by Jody Kaye
“Why is Eric pushing up the timeline?”
“Something about a soirée he’s throwing.”
Rose didn’t know about any party. The start date for a kitchen remodel may slip her mind but a party never would. She’d loved putting on her best dresses when Miss Joy entertained. Memories of her younger years floated through Rose’s brain like dandelion seeds in the wind.
Large or small gatherings, her mother was the quintessential hostess. Her father rarely celebrated anything at Kingsbrier anymore, finding it easier to book a banquet hall and leave the details to the professionals. It was as sad as it was maddening that the beautiful mansion was never used for social gatherings. As a naive, young girl Rose hoped Eric allowed her to have her wedding here.
Unease crept up her back. “Can you manage that?” she asked, unsure of Eric’s real motive. She wasn’t getting married anytime soon, but her timeframe didn’t seem to matter to Eric. Her father could be using the idea to plot against her. Or, full of himself, Eric may be looking to cause a problem for Ross.
“It’ll be a bit of a stretch, but I don’t see why not. This crew is making good progress inside and out. It would go faster if there were more days like today.”
Rose shook her head not understanding.
“When you aren’t traipsing around with no clothes on,” he replied, mocking her.
The side of his lip quirked up with a teasing smile and Ross’s nose crinkled. He’d spent time in the sun recently. Rose noticed the bridge of freckles on his nose had darkened to more than a smattering. The combination of light and dark dots trailed down his cheeks and neck disappearing under his t-shirt and reappearing out from under his short sleeves, lessening to a light patchwork as they approached his wrists.
Her shoulders fell. Everyone’s life would be easier if Rose wasn’t there. She was unwelcome on Rodger and Lily Anne’s dates. Her daddy had little use for her. And Ross was unlikely to appreciate Rose asking how far down his chest those endearing spots went. Uncomfortable, Rose shifted her weight attempting to remove her gaze from his pecs.
“Hey, it was a joke. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You didn’t. I have a thicker hide than you know.”
“Yes, I did. Thick skin or not, I’m sorry. Heck, I shouldn’t be poking fun at you. The statements about what you wear at your own pool were out of line. I thought you’d want to know that the guys were, well, being guys. They’re not the type to catcall. But some of the stuff that’s said a lady won’t appreciate hearing. I was only trying to warn you that there’s no privacy sunbathing out there when we’re here.”
“The crew’s torn up half of my house. It’s hard to miss that I’m not alone.” Except despite the extra people, Rose was lonely.
“Not half. This house is too big.” Ross looked over his shoulder at the impressive stucco, timbers, and brickwork. “A quarter. A fifth.” He nudged her shoulder, amused at himself.
“Do you only see the house?”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“When you look at me, is all you see the house and the money?”
“Where is this coming from, Rose? No. It’s hard for my head to integrate the woman from the stands that I danced with as being the girl who lives here. But you’re just… You. A little feisty, but easy to talk to. You don’t put on any airs, if you know what I mean.”
“If I wasn’t rich would we be friends?”
Ross brushed the light scruff on his cheek, thinking for a moment before he responded.
“Nevermind,” she huffed, attempting to stand. He snagged her wrist and she felt a tender stroke across the thin bones. Her pulse slowed. Rose stopped her efforts to make a scene, lowering herself onto the hard stone once more the way honey drips from a comb.
“I hadn’t thought of it one way or another until you asked.” He spoke with sincerity. “I guess I presumed that we were. We’re always conversing about something when I’m at Kingsbrier for the day.”
“There’s a big difference between being friends and being friendly, Ross.”
“So we aren’t friends?”
“I didn’t say that.” She tried to backpedal, fearing that Ross wouldn’t want anything to do with a friendship if he believed she thought too little of him.
“Okay, Rose, what do friends do that we don’t?”
“Stuff.”
“That’s real helpful.” The smooth tone of his voice overlaid any condescension.
