“Oh,” she said and gave a nervous laugh. “I forgot about that. Come on in and enjoy the sauna.”
He smiled as he crossed the threshold and closed the broken door the best he could. Callie strode over to open one of the two windows facing the street. She pushed aside her sheer blue curtains, undid the latch, and shoved at the window. It took some effort to get the swollen wood to budge, but she finally got it to slide open.
While she worked on that, Lucien opened the other window. The muggy air coming through the windows did nothing to cool the place off, but it alleviated some of the staleness choking the apartment.
Lucien studied the living room with its gray sofa and matching armchair. A fluffy, cream-colored carpet covered the floor, and across from the sofa sat an entertainment center with a TV on top. Next to the sofa was an end table with a nearly empty glass of water on it.
Photos of horses, a farm, and a man hugging a child, who on closer inspection turned out to be Callie, hung on the beige walls. Another photo of a group of women hugging each other was on the entertainment center.
Callie was one of the women, and he assumed they were at an outdoor concert as a crowd surrounded them and there was a stage in the background. Different colors of paint splashed their bodies and faces. The glow-in-the-dark necklaces they wore illuminated their grins as dusk settled in behind them.
This is the life she’s lost, he realized with a sad pang in his chest. He was so glad he’d found her, she was the best thing to ever happen to his life, but whereas she’d only made his life better, she was losing so much.
He lifted his head as she walked over to the end table. She was so incredibly beautiful and though she’d lost so much, she didn’t complain about it or cry and rail against the unfairness of it all. His heart swelled with love, and the words rose in his throat but died on his lips. He’d never uttered the words before, and he didn’t know how to do so now.
Callie lifted the water glass from the end table and carried it into the kitchen. Remodeled in the early two thousands, the house retained some of its oldness in the kitchen cabinets. Because of their quaintness, she’d painted the wood around them a darker green while making the doors a paler green.
The contrasting tones helped emphasize the country feel of the kitchen, as did her fluffy, yellow curtains. She hated giving up her rented home for an apartment, so she’d done everything to make this place feel like home when she moved in, and she loved it.
She set the glass in the sink and opened the window above it before crossing the yellow, tiled floor to the back door. She checked the lock before peering out at the stairs winding down to the backyard.
There were three sheds down there; hers was the one to the right. She’d only lived here for a couple of months, and she’d stored all her containers inside the shed when she finished unpacking them. They would come in handy now.
She turned to find Lucien studying the built-in shelves in the kitchen. A delicate, old tea set with a red rose pattern decorated the shelves.
“That was my grandmother’s,” she said. “It was one of the few things my father kept after they passed. Apparently, it belonged to her mom.”
And it’s one of the reasons she was so insistent upon coming back here, Lucien realized.
Next to the shelves was a small table with chairs surrounding it. Only one chair wasn’t pushed neatly into the table. Everywhere he looked, he saw Callie in this place. It was warm and inviting, like her.
He followed her through the doorway off the kitchen and into a small room with a desk. A computer sat on the desk, and a printer was tucked under it. Wooden shelves lined the room. Books on animal anatomy with a focus on horses filled the shelves, but others were for fun.
He followed her through another doorway and into her bedroom. There, he discovered a queen-sized bed with a yellow bedspread pulled neatly over the top of it and some fluffy pillows on top of it. Hanging over the bed was a painting of a horse running toward them. Across from the bed was another entertainment center with a small TV on top.
The walls were pale yellow, and the curtains an emerald green. Callie walked around, opening the windows while he studied the shelves. One of them held an assortment of mystery books while the other was dedicated solely to various carved, wooden horses.
He crossed the room and lifted one of the horses to inspect it more closely. His fingers ran over the smooth lines of the statue as he traced the mane and tail flying behind it as if the horse were racing across an open plain.
The one he held was painted black, but the others were an assortment of colors and in a different array of positions. Some were rearing, others were bucking, some were lying down, and one was a mother with its foal tucked against her side as they lay together.
“My father made those for me,” Callie said as she came to stand beside him.
Lucien turned his attention to her as she lifted another horse from the shelf. The one she held had its chin tucked into its chest and its front legs high as if it were prancing across the ground. It was brown with a black mane, tail, and legs. She turned it over and pointed to a small, red stain on its belly.
“This is the first one he ever made me, and he cut his finger while doing it. The cut required six stitches. I didn’t know he was making it until he gave it to me for my eighth birthday. I remember asking him how he injured his hand and him telling me that he cut it on a piece of glass. I figured it out after he gave it to me and I discovered his blood had seeped through the paint.” She set it carefully back on the shelf. “It’s priceless to me.”
Her expression was stoic, but the love in her words was palpable. He should have brought her here sooner. “You should have told me about these.”
“Was I supposed to say that I want to risk my life for my horse statues?”
“Yes, because they’re more than that to you.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d understand.”
He rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. “I do. But you have to understand that you are priceless to me.”
Callie couldn’t stop her lower lip from trembling, and a single tear slid free. She hadn’t considered it possible, but she fell more in love with him. When Lucien hugged her, she clung to him while she regained control of her emotions.
Lucien rested his chin on her head and held her close as he studied the room. There were more pictures of her with her father, along with photos of her riding horses and her friends at concerts and the beach. There was one of them dressed in matching, yellow dresses while holding bouquets and standing beside a pretty woman in her wedding dress.
There was also one of her sitting on the lap of a woman who could only be her mother as the resemblance was striking. He suspected it might be the only photo she had of her mother. Yes, she definitely needed to come back here to get her things, but he had to keep her protected.
“We should get moving,” he said.
Callie reluctantly released him, and stepping back, she wiped away the tears still filling her eyes. Nodding, she glanced around the room. It wouldn’t take her long to pack.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I have some containers in my shed out back,” she said.
“I’ll go get them.”
“It’s shed number three. The key to the padlock is in the kitchen.”