Page 9 of Home for Nathan (Secret Springs)

Chapter

Eight

Z ion 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, and then guest 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, I definitely 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 and treasure 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.”

A little breeze ruffled his hair then, making him shiver, but Zion shrugged it off. Nathan would say he had a ghost like Joe from the Merchante building. Regardless, he wasn’t going to hoard neat stuff just because he could.

“Oh, I do like you.”

Zion snorted softly. “I’m a likable son of a bitch. Come on. This is Torah, by the way.”

“Are you Torah? It’s nice to meet you.” He liked how Hank, immediately bent down to love on Torah, giving the pup her due. “You are a sweetie, aren’t you?”

Torah wagged as if to say, well yes, yes I am. That’s me, a sweetie.

“You’ve really been doing some wonderful things with the floors and everything.”

He grinned and nodded, pleased that Hank had noticed. “I’m trying, you know? I really am. I want this place to be a home, but also like a studio for my design business. I hope that a bunch of people come out here and look around and want to see everything that Secret Springs has to offer.”

Hank nodded. “I’ve already heard the buzz in town about you bringing in your business. Everybody’s kind of talking about how extra it’s gonna be, having a professional snowboarder here.”

He tilted his head, surprised to hear slang coming from the prim little historian. “Did you just say extra?”

“Is that not snowboarder lingo?”

Oh good lord. “Steeze.”

“Pardon me?”

“I think the word you’re looking for in snowboarder lingo is steeze.” Was he really having this conversation?

“Can you please use that in the sentence?”

He was really having this conversation. “Everybody’s kind of talking about how steeze it’s gonna be.”

“Steeze,” Hank whispered. “I like that. I cannot wait to use that with Antonia. It’s going to make her father crazy.”

That made him bark out a hard laugh. “You are a mean little man.”

“You have no idea. Making my Elliot insane is one of my favorite hobbies. Now box, maps, blueprints—show me the things.” Hank straightened his wee bow tie.

He led Hank back into what was going to be the parlor, where the stuff was sitting in a box marked “old shit I found in the house”.

Hank glanced at him and grinned, and he shrugged.

“I’m going to be in boxes for a while. I want to make sure I know where everything is. Believe it or not, I’m an organized kind of guy.”

“I appreciate organization on a deep, personal, cellular level.” Hank nodded and started digging through the box. “Have you seen any ghosts here?”

He shook his head no. “I haven’t seen anything, no. And thank goodness, because that would freak me the hell out.”

“You think so?”

“No, I know so.” Just the idea of having a ghost made him very uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to bother Nathan in the least. He spoke to the Joe ghost at the apartment all the damn time.

Zion was just a super practical, live-in-the-now kind of guy. He wanted to hear ghost stories and believe in romance and even watch weird movies and stuff but not live in a haunted house.

Another breeze ruffled his hair, Torah barked, and Hank gave him a wide smile. “It’s not so bad, depending on the ghost. I mean, Nathan has one. And I named my daughter after one.”

“Yeah.” That had been mentioned in the ghost tour he’d taken with Nathan, and he thought that was wild. “Anyway, I just hope this stuff is fun, not dangerous.”

“Look at that.” Hank pulled out the letter opener. “That is gorgeous. And kind of substantial for as delicate as it looks.”

“Oh no.” Zion shook his head. “No thinking it might have been used for a weapon.”

Hank chuckled, then pulled out a hanky from his pocket to touch the papers. “Oh, look at the blueprints. Do they match the house?”

“I haven’t had time to spread them out on the table and look.”

“Well, I don’t want to damage them…” Hank tapped his other fingers against his chin before putting all the papers back in the box. “Let me get my friend, who does documents for the society, to make copies, and then we can compare them to the house.”

He loved that we thing. “Sure. We’ll make it a get-together with Nathan and maybe your hubs? We could have supper here.”

“Oh, that sounds wonderful.” Hank beamed at him. “I really appreciate this.”

“Hey, like I said, I want people to see this. I can visit it any time.” He loved old things, but at the same time, this might give the town some interesting tidbits.

“Well, I love that for Secret Springs. So, how’s it going with Nathan?”

The change of subject made him blink hard. “Uh. Good. We’re good.”

“Excellent. We’re all very fond of him, you know.”

“Cool.” He tilted his head. “Are you warning me off?”

“No. No, of course not. I just want him happy.”

Zion got the feeling Hank could be fierce when he defended his friends.

“I do too, Hank.” And Zion realized it was absolutely the truth.

And he wanted Nathan to be happy with him.