“Oh. No, it was fine. The dogs started barking and then they rang the doorbell. It didn’t make sense not to let them do what you hired them to do. They seemed to know you’d be busy around thefarm.”
“Yeah. It’s been a long morning,” I say and my body picks that exact moment to remind me that I’m exhausted. I blink hard and force my eyesopen.
“You don’t look like you slept much. Did I keep youup?”
“Of course you don’t remember,” I say as I sit down on the bed beside her. She reaches behind me and moves some of her shit out of the way even though I’m not sitting onanything.
“Rememberwhat?”
“Yes, you kept meup.”
“My bad. I do sleep kind of wild when I sleep hard. I haven’t slept much thisweek.”
“But you slept well last night?” Iask.
She lets out a long sigh. “Yeah, I did. Thankyou.”
“Good. How’s your ankle? I saw you limping lastnight.”
“Still aches, but it’s okay. I packed in a hurry. Scott told me to bring comfortable shoes so that should help more thanheels.”
“You hear from my shithead of a brother yet today?” I pull off my hat and scrub my hair and then my face with myhand.
“Um… yeah. He’s helping with my apartment. The cleanup at my apartment. There was a lotblood.”
“What happenedexactly?”
“Someone put a hit out on me and I ended up stabbing the guy in the neck with my stiletto,” she says matter offactly.
“Scott left that part out. I can see how that would keep you up at night. People don’t take out hits on people here, so don’t worry. Scott is missing the portion of his DNA that makes you a decent human being. You are safe here. I won’t let anything happen toyou.”
“Thank you,” she says, quietly. She sounds like she’s about to cry. Makes sense. She seems pretty stressed out, but there’s no point in dwelling on shit that’s alreadyhappened.
“You hungry?” Iask.
“Actually yeah. I’mstarving.”
“I’ll take you over to the cafe and we can get some lunch. I’ll introduce you to everyone. Are you into handholdingor…?”
She looks over at me like I’m nuts and then she remembers. “Right. I’m supposed to be your girlfriend. Uh, sure. Why not? I mean I’m not huge into PDA, but handholding isfine.”
“Great. I’ll let you get finished up. I’ll be in thehall.”
“Okay.”
I leave her to finish putting on her sneakers and handle whatever woman shit she needs to before we leave. She doesn’t take too long. Maybe five minutes later she comes out of the bedroom. Honeycrisp is trailing behindher.
“I turned the AC off,” she says as she glances down at Joe and steps around him. “Thanks for leaving it on forme.”
“No problem. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and then it should cool down a little bit. Come on.” I open the front door for her. Honeycrisp trots out onto the porch after her. She follows Ebie and me out to mytruck.
“Where are the other dogs?” Ebieasks.
“Morty’s over by the barns. Gala and Hank are out in the orchard with the boys and Tina. It’s picking season. They like to keep them company. I’ll take you out there to meet them after we eat.” I walk around to the passenger side and open the door forher.
“Thankyou.”
“You wanna come?” I ask Honeycrisp. She looks at me for a second and then over atEbie.
