Being here, being in Ashland, Oregon, made me wish I had my brushes at my fingertips.
Nothing had inspired me as much as seeing the landscape here. The trees were so tall, so green, and so beautiful. The mountains were…there were no words for them. It was a beautiful place, so different from the flat landscape of home. I mean, Texas has its own beauty. But there are only so many rocks and sagebrush and dusty canyons a girl can paint. Here…this place was a different story. There was so much I could put on a canvas just sitting in this bedroom Harrison had so politely escorted me to last night, just sitting in this chair, staring out the window at the lush garden behind the house.
I wish I had a sketchbook and couple of pieces of charcoal.
I sighed, reluctantly forcing myself to my feet. JT was up. I’d heard him call up the stairs when he woke, looking for anyone willing to help him fix something for breakfast. I could just imagine the mess he and Harrison were getting into at that moment. I guess it was time to go down and rescue them.
But when I came down the stairs and stepped into the kitchen, they were humming right along, the wonderful scents of eggs and bacon and pancakes filling the house.
“Morning,” Harrison said, winking playfully at me.
“Harrison taught me how to make eggs,” JT said from the high stool where he was sitting.
“Great. Now you have no excuse for not eating something halfway healthy when you come in from school.”
JT laughed, but the pleasure had gone out of the morning for me. I kept forgetting that JT wasn’t coming home with me. His afternoon snacking habits were no longer my problem.
“Have a seat,” Harrison said, “and I’ll bring you a plate.”
I did, tucking my leg under me as I settled at the kitchen nook, my eyes moving to the scenery outside. These windows overlooked the front of the house, the driveway and front hedges. Not as enticing as the back yard, but beautiful none the less.
“I’m going to have to wander over to the office for a couple of hours,” Harrison said as he set a plate overflowing with pancakes and bacon in front of me. “But I’ll be back before seven and we’ll head over to my mother’s for dinner.”
I nodded, only hearing half of what he’d said.
“We get to meet my grandmother tonight, Penny. That should be fun.”
I looked over at JT and forced a smile. He seemed to really be enjoying himself these last few days. And he deserved it after everything that’d been going on. So I forced a smile and tried to look pleasant as I dug into a plate of food I really didn’t have the appetite for.
After Harrison left, JT settled himself in the game room—an entire room there on the first floor that was filled with game consoles, game accessories, flat screen televisions, and everything else a teenager would need to enjoy a few games—and I could hear the familiar sounds of machine guns firing and animated characters dying.
I wandered the house almost like JT had done the night before, running my fingers over pictures of Harrison with his family members, paintings on the wall by modern artists I recognized, over exotic art work scattered here and there among the more mundane items like magazines and discarded newspapers. I was once told you could tell a lot about a person by the things in his house. I found myself wondering if this house spoke more to Harrison, or his designer, or, perhaps, the women in his life.
The more I looked around his house, the more I realized I really knew nothing about Harrison. I mean, the real Harrison. I knew he knew enough about literature to teach high school English, which also meant he had at least a bachelor’s degree in something along those lines. I knew he was intelligent, that he was smart enough to create a multi-billion dollar company out of his father’s small, failing furniture business – the latter of which I learned when I did some research on the Internet. And I knew that family was deeply important to him, important enough that he came all the way to Texas to find JT.
But that was pretty much the sum of all I knew about him. I didn’t know who he spent his time with here in Oregon. I didn’t know what he did in his spare time, except for the obvious fact that he had an entire room filled with video games. I didn’t know what he liked to read, what he liked to talk about, who he gathered around him when he needed support.
It bothered me that I didn’t know these things. I tried to remind myself that it really wasn’t my business. I was here as a courtesy. Once JT was healed and comfortable hanging out with Harrison, my presence would no longer be necessary. Harrison made that kind of clear last night when he escorted me to a guest bedroom instead of his own. Whatever it was going on between us, it wasn’t permanent and it clearly didn’t mean enough to him to continue it here.
Not that I wanted it to continue. Or maybe I did.
All I knew was that I wanted to know more about him. And I wanted him to welcome me into his bed here in his home. I hated that I wanted this, that I wanted him, but I did.