“They go places, eat together, see shows, movies… I don’t know, simply hang out and—”
“Enjoy each other’s company? Thought we were doing precisely that.” Ross stood brushing off the seat of his pants. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Rose furrowed her brow. “Go where? I don’t leave with random—”
“Friends?”
A smile broke out on her face. “Men.” She stood on the step, making their height almost equal. Ross took her hand.
“If I was a guy you picked up at, say, a rodeo,” He stopped and let her nervous laugh hit him in the gut. “I wouldn’t know that my friend is having a rough go and needed to get out of here for a while.”
“You figured that out?”
“I’ve got a decent gauge of people’s moods; comes from being the boss and knowing when to ride someone hard or cut some slack.” He had that same uncanny knack with horses in the ring, knowing their personalities and how to ask them to do what he needed of them. “So get your shoes, nelipot, ‘cause this friend is taking you away from this place for a bit.”
Not long after, Rose found herself bouncing down an old country road in the passenger seat of Ross’s beat-up truck with the windows rolled down. She had to hold her long blonde hair in her hand to keep it from flying in her face.
He used the underside of his right wrist to steer, sometimes touching the wheel with his left hand, when the road dipped, to maintain control. He had an uncanny knowledge of the road the same way that he did with people and animals. Everything about Ross was easy and natural. And, although the way she trusted him was a little scary in hindsight, Rose couldn’t help opening up to him.
“Lily Anne isn’t around much. Did you say she was your cousin?” He snagged a dog-eared copy of East of Eden whose pages flapped back and forth from the wind and stuck it in the glove compartment. The small, bottom-hinged door clicked as he closed it.
“Nah. Actually, Rodger is my cousin.”
“The boy she keeps taking off with. That’s gotta leave you in an awkward position. What if it doesn’t work out between the two of them.”
“It will,” Rose said with confidence. “They’re perfect for each other. I’ve known Lil almost my whole life. She’s come to Texas every other summer for as far back as anyone can remember. Once upon a time, my father and Mr. Andrews invested in a business venture together. Our momma’s wound up on the friendliest of terms, bordering on sisterhood. They instilled the same bond between us because we didn’t have our own siblings. Anyhow, every other summer we’ve gotten shipped off to the other’s home for an extended stay. The only exception being when we were fourteen.”
“What happened when you were fourteen?”
“My momma died.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” she paused, turning to look out her window.
Ross wasn’t driving especially fast, but the fields seemed to wiz by. The way her eyes tracked back up to the horizon beyond the rearview mirror and whipped back near the unfastened seatbelt that clinked behind her ear started to make Rose car sick. Her palms became clammy.
At first, she spoke to take her mind off of her stomach. “I was already in Atlanta with the Andrews. Eric came to fetch me. I remember being so upset because it cut the time short that Lil and I had together. She’s always been important to me.” Then Rose continued, knowing that she’d never have the gumption to get through the story otherwise. “I’d never guessed flying home that afternoon that she’d be all I had for a si
ster… My momma was expecting. She lost the baby and wound up with an infection.”
With a flat belly and sunk-in eyes, her mother, lying in a beautiful coffin adorned with a spray of dozens of multi-colored roses, looked nothing like herself. As an only child for so long, Rose had joyously anticipated coming home in the fall to prepare for her new sibling. Instead, she spent the rest of the longest, loneliest summer wondering what it was like to have a family and not a nonexistent man who called himself her father.
Eric was near absent in his own grief, throwing himself into work. In the early days, she resorted to staying on his good side, making an effort to maintain their thread bare connection. Complaining wouldn’t have helped matters. At least, she’d still visited with Lily Anne for a while.
Sullen, Eric agreed with Savannah Andrew to return Rose to their Georgia plantation the following year. During the day it was as if nothing had changed. They played and swam, and gussied themselves up for Savannah’s frequent dinner parties; pretending to be women instead of girls on the verge of becoming young ladies. However, at night Rose wept in Savannah Andrew’s arms, desperate to connect with someone who understood her misery. Lil’s mother was one of the few who’d speak of Joy as if she were still alive, providing consoling words to the lost child.
