barely heard them beyond registering that all these bridges he was going to have to cross would take time. And time meant—
“Where are you staying?” she asked abruptly.
Nick blinked, then the lopsided smile reappeared. “Well, Mona invited me to stay here.”
Edie felt as if she’d been punched in the gut.
“Is that a problem?” Nick asked. He was looking at her speculatively.
“I—” Edie managed one word, then her speech dried up.
Problem wasn’t precisely the word. Try awkward, she thought. Try disconcerting. Or mortifying. But how could she explain? She’d told him that Mona was matchmaking back in Mont Chamion. She didn’t want to have to admit it again. She didn’t want him to think her mother was trying to serve him up on a plate!
Deliberately she pasted on her best mi casa es su casa smile. “Of course not,” Edie lied and stepped back to open the door wider. “Not a problem. I was just surprised. Come in. This is Roy, by the way.”
Nick hunkered down and ruffled Roy’s ears. The dog, a sucker for ear rubs, moaned his pleasure. The sound made Edie remember all too well how Nick’s hands had made her moan, too.
She was sure her cheeks were flaming when he gave Roy’s ears one last rub, then stood up. “I’ll just get my bag from the car.”
Edie waited by the door and tried to gather her wits, to find a proper emotional leg to stand on from which to handle the sudden appearance of Nick Savas into her life.
He wasn’t here for her, she reminded herself. At least not in his estimation. He’d come because her mother had given him some song-and-dance about renovating the adobe. And he didn’t care enough about her one way or the other to let it sway him.
“It’s business,” she told herself firmly. “Remember that,” she muttered under her breath as he strode back up the driveway with a leather and canvas duffel in one hand and a battered laptop case in the other.
“What’s that?” he asked, obviously having heard her saying something.
Edie shook her head. “Just talking to myself. I need to remember something.”
“You should write it down.”
Yes, Edie thought. I should. I should emblazon it on the insides of my eyelids.
“I’ll do that,” she told him briskly, then took a deep breath and turned to lead him back into the house. “Right this way.”
“Amazing place,” Nick said appreciatively as he followed her.
The living room, with its high ceilings, thick cream colored rough plastered walls and terrazzo floors, opened through a series of French doors onto a broad patio with a trellised canopy sheltering it from the sun. The doors at this time of year were open, and the light afternoon breeze drifted in, stirring a set of shell wind chimes as they passed.
“It’s hardly authentic,” Edie said over her shoulder, glad that he was looking around rather than at her. “It’s what my brother calls ‘Movie star Spanish.’”
Nick laughed. “I recognize it.” Then he shrugged. “But it pays homage to the real thing in an impressive way. The purists hate it, but it celebrated the heritage and the history in its own way. It’s made it popular and accessible.”
“You’re more forgiving than my brother.” Edie was surprised at his attitude. She would have thought an architect, especially one who dealt with authentic historic preservation and restoration, would be more judgmental, not less.
“It is what it is,” Nick said, running his hand up the smooth dark bannister as she led him up the broad staircase, then looked back at the room below them. “A romantic idealization. It’s not pretending to be authentic. Maybe your brother is responding not to the house but to what it means to him.”
Which was probably truer than he could know, Edie thought. And Ronan wouldn’t like being called on it, either.
“You could be right,” she said as they reached the open hallway on the upper floor.
“You can pretty much have any of these that you want.” She gestured at the several open doors. She showed him all the ones that were available, at the same time pointing out her mother’s suite at the far end of the hall, then her youngest sister, Grace’s, room and the twins’ room overlooking the pool. “They’re in Thailand with Mona right now,” she said. “For the summer holidays.”
She used to do that herself when she was young, trail after her mother and watch the filming from the sidelines. Those experiences had made her certain she never wanted to do what her mother did, at the same time it had made Rhiannon long to get in front of the cameras.
“How about this one?” Nick said, looking into a spare masculine looking room. It was almost Spartan in its lack of decor.
“Ronan, my older brother, uses this one when he’s here. But he won’t be here for months, so you’re welcome to it. Or,” she added with a grin, “you can have the tower room.”
“Tower?”
“Surely you noticed our pseudo-Moorish tower when you drove up.” It was the most romantic of all the romantic elements in the house.
He grinned. “I’d forgotten that. There’s a bedroom up there?”
“A small suite. Rhiannon loves it.” She pointed at the narrow staircase that curved upward.
“Why am I not surprised? Does she use it when she’s here?”
“Yes. But she’s gone right now. You’re welcome to it.”
“I’d have thought you’d have first dibs on it.”
“Never wanted it.”
He raised a brow. “Not a romantic?”
“No.” Not about rooms, anyway. And she tried to be realistic. At least most of the time. “That was my room.” She tilted her head toward one that looked up toward the woods.
“Was? Which one is yours now?”
“I have an apartment over the carriage house.”
It was a small, cozy one-bedroom flat that had been the caretaker’s place when Edie was growing up. But then the caretaker left, and Ronan had taken over the carriage house during college. He’d kept it even after he got his first job as a journalist. But eventually he was out of the country so much he decided he didn’t need it.
Edie had moved in there when she came back after Ben had died. She would work for her mother willingly, but she wasn’t going to live with her, too. She’d been a married woman, Now she was a widow. She wanted her independence.
For all the good it was obviously doing her!
“So who’s sleeping in your bed?” Nick asked.
Edie opened her
