the same places I would have put things myself if it was my kitchen.
There wasn’t a speck of dust on the furniture or a thing out of place in the house... until I opened the other door in the hallway and found Leia’s bedroom.
It looked like a tornado had come though and wrecked the place leaving clothes strewn everywhere. There were piles of clothes all over the room, barely anything hanging in the closet, and one entire wall was covered in pictures.
There were horses, rock bands, country music stars, and pictures of Rowdy and Leia tacked here and there amid the famous people. Some of the pictures looked like they had been pulled out of travel magazines - I assumed they were places Leia wanted to visit someday.
Piles of papers, stacks of books, and the occasional stuffed animal took up every flat surface in the room and the bookshelves were stuffed full of figurines of horses and other animals that were so perfectly detailed I had to step in and take a closer look at them.
I wasn’t sure where she had collected the figurines, but I could tell at a glance that they were worth a fortune. They were hand-painted, most of them wooden, but some of them made of clay - every single one of them detailed to perfection. As I glanced over the shelves, I saw horses, cows, a few goats, some cats and kittens, a dog or two, and even a polar bear. They went from a little turtle the size of my thumbnail to a peacock with his feathers splayed out that was bigger than my hand.
“Are you ready to go?” I heard Rowdy ask from behind me.
I jumped and spun around as if I had been caught breaking into his safe.
“Sorry!” I sputtered as I tiptoed my way through the mess of the bedroom to get back through the bedroom door. “I was just looking around and saw the figurines on the shelf.”
“Oh, Leia loves those,” Rowdy said. “Her room is a fucking mess, but that’s just not a battle I’m willing to fight. I finally decided that she’s perfect in every other way; being a slob can just be her only flaw.”
I laughed and shook my head, wondering how such a neat freak of a man didn’t go nuts knowing what was just behind that door.
“Where will Lexi sleep?” I asked, looking at the other two doors in the hallway.
“We have a guest bedroom that can turn into hers. My dad stays in there when he comes to visit, but we can move his stuff into my work room.
“Work room?”
“Yeah,” Rowdy pointed to one of the doors I hadn’t explored yet. “That’s my hobby room over there. Lexi’s room will be the other one. It’s the same size as Leia’s and painted plain white, but she can paint it whatever she wants. Nicole won’t mind at all.”
“Nicole owns this house?”
“Yeah,” Rowdy shrugged. “She lets us live here for cheap since I take care of the horses and other large animals when she gets them. I tried to get a loan to buy the property from her, but the bank wouldn’t give me that much, so Reagan has been helping me rehab my credit so I can try again. At this point if I buy my own house it would be in town.”
“What about the horses?”
“I’d just have to drive out twice a day and spend time here,” Rowdy shrugged. “I couldn’t ever give up my girls.”
“Can I see your hobby room?”
“Sure,” Rowdy shrugged. “Come on.”
I followed him a few feet further down the hall and he pushed the door open before waving me in.
The room was organized, just like the rest of the house. But this one had shelves from floor to ceiling on two sides and the middle of one wall had a workbench with tools organized in a row. The upper shelves were filled with figurines like the ones in Leia’s room and I moved closer to marvel at the details.
“You did all this?” I whispered as I reached up to touch a chicken that was set around with others of different colors, as if they were pecking the shelf looking for food. I snatched my hand back and Rowdy laughed.
“You can pick them up. If you break something, I’ll just make a new one.”
“These are beautiful.” I reached out and picked up one of the chickens and marvelled at the detail in the clay. I couldn’t get over how real he