Montana Darling(22)
His hostess, Sarah Zabrinski, embodied the warmest, most genuine motherly aura he’d ever met. When she hugged him hello, his heart had melted a little. Even some of the resentment he felt toward his own mother might have disappeared with that hug.
“You have to let me photograph you the next time you do this. I want to capture the exact moment you infuse the secret ingredient into the dough.”
“What secret ingredient?” Emilee asked.
They were sitting around a giant oval table, with an incongruous, but somehow appropriate mix of paper plates and crystal wine glasses. Emilee and Hunter sipped apple juice out of their sparkling stemware.
“Love. I can taste it. Can’t you?”
She made a face. “You’re weird.”
“Emilee. Rude.”
Emilee looked at her mother. “Sorry.” Her tone was anything but.
Sarah offered Ryker another slice of the pepperoni, jalapeno and artichoke, which he took. “You’re too kind,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of practice. Four kids, including twins, was a challenge at times. Luckily, they were all very independent and self-starters. I was happy just to keep up.”
He looked around the table as he chewed. Bob Zabrinski, Mia’s dad, reminded Ryker of his own father in a way. Or, maybe, the way he thought his dad might look if he’d lived to be sixty-eight. Still tall, broad-shouldered and fit, with a great deal more silver than coal in his recently barbered hair. Bob had pulled Ryker aside to ask the tough questions any patriarch would ask: age, marital state, employment, family background, and work history. The latter surprised Ryker, until he remembered the man had run a retail business most of his life.
“So, Ryker, you were telling us about all your travels. Sounds like you started pretty young. Where’d you go to college?”
Ryker shook his head. “I had acceptance letters from two Ivy League schools, but after my dad passed away, my mother remarried quite quickly and my stepfather didn’t believe anybody deserved a ‘free ride,’ as he called it. No money and no time to apply for aid didn’t leave me with a lot of options. Luckily, my dad had a lot of connections and was well liked. I begged a recommendation from a friend of his who was an editor at a local newspaper to snag a stringer spot with an affiliate of UPI—United Press International. It took about nine months to get in so I used the time to sharpen my skills in fashion in New York.”
He took a breath and let it out, picturing how green he’d been. Such a baby. Good thing some guardian angel—his dad he always figured—had been looking out for him.
“When I was nineteen, I was sent to Afghanistan as a gopher with an experienced crew. We wound up in Fallujah right before a major offensive. Utter chaos. Someone handed me a camera and I kept shooting until the shooting stopped. The world press picked up a couple of my shots. Just luck.”
“Impressive for one so young,” Bob said.
“In the early years, my age probably is what saved me. People didn’t have very high expectations. Every once in awhile I’d get lucky, but most of my shots sucked most of the time. I didn’t know a tenth of what I needed to learn about composition and light. But I got better.” He washed down his last bite of pizza with a large gulp of Chianti.
When Bob turned away to answer a question from his wife, Mia reached under the table to touch his leg. Just a little pat but the zings of electricity from the contact made him nearly choke on his wine. “Sorry for the inquisition,” she said, leaning close enough to whisper. “We’re all still adjusting to our new roles. Dad forgets I’m not in high school anymore.”
“I’ve been grilled by worse. No worries.”
Mia stood. “Apples To Apples, anyone?”
“Grandpa and I are playing Minecraft,” Hunter said.
“I’m Skyping with Cara and Jenni. We have to decide on the image for the Volleyball T-shirt fundraiser,” Emilee answered. “Which do you like better, Ryker?”
She walked around the table to show him her phone. “This one?”
The pink shirt sported a familiar twisted ribbon made up of people’s names. “That’s cool. Is your mom’s name in it?” he asked, squinting.
“No. It’s just some clip art our teacher found online.”
Mia leaned over his shoulder. Her scent wrapped him in a hug that left him a little breathless. Shit. Weird. He liked her. He’d like to take her home with him and spend the night making love with her, but despite her friendliness, he guessed that wasn’t going to happen. She had a family. She belonged here. He didn’t.
