“She gave me the advice that helped me pass my road test,” Sera said, uncomfortable now. Why did you have to bring that up, big-mouth? she chided herself.
“And what advice was that?” Asher’s eyes were alight now.
She squirmed a bit. “Well, I was really nervous the day I had to go take the test. I must have been seventeen or so. So I asked my aunt what I should do. She said, ‘I only got one piece of advice for you, kiddo.’” Sera imitated her aunt’s intonation with the ease of a lifetime’s familiarity. “‘You wanna pass your test, wear a tight shirt.’” Sera shrugged. “It worked.”
“I can see why it would,” Asher said, eyeing Sera’s cleavage, showcased by her V-necked white tee.
Sera flushed. You’re probably reading him wrong, Sera, she told herself. That, or you’ve been in the sun too long. He is not flirting with you. “Yeah, well, anyhow… I don’t really drive that much, but I always had this fantasy…” She should really not be discussing fantasies with this man. “This, dream, rather. That one day I’d have myself a really, I don’t know… unladylike… car. And that I’d totally own it—master it, if you know what I mean.” Sera rambled to a halt.
Asher’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “I think I do. And speaking of ‘mastering’…” He stepped closer to Sera, and for a moment she had the crazy idea that he was going to snatch her into an embrace like some sort of movie brigand… until he reached around her and levered open the truck’s enormous steel door. “I think you should take your fantasies seriously, Bliss. Why else have you come here, if not to live your dreams?”
The abyss yawned, tempting. Sera took a leap…
Up, and into the truck’s cab.
Oh yeah. The view from up here made her feel instantly more badass. Taller. Stronger. And prepared to take a whole lot less shit. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Her heart rose, and she couldn’t resist beaming down at her landlord.
“I’ll go get the keys from the salesman,” Asher said.
Chapter Sixteen
It was a bare half hour before sunset when Sera roared down the gravel-strewn road toward Asher’s house in Arroyo Hondo, proud owner of a 1999 Ram with one hundred and fifty-seven thousand miles on it. Pauline and Hortencia, lips zipped against leaking disapproval, had headed home in the Subaru, leaving Sera to give Asher a ride back to his house.
Which she was doing to the best of her ability.
Thank God Asher had had all that military training, she thought. Had he not, his nerves might not have survived Sera’s maiden voyage in the truck she’d named, with some irony, “Cupcake.” But all things considered (and a few chamisa bushes notwithstanding), she’d done pretty well, following Asher’s instructions to the little community tucked away in the hills just south and east of Santa Fe proper. With the small part of her attention not engaged in keeping the one-and-a-quarter-ton truck on the rutted track, her eyes took in the environs—rolling hills, endless vistas stretching nearly a hundred miles into the mountains that limned the horizon like construction paper cutouts in varying shades of gray and blue, the clouds above orange and purple and rose with imminent dusk. Short piñon trees and scrub brush characterized the landscape, which felt somehow both wide open and strangely sheltering. Then Sera turned her attention back to the road, which was a bit too twisty for gawking greenhorns to take for granted.
At length, with almost no new scratches on her not-exactly-direct-from-the-factory paint job, they turned down Asher’s drive. Sera’s face broke out in a grin—one part pride that she’d wrangled Cupcake into doing her bidding, one part delight at the sight of the place where Asher lived.
The patio alone was worth the price of admission. Native stone paths embedded in fine gravel twined whimsically between garden beds bursting with lavender, rosemary, and sage bushes, forming a graceful trail leading guests to the front door. The door itself was an intricately carved Balinese design of birds and flowers, mellowing into obscurity against warm adobe walls. Beside it, a rustic portal of weathered poles gave shade where it leaned against the side of the house, several bird feeders swinging from its upper reaches. A ladder to nowhere—a phenomenon Sera saw nearly everywhere in Santa Fe—angled itself against the wall farther toward the back of the house. A brick-paved porch encircled by a low adobe wall created a welcoming space for an outdoor meal or a quiet moment of contemplation. All this Serafina took in with a sweeping glance that told her her landlord’s home was something special.
Sera’s breath caught as she turned the clunker carefully into the guest parking slot, trying not to slay any shrubbery as she muscled the truculent truck around the gravel turnabout. The turning radius on the old behemoth was… less than ideal. But she got the darn thing in Park and it either stalled out or turned off, she wasn’t sure which—and didn’t much care. She let out her breath in relief.
“Made it!” she said brightly.
Asher gave her a look she couldn’t quite place. Then he leaned over, across the gear shift, and dug one hand into her hair. He pulled her close to him, making Sera gasp, then planted a kiss…
On her forehead.
A brotherly—perhaps even patronizing—kiss.
Before Sera could react, he’d hopped from the truck, motorcycle boots kicking up little puffs of dust. “Come, Bliss,” he invited. “You must stay for dinner. After your adventure, you’ve got to be starving. I know I am.” He flashed her a grin as he slammed the truck’s door and came around to her side.
Is he really going to… Yes, he really was going to open her door for her, all chivalry, never mind that she was driving a truck so butch it practically took testosterone instead of gasoline.
Sera didn’t try to protest. She was starving, and besides, she was dying to see where Asher lived—and not so incidentally, to spend more time with him. Brotherly kiss or not, her heart was racing far more than her recent ride could account for. “Wow, um, sure,” she said, hopping the considerable distance down from the driver’s seat to the ground and reaching up to slam the door. “Dinner sounds awesome, if it’s not too much trouble. I mean, if you didn’t have any other plans or anything…”
“No other plans, Bliss,” he said, leading the way. “I’m all yours tonight.”
If only…
She trailed after him, clutching her keys in one hand and surreptitiously trying to smooth her disheveled hair with the other. Dinner with Asher was unexpected—intimidating, but so enticing she simply had to accept. “Just a sec,” she said, pausing on the patio. “Gotta check in with Aunt Pauline so she doesn’t worry.” Quickly, she sent her aunt a text message letting her know where she’d be and that she hadn’t had a gruesome accident in the “monstrosity,” as Pauline had dubbed her new truck. Almost instantly, Pauline flashed back a winky emoticon that Sera could swear was a leer, along with a message saying, “Atta girl! I won’t wait up.” Shaking her head at her aunt’s incorrigibility, she looked up at Asher. “Okay, all good now. Lay on, Macduff.”
With a small flourish that reminded her of the first time they’d met at P-HOP, he invited her to precede him, and Sera smiled as she passed before him into the house.
Her smile grew as she took in the interior.
The entire right side of Asher’s living room was one long wall of glass. Floods of evening sunshine slanted in from the patio, filtered through passive solar windows and the leaves of his ever-present plants. Everywhere, foliage made itself at home, trailing vines, poking up proudly from pots, hanging from rafters. The perfume of growing things scented the air with a subtle, earthy tang and provided a trace of precious humidity. To the left, a galley kitchen with acres of polished wood counters branched off from the living room. A wall of built-in bookshelves, packed to capacity with novels and biographies in both Hebrew and English, was tucked to one side, with doorways leading out of sight to the left and right. Sera’s eyes took in waxed brick floors, heavy viga beams, skylights, and at the far end of the room, a woodstove. To her, the very thought conjured images of Laura Ingalls roughing it on the prairie, but even Aunt Pauline had one, so she supposed it was a legitimate method of heating out here in the high desert.