Wind River Wrangler (Wind River Valley #1)(77)

“Do you like the chandelier?”

“Oh, I love it! I was so taken with your kitchen that I didn’t notice it right away.”

“You like to cook. Why wouldn’t you go to the kitchen first?” he said, grinning.

Shiloh absorbed Roan into herself. He wore a blue-and-white plaid cowboy shirt with pearl snap buttons. The collar area was open, a dark blue kerchief around his thick neck. The man definitely had some sense of art and color combinations. “Guilty,” she admitted. “That Wolf stove is to die for, Roan. And I loved the glass tile backsplash. You’ve been so thoughtful about the color scheme. It’s not too masculine and its counterpart is the feminine.”

Raising his brows, he smiled a little. “I hadn’t really thought about it in those exact terms.”

Smiling, Shiloh said, “I didn’t think you would. But my mom saw everything through her artist’s eyes like that. Whether it was angles or curves.” She gestured to the chandelier. “How long did it take you to make that?”

“Oh,” he drawled, “that’s a project that’s taken every stitch of my patience for nearly a year. I’d bring it out and work on it and the wood I’d wet to shape and curve it would snap and break. I can’t tell you how many times I had to start over.” And he shook his head, giving her a rueful grin.

“It’s breathtaking,” Shiloh said, so much passion behind her words. “And those faceted glass beads are the perfect addition to it. What made you put them on? What was your idea about it?”

Roan gazed up at the chandelier and then back at her. “I wanted the green to represent how lush this valley is with trees and grass.” He gestured upward toward it. “The blue is to represent the sky. The transparent crystals are the stars I see in the Wyoming night sky.”

She was mesmerized and deeply touched by his sensitivity, his ability to observe and then create such an incredible work of art. “Did you have a pattern? Or did you buy it?”

Shaking his head, he said, “There were many, many times when I wished I did, Shiloh. No, it was in my head. I made drawings on graph paper to figure out the dimensions, the length and width of each arm. Carving out the cedar template was easy compared to finding the right color of natural wood and then trying to get it to bend and curve.”

“And you said it took you a year to do this?” Talk about a labor of love, Shiloh thought.

“Actually,” Roan said, “when Maud gifted me with this five acres as part of my package as a wrangler working for the ranch, the design just popped into my head. After getting the cabin shell up, which took a year, beginning the second year, I started the design. I saw the chandelier as defining everything I wanted the cabin to represent.”

“Wow,” she murmured, awestruck, “you have such an amazing and artistic way of seeing the world.”

He grinned. “Not bad for a black ops guy like me. Right?”

She saw some color come to his cheeks, realizing he was blushing over her heartfelt compliment. “No . . . not bad at all. There must be some connection between your career as an operator and your skills in carving and building.”

“I don’t see any.”

She chuckled. “You wouldn’t. It’s my writer’s curiosity to understand the connections of how a person sees their reality. That’s how I create really great characters who have depth and breadth.” Tilting her head, she asked, “Is your mother an artist, I wonder?”

“She sure is,” Roan murmured, finishing off his lunch. He wiped his hands on a paper napkin and pushed the emptied plate aside. “But her art is in quilting. She likes crocheting and knitting, too.” He pointed toward the red afghan draped over the couch. “That’s her work. I don’t know if you went over to look at it, but it’s pretty intricately knitted. She’s great at detail work.”

“That makes me feel good that your mom is here with you in that way.”

Roan frowned. “Do you have things your mother gave you?”

“Yes,” Shiloh said quietly. “When my parents died, I was in the will and I got everything. My mother worked on several paintings at once. She loved landscapes. Maud has two of them in her house. If you feel like it, you might go over and take a look at them.”

“So you have some of her paintings?”

“I have four. And every one is priceless to me. She was working on a season theme before she was murdered by Leath. She’d gotten her art degree from the Sorbonne in Paris and she’d spent four years there. My mom loved nature. And she was always torn between the liveliness of the city and wanting to go live in the West. She made many trips out here. And she took a lot of photos. The season paintings were like a culmination of her trips to the West. I was only seven, but I remember walking into her art studio where she painted and feeling like I’d walked into a magical realm.”

Roan frowned. “How do you mean that?”

“Her paintings,” Shiloh said, finishing up her lunch. “These are big paintings, Roan. They are about four feet high and two feet wide. I remember when she was painting winter, that I came up and just felt like I’d walked into it, that I was a part of it.”

“Because she painted so realistically?” he asked.

Nodding, Shiloh smiled. “Yes. It WAS like a photo, but it wasn’t. But I felt it was so real, that it was like looking at it, it surrounded you and you were pulled into it.”