“Riell is a very small town. A strange town, by the standards of the rest of the world. It was unusual for anyone to leave—I only knew one woman who did. Our doctor. I liked her. She taught me how to drive when no one else would, and she’s the one who gave me a broken-down old Chevy to leave the valley when the time came. I owe her a lot.”
It was hard for Jillian to believe towns that tight-knit and small-minded still existed. She was just thankful that the doctor had been there to show Theo the possibilities of a wider world.
“Everyone in the valley is... old-fashioned,” Theo went on. “I know it shows. I’ve watched a lot of TV to try to get acculturated, but I know sometimes I sound—different.”
“You mean you sound like you would use the word ‘acculturated’ in a sentence?”
Theo laughed.
“I like the way you talk,” Jillian said. “It’s gentlemanly. Not in a ‘let’s sit and smoke in the billiards room while the ladies do their chatting in the parlor’ way, but in a real way. I work around kids all day. It’s nice to hear someone sound... courteous.”
“Thank you, milady.” He gave an exceptionally courteous pet between her legs, where all of her twitched longingly but exhaustedly forward.
She groaned. “You’re such a tease.”
“You’re trying to seduce me while I talk about my childhood,” Theo said primly.
“I wasn’t trying to seduce you!”
He tilted her chin up. Humor shone from his eyes.
“You mean,” Theo said, “this is you not trying to seduce me? Where would I be if you were actually putting an effort in?”
“On a circular waterbed, no doubt,” Jillian said, “with a mirror on the ceiling.”
Another warm chuckle. He returned to his lazy caressing of her shoulders and back.
“You could say that I come from a group of people who have a very particular way of life that they wanted to hold onto,” Theo said. “The valley where I was born—it was settled generations ago by our ancestors. It was ours. And keeping it—keeping what we had there—seemed to everyone like the most important thing.”
“But not to you?”
“I felt trapped. I wanted to stretch my wings. Then when I was out, I realized how the rest of the world saw us: stuffy, narrow-minded, secretive. Snobby, arrogant. It’s not untrue, but it’s... the valley, in the morning, it’s so beautiful. You can see the river light up so golden like it’s caught on fire.”
“And the people?”
“In their annoying, claustrophobic way, as beautiful as the river at dawn. But I don’t know how to learn their good lessons without learning their bad ones.”
“I don’t think anyone ever figures that out,” Jillian said. “We just spend our whole lives trying. What are you afraid you’ll learn from them? A hatred of contractions and water parks?”
“Self-satisfaction. Arrogance. A way of looking at the world that makes everything about greed and acquisition, about earning without ever giving.”
He could have been describing her own fears. Unfortunately, that meant she had no reassurance for him.
All she could say was, “I don’t think you’re the kind of person who wouldn’t give anything back to the world.”
Should she be falling for him as fast as she was? She didn’t know that she could help it: there was no irritating fault she could grab onto to slow herself down. Maybe the morning would show her some. Maybe he would turn out to be obsessed with paint-by-numbers clown paintings.
Or maybe if she got him to talk about his job, he would grow suddenly, compellingly boring. Jillian had never known a guy who could talk about work without getting at least a little boring.
“I’m sure your parents would be proud of your job, even if they wouldn’t have expected it.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound at all sure. “But I’m sure they still would have wanted me to ‘get it out of my system’ and come home as soon as possible.”
“My dad always thought I would come back for the money,” Jillian said. “He figured the nonprofit work would scratch the good person itch but then I would still come around and let him buy me dresses and cars.”
“Do you like dresses and cars?”
“I do. And I wind up buying vintage on both.”