Between You and Me by SUSAN WIGGS

Author:SUSAN WIGGS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

11

As the days of Jonah’s recovery passed, Reese and Caleb fell into a pattern. Each morning, he took an early bus up to Grantham Farm, where he worked with the horses. Late in the day, he returned to visit with Jonah through supper and up until bedtime. If Reese’s schedule lined up with that, they would do something together. She told herself she spent so much time with him because he was so alone in the city, trying to balance his responsibilities to Jonah, to his work, and to the distant farm in Middle Grove. But kindness wasn’t the only thing that drove her.

She took unabashed delight in sharing her world with him. Everything startled him—wall-to-wall carpeting, a restaurant menu, the fact that people could bring food to the table and earn a tip for doing so. She introduced him to pizza one night and sushi another, roaring with delight at the expression on his face as he watched the sushi chefs at work with their knives and blowtorches.

“Back home, we’d probably use this for fish bait,” he said, eyeing a portion of unagi and a roll covered in bright orange roe.

“Try it,” she said. “You’ll never look at fish bait the same way.”

He fumbled with the chopsticks, but managed to get a roe-covered morsel into his mouth. His eyes widened and then teared up. He swallowed hard, grabbed for a glass of water, and downed the whole thing.

“Not your cup of tea, then,” she said, suppressing a grin.

He gamely stabbed at another bite, this one from a vegetarian roll. “I’ll keep trying to like it.”

She gazed at him across the table. “Is it hard then? To like being in this world?”

He set down his chopsticks and gazed back at her. He seemed to be looking at her lips. “Sometimes it’s altogether too easy.”

Her mind lingered on his comment as they went for an after-dinner stroll back to the apartment. “By too easy, do you mean convenient?”

“Could be it’s just an adjustment, getting used to the way things work. Like someone brings the food ready-made, then takes away the dishes. Or you need to do the bookkeeping and there’s a program to tally everything up.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“No, it’s just a thing, as my friend Reese would say.” As they passed a trendy gym that was crammed with exercise machines, he shook his head. “Now that is something you won’t see in an Amish community—devices to make a body work harder.”

“Lots of people slave all day at a desk job. When you’re doing taxes, you probably sit around too.”

“Not all day. All night. During the day, it’s the farm or the horses. No need for the gym.”

It shows, she thought, unable to keep herself from checking out his muscular arms. In the deepest part of herself, she knew it wasn’t just attraction she was feeling. Deep down, she sensed an oh-so-satisfying flash of defiance—this was not her norm. It was something wholly new and different and unexpected.

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