“Nice, but not very volleyball-ish,” Mia said. “Show us the other one.”
Emilee flicked the screen with her fingertip. A light pink background with hot pink lettering that bore the words: “Bump, Set, Spike for a Cure.”
Ryker and Mia exchanged a look. “This one,” they said together.
Emilee looked from one to the other and back. Then she walked away without comment.
Probably just as well, Ryker thought. The pheromones line-dancing between him and her mother were undoubtedly glowing the same shade of pink as the wording on the shirt. “I’ll buy one, if they go with the Bump, Set, Spike design,” he said.
“You’re not afraid to be seen in pink?”
“It’s one of my best colors, I’ve been told.”
She grinned. “I’ll order you a size large. Now, how ’bout some help cleaning up since Mom is probably on the phone with my future sister-in-law talking wedding details and my lazy children seem to have disappeared.”
“Oh, Mo…om,” he whined, with a wink. “Okay.”
He followed her around the corner to find a bright, cheerful, open layout kitchen that included a large island with four stools and a gleaming chrome cooktop. “Something tells me this is Family Central.”
“It is, now. This used to be a wall when I was growing up. A woman’s place and all that,” she added sardonically. “A few years ago, Paul’s crew gutted the room when Mom and Dad were doing their snowbird thing in Arizona. They took out a wall and replaced it with this island.”
“Looks great.”
She nodded. “The plan called for him to move the basement steps to the other side of the room so this could all be dining room.” She pointed toward a painted railing capped with a polished oak banister. “That proved cost prohibitive. But taking out the wall and adding French doors out to the deck gave the kitchen a view.”
He stared out the darkened windows. When he’d ridden up, he’d glimpsed what appeared to be creek trees behind the house. He didn’t know the variety. “Do you back up to the river?”
She walked to the sink and turned on the water. “Just a feeder creek. It runs briefly in the spring. When we were kids, we’d catch crawdads and Austen swears he got a trout one time, but I never believed it.”
He hurried to her side, grabbing a towel from the handle of the stove on his way past. Since she was washing the silverware first, he started drying the flatware they’d used. The warm, lemon-scented steam from the wash water made him smile. “I didn’t know how much I missed hot, running water until I moved into the Fish and Game. It’s a luxury beyond words.”
“Where did you bathe when you were in your tent?”
“Once—sometimes twice—a week, I’d ride my bike to the hot springs. Heavenly. But most days, I’d simply go for a swim with a bar of soap. Not enough to pollute the river, I promise.”
She snickered. “I’m sure the people swimming upriver from you weren’t that concerned about hygiene.”
“True. Once, when a group of German tourists were passing by, one of them paddled to shore and gave me an ice cold beer from his cooler that had a dedicated float.”
“Sounds nice. Your great summer adventure.”
He took his time polishing a high-end looking knife. He studied his reflection in the steel. “My tent was a great place to hide out from reality.”
She rinsed the glass carafe from the drip coffeemaker. “If we’re being honest, I have to admit when I first saw your camp and how relaxed you seemed, I was green with envy. That’s one of the reasons I was so testy. A single mom is lucky if she can go to the bathroom without someone wanting something. There have been times when I would have paid someone to hire me just so I could get out of the house.”
He liked her honesty. It made her more accessible and real.
She went on. “While living here with my folks is a great blessing, I’ve been on my own since I left for college. This is home, but it’s not my house. I guess that’s why I was in such a big hurry to get the foundation in.”
He took the carafe from her hands and slowly dried it. “When I first got back to the states, I spent a month with my brother in Kentucky. He and his wife were not getting along. They’ve since split up. At the time, I felt like a buffer…an excuse to avoid dealing with their problems.”
He shook his head. “So, last year, right after Christmas, I headed to Key West to see an old friend from high school. He lives mostly off the grid, fishes, sells a piece of art every once in awhile and seems pretty darn content. He told me I owed it to myself to check out Montana.”