Hideaway Page 26

  As with her furniture, the equipment she’d packed up, shipped out, wove in with new.

  The mics, the stands, even the pop filters, her work comp, the headphones, the works. They’d put in a small, glass-fronted cabinet, stocked it with the water she needed to keep her throat, her tongue lubricated.

  They hadn’t missed a trick.

  “I’ve got nothing,” she managed. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “A professional needs a professional space to work.”

  She could only nod at her grandfather’s statement. “And boy, is this one of those. It’s got it all and then some. You even thought of the mirror.”

  “You said you practice expressions in character to help find the voice,” Lily reminded her.

  “I do.” Stunned, she stepped into the little recording booth, looked at the equipment.

  “And if you’re doing a song, or an audiobook, especially, you like more isolation and control.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, a little quirk of mine, I guess.”

  “An artist isn’t an artist without quirks.”

  She turned back to them. “This is the most amazing, most thoughtful, most absolutely loving gift from the best grandparents in the history of grandparents. I need to cry a little.”

  “I was hoping you would!”

  On a watery laugh of her own, Lily pulled her in.

  Cate reached for Hugh, made it a trio.

  “And now, I have to squeal.”

  She did, added bounces, cried a little more.

  And was home.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  She hadn’t taken any work, had kept her calendar open for two weeks, calculating the time to settle in, to set up a home studio, check out the studios in Monterey and Carmel.

  Now she opened that up by a week, let her agent know she’d be ready for offers. She still wanted the week to just be, to spend real time with her grandparents. To bake that soda bread.

  They had a welcome-home dinner, a movie night. She worked out in the gym with her grandfather, who complained about it, but continued to work on strengthening his injured leg.

  She worked out because he complained, and he couldn’t shrug off the exercises under her eagle eye.

  She walked the beach or just sat on the rocks.

  Because it pleased them, she picked tomatoes or peppers, harvested herbs or whatever came to mind to take to the main kitchen for Consuela.

  She read over some offers, considered, and decided to take them all. After all, why not? It’s what she did.

  One, a voice-over for a book ad, needed a quick turnaround, so she started her setup while her bread baked in the kitchen.

  Since the client wanted warm, she chose a dynamic mic, used a pop shield, a shock mount to cut any rumblings. A fifteen-second spot still required all the tools. She mounted her mic, adjusted the angle. Satisfied, she checked her software, her monitors. Set up a second stand for the script.

  After rolling down the shades, putting the RECORDING IN PROGRESS sign on the door, locking it just in case, she put on her headphones. Did the first run-through and playback.

  Nearly a full second over. She could fix that.

  But wow, the sound? Great. She couldn’t have done a better job setting up the studio herself.

  She ran through it again, nodded.

  Warm, she thought, inviting. You know you want to read me.

  She did four takes, punching different words, phrases. Ditched one because she’d gone more sexy than warm.

  After two more, she listened to each, and chose what she considered the best three. She labeled them, sent the audio files to the client.

  If they wanted a different tone, she’d go back and do it again, but she’d given them warm, female, inviting. And considered her debut in her new studio a success.

  Once her bread cooled on the rack, she grabbed a jacket, walked outside.

  The breeze, a frisky one, carried the roses and rosemary, the sea and the salt. She wandered back toward where a little vineyard—another new addition—climbed the terraced steps in the cliff, where more roses smothered an arbor with pale peach blossoms and subtle scent as the leaves waved and whispered in the breeze.

  Her grandfather sat in the sun. He wore a wide-brimmed hat to protect him against the rays. A mug, coffee no doubt, as no one could convince him to give it up, sat on the steel table beside him.

  He had a script in his hands, and his reading glasses on.

  “Retired, my butt.”

  He looked up, nudged the glasses down to peer at her over them. “Semi. I’m just giving it a read. It’s not green-lit yet. It should be.” But he set it aside. “Want coffee?”

  “No, I’m good. God, what a gorgeous day. I hardly ever got up here in the fall. It’s just glorious.” She tipped back her head, closed her eyes, just breathed.

  “If Lily sees you out here without a hat, she’ll scold you. Take my word.”

  “I’ll remember one next time.”

  “Big brim,” he said, tapping his own.

  “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 whe
n 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.

  The investment they’d made expanding their goat herd, adding a few milk cows—and adding the dairy kitchen—continued to pay off.

  “Took you long enough,” Maggie said.