Overwhelmed afterward by the release of emotions, Rose made profuse apologies for monopolizing Savannah’s attention. Lily Anne accepted every time, saying the only other person she’d ever want cleaning her cuts was Miss Joy.
Their sophomore year of college, the one person who understood how much it hurt the day the preacher lowered Savannah into the ground was Rose. In the two years since, they held onto one another tight, understanding they’d lost everything that meant anything.
Ross put the truck in park and reached over to touch Rose’s hand. She’d become lost in the past and startled feeling his calloused hand on hers.
“We’re here,” he said.
Her sad, bordering on vacant expression, changed like a windshield wiper swishing away rain. There was a chameleon-like quality to Rose. At the bar, she was all woman, but today without a hint of makeup she was a young girl. He’d watch her go from ferocious while defending herself to friendly in the blink of an eye. Part of that scared Ross. The other part, well, he wanted to find what Rose had hidden. The expressions and demeanor that she hadn’t shown yet. He wanted to get to know her.
That was dangerous on two levels. A woman like this may be a complete psychopath. Or he could become so intrigued that Ross forgot the real reason why he was able to spend time with Rose. His company’s reputation was at stake.
“You miss your mom?”
“Like crazy. Every day. The hardest part of grieving is trying to stop comparing what it was supposed to be like with the way it is. We were going to be a big, happy family. Wound up me and a workaholic, who paid little attention to me until recently.” When Eric decided shackling her to someone else was the way to maintain his fortune. “My momma loved with her whole heart. She must’ve shielded me from his ways. I don’t understand how she married him, though.”
“My grandy says you don’t get a choice in who you love. You love and it gets returned to you ten-fold.”
“From that same person?”
“Gosh, I hope so. She and Gramps were married fifty-five years.”
“I hope that she’s right.”
“A pretty girl like you’s never been in love?”
She scoffed. “No. Not like Lil and Rodger are.”
“You’re young enough. Cupid is bound to hit you with one of those arrows when you least expect it.” Ross cocked his head to the side. “Plenty of guys on the crew would jump at the chance to be with a gal like you.”
He realized how dumb he sounded as the words left his mouth. Rose wasn’t going to lower herself to date a construction worker. Her type was silver spoon fed at the country club.
Ross opened the rusty white truck cap and slid a beaten blue Igloo cooler toward himself after folding down the tailgate of his pickup.
“Did you go camping recently?” Rose asked, seeing a rolled up sleeping bag, a squashed half loaf of Wonder Bread, an open container of Skippy, and an empty box of Pop Tarts littering the bed.
“Nope. Snag that sleeping bag, will you?”
“Then what’s all this?” she asked, motioning to the haphazard mess of tools, trash, and food. Rose tucked the red buffalo check fabric under her arm.
Ross huffed, his laugh catching the breath leaving his lungs. He knew there was no way that she’d understand. Rose was likely all about fancy houses and flashy clothes. Still, he wasn’t ashamed of the truth. There was no sense in pretending for her sake.
“This, my lovely Miss Kingsbrier, is home sweet home,” he remarked, locking up.
“You live in the back of a pickup truck?”
“Sure do.”
Rose shook her head, noticing a crate of folded t-shirts and Levis through the dirty window. “How do you shower?” She cocked her head, disbelieving.
“It all works out,” Ross responded. He relied on friends, the local YMCA, and visiting his family.
Rose trailed behind as they walked to a shady spot under a large oak tree. Enormous, graceful and knotty roots spiraled out from its base. The earth underneath was a dark brown so rich it bordered on black. In the sunshine, past a white post and beam fence, five horses grazed in the pasture. Their different colored coats shiny from perspiration even while several stood motionless.
The smallest with a light yellow coat wickered. Then with a swift and violent kick her back legs came up. The other four, anticipating the mare’s antics scattered, stopping yards away and resuming their chore of basking in the heat.
