Нора Робертс - Hideaway

“I only have ball caps.”

“Get one. Trust me.”

“Next time I’m out and about then. I did my first voice-over this morning. The studio rocks, Grandpa. It seriously rocks. I’m going to start rehearsing an audiobook read later today. I’ve read two of this author’s books before, so I know her style, her voice when it comes to narration. I need to get a handle on the characters. It’ll be fun.”

She opened her eyes, reached out to tap the script.

“Who are you?”

“The freewheeling, slightly crazy grandfather trying to convince his straight-arrow grandson to cut loose. They’re on a cross-country trip—Boston to Santa Barbara—because the old man won’t fly. The daughter—the grandson’s mother—is working on having the old man deemed nuts, and put in a nursing home. He ain’t going without a fight.”

“I don’t like her.”

“She’s a former flower child who’s converted to suburban matron. She believes she’s doing the sensible thing. It’s a romp, so far. Well done.”

She tapped her finger at him. “I hear you, Sullivan. You’re going to make sure it’s green-lit.”

“I may twist an arm or two. But I’ll finish it first.”

He turned his head, grinned when a couple of happy barks hit the air.

“When did you get a dog?” Cate asked.

“Not yet, but I’m thinking about it.” He clapped his hands, gave a whistle from between his teeth. A pair of black-and-white dogs, with a few spots of brown for good measure, raced straight to Hugh, wiggled until he rubbed both of them.

“They—they can’t be Dillon’s dogs.”

“They are. Not Gambit and Jubilee. They slipped away last fall. Meet Stark and Natasha.”

They shifted attention to Cate, sniffing, rubbing, staring at her with soul-filled eyes. “Iron Man and Black Widow?” Laughing, she rubbed. “Sticking with the Marvel Universe.”

“What can I say?” Dillon walked up the stone path. “I’m a fan. I brought you a basket of those fingerlings you like, Hugh.”

“Hot dog—and I don’t mean you two. Sit down, boy. I’ll call in for coffee.”

“Wish I could, but I’m on my way to the co-op with produce.” But he pulled off his sunglasses, smiled at Cate. “I heard you were back. It’s good to see you.”

“You, too. You really can’t stay for a few minutes?”

“With Hugh, I sit down for a minute and the next thing I know it’s been an hour. Next time.”

As he snapped his fingers for the dogs, Cate rose. “I promise I won’t keep you an hour if you’d walk back down with me. I have something for you—your mom and grandmother.”

“Sure. You’re in the guesthouse, right? Well, I guess it’s Cate’s house now. I’ll take that hour, Hugh, first chance.”

“See you do.”

“I guess you know,” Dillon said as he walked with Cate, “you made Hugh and Lily about the happiest people on the planet when you said you were coming back to stay.”

“It turns out it’s making me pretty happy, too.”

“Don’t miss New York?”

“It’s there whenever I need an East Coast fix. It was good for me. Now this is good for me. Tell your mom, and Gram, I’m going to come see them. I wanted to keep a close eye on Grandpa for the first few days.”

“He needs one.”

“I got that.” She opened the door. The dogs rushed in, began their obligatory sniffing.

He walked around, looked around. “It looks good. I saw a couple of stages when they were changing it up. It really looks good.”

So did he, she thought.

Obviously he didn’t always wear a hat in the sun—wide-brimmed or otherwise—as that sun had spent plenty of time streaking through his dense brown hair and gifting it with a million highlights. It spilled around his face somewhere between a curl and a wave—an interesting medium she suspected would take her hours to perfect on her own rain-straight hair.

He’d fined down, too, looked honed, she decided, so his face was all planes, angles, shadows with an outdoorsman tan that added even more depth and color to his green eyes.

He had a body that seemed to have been made for jeans, work boots, work shirts. Tough and lean.

He moved, as he wandered her space, with the rangy kind of ease of a man who strode around fields and pastures.

She let out a half laugh. “It’s central casting.”

“What’s that?”

He glanced back, and well, Jesus, the sun slanted over him like a damn key light.

She pointed at him. “Rancher. You nail the look.”

He grinned, and of course, it was lightning quick and just the right amount of crooked. “I am what I am. And you’re a—Hugh calls it—voice actor.”

“That’s right. They built me a studio in here.”

“Yeah, they talked about it.”

She gestured for him to follow her, led the way.

He stopped at the doorway, hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. “Well, wow, that’s a lot of equipment. How’d you learn how to work it all?”

“Trial and error—a lot of both. It’s not really as complicated as it looks. I worked out of my bedroom closet when I first started. This is a big step up.”

“I’ll say. I saw—heard—you in Secret Identity . You looked good as a superhero, and as her alter ego, the quiet, lonely scientist. The voices worked. Soft, like hesitant for Lauren Long, fierce and sexy for Whirlwind.”

“Thanks.”

“I figured you’d have to go into a studio, with a director, crew, all that stuff.”

“For some things, yeah. For others? The bedroom closet works.”

“This is some closet you’ve got here. Maybe sometime you can show me how all this works. But I have to get going.”

“I can do that when we both have time. Let me get the soda bread.”

She moved by him, realized he even smelled like a rancher: leather and fresh grass.

“Soda bread?”

“I made it this morning. I’d claim it as an old family recipe, which is true—just not my family. A neighbor when I lived in Ireland.”

“You bake bread?”

“I do. It helps me clear out cobwebs, work on voices.”

She got a cloth, took one of the loaves from the cooling rack, wrapped it. “I wanted to give your family something from me.” She offered it.

He stood a moment, the wrapped bread in his hands, the dogs at his feet sniffing the air. His eyes held hers the way they had that night so long ago.

Direct, curious.

“Appreciate it. Come by. My ladies would really like to see you.”

“I will.”

He started for the door, the dogs at his heels. “We never had that ride. You still ride?”

It took her a minute. “Oh, sure. It’s been awhile.”

“Come by. We’ll see if you remember how.”

He started out, that easy, ground-eating stride, looked back. “You look good as Cate, too.”

When he continued on, she stepped back, closed the door.

“Well,” she said to herself. “Well, well, well.”

Dillon did his rounds. Delivered to the co-op, hauled an order of hay and oats to a local woman who kept two horses, dropped off a half gallon of goat’s milk to a neighbor who couldn’t pick it up herself because her car was in the shop.

He got a couple of cookies as thanks, considered it a good deal.

Back at home, he parked the truck, let the dogs out to run as he went over his mental list of what he still had to do. The first? Deliver the bread and mooch some lunch.

He noted Red’s truck, which meant he wouldn’t be the only one mooching lunch. But when he went inside, he found only his mother and grandmother in the dairy kitchen.

His grandmother hung a cheesecloth bundle of goat’s milk curds, the big bowl beneath it to catch the whey that would separate from the curds. His mother filtered another—and it looked like the last batch of milk.