Julia's Chocolates. Cathy Lamb

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СКАЧАТЬ Don’t be scared of him, Julia. He’s a good man. A man who is not afraid of his testosterone. He rules his testosterone and does not let his testosterone rule him. His balls are made of steel, you can tell by the way he moves.”

      Steel balls?

      “Moved here several years ago. He’s a farmer and a rancher. Attorney, too, so he goes into the city for weeks at a time sometimes. Some big hotshot. I don’t know. Stash does.”

      Great. A rancher. Farmer. And an attorney. Oh, yes. I’m sure he would be excited to dine with someone like me. A nervous, paranoid, blushing, clutzy, bruised, muddy, plump, overly endowed ex-fiancée who left her wedding dress hanging from a tree and who sounds like she’s been getting it on with chickens.

      “All I know is that he is a damn good poker player. He beat Stash many times, and he’s almost beat me. He’ll play for quarters, not pennies, like all the other cowardly people in this town.” Lydia snorted, then grabbed my arm. “I’m drying your hair.”

      “No, please, Aunt Lydia. Tell him I’m sick. Tell him I have leprosy. I’m certainly not going down to breakfast.”

      “You do look a little pale, Julia. Which is why you need to pump your womanhood full of eggs and cheese. They will restore the equilibrium in your inner core, which is what you need. And those jeans look good on you.”

      “I’m fat.”

      “You’re not fat. You’re curvy. Men like something to grip in bed, Julia. They like handfuls of warm woman. Mouthfuls, too, now that I think about it. But men are pricks!” she shouted, pointer fingers in the air again, as if she’d just remembered. “Sleeping with one of those skinny models would be like sleeping with a fence post with a head. You attracted to fence posts? Me neither. Now get in there so I can dry those curls of yours or I’m calling Stash in to do it.”

      “You wouldn’t.” But I already knew.

      “I would. Sure as I would paint the north outbuilding orange, I would, which is what I’m going to do tomorrow. Now move.”

      I stood up, my knees still a bit weak from the attack of the Dread Disease.

      “And, by the way, after breakfast, can you help me paint the back shed green?”

      “Sure, Aunt Lydia.” I’d work all day if I could. Nothing like work to take your mind off the fact that you’re going to be hunted down by your ex-fiancé at the same time you’re fighting off a Dread Disease and Paul Bunyan and his great big steel…thingies, who is down in the kitchen.

      I shivered again. I wouldn’t go there. Wouldn’t think about steel balls. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to eat the sausages.

      “So you don’t like sausages?” Paul Bunyan asked me from across the table.

      Stash had, indeed, prepared Oregon’s best omelets. Avocado. Shrimp. Sour cream. Some type of sauce. Tomatoes. Spices. Delicious. Or at least it would have been had I been able to eat much.

      Stash was on my left, Lydia on my right. Stash had also brought over blueberry muffins. “I cooked them for you, sweetie,” he told me, giving me a hug before settling me at my seat. “You’re my sweet blueberry girl. Always have been, always will be.” Then he told Paul Bunyan about how I ate so many blueberries one night that they had to drive me to the hospital at two in the morning because my stomach hurt so bad that the doctors thought I needed an appendectomy.

      I looked up into those blue eyes again. Cool. Smooth. Yet friendly.

      I caught myself. Breathe, Julia.

      “The sausages?” Dean asked again, smiling at me across the table.

      I jumped. I had stared at him, not answering.

      “No. Yes.” I shook my head. I wondered if there was a Mrs. Paul Bunyan? Was she as big as him? “I do like big sausages.”

      Oh, deliver me, Lord. Had I said I like big sausages?

      I heard Stash’s fork drop to his plate with a clatter. There was a dead silence around the table. Then Lydia snorted.

      I heard Stash trying to control his laughter. He sounded like a hyena who was being muffled with a pillow. I felt the blood rush to my face. Aunt Lydia had found a sudden interest in her napkin. It covered her whole face. Her shoulders shook. She made odd meowing sounds.

      “Well, what I meant…” I protested. I looked into Paul Bunyan’s eyes. They were laughing, but his mouth was very still. “I meant that I do like sausages, any sausage.”

      Aunt Lydia snorted.

      “You know, there are different types of sausages….” I sputtered, still trying to save myself. “Bavarian sausages, German sausages, French sausages, California sausages. I didn’t really mean big…really didn’t mean…”

      Stash made a sound like a donkey braying. Lydia answered with her own high-pitched choking sound.

      “But I don’t like spicy sausages….”

      Please, I told my mouth, oh please, stop.

      “Nothing spicy,” Paul Bunyan said, those lips moving over his words like hot syrup.

      “Right.” We needed to get away from this conversation.

      “So,” Stash said, tears floating in his eyes. “That’s a good thing for you to remember, my boy, Dean. She likes sausages of any kind.”

      Aunt Lydia didn’t even try to pretend anymore, her laughter filling the room like sweet flowers on a cold winter day.

      “But nothing spicy.”

      “Never,” said Stash, laughter spilling from his mouth like caramel corn from a paper bag. “Women are picky about these things. Some women like one type of sausage, some another. Spicy sausages. Big ones, small ones, sausages from different countries. There’s just no pleasin’ these gals sometimes, Dean, no pleasin’ them at all.”

      “Well, I like your sausage, Stash,” Aunt Lydia said. “I like it right fine. Right fine.”

      I stared, astonished. Then I laughed. I couldn’t help it. For all the time that Aunt Lydia was fighting with Stash, this was the first compliment I’d heard her give him in a long time. The tension rolled right out of my body with that laugh. I looked at Paul Bunyan, who did not seem the least bit embarrassed about my sausage comment. His eyes were still on me, but now they had a look in them, a considering look, a curious look.

      “But you must remember!” Lydia boomed, holding her fork high in the air.

      “I know, I know, darlin’,” Stash said, still laughing. “Men are pricks!”

      5

      Caroline Harper’s house was a study in surprise. Her home is actually a pole barn, painted brown on the outside. From the front, all you can see is a door and a tiny window. There’s a red and white sign in that tiny window that says GUNS ARE LOADED. Outside another sign says NO TRESPASSING.

      It looks like the kind of place where methamphetamine СКАЧАТЬ