  “There were conversations.” Opening the fridge in the main kitchen, he took out a Coke. “I took some orders—I’ll get them up after the lunch I’m hoping for.” He twisted off the top, gulped some down. “Where’s Red?”

  “She kicked him out.” Julia nodded toward her mother. “He’s out tinkering with the little tractor.”

  Dillon crossed one of the items off his list, as he’d planned to tinker after lunch.

  “He was underfoot.” Maggie, her hair in a burnt-orange-colored braid, walked down the row, checking the separation progress. “Just like you.”

  “But I come bearing gifts.” He unwrapped the bread, sniffed it. “Smells good, too. It’s from Caitlyn Sullivan. She baked it.”

  Lips pursed, Maggie crooked her finger while Julia worked on the last bundle. Like Dillon, she sniffed. “Irish soda bread? Lily said the girl could cook some.”

  “How’s she doing, Dillon?”

  Dillon gave his mother a winsome smile. “Maybe I could tell you over lunch.”

  Maggie flicked a finger at him. “Go tell Red to stop tinkering and clean up. We’ll feed you.”

  Happy to oblige, Dillon went out. He needed to spend some time that afternoon working with a couple of the yearlings, and wanted to check on the pregnant mares. Then there were the fall crops to look over. And the stock.

  His mother handled the afternoon milking of their three dairy cows.

  And thanks to Red—who’d turned out to be a damn good mechanic—he might not have to spend any time on tractor repair.

  He heard the engine turn over, run smooth, and smiled. Yeah, cross that one off.

  He found Red sitting on the tractor, head cocked as he listened to the engine. His hair, stone gray, wound in a braid to just below the collar of his ancient denim jacket. He had an equally ancient ball cap over it.

  He still surfed every chance he got, stayed trim and agile. Proved that as he cut the engine and hopped down, planting his feet in the peacock feather boots Maggie had given him for his birthday.

  Because, she’d said, he thought he was the cock of the walk.

  “Got her going?”

  “Yep.” Red swiped his hands over his jeans. “Timing was off mostly.”

  “Yours isn’t. You finished up in time for lunch.”

  “That was my plan.”

  They walked away from the barn together. “I dropped by the Sullivans’ on my travels this morning. Caitlyn’s moved in.”

  Red nodded, paused by the old pump well to wash his hands. Considering those travels, Dillon did the same.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Seems good.” They dried their hands on the towel hung for that purpose and changed daily. “Looks damn good.”

  Red’s lips cur
ved. “Is that so?”

  “It’s definitely so.”

  They rounded to the back, scraped boots, went in through the mudroom. Hung jackets on pegs. Removed hats.

  Nobody sat at Maggie Hudson’s table wearing headgear or with dirt under their fingernails.

  In the main kitchen the smell of curds and whey fell under the aroma of soup on the simmer.

  “Did you wash your hands?” Maggie demanded.

  Both men held up their hands.

  “Then you can have a seat at the big table. Soup’s almost on.”

  Red snuck in a kiss to the side of Maggie’s neck under her burnt-orange braid.

  “Take that bread on the board in with you. We’ll see how Cate’s baking holds up to Julia’s kitchen sink soup.”

  “She baked bread?” Obediently, Red picked up the breadboard.

  “Says she learned how when she lived in Ireland, and how she can work on voices while she’s making it.”

  The “big table” meant the adjoining dining room with its big walnut buffet that Dillon had helped his mother refinish when he’d been a teenager, and its view of the woods where Cate had run as a child.

  Curious and damn hungry, Dillon cut a slice, sampled the heel. “It’s good. Anyway, I didn’t see Lily when I dropped off the fingerlings, so I went over to check on Hugh. He’s looking good. Cate was sitting out with him.”

  “Dil says she looks good, too.”

  “And then some,” Dillon added over another bite. “You guys should go over and see what they’ve done to that guesthouse for her. Really changed it up. And put in this whole studio deal.”

  “So she can work right there?” Julia brought in the pot of soup, set it on the big trivet.

  “Yeah. She said she started doing all this in a closet. Well, this ain’t no closet.” Since his mother put out the crock of butter—made fresh at Horizon Ranch—he smeared some on the bite of bread he had left.

  Even better.

  Maggie brought in the bowls, began to ladle them up. “I feel good knowing she found her way, and found her way back. She needs to come see us.”

  “She’s planning to.”

  “When I think about that mother of hers.”

  Red rubbed Maggie’s shoulder, but it didn’t calm her down.