Free Beauty and the Brit by Lizbeth Selvig Page A

said.
    “Well, my bank creditors are crap out of luck,” she said.
    Discomfort shadowed his face. “Yeah. Rio, I’m sorry.”
    She shrugged, swallowed away the omnipresent lump in her throat, and changed the subject. “If we’re going to town, maybe we should go.”
    “Right. Good,” David said. “A short drive is all.”
    “Could I stay here and watch Kim’s lesson?” Bonnie asked. “I’d rather do that.”
    “I don’t think so,” Rio said. “You need to stick with us and help pick out what you want.”
    “You know what I eat,” she said. “You shop at home. Please, Rio, just let me hang out here.”
    “It’s okay with me,” Kim said.
    “It’s up to you, of course,” David added, “but she’ll be fine. Kim and Jill will watch over her well. She might as well get to know the place.”
    The one thing Rio had figured to have some control over, some sense of home with, had been Bonnie. What had happened to the scared teen hiding from the police chief? Here she was, jumping into the pool without Rio as a life preserver.
    Grow up, Rio. You always say you never want to be her mother.
    “All right, if you’re sure.” She looked to Kim.
    “Absolutely.”
    Rio turned warning eyes on her sister. “Be careful.”
    “Duh.”
    David chuckled.
    Rio could already see how Bonnie, with her extrovert’s personality, might take quickly to Bridge Creek. Rio felt slightly ill at ease in a place where nobody seemed to be on guard or at least on watch for danger to erupt.
    “What do you think? Shall we go? Leave the little girls to their gossip?”
    That’s when it dawned on her she was about to head off alone with the man, his muscles, and his accent. She glanced hopefully at Bonnie, but her sister didn’t even look up from her newest lesson on how to pick up a horse’s foot. There was no hope she would change her mind about coming to town.
    “All right.”
    “Do you need anything from the house?” David asked, when they’d reached the yard. “Take as long as you like. There’s no hurry.”
    “I should grab my purse.”
    “I’ll bring the car ’round to the front.”
    The butler-esque phrase seemed to clear her head. Or maybe it was just being out of the barn where his delicious masculine scent couldn’t scramble her brain.
    She faced him. “You’re going above and beyond for us, and I can’t thank you enough. But I hope you won’t keep waiting on us hand and foot. I’m not used to that.”
    He frowned. “I know you’re not. You’re used to making your own way, and I respect that. But you’ll find we do for each other around here. And you have an incredible number of things to figure out. They don’t all have to be sorted this minute, but when you need help we’ll be here. Go grab what you need,” he finished. “See you in a couple of minutes.”
    She made her way back to the stark room she’d chosen and was pleased with the sense of comfort the empty space still gave her. For one moment it was like standing on a blank canvas, no blemishes, nobody else’s marks on it, no expectations of what should be on it or in her life.
    Her shoulders relaxed slightly.
    One problem at a time. She could learn to do that. The only truly immediate problem she had was how she was going to survive a closed-in car ride with David Pitts-Mattherson without his presence and that voodoo scent he wore turning her logical brain to mush.
    Her logical brain was all she had left.

 
    Chapter Six
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    D AVID SHIFTED IN the leather seat of his Forester and glanced at Rio, who, with her chin in her palm, had lost some of her rigidity. If she wasn’t comfortable in his presence, at least she seemed resigned rather than resentful. Now if only he could bring back the smile he’d seen exactly twice since meeting her. It wasn’t fair that such a stunning woman should have to wear this guarded a look all the time. From what he remembered of her rare happy face, it turned her into a radiant beauty. And him into