AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How long have you been divorced?”
“Six years,” he said, a horrible thought blitzing through him. “You’re not married, are you? I suppose I should’ve asked that first.” His chest heated, and he took in a big breath. “No boyfriend?”
Something shivered across Rosalie’s face, and she turned away from him. “No,” she said. “No boyfriend. Not married.” She flashed him another smile, but it held more pain than her previous ones.
Lee cocked his head then. “I sense some stories.”
Rosalie laughed lightly. “I do have some of those.” She met his eye again, a boldness in her face he sure did like. Around the farm, Lee had to make quick decisions sometimes. Everyone looked to him to be the boss, and that was no easy weight to carry. “Lee, I’d love to go to dinner with you tonight. I just have to make a couple of phone calls first.”
“Sure,” he said easily, his breath practically whooshing out of his body. He held it back just in time, and covered his long, relieved sigh with a smile. “I know what it’s like to always have one more thing to do at work.”
Rosalie looked over to the rack of games that stretched as tall as he did. “Yes,” she said absently. “But these are personal calls. I need to talk to my mom and sister about coming this weekend.”
“So no dinner on Saturday.”
She smiled at him. “Probably not. Tonight, I need…I’ll have to check with my babysitter or arrange for a different one if she can’t stay.”
Lee didn’t miss a beat. “How many kids do you have?”
“Just one,” Rosalie said, reaching to tuck her hair. Of course, the curl didn’t stay. “A little girl. She’s four.”
Lee nodded, so much understanding pouring through him. “I can hang around town for a bit. It’s thirty minutes out to the farm, so it doesn’t make much sense to go back and then drive in again.” His eyebrows went up. “How long do you need?”
She raised her arm and looked at her watched wrist. “Let’s see…it’s almost four-thirty.” She looked up, a question in her stunningly beautiful eyes too. “A couple of hours? Six-thirty?”
“Sure,” Lee said, though he had no idea what he was going to do in Sweet Water Falls for two hours.
“You sure? You’ll just hang around here?”
“I can go see my boy,” Lee said, deciding on the spot. Martha didn’t care when Lee stopped by, as long as he let her know he was coming. “Call my daddy and see if he or Mama needs anything from town. I’ll be fine.”
Rosalie nodded and turned back to her desk. “All right. I’ll be ready at six-thirty.” She picked up her phone and faced him again. “Want to give me your number, and I’ll text you my address?” She met his gaze again. “You are going to come pick me up, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, rocking back onto his heels for a moment, then righting himself. He rattled off his number, sure he’d entered some dream world through an ordinary storefront door-portal. He hadn’t gotten a woman’s number in forever, but as his phone chimed, he now had Rosalie’s.
“That’s me,” she said, smiling still. Lee couldn’t quite believe that either. Questions screamed at him again, but he silenced them all. He had her number now, and they were going to dinner in just two hours. He could ask about her divorce—or if she’d been married to her daughter’s father at all—her age, everything later.
Much later, a voice told him. His sister’s voice. Both of them combined in his head, tormenting him with things like,Be nice tonight, Lee. Don’t ruin anything tonight, Lee. Don’t ask her hard questions tonight, Lee. It’s a first date, for crying out loud.
Through Clarissa’s and Cherry’s voices, he managed to hear Rosalie say, “Okay, well, I have to get going,” which was her obviously telling him to get his feet moving toward the exit too.
“Right,” he said, pulling his hands from his pockets. “Okay, I’ll see you soon.”
“Yep,” she said, and Lee turned smartly on his heel the way soldiers did and left Curious Kids. Outside, the air went down like soggy paper towels, but Lee didn’t care. He felt like jumping up and touching his heels together, then congratulating himself for finally,finallyasking Rosalie to be his date for the wedding.
Instead of doing any of that, he got behind the wheel of his truck, started it, and backed out of the space. He left the parking lot completely, thinking an ice cream cone sounded like a fine way to spend at least ten minutes of the next one hundred and twenty.
Perhaps he could take a nap too. He never had much time off from the farm, and as he waited in the drive-through line for one of the famous Rock House cement-thick shakes, he tapped out texts to Daddy and Mama and Martha.
He didn’t tell anyone that he’d successfully asked out Rosalie, and he collected his orange chocolate chip shake from the window and headed down the street to a shady parking spot alongside a park.
Only then did he take a bite of the sweet treat. Happiness soared through him with the fruity chocolate, and he grinned as he tapped the screen to call Cherry for the second time that day.
“You better be reporting the success of the tasks you were assigned,” his sister barked at him.
“Yep,” Lee said, mimicking Rosalie’s last word to him.
“Lee,” Cherry said, her voice mostly a gasp. “You did? You asked her to the wedding?”
