The smile on her face widens, and she grabs my upper arms. “Oh, you’re a godsend, Lacey.”
As she skips off out of the house, everything inside me shrivels, because her enthusiasm is misplaced and I’m confident she won’t think favorably of me for much longer.
After glancing over the form, I stack the dishwasher and stare out of the patio doors onto the deck that runs along the back of the house. Reveling in the calm view and the faint hum of the refrigerator.
Some people are so lucky.
And if it wasn’t for the details needed on this damn employment form, I would probably include myself in that group.
Two
Lacey
Hopping around the small bathroom Amber said was mine to use, I lose my balance when I catch my little toe in a rip in the knee of my jeans. I allow myself to topple to one side and let the wall catch my fall. I close my eyes for a second, calm myself, then push off the wall with my elbow so I can straighten and finish dressing.
My jeans and shirt feel crinkly but smell lovely. I washed all the clothes I brought with me in the bath with hand soap from the vanity and they’ve dried overnight on the towel rail. The thought of bringing the smell of my past with me was too much. I run a flattened palm over my shirt, scrape my hair into a high ponytail, and take a moment in front of the mirror.
I need a little time to adjust. Then I’ll be fine. I force the corners of my mouth into a supportive smile.
My stomach growls. I only ate the chicken and avocado wrap yesterday and my body is telling me it liked it. And misses it. So, I need to quit messing around and grab some breakfast. Thank you, kindly. But then there’s another pain in my stomach. Lower down this time. Quickly, I use the toilet and throw my head up to the ceiling in relief when I spot the red, telltale sign in the toilet bowl of my period. This is turning out to be my lucky week. And I feel no shame in rolling up toilet paper to line my panties.
I skip down to the kitchen where Amber clatters pans from a cabinet onto the stove with a cell phone wedged underneath her chin.
She nods and smiles at me and I slide onto a high-backed stool at the island, waiting for her to finish her call.
“You hungry?” she tosses the phone on the granite top of the island. “I’ve made enough grits to feed the entire ranch here.”
My mouth salivates as I nod.
She tosses a full pack of bacon into a frying pan and it immediately sizzles, releasing a divine smell.
“Did you sleep okay?” She shuffles the pan over the gas to unstick the bacon from the bottom.
“Yeah, thank you.” I attempt to smile. I need to make some friends around here, as last night I decided it would be a good idea to make this work and let my trail go cold. At least for a few days.
Amber looks me over for a while longer than is comfortable. “So what’s your story, anyhow?”
I stutter a laugh. “Nothing. I’m pretty boring.”
She laughs too. “We can’t have that now, can we?”
I force my laughter to carry on. The two days I spent on high alert as I made my brave escape have left me weak with exhaustion. The anxiety stripped me to my core and I’m unable to see light in any situation. So for now, smiles and laughs are fake.
“I was meaning to ask yesterday.” My heart hops around in my chest as she thrusts the wrapper from the bacon into the trash, and I wait on her to finish her question. “Do you ride?”
I roll my lips and crease my forehead just as she turns to me for an answer.
“Horses, I mean.”
“Oh, no.”
“City girl, eh?”
“Yeah.” I sense more questions about me and I need to divert her line of conversation. “It’s lovely here, though. Nice and quiet. Have you always lived here?”
“Yeah. Born and raised.”
I nod, frantically thinking of something else to ask her, but there’s no need, she’s one of those chatty types.
“When Daddy died, Mom fell ill, and I picked up the responsibility of caring for her. But my brothers were keen for me to set up the horse-riding school to stop me from getting bored.” She chuckles, which seems weird as it seems as if her brothers have her best interest at heart.
“Why, what would you do if you didn’t do that?”
“Dunno. Go wild.” She shrugs and pushes the spatula around in the pan. “And my brothers would get all antsy about that.” She rolls her eyes.
Ah. Seems guys are the same everywhere then.
“You’ve met Colt. Well, Blue is the same but a more intense version. Although, he’s mellowed since Josie came to live at the ranch. You’ll get to meet him tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Family dinner. Blue insists we carry on the tradition that Daddy set. If you’re at the ranch and done with work, you need to eat with everyone. No sloping off for a TV dinner or chow down in your bedroom. We all sit around the table at seven.” She bounces on her heels, and with excitement adds. “And now you’re here, you can help prepare it, if you like?”
“Yeah, I like to cook.” I bite my lip; I need to curb my enthusiasm.
“That’s good, because they’re all sick of crockpot.” Her mouth kicks up into a grin and she brandishes the spatula, bacon fat flicking on to the island surface. “My style is frozen everything, thrown in a pot with a stock cube and plopped into five dishes at ten to seven.” She laughs. “So I’m hoping I’m not setting you up or nothing, but I’ve got high hopes.”
“As long as there are some recipes or cookbooks lying around, I’m good.”
She points with the spatula to a bookshelf that separates the dining table from the sitting area.
I wander over to look. There’s a good array of baking and recipe books along with some fiction titles.
“Did your mom use these?”
“Yeah. Her pastries were to die for.”
