Page 24 of Home for Nathan
Chapter
Eight
Zion whistled as he put the last finishing touches on the baseboards in the living room. He supposed it would have been called the formal parlor back in the day.
Did farmhouses have formal parlors even then, or did they just have front rooms? He imagined his mom would call it the front room. He’d sent his folks pictures, and they’d said they wanted to come see his house, but he knew it would probably be a year before they got around to it. They didn’t leave home too much. His sibs, now, they would show up.
So would his snowboarding friends.
So he figured the next thing he needed to do was to get one of the guest rooms cleaned up and get a bed in there. Well, front room, his bedroom, then the guest bath, andthenguest room. The nice thing about this place was that it had three bathrooms which was exceptional for such an old house. One downstairs, two up.
”Looks pretty good, don’t you think, Torah?” It had turned out that no one was looking for the border collie he had pulled out of the river, at least not around Secret Springs or Montrose or even Grand Junction. She was his now, and he had named her after one of his favorite snowboarders of all time, Torah Bright.
She just yawned and rolled over, waving a paw at him, like come scratch my belly.
“Nope. If you want a belly rub, you’re gonna have to come over here.”
It really kind of made him sad to know that somebody had invested as much as they clearly had in this dog and then lost her. She was leash trained, she was off-leash trained, she was potty trained, she was a go baby in the car. And he thanked the universe every day that he had saved her life. She was exceptional company.
“You know, Torah, I’ve been thinking maybe we should make the yurt into a workshop for Nathan. That way, he could put all of his stuff that he has in storage out there as far as the weaving—his looms and all of his materials. It’s watertight, and it has a heater and a little cooler and all the stuff that he would need to come out and work. What do you think?”
At the mention of Nathan’s name, she started wagging. Torah adored his…boyfriend? Lover? Yeah. Lover.
So did Zion, when it came right down to it. In fact, he was pretty sure that he was in love with him. He and Nathan had been spending most evenings and all of Nathan’s days off together, and he was loving watching Nathan’s belly grow and looking forward to this kid being born in a huge way. But not only that, he really loved Nathan’s generosity, his quick mind, his hot little bod, and his kind nature. Nathan just gave and gave, and it made him furious to think that somebody had taken advantage of the guy.
Zion wanted to protect Nathan, although he was pretty sure that Nathan was fierce enough to protect himself.
Torah got up and came across the floor to him, nails clicking on the boards that he had so painstakingly refinished. She leaned on him, panting, and he rubbed her ears. “Yeah, Idefinitely think that’s a good idea. Let’s put that on the list ahead of the guest rooms, huh?”
Torah licked his face. He was getting used to that. It had been a while since he’d had a dog, and he’d forgotten how much slobber was involved in the proposition.
A knock sounded at the door, and somebody hollered out, “Yoooohooo!”
He had no idea who it was. He sure hoped it wasn’t an axe murderer. Torah woofed and headed for the door. She didn’t have terrible hell hound syndrome with her barking, but he knew that she would herd anybody away from the door that he didn’t want to come in. He’d already found that out when a hiker had shown up at the house, thinking it was still empty.
“Coming!” Zion went to answer the door, and it was Hank Vargas, he thought, the guy from the ghost tours and the historical society.
“Hey, Hank, what’s up?”
“Oh, I just wanted to check in and make sure that everything was going okay, and that you didn’t need any information about the house.” Hank gave him a bright smile, his little goatee and mustache making him look like a Musketeer or something.
Zion chuckled. “You mean you wanted to see what I was doing with the interior of the house to make sure I wasn’t screwing it up?”
Hank nodded, waving a hand at him. “That too. I also wanted to see if you’d found anything cool that you wanted to donate to the Historical Society?”
“Ah. Now I know what the real plan was.”
Hank shrugged and waggled his eyebrows. “Well, you know. This place is wicked cool. I’m so glad that someone decided to renovate.”
He nodded. “It’s an amazing house. A lot of this stuff that was in here, I have to admit, it’s been gone through by squatters andtreasure hunters and everything else.” At Hank’s sad expression, he waved one hand. “But I did find something cool under a loose floorboard.”
That made the historian’s eyes light up. “Really? Like what?”
“I found the blueprints for this place. A couple of hand-drawn images of different mines, like maps and stuff. It’s like they were exploring and sketching it out as they went. I also found a little box that had bits of ribbon and a couple of old coins and a letter opener.” It was beautiful, with a bone handle and little flowers carved in it. “And then I found a couple of what were obviously letters, but the ink or the, you know, whatever it was written with, it’s really faded. I can tell somebody wrote on it, but I can’t read it.”
“Oh, that’s exceptional. Can I see it all?”
Like he’d have offered otherwise. Zion nodded and chuckled. “Man, you can have it. I don’t have any need for it. I kept them, of course, because they were cool. But I’m totally willing to let everybody share in it.”
