I need to prepare the walls for you?”
“Oh, good question. Yes, please.”
“Just tell me what you need and when and I’ll get her done.”
“Great, thank you. That won’t be for a while, though.”
They continued chatting about the steps to undertaking this project, both engaged and distracted from whatever other cares they had. He promised to take her to the college to see the outdoor walls soon. After she explained what needed to be done, he planned to remove the stucco and prep the walls to her specifications while she painted her smaller-scale grid.
After dinner she helped him wash the dishes, then she went on and on about how beautiful his house was and how extraordinary her living quarters were. Suddenly the day, and meal that had gotten off to a rocky start, was ending on a much better note.
Because she’d eaten so little, he showed her where the leftovers would be and several other choices for snacks, making sure she understood the mi casa es su casa philosophy they needed to agree on. It was called Scandinavian hospitality or the Viking code and the god Odin had originally laid down the law in the poem Havamal: “Fire, food and clothes, welcoming speech, should he find who comes to the feast.”
She thanked him again and said good-night, then quietly went up the stairs. He planned to take the dogs out for one last quick walk, but before he did, he watched her hair sway as she ascended the stairs and, to his surprise, he also noticed the twitch of her hips. But what man wouldn’t?
Having a woman in the house had already changed things. A life force was again coming from that end of the second floor. The often overbearing emptiness of the house seemed tamped back a bit, and it felt...well, it felt damn good.
Later, when he laid his head on the pillow, he tried to remember the last time he’d engaged a woman in a conversation for more than two minutes. Not counting women trying to engage him in conversation, like his guesthouse renter, Lilly, who was always full of questions about the town. But what could he expect from a reporter? Or little old ladies at the market with single daughters or granddaughters.
Nope, he’d initiated this conversation tonight, and somehow he’d managed to draw Marta Hoyas out of her shell, even if only for a little while. The thought made him happy, a foreign feeling for him. Well, he’d had a couple of glasses of wine, which probably helped that along.
Yeah, that had to be the reason for that goofy-feeling grin pasted on his face.
Not the beautiful woman from Sedona.
“Ellen?” Leif rolled over in bed, mostly asleep. “Ellen?” No flash of a dream came back to him like usual. What had driven him out of deep sleep thinking of his dead wife? And what time was it? He looked at the bedside clock—quarter to five. Almost time to get up anyway.
Leif sat up, gave a quick shake of his head and pulled on his jeans for the short walk to the hall bathroom. Another inconvenience of having a woman in the house. As he woke he understood he must have been dreaming about Ellen, but usually when he did he remembered it. He didn’t remember anything about this dream. If that was what it was.
He heard a sound and stopped. It was very faint but undeniably a sound he remembered.
He stood quiet and listened harder. There it was again.
Retching.
The old and familiar heaving from when Ellen had suffered through chemotherapy came rushing back. He must have heard that unmistakable sound in his sleep.
Retching? What was up?
He squinted and listened. It had gone quiet again, but the puking sound had come from Marta’s room. Had she gotten food poisoning from what little she’d eaten last night? Damn, that would be horrible. He felt fine, so why would she get sick?
After he finished his quick pit stop and washed his hands he heard more retching and fought off a wave of terrible memories. Oh, God, Ellen, what you went through. He strode to the end of the hall, not wanting to be nosy but unable to let this lie. It was quiet again.
Marta was curvy—not ultrathin like anorexics or bulimics tended to be. What a crazy thought to even entertain, that she might have an eating disorder. That couldn’t be it. But she’d picked at her meal and looked queasy during dinner, even said her stomach had been giving her fits.
She’d also refused alcohol.
A lot of people didn’t drink. But a warning thought planted inside his brain and made him back off as he heard one more round of intense dry heaves. He wanted to help her out, but it could prove embarrassing for her, and that wasn’t his intent. She needed—deserved—privacy. If she was sick, he’d gladly take care of her, but not without an invitation. She was a grown woman and he assumed she wouldn’t hesitate to ask for help. Unless she was one of those superproud ladies who couldn’t ask for anything.
He ran his hand through his hair, torn. Let it be, Andersen. He listened to his intuition stemmed from the fact she’d refused any wine last night. A troubling thought of what a woman throwing up first thing in the morning usually meant made him step away from the door, then he headed back to his bathroom for a shower.
* * *
Later, Leif had eaten and was feeding the dogs, having decided to take them with him over to the job for the day. He’d promised to finish the add-on to Gunnar Norling’s house in six weeks, and Gunnar had offered to help as much as possible. That meant today, before the sergeant’s shift at Heartlandia PD, they’d install the triple-paned windows that had arrived yesterday. Even though he’d been driving his crew hard on this project, no way would Leif ask them to work on Sunday. The guys needed at least one day off. He and Gunnar could handle it.
After both dogs took a quick whiz, he whistled for them to jump into the bed of the truck. He’d removed the cover and had thrown in his window installation tools. Just as he finished closing the tailgate, he noticed Marta standing in the kitchen doorway in a robe that looked like a Native American blanket. With her hair parted down the middle and not brushed, it tumbled over her shoulders in a wild mess. The vision moved him in ways he hadn’t felt in years. It also bothered him to react so viscerally to a near stranger. She might be pregnant, for crying out loud.
“Where are you going?” Curiosity knit her brows.
“I’ve got a job today. I left you a note in the kitchen. Sorry, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Oh, okay.” She folded her arms. “That’s all right, then. I’ll wait to talk to you later.”
“Is there anything you need?” He thought back to the noises emanating from her suite earlier.
“Besides a good night’s sleep and peace of mind?” She offered a wan smile. Her pained look made him want to wrap his arms around her and tell her everything would be okay, and what was up with that impulse? But other than having a pretty solid hunch, Leif didn’t know what her problem was. He really didn’t have a clue if things were okay in her world or not. Obviously, something had robbed her peace of mind.
“Do you want me to stick around? Take you anywhere?”
