Page 6 of Love In Translation
“You mentioned something about Carrie coming back?” she asked, hoping she’d misunderstood him. She couldn’t cope with Captivating Carrie right now. “When?”
“She said she’d be here in two weeks. We intend to kayak the Little White Salmon together.”
Despite her lack of interest in anything outdoorsy, Rheo knew the Little White Salmon was a world-famous kayaking run not far from here, offering incredible rapids...ifyou possessed the skills to attempt it. Competent Carrie did.
“We’re also going to do some trail running, some soloing,” Fletcher added.
Soloing was shorthand for rope-free climbing, and Rheo pulled a why-would-you-want-to-do-that face.
He grinned. “Which one don’t you like? Trail running or climbing?”
Rheo waved her hand in the direction of Mount Hood. “All of it. Getting sweaty and dirty is not my idea of fun.”
He leaned his big shoulder into the wall next to the front door and examined her face, his expression more intense than before. “I remember Carrie mentioning you. You have an important job in the city, and you work incessantly, right?”
He made it sound like work was all she did...
To be fair, he wasn’t wrong. She did work long hours. She heard the questions he was too polite to ask out loud—Jesus, how can you live like that? Don’t you feel like a rat on a wheel?—and sighed. Compared to her van-life-loving parents and the wildly adventurous, sexy, and charismatic presenter/adventurer/influencer Carrie, Rheo’s life sounded dreary. But it was her life, her choice, and she didn’t need to be constantly moving or climbing mountains or swimming with sharks to be content.
A good book and a glass of wine worked for her.
Everyone in her family, except for Paddy, felt the need to try to save her from her mindless existence—For God’s sake, live a little more! You need more stamps in your passport, Rheo! Do you even own a passport, Rheo?—so she kept her interactions with them to a minimum, restricting their communications to a monthly email, and a call every two weeks for her to catch up on their adventures and for her parents to sigh when they heard her life was the exactly the same as last month and the month before. If they were in the same area, they sometimes met up to celebrate birthdays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If teeth-pulling conversation could be called celebrating.
And that was exactly why they’d be assuming now, that she still lived in the city and worked at the UN. They didn’t know her career was in tatters or that she was fighting to find her way back to who she was before.
“It’s a gorgeous house and bigger than I realized,” Fletcher said, looking past her into the hall.
And it was the house he’d paid to lease. He had the right to be here; she didn’t. Theoretically, she should pack up and ship out. But where would she go? Abi would let her sleep on her couch for a night or two, but Rheo was allergic to sharing her living space with anyone...which was the primary reason Callum had dumped her last year. He’d wanted them to move in together, but Rheo believed the three nights a week he slept over was two too many.
But the Pink House was way bigger than her apartment and definitely big enough to house two people who wanted, or needed, to live separate lives. Would Fletcher let her stay for a little while, just long enough to make a new plan? And if he did, would he also agree to keep her presence in Gilmartin a secret until she figured out what to do, where to go, and how to wiggle out of her self-created predicament?
She knew what she should do—bite the bullet and tell Paddy, and her parents, how she’d screwed up—but if she could get away with keeping her goat rodeo shit show under wraps, she would.
Pride might come before a fall, but at least she didn’t have that far to drop.
Rheo rubbed the back of her neck. Okay, even if she managed to persuade Fletcher to share the house, how would she cope with living with him? He couldn’t be ignored: he was a big guy and took up space. He exuded capability and charisma, the kind people noticed when walking into a room. It often happened at the UN. If one looked past the head honcho leading political delegations, there was someone at the back of the retinue not saying much, but when he (or she) did, people listened. And responded. Immediately. The power behind the mouthpiece, the true leader.
Fletcher was the same. Whether he meant to or not, knew it or not, he commanded attention.
He was also the first man who’d literally made her feelexhilarated. Dammit. Was this what her parents experienced when they scaled a rock face? What Carrie felt when she dived with white sharks or bungee-jumped off the bridge over Victoria Falls? All shaky and shivery and shiny? If yes, then Rheo didn’t care for it. She liked stability in her emotions as well as her life, thank you very much.
Rheo watched old Mrs. Nicolson walk by, her head swiveling at the strange man standing on her doorstep. Rheo jerked her chin, gesturing for Fletcher to come inside.
He dropped his duffel bag to the black-and-white tiled floor and lowered his laptop case to rest on his bag, his attention caught by an oversized, colorful, but unsettling painting on the opposite wall. Paddy was convinced it was a work by Georgia O’Keeffe, one of her flower paintings, but Rheo thought it was porn adjacent and wished she’d take it down.
Fletcher asked to use the bathroom, and Rheo directed him to the small one behind the stairs. The door clicked shut, and Rheo ran her fingertips over her forehead, conscious of her pounding head. Her meeting with Nicole had left her drained, and having a sexy stranger drop onto her doorstep with the intention of staying knocked her off-balance.
Think, Rheo!
If she sent him away, he would call Carrie, and within thirty minutes, her phone would blow up with calls and messages from her family.
She couldn’t tell them she’d failed. How would she explain her life was a mess and she was consumed by uncertainty? Oh, they weren’t horrible people, they could be fun and great company, but she couldn’t handle anyCome down to earth with a bump, haven’t you?comments.
Look, she didn’t blame them; there had been a few times when she’d been pretty vociferous while expressing her scorn for their adventurous, nomadic lifestyles. She’d reprimanded her father for demanding to see Paddy’s will, told Carrie she was insanely careless for visiting volatile Kashmir, and rolled her eyes at her mom’s devotion to homeopathic medicines when an old-fashioned antibiotic would make her better quicker. It was human to gloat.
Carrie, who’d never met a secret she didn’t spill, would tell Paddy that Rheo was staying at the Pink House, and an intense interrogation from her grandmother would commence. Her grandmother was many things—sensibly adventurous, soulful, intelligent, and shrewd—but she did not suffer fools, and she wasn’t, and never had been, warm and fuzzy.
After Rheo explained she’d screwed up and bolted to Gilmartin, Paddy, always straightforward, wouldn’t hesitate to wade in. After roasting her for using the house without permission, she’d drop a few conversational nuclear bombs in a withering tone.