The Secrets of Rosa Lee. Jodi Thomas

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      “Your hair gets even curlier when it’s damp.” He hadn’t meant to touch it, but the mass was so beautiful, all shiny with red and brown highlights. He let the tips of his fingers brush one curl.

      “It’s natural.” She winked. “All over.”

      Micah turned his face to the rain. She’d done it again, he thought. Treating him like just any person—like just any man. It felt good and frightening at the same time. Since he’d buried Amy, he thought of himself as a father, a minister, a friend. He’d set all other definitions aside. Now, to be accepted for being nothing more than simply human overwhelmed him. He felt free somehow.

      Randi elbowed him. “How about I clean up their place a little? No one wants to wake up with a hangover and have to face all the empty bottles sitting around.”

      “I’ll help.”

      “No way.” She spread her hand out across his chest stopping him from following her. “I think you should find a hose and wash out your car before you take me home. It’s too far a drive to hold my breath.”

      Micah glanced out in the rain. “I’ll get wet.”

      “I’m not riding back with that smell.”

      “I’ll get wet,” he repeated.

      Randi patted his shoulder. “You’ll dry.” Then, without warning, she shoved him into the rain.

      Micah stumbled off the porch, laughing. He told himself he wasn’t attracted to her or any woman, but it felt great to have someone touch him. Just touch him. Not friendly handshakes or polite hugs, but an honest touch.

      He dug around in the flower beds until he found the garden hose rolled up neatly beside a rosebush. He did his best to avoid stepping on any of the rosebushes. Everyone in town knew how the sisters loved their roses.

      Turning the water on full force, he dragged the hose to his car and pulled out the mats. He hardly noticed the rain. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d been so alive. Maybe it was the excitement of this morning, or the way Randi talked to him, or maybe it was just time to start living again. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. It just felt good.

      By the time he got the hose rolled back up in the mud beside the rosebush, Randi stood on the porch ready to go. He motioned for her to climb in and was surprised at how she walked slowly to the car and turned her face to the rain, as if it didn’t bother her at all.

      When she closed her door, he said, “You really do like the rain.”

      Randi shrugged. “I’ve been rained on a lot. It doesn’t scare me anymore.”

      They drove back to the bar in silence. He thought about what she’d said, and what she hadn’t said.

      The parking lot was dark when they got to the bar. The sisters’ van was the only one out front. Micah didn’t want this strange time to end, but had no idea what to say. He knew he wasn’t likely to see Randi again after tonight.

      “You want to come in for breakfast?” She lifted the doorknob. “I always eat when the night’s over, then I can sleep until noon without waking up starving.”

      He hadn’t had a bite since before the committee meeting that morning. “I’d love to, if you don’t mind? But I warn you, I’m starving.”

      “I asked, didn’t I? I think I can fill you up.”

      They walked to the back door. She reached above the frame. “Frankie kept locking himself out and we didn’t want to leave the door unlocked, so he installed a latch above the door. Lights flash in the kitchen and my office when this back door swings.” She led him down a hallway lined with boxes and mops to a tiny kitchen.

      “Of course, I lock it when I head upstairs for the night. We figure only a tall drunk could reach the latch, providing they knew about it.”

      He wondered if she often told her secrets so easily. Looking around the kitchen he tried to understand her. The kitchen appeared to have been added to the bar in the fifties. Nothing had been updated. The counters were red linoleum, stained and worn through in a few places. Pots and knives hung on the wall behind a stove. The refrigerator clanked out a steady beat. The place was spotless.

      “Frankie used to serve hot appetizers years ago, but it got to be too much trouble.” She pulled a string on a bare light swinging from the center of the low ceiling. “I keep it open so when I’m stuck here I won’t starve.” She winked. “A girl can’t live on bar nuts alone.”

      The cleanliness of the place surprised him. There was a wildness about this woman, but there was also an order.

      “If you want to dry off, there’s a stack of towels by the back door.” She combed her hair with her fingers and twisted it into a wild knot behind her head. “How do you like your eggs?”

      “Any way but scrambled,” he answered thinking of the thousand church breakfasts he’d eaten with scrambled eggs. He heard her banging around the kitchen while he dried his hair in the hallway between the back door and the kitchen. Using paper towels, he wiped mud off his shoes then washed his hands in a big sink that looked as if it would only be used to clean mops. The Rogers sisters’ rosebush had torn a two-inch rip in his trousers at the knee, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Since he had no comb, he raked a hand through his hair, hoping he wouldn’t frighten her.

      Then he laughed. The woman owned the roughest bar for thirty miles around. Probably nothing frightened her. In all likelihood she told him about the back door’s latch because she wasn’t the least afraid of him.

      When he walked back into the kitchen, the smell of steak and onions grilling drifted across the room. She motioned for him to sit before turning back to the stove.

      Micah tried not to stare but couldn’t help himself. The lean woman in tight jeans and a rain-dampened Western shirt that stopped an inch above her waist was unlike anyone he’d ever encountered. She moved with an easy grace, but everything he knew about her told him she must be made of rawhide.

      “How do you know the sisters?” She didn’t turn around.

      “Maybe I grew up here and they were my teachers?” he offered.

      “Nope,” she answered as if being tested. “I grew up here and they were my teachers. You’re definitely a transplant.”

      “That obvious?”

      She grinned over her shoulder and pointed with a spatula. “It’s the shoes.” When he didn’t answer she added, “No man from West Texas wears shoes with tassels. Those are for the big cities like Dallas and Houston. And while I’m at it, any self-respecting working man lets the mud on his shoes dry, then stomps it off.”

      “Anything else?”

      She set two plates filled with eggs and steak on the table. “In my line of work I’ve learned to read people. You’re not married, but you were. Divorced, maybe with a kid, grade school probably. You see him often.”

      “Widowed. One child, seven.”

      “Sorry.” She met his eyes. “I’m the same. My husband was killed in СКАЧАТЬ