I pick out a book with a glossy sleeve. Amber hovers at my shoulder. “Ooh, that one there.” She stops the pages from flicking over with a finger. “Chicken and leek pie. Yum, yum.”
She retreats to the stove while I read the recipe. It seems simple enough.
“Do we have the ingredients?”
With the grits pan in her hand, she thinks it over for a while, then leans over bowls she has set on the counter. “Reckon so. Anything we don’t have you can just get from town. I’m going in later today if you wanna grab a ride? I can show you where everything is.”
She serves up the breakfast, not waiting for me to reply, which is fortunate because after considering it yesterday, I don’t really want to risk going into town just yet. Lie low and let the dust settle seems the best plan.
Amber sets the bowls onto two trays, along with silverware, linen napkins, and today’s newspaper.
“Is that your employment form?” She nods at the folded paper I snuck onto the side when I first came in—not daring to hand over something as full of lies as that piece of paper is.
“Yeah.” My heart sinks. I was hoping she might forget about it somehow. My name, address, and next of kin were easy to make up but it’s the random numbers for my social security number which will surely catch me out. Especially as I don’t know how any of that shit works.
“Okay, be a darlin’, just pop it on that bookshelf so it doesn’t get tidied away and I’ll deal with it later.”
I gladly do as I’m told, slotting it in between the last two books on a shelf.
“Come on. We’ll take these to Mom and eat up there with her. I’ll tell you what food she does and doesn’t like and her medication routine on the way.”
We each take a tray and carry it through to Mrs. Corrigan’s apartment to find her already sat at the kitchen table.
“I could smell the bacon a mile off.” She smiles.
We sit around her small cloth-covered table, and she asks about Colt and Blue, Amber’s horses, what the latest prices are for beef and almonds, and Josie’s forge. It all seems very relaxed and her interaction is pleasant and upbeat
. I wonder at this point why she even needs any help as she seems fine to me. But I’m happy to be her companion while I get myself together.
I take the dishes back to the kitchen, leaving Amber five more minutes with her mom before she needs to return to the horse-riding school. She leaves me with a list of instructions and I go through to get to know Mrs. Corrigan more, who now rests in the padded armchair near the window and I sit opposite her, placing her newspaper on the windowsill.
“So what do you like to do?” I ask.
She looks at me, her eyes void of expression. “Who are you again, lovey?”
Her change shocks me somewhat and I stammer my response. “Lacey. I’m here to help you with… well, whatever you want.”
Her alabaster colored skin crinkles with a smile. “That’s nice.”
“So Amber told me you like to do jigsaws, and cross-stitch.” I slope over to the sideboard where Amber showed me the jigsaws are stored. I’m sure I can do one with her. Cross-stitch is beyond my capabilities, and I don’t think my fingers will stop shaking enough to practice.
“Which do you want to do?” I call across to her while I shuffle the boxes. “There are country scenes, or… more country scenes.”
She simply stares at me, so I choose one and clear the kitchen table, carrying it over to her armchair. At first she lets me start the edges, but after a while she joins in and we chat about the ranch and her love of horses, while we sort out the pieces of a grassland scene. Then she asks about her husband, which Amber warned me she would, and I give her the stock answer that he’s away. Apparently, she can’t cope with the true answer. But I hate to deceive her all the same. I need at least one person I don’t lie to in this world.
After a while she grows quiet and her eyelids lower. I sit for a while looking out over the ranch. Cowboys wearing hats and suede chaps shout and wave large sticks at distressed cows. I spot Colt sitting on a tall black horse. He rams it repeatedly into the line of cattle, its hooves thump perilously close to the legs of a cow. I shiver at the behavior. Another guy, who I figure must be Blue from the same frame and hair color as Colt and Amber, stands on the first rung of a fence, waving a curled-up whip at the cows as they filter into a single line. The herd files through to a barn and the men follow, leaving behind a picture-perfect view of rolling hills and craggy mountains.
I relish the quiet for a few minutes, overlooking the alien scene until the cows make the most godawful noise from inside the barn. Ugh, it’s everything I imagined it would be here in the country—full of animal cruelty and macho men. Then I hear the code being tapped into the pad near the door and I spin anxiously toward it.
Amber curls her fingers around the door and sticks her head through the gap. “Is she asleep?” she hisses.
I nod.
“Come on, then.”
I take a quick look at Mrs. Corrigan and pull the throw from the side arm of the sofa onto her lap, tuck it into the cushioned sides and sneak out of the room.
“We’ll pop into town now. If Mom needs anything, she will call.” She waves her cell up to me. “I should really add your number to her phone.”
“Oh. I don’t have one right now. I dropped it and the screen smashed.”
With no hint of surprise or disbelief, she pops her phone into her back pocket. “I’ll rummage through the office drawers, see if I’ve got an old one you can have. If not, I’ll sweet talk Josie into giving you an advance on your wages. She deals with payroll at the ranch, and we need you to be in touch, so I’m sure she will be cool with that.”
“Okay, thanks. I can always stay here and mind Mrs. Corrigan. I’m sure I can find another dish to make for dinner. Something we already have ingredients for.”
