Beauty and the Brit by Lizbeth Selvig Page A

treasure trove of a room in this immense house. She barely knew what to say about anything.
    “These last rooms are just as they were when we bought the house,” David explained, leading the way down the hall. “A bit less dusty and filled with my own storage but unchanged from probably fifty years ago. The house, according to the original deed, is eighty-nine years old and was quite the showplace in its day.”
    It’s quite the showplace now . Was he so jaded he couldn’t see what he had?
    One more room faced the house front. Its walls bore faded flowered paper and the floor was stacked with neat plastic bins along with a folding table and a sewing machine in its case.
    “Mum uses this as her sewing room when she comes,” David said. “The bins are full of fabrics, I guess. I don’t come in here much.”
    “How long does your mother stay when she visits?” Rio had to wonder about a woman who specialized in drive-by interior decorating.
    “A solid six weeks. Long enough to indulge her decorating fantasy-of-the-moment and get a bit of visiting in, as well. She’s quite a girl is Mum.”
    Rio swallowed back the slightest twinge of envy. She’d been four when her mother had died, and she remembered her mostly from stories and pictures.
    “This room is purely storage.” David opened a door on the opposite side of the hallway.
    The small, white-walled room had a sloped ceiling, a small window facing the back, and was filled nearly floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes and random pieces of furniture. The not-unpleasant scent of age filled her senses.
    “It’s my version of an attic,” he explained. “I don’t even remember what’s in some of the boxes. There’s a trunk in the corner came from England ten years ago. Shows you that, unlike my mother, I’m basically disorganized.”
    After showing them more rooms, each a different size and filled with a random assortment of junk, extra beds, exercise equipment, and horse tack, David pushed open a door at the end of the hallway. “The last room,” he said. “Completely untouched although it probably has the most potential, as an office or lounge or some such thing.”
    The room was slightly bigger than the other bedrooms. Bare hardwood covered the floor, and the walls bore faded, purple-ish paint. Although the sloped ceiling reduced the back half of the room to three-quarters height, three windows brought in an abundance of light, and half-height bookshelves lined the back wall. A single bed covered in a quilt of periwinkles, purples, and turquoises stood on one side, and a large antique wardrobe served as a closet.
    The barren space seemed to call her name. “This is beautiful.”
    “We call it the nothing room,” said David.
    “Could I stay in here instead?” she asked, before she could lose the bold nerve.
    “Here?” He seemed honestly astounded. “But there’s nothing to it.”
    “There’s character. And a bed, and a place to put what’s in this suitcase. We aren’t going to be here long, and I’d rather have the . . . sparseness.”
    “Of course,” he said, still nonplussed. “You’re welcome to it. But you know you can stay, you must stay, until the threat toward you and Bonnie is gone. Don’t you want something more comfortable?”
    To her, this space was steeped in more comfort than any Better Homes and Gardens room she’d already seen, as if it was perfectly suited to holding her tiny suitcase of possessions and her enormous trunk loads of mental junk.
    “This is plenty comfortable.”
    “All right then.” He swept his arm toward the room. “If you want it, it’s yours.”
    “Do you have a plan? For this room?”
    “Ah? Not in the near future.”
    “I thought maybe if you had a paint color chosen I could paint for you.”
    He turned in place to face her squarely. “Look here, love. Are you taking this bare room and offering to work for it out of some wrongheaded idea that you don’t deserve simply to be here and be