“Did you see her?” Rose marveled. “The smallest one and she has the rest of them scared!”
“Bramble. She got her name by getting stuck in some blackberry bushes as a foal. Her coat got so stained she resembled a zebra for a season.” Ross chuckled.
“How do you know?”
“I was working here that year.”
“Is that were you learned to, you know… Do that winding up not-getting-trampled thing?”
“I’ve always liked animals: horses, dogs… little kids. The goats, and the human variety.”
Rose giggled.
“Not positive where it came from. It’s pretty darn handy, though, when you love riding the way I do.”
Ross put down the cooler, helping Rose spread the bedroll to blanket the grass. He tried not to gape when she sat down cross-legged. She might not be tall, but in her shorts or those bikini bottoms she showed off by the pool, Rose’s legs gave the illusion that they went on for miles. Once he settled a comfortable distance from her, he opened the dinged-up cooler, pulling out two different cans of soda.
“Ladies choice.” Ross held them up by the tops, letting her opt between the red or green brand name labels. She picked lemon-lime with a quiet thank you. He put the cola can down and unrolled a foot-long sub, separating the halves on the waxed paper. “No plates. But I have napkins for later.”
“It’s fine. Beggars can’t be choosers. I appreciate that you’re giving up a portion of your meal for me.” It wasn’t a hardship to share the wrapper as a placemat if either had to put their sandwich down.
“Dig in then.” He lifted the turkey and lettuce toward his mouth.
Rose watched him start to chew before she began eating. Ross closed his eyes, savoring lunch. Parched, she swallowed and took a quick sip of her soda.
“So now that you got me to spill my guts, who are you, Ross Cavanaugh? Obviously, you live locally.” She flippantly tossed her chin toward the vehicle. “It’s not fair that you know more things about me than I do about you—from where my house is to what I look like in a bathing suit.” She winked, gauging his reaction to see if he was watching too while she was poolside.
He ignored it.
“Not much to tell. Enlisted in the Navy at eighteen. Got stationed in the Far East. Pa
rt of my paycheck that I didn’t waste drinking Korean beer, I sent back home. I thought I was doing right by my parents, but they saved every penny and put it in the bank. Couldn’t stand being surrounded by all that water, and the fillies that were available weren’t the ones I wanted to ride… Those girls were sure pretty, though.” He joked and she swatted at him. “When my tour was up, I came back to find out there was enough seed money to start a business. So I did. Five, going on six years later, the company’s earned a solid enough reputation to get hired by the likes of Eric Kingsbrier, and on the weekends I ride or visit my Grandy so that she can go on about how proud she is of me. Shouldn’t like that as much as I do, but I reckon’ everyone has someone they rely on to do that.” Ross took a sip of cola and looked over at Rose who was now slack-jawed. “What? Thought I was too altruistic to need someone to fluff my feathers?”
“My God, you’re old!”
“Nah, you’re young,” he mused, slapping his thigh. “Seriously, that’s what you gleaned? That I’m older than you? I figured that’d be straightforward enough for an educated person like you to decipher.”
“You don’t look old.” She searched this face for wrinkles and crow’s feet and his dark temples for faint traces of silver.
He raised a brow. “You don’t look rich.”
Rose took a gander at her attire. She hadn’t bothered to dress today, tossing on the first thing she found in the lump of clothes, which was back to residing on the floor.
“Touché.” She combed her fingers through her long locks, hoping that she didn’t resemble a sheepdog riding down the road with its head out the window and its tongue on display.
“Why weren’t you surprised to see me in the hall the first day?”
“Already had a chance to recover from the shock. I was stupefied seeing a picture of the girl I danced with on Mr. Kingsbrier’s desk.”
Rose cocked her head.
“Sure you didn’t go to college?”
“No. Why?” Somehow Ross had already put away his half a sandwich.
“Don’t take this the wrong way; you have a big vocabulary for a construction worker.”
