I come to a stop in front of the main house, and Jo shoves the bag holding the candy under her shirt. "Good luck to you in the deluge," she calls, then hops from my truck.
I'm laughing as I reach for the champagne. Jo is funnier than I remember. And she defended me just now. I'd come in to get her and overheard her. I don't know what those women had said, and I didn't know it was me Jo was talking about until she called herself my boss. What I do know is how it makes me feel, to be someone who she thinks deserves defending.
I reach into the back seat, grab the bag I forgot to take inside with me when I got home yesterday, and grip the neck of the champagne bottle. Rain pelts me as I run to the house, where a laughing Jo waits for me under the safety of the covered porch. We are both soaked. My shirt sticks to my skin, and drops of water roll down her face.
"I wonder if there'll be flash floods," Jo muses, looking in the direction of town, even though we can't see it.
The rain smacks the ground and bounces. The ground is hard, and it's been so long since it last rained. The clay is not yet soft enough to absorb the torrent, so it forms streams and, luckily, flows away from Jo's house. At least she has that going for her.
We toe off our shoes and go inside. From the bag, I produce a plastic-wrapped bag of plain white T-shirts, the kind that go under the work shirt I wear on the HCC.
"Here," I say, ripping open a bag and handing her one.
She takes it, shaking it out. "Thank you."
She disappears around the corner to change, and I trade my wet shirt for the dry. My jeans are wet in places, but not soaked. Even if they were, I can't remove them.
Jo walks back through the living room and into the kitchen. She holds her shirt over the sink, wringing out the water then draping the shirt over the faucet.
We walk through the place, checking for leaks. In total, there are five. I warn her there could be more, some may not develop until it's been raining for a while. She frowns, and I choose not to tell her entire sections of the roof can collapse. I don't want her to fear our hypothetical conversation from the truck coming to fruition.
In the kitchen, we find a cabinet loaded with pots and pans. "Isn't that bizarre?" Jo asks, holding one up by the handle. She opens more cabinets and finds other kitchenware. "Why would they leave this stuff behind? They took the furniture."
"Maybe they hated cooking," I joke. We move through the house, placing pots under the leaks to catch the water.
We go back to the living room and she takes a notebook from her purse. "Roof," she says out loud as she writes. "My list just keeps getting longer."
Briefly I consider asking her why the roof wasn't on her list, then change my mind. The more time I'm spending here the more I see that Jo needs someone to guide her on this project. I'm thinking of how I can rope Dakota into helping more when Jo says harshly, "Quit it."
Her tone jolts me from my thoughts. "Quit what?"
Jo tosses the candy to me. "I know what you're thinking." She drags over an empty crate and flips it upside down, using it as a seat. I watch her gather her hair into a ponytail and secure it with the hair tie she had on her wrist. She has a graceful, slender neck. A tiny mole just below her left ear.
I unwrap my Twix and take a bite. "No, you don't," I argue pointedly.
"You're thinking I don't know what I'm doing here. You're trying to figure out how a person who hasn't yet had the roof inspected could possibly pull off the rebuilding of a ranch and the opening of a business." She points her full-size Cow Tale at me, the end hanging limply.
"Not true," I insist, pushing the last of the Twix into my mouth.
"Then what were you thinking?" Her eyebrows raise in challenge.
I don't think it would go over well if I tell her I was trying to keep myself from imagining what her rain-moistened skin would feel like against my tongue. "I was thinking it's pretty great what you're doing out here."
She narrows her gaze. "You're a bad liar."
I snort. "That's the first time I've heard that." I grab the champagne from where I set it on the counter before we walked through the house looking for leaks. "But you're right, that's not what I was thinking. That doesn't make the sentiment any less true, though. And I think what you're doing out here should be celebrated."
I hold out the bottle for her to take, but she points back at me. "You do the honors."
I pull off the foil and ball it up, tossing it aside. I position two thumbs on the side of the cork, then think better of it. Barometric pressure might make it come shooting out, and although it sounds fun, it also sounds like a mess. Instead, I twist the cork until I hear thepop, and just a tiny amount bubbles over.
Holding the bottle out to her, I say, "To you, Jo, and your big dreams."
Jo smiles shyly, her eyelids fluttering closed for a brief moment. A flash of time takes over, as if I've lived another life. I see Jo in a dimly lit hallway, the walls stucco, two oversized plants on either side of her.
I blink against a memory that cannot be my own as Jo takes the bottle from me. She drinks straight from it and hands it back to me. I sip, and we're both quiet, listening to the rain and thunder. Jo rubs at her bare forearms and says she feels like she should be cold, even though she isn't. It's probably almost eighty degrees in here right now, and it feels even warmer from the humidity the storm has brought with it.
Wyatt?" Jo says, looking up at me. I sit down beside her so we're on the same level. She continues. "How do you justify what happened in the Merc?"