“No way. I’m salivating just thinking of chicken and leek pie now.”
My heart sinks. But I do need to pick up some toiletries. All I stuffed in my backpack before I escaped were clothes.
We take Amber’s prized Mustang, and she wastes no time spinning it around outside the ranch and pushing her foot on the gas so the back-end swerves recklessly on the loose surface of the farm track. The stereo blasts out, and Amber sings at the top her voice.
“Who is this?”
Amber quits singing and looks across at me.
“Do you really not know?”
I curl my lips and lift my brow.
“Only Kane Brown. The most delectable, singer, everrrr.”
She turns the volume up and sings even louder, thumping the steering wheel and shaking her dark hair.
She makes me smile. She’s confident. Fun-loving. Free.
At the end of the song she turns down the volume and I swallow, frantically trying to think of a question or a line of small talk.
She eyes me and I quit wringing my wrist and lift my elbow to the door frame and stare at the small holdings flashing by until she slows as we enter a street with the first of the neighborhood houses. The town is bigger than I expected, and as she drives us through it, I scout around for signs to a bus or train station.
“What’s that tattoo you’ve got there?”
I stick my hands in between my legs. “Oh, nothing, just some stupid dare when I was a teenager.” The tattoo burns me like a branding iron.
She laughs. “I so need to get a tattoo. You should come with me to get one and hold my hand.”
“Sure,” I whisper, trying not to reflect on how my hand was held down when my supposed boyfriend insisted he mark me. The first sign of ownership that I’m scarred with forevermore.
“Here we go,” she says, hesitating before she exits the car. For a moment I think there is something wrong and she will call me out over something. “Are you hungry?”
I roll my lips. Actually, I’m always hungry. An ache in my stomach has been a feature as long as I can remember and is actually how I know I am still alive.
Eventually, I nod.
“Good, we’ll dip into Alma’s before we hit the other stores.”
“What’s Alma’s?”
“The local bakery. Consider it research. If you can master pastry and dough like they serve, then you’ll have a job for life.”
She laughs and reaches out her hand to squeeze my forearm. My eyes linger on her hand and then the heated spot when she lifts her hand away. A simple act of companionship, and she doesn’t know how much it means to me. I haven’t had a friend for a long time. I study her. I know I could never be her, but I’d love to be her friend. I snap my head away and grab hold of the door handle, catching my misted eyes in the reflection. What a stupid thought.
Alma’s is heaving and I hold my breath, scouting around for anything that should concern me before I close the door behind me.
“Come on.” Amber is excited as usual. It’s a permanent state with her. “Do you wanna grab those stools and I’ll bring coffee and donuts over?”
I swallow nervously and slink onto a stool set up at a wooden bar that runs along the window, studying the menu and keeping my head down. I wish I’d brought my ball cap to hide under, but the motif on the front would be a dead giveaway for anyone looking for me.
Moments later, Amber dumps a large paper bag and slides a tray holding two coffees across the bar.
“Sorry, I should have helped.”
“Stop with your apologizing, girl.” I should, I know. It makes me sound weird. “Here we go. Coffee for you.” She pulls a polystyrene cup from the tray, plonks it in front of me, and drops a ton of sugar packets next to it. “And a cherry donut.”
I peel open the paper bag and sniff in the aroma.
“Yep, it’s still warm.” Amber grins. “That’s why we’re eating them in here before they cool. Josie put me onto them. I’ve lived in this town all my life and don’t know what I did without these little beauties!” She immediately shoves one into her mouth. Moaning and sighing around it and licking the sugar from her lips. She really doesn’t care that people stare at her. “And I’ve got some to take back to Josie and chocolate cupcakes for Colt. He’
s a sucker for chocolate.”
I jerk my chin in recognition and think of the guy who gave me this break only yesterday and how he was today on that horse. He’s a conundrum. So different to any man I’ve ever known. Built for a purpose and not show. Caring with a stranger, but not so much animals. Lives with his real family and not a bunch of misfits.
“So, how you settling in?”
I wrench away from my thoughts to answer her. “Fine.”
“And what do your folks think of you living out here in the sticks?”
I shrug. “No family to speak of.” Unless you count the relatives I told Colt I was staying with. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“Shit. Sorry, I forgot you told me that already.” Seems Colt didn’t mention that detail about my family to Amber. “And no boyfriend either?”
I shake my head while a feeling seeps through at how unlikely it is that I can enjoy Amber’s company for much longer. My story sucks, and the info I put on that employment form will be the last nail in my coffin.
“So you’re hot, free, and single. Just like me.” She laughs and I smile nervously at her description. All three attributes are alien to me but I understand why she would think that way. I study Amber’s face. She has a smattering of make-up and mascara curls her long dark eyelashes to open up her bright, golden-hued eyes. Her hair has a regular trim, with no split ends. Precisely waxed eyebrows and manicured fingernails that don’t reveal the work she does. She’s lovely, and a million miles away from me.
“How you finding everyone so far?”
“Good.” I pick off a small piece of the fried dough.
“We get a little crazy at times but no more than any other family, right?”
Notes in Love Page 2
