“Do you live here full-time?” I ask.
“Not full-time. In between seasons. I rent a place at whatever city my team is based out of, but I consider this my home base.”
I slowly stroll towards a battered leather couch, the only piece of furniture besides a flat screen TV mounted to the wall. The leather is scuffed and the cushions are sagging.
It looks like it’s been through war.
Delicately, I ask, “Is this an… inherited piece?”
“Inherited from the basement of Rosemont. That’s the main house here at Wild Rose, where we grew up.”
I’m all about designing around people’s treasured objects they’ve collected, but this couch has seen better years. Or decades.
“Does it have sentimental value?” I venture. “Are you emotionally attached to it?”
“I’m not emotionally attached to anything. Toss it in a fire, I don’t care. I don’t hold onto things.” He heads towards the kitchen. “You want anything to drink? Coffee? Water? A beer?”
I check my watch. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, earlier than I would normally have a drink, but hey. It’s Saturday afternoon. And when in Rome… or Wild Rose, as it were.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” I say.
He goes to the enormous, commercial-grade stainless steel fridge and I peek inside before he closes the door. Everything is neatly arranged: stacks of green vegetables, rows of eggs in neat containers, slabs of gleaming salmon and cuts of steak. It looks exactly like what I would think a professional athlete’s fridge should.
I think of my tiny fridge overflowing with random condiments and a million flavors of yogurt and miscellaneous piles of fruit and leftover cake from Sarah’s birthday that I’m making my way through day by day.
Thank God this man will never see the inside of my fridge. My semi-organized chaos and his neat freak nature are just another way in which we’re opposites.
After twisting off the top, he hands me a cold bottle of Yellowstone Pale Ale and clinks his bottle against mine. “Thanks for coming all the way out here. Let me give you the house tour.”
Chapter 6
House Tour
LILA
As he walks me through it, I start forming my professional assessment. There’s very little personal assessment to go off of, because Slade keeps nothing personal in this home.
Lucky trails behind us as he walks me through the house, her prosthetic leg clicking softly on the reclaimed wood floors, nose tipped up like she’s taking inventory too.
He stops in the main bedroom. The views of the mountains are astonishing, steel windows revealing a vista of sweeping, pristine wilderness. There’s a hawk floating on a thermal above the tree line. Pine trees swaying in the wind.
“What a gorgeous view to wake up to every morning,” I sigh longingly.
With difficulty I tear my gaze away from the window. Only to find Slade gazing at me.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “It’s something.”
Ipicture waking up in this bedroom. With the man it belongs to.
That is… not part of the professional assessment.
With some difficulty, I force my focus on the only furniture in the room. Which is a mattress on the floor.
It’s neatly made, at least. One blanket. One pillow.
Does one pillow mean he doesn’t share his bed with a companion?
My gaze finds Slade’s as I try to come up with something diplomatic to say about the mattress on the floor situation.
