particular man yet had a role to play in Natalie’s life, whether she realized it or not.
Chapter 6
N atalie had learned long ago that the drive to Compton’s estate wasn’t nearly as far as people expected it to be. And it wasn’t to the posh housing on the exposed western slopes of the Sandia Mountains, which they also generally expected.
No, the whittled-down old de Salas property now nestled between the old acequias of the Spanish land grants clustered in the Rio Grande bosk, all long since broken into tiny agricultural pieces. That the pieces followed the acequias —the canals—gave Compton his utter privacy.
Even Devin drew back from distraction to give Natalie a surprised glance when she pulled off the old El Camino Real highway—a grand name for a tight little two-lane road, even if it had been the first true highway of a country not yet born—and onto the narrow side street splitting an alfalfa field and sheep watched over by their glaring ram.
The speed bumps slowed them—broad humps of badly raised pavement, impossible to navigate gracefully even below the speed limit. They curved past an adobe hut of questionable soundness, a grandly decorated gate with all the bright colors and flowered dignity of old Spain, and a cluster of bright blue plastic barrels with fighting cock occupants.
He sat straighter when she quite suddenly made the turn down the wide sand-clay maintenance path of a main feeder canal, heading deep into the trees of the bosk—and straighter yet when she whipped the car through a tight turn into an unpaved driveway, winter-dead honeysuckle and creeper vines brushing the windows and snagging the antenna.
They slowed to navigate the gravel, and the estate home grounds opened up around them: thick browned grass, winter birds scattering through the bushes, high pampas grasses and trees lining the property, and the grounds themselves vast and groomed, a cluster of buildings toward the back third of the property.
“Well, huh,” Devin said.
And it was pretty much all he said, even as she parked—beside her own casita, a guest building as large as his own house—and led him toward the house.
She found she didn’t have much to say. Not with the trickle of second thoughts, the sudden trepidation that the moment these two men met...
Might just not be a good thing after all.
“What, no manservant?” Devin asked, as she opened one of the massive double doors beneath the long covered portal of the house front. Beautiful Pueblo style married with some of the old Mediterranean ways, painstakingly restored and maintained.
Natalie said, “Mr. Compton is a very private man. No one comes here unexpected or uninvited.”
“I’m supposed to feel flattered,” he observed, not sounding it.
What he felt, clearly, was unwell, and Natalie flinched from it—and from the truth of the words he’d so recently said to her.
Stop it. Of course Compton made a huge number of the decisions in her day—he was making those decisions for himself; she merely saw them through.
This one, she thought, was one she might well have made differently. Given a choice.
Too late for that.
She’d keep this short; she’d see him home. And she’d take the opportunity to get answers from him about what had happened the night before—to those men, to Devin himself. To her, if it came to that. And then it would be over.
The second story ran in a mezzanine around three walls, leaving room for a soaring cathedral ceiling with a latilla rondel. Compton knew how to make a grand entrance—and knew when. “Natalie. Thank you.”
He had a rich voice—a cultured voice. Mellifluous enough to deserve a stage, intimate enough to command it. A man of his early fifties, he had a trainer-sculpted body, hair gone early to a bright silvery sheen and piercing blue eyes.
For all he demanded, he also rewarded. Until today—until this moment—Natalie had thought herself in the perfect situation.
Devin, on the other hand,
Chapter 6
N atalie had learned long ago that the drive to Compton’s estate wasn’t nearly as far as people expected it to be. And it wasn’t to the posh housing on the exposed western slopes of the Sandia Mountains, which they also generally expected.
No, the whittled-down old de Salas property now nestled between the old acequias of the Spanish land grants clustered in the Rio Grande bosk, all long since broken into tiny agricultural pieces. That the pieces followed the acequias —the canals—gave Compton his utter privacy.
Even Devin drew back from distraction to give Natalie a surprised glance when she pulled off the old El Camino Real highway—a grand name for a tight little two-lane road, even if it had been the first true highway of a country not yet born—and onto the narrow side street splitting an alfalfa field and sheep watched over by their glaring ram.
The speed bumps slowed them—broad humps of badly raised pavement, impossible to navigate gracefully even below the speed limit. They curved past an adobe hut of questionable soundness, a grandly decorated gate with all the bright colors and flowered dignity of old Spain, and a cluster of bright blue plastic barrels with fighting cock occupants.
He sat straighter when she quite suddenly made the turn down the wide sand-clay maintenance path of a main feeder canal, heading deep into the trees of the bosk—and straighter yet when she whipped the car through a tight turn into an unpaved driveway, winter-dead honeysuckle and creeper vines brushing the windows and snagging the antenna.
They slowed to navigate the gravel, and the estate home grounds opened up around them: thick browned grass, winter birds scattering through the bushes, high pampas grasses and trees lining the property, and the grounds themselves vast and groomed, a cluster of buildings toward the back third of the property.
“Well, huh,” Devin said.
And it was pretty much all he said, even as she parked—beside her own casita, a guest building as large as his own house—and led him toward the house.
She found she didn’t have much to say. Not with the trickle of second thoughts, the sudden trepidation that the moment these two men met...
Might just not be a good thing after all.
“What, no manservant?” Devin asked, as she opened one of the massive double doors beneath the long covered portal of the house front. Beautiful Pueblo style married with some of the old Mediterranean ways, painstakingly restored and maintained.
Natalie said, “Mr. Compton is a very private man. No one comes here unexpected or uninvited.”
“I’m supposed to feel flattered,” he observed, not sounding it.
What he felt, clearly, was unwell, and Natalie flinched from it—and from the truth of the words he’d so recently said to her.
Stop it. Of course Compton made a huge number of the decisions in her day—he was making those decisions for himself; she merely saw them through.
This one, she thought, was one she might well have made differently. Given a choice.
Too late for that.
She’d keep this short; she’d see him home. And she’d take the opportunity to get answers from him about what had happened the night before—to those men, to Devin himself. To her, if it came to that. And then it would be over.
The second story ran in a mezzanine around three walls, leaving room for a soaring cathedral ceiling with a latilla rondel. Compton knew how to make a grand entrance—and knew when. “Natalie. Thank you.”
He had a rich voice—a cultured voice. Mellifluous enough to deserve a stage, intimate enough to command it. A man of his early fifties, he had a trainer-sculpted body, hair gone early to a bright silvery sheen and piercing blue eyes.
For all he demanded, he also rewarded. Until today—until this moment—Natalie had thought herself in the perfect situation.
Devin, on the other hand,
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