Love Walked In (Stevens Book 7)

Chapter 2

They had eventually moved their meeting to lunch since Lizzy had been on a roll, and Norah's head was still spinning when she pulled into her driveway three hours later.  When she pushed open her door her way was impeded by a stack of mail that had been slipped though the mail slot in her absence and she didn't have to look at it to know that it was all past due bills. Proving to her, yet again, that she had been right to take the job Lizzy had offered her despite her unease. Her dog Scarlett came from the back of the house to greet her as she stooped down to pick up the mail.

Norah took a moment to bury her head in her neck. "At least I have you girl." Scarlett licked her face as if she understood that most of her bills were past due and she had almost no money in the bank.

She carried it all into the living room and slumped onto the couch. If someone had told her three years ago that she would be close to destitute she would have laughed at them.  Now, she would have to get a real job, her only problem was that she had never had a real job and she had no marketable skills.

She laid her portfolio on the table and pulled out Caleb's sketch.  "If only you had loved me as much as I love you." The sadness of not having him in her life was suddenly overwhelming.

Who's fault was it really, Norah? If she looked long and hard at the story it was her secret that had kept him from her. She had been too scared to show him all of herself, both physically and emotionally, for fear that he would be as disgusted with her as much as she was. Perhaps if she had shared he would have understood.

Her father had been as much to blame as she was when he had objected to Caleb.  Caleb was just a common blue collar construction worker, not nearly good enough for his precious daughter. When he had found out about their relationship he had gone through the roof.

Rodger Radcliffe had not been a compromising man.  It had either been his way or no way.  It had forced Norah to keep her and Caleb's relationship a secret from him and she had never told him the truth of what had happened between the two of them.

Norah searched though the sketches and found the one that had started it all.  It was a cowboy leaning against an old beat-up pickup truck at sunrise.  His hat was pulled low, his legs were crossed at the ankles and he was holding a cup of coffee. 

That had been the first time she had seen him.

*******

Somehow Norah's quick hands had added him to the sketch. She looked down at what she had drawn, mystified as to how it had happened. She had been coming to the bluff that overlooked the building site of her father's new house and sketching the changes that happened every week. 

Norah's father, Rodger Radcliff, owned a large parcel of land just outside of Austin, Texas.  He wasn't a rancher like many of the families, he worked in Austin as an entertainment lawyer during the week and he liked his privacy, which was why he had so much land.  Prior to moving to Texas their family had lived in Los Angeles, but after her mother's death he felt they needed a change and he had moved them all to the Texas Hill country where he was originally from. The thought of her mother distressed her as usual so she pushed her memory out of her mind and focused on her father's new wife, the reason the new house was being built.

He had meet Leslie, his new wife, the previous year, and she seemed to be a nice woman, even if she was much younger than her father. She was a beautiful and wasn't much older than her older sister. Her dad was a young fifty four and Leslie was in her early thirties. She had come as a shock to Norah because she hadn't been expecting her father to marry again; he had been so in love with their mother.   Leslie had done her best to include Norah, but the relationship with her father wasn't the same now that she was a third wheel.