When in Rome
LILA
Sure enough, Sarah does interrogate me as soon as I get back to the boutique. What is Slade really like, was he flirting with you, and so on.
“He wants to hire the firm to decorate his house,” I tell her. “That’s all.”
“Oh.” She deflates the way I did when Slade asked me that question.
Logically, I understand that me deflating like that is crazy. Having a VIP client hire us to do full-service design ought to be a dream come true.
So that’s how I’m going to look at it.
His interest is strictly professional, and that’s just fine. Better, really. Romantic relationships crash and burn, but a good designer-client relationship can last decades.
But that doesn’t exactly explain the way my heart is racing as I pull up to the gates of his family property the next day.
Wild Rose Ranch is burned into the enormous crossbars above me. There’s a security code I have to input, and then the wide, huge gates slide open.
Before I can drive in, my phone chimes. It’s a text from Slade.
Slade
Hi Lila, I’m running late. Fence went down in the west pasture and we’re putting it back up. I’m sorry. Be there in about fifteen minutes.
I text back:
You’re the client. I’m here at your pleasure!
Belatedly, I realize just how that sounds.
As I drive through the gates, I follow the GPS navigation to his address, winding across dirt roads.
I can see why this place has achieved mythical status in Marble Falls.
It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of land I’ve ever seen.
Mountains tower in the distance. Wide open pastures unfurl before me in a green carpet, horses grazing in some sections, cattle in another.
When I roll down my windows I smell cut grass and rich, loamy soil.
Though I’ve never been here before, there’s something oddly familiar about it, and it occurs to me that I probably have seen this place in movies before.
When I reach Slade’s house, I immediately clock it as a new build. It’s clad in wood and stone on the outside, framed out with huge steel windows. I recognize the work as that of an architecture firm in Bozeman. It’s elegant, subtle, and extremely expensive work.
I’ve never worked on such a high end project before. Or one with such modern bones. Most of my design has been on older, historic houses. This will be an interesting challenge.
As I get out of my car to walk the perimeter of the property, my design-brain is already in overdrive, imagining how to soften some of the harsh edges, add a little color to the neutral palette.
The hoofbeats reach me before I see him, a low, rhythmic percussion quickly getting louder. Then Slade comes over the rise on a massive storm-grey horse, moving at a canter, and my brain does that thing it did the first time I saw him, where it just stops processing for a second.
He looks like something out of a movie.
He’s got his hat pulled low against the wind, a coil of rope looped on the saddle horn. One hand is loose on the reins, the other resting on his thigh, those broad shoulders perfectly still while everything below them moves with the horse.
The horse’s hooves throw up small divots of earth as they slow, and I become aware that I’ve stopped walking entirely and I’m just standing there with my notebook against my chest, watching.
He brings the horse down to a walk with a subtle shift of his weight and a quiet word I can’t hear, and when his eyes find mine he reaches up and tips his hat.
He comes off the horse in a single fluid movement and loops the reins around a nearby post. With a pat to the horse’s neck, he strolls towards me.
“I’m sorry again for running late,” he says.
Up close, after the full cinematic experience of him cantering across that pasture, the deep drawl and the green eyes and the square jaw are a lot to absorb at close range.
“It’s nothing.” I wave it away, impressed by how well I’m faking being unaffected and casual. “This is an absolutely beautiful piece of land. The views are incredible. And your house—was it an Ellis & Macklan project?”
“That’s right. My brothers Walker and Tanner used them on their places too. They’re about ten minutes north and east, respectively.”
“Is this your horse?” I ask.
“This is Ghost. My dad’s gelding. I’m not around enough to keep a horse of my own at Wild Rose.”
“May I?” I ask, approaching the gelding.
“Of course,” he says.
I stroke his pale coat and keep my palm flat and Ghost’s whiskers tickle my wrist. I laugh a little, surprised by the sensation. It’s been a long time since I petted a horse.
I missed being around them, missed their liquid eyes and velvety noses and even their smell. Horses were my first love, the only animal I was allowed to have. My father had his hunting dogs and my mother had her Persian cats, each one meaner than the last.
I loved those mean, furry cats anyway, grumpy squishy faces and all. I’ve spent most of my life loving creatures that never loved me back.
But at least my childhood show ponies returned my affection.
When I glance up Slade is watching me with those green eyes.
“Do you ride?” he asks.
“Only English. I grew up doing show-jumping.”
His dark eyebrows shoot up. “No shit.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on horseback though. And never on a Western saddle.”
“Western’s easy to pick up, especially if you already know how to ride. We could go out on the trails sometime.”
“I would love that,” I say.
It’s not a date, obviously. Clients invite their designers out with them all the time. To dinners, on their boats, even going together on lavish trips to source materials. You can’t design someone’s home without getting personal. It doesn’t mean anything beyond that.
I’ve always been very clear-eyed about that distinction.
The problem is I’ve never had a client like Slade Rhodes. Ridiculously hot, good with animals, accomplished and humble and… yeah, okay, I need to stop.
This crush can’t get out of hand.
I’m a professional. This is professional. Everything is fine.
“Here,” he says, “let me show you inside.”
He opens the front door for me. The first thing that happens is a low, doggy woof from another room.
Moments later, Lucky comes around the corner, slow and a little uncertain on her prosthetic leg, but her tail wagging back and forth.
My heart swells. She looks so different from the broken, frightened animal we carried into the vet three days ago.
Now she’s clean and bright-eyed, panting happily. She’s doing her best to trot despite the new leg throwing off her gait. I can tell she’s figuring it out in real time and she’s not letting it stop her for a second.
I crouch down and she trots straight into my arms like she knows me, which I guess she does, and she shoves her cold wet nose into my neck.
“Hi,” I tell her, a little overcome. Another twist of fate and things might have gone very differently for her. But she’s alive and healing and she’ll have a good life ahead of her now. “Hi, sweet girl. Look at you. So fresh and clean.”
“I bathed her,” Slade says, from somewhere above me. “She tolerated the scrubbing pretty well. She’s still getting used to that leg though.”
Lucky pulls herself away from me and goes to Slade, shoving her big head against his thigh. He reaches down without looking and scratches behind her ears as he talks. “My nephew Jonah met her this morning and the two of them are fast friends already. She loves kids. She’ll make a good family dog.”
“Would your brother be interested in taking her, then?”
Slade lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “I didn’t ask yet. Figured I’d give her some time to settle in here. Besides, Walker and Sadie have twin girls born a couple months ago, so they’ve got their hands full.”
I look at Lucky, who has planted herself directly on top of Slade’s boots and is leaning against his leg with her whole body.
Yes, settling in is exactly what she’s doing.
Secretly, I’m relieved Slade isn’t overly eager to off-load Lucky. I like being a part of her life still. And I like that she’s in such good hands with a certain stoic but surprisingly caring cowboy.
Lucky follows us as we walk further into the house and I take it all in. The high ceilings and reclaimed wood floors. The sleek kitchen appointed with high-end appliances. It’s a beautiful canvas but a blank one, barely even furnished.
“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.”