Uncommon Passion (20 page)

pushing open the screen door to the backyard, taking the deck steps at a lope.

“What’s up?” Ben asked, looking down at his folded arms.

“Do you know anyone at DPFS?”

He looked up into his brother’s face, into his own face, and read real anxiety there. “Not well. Why?”

“They’re stonewalling us again on the adoption papers. I thought I’d see if you knew anyone who could

tell us anything.”

“Besides the fact that they’re overworked, you’re gay, and this is Texas?” Ben said.

“Yeah. Besides that.”

Ben huffed and shook his head. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thanks,” Sam said. “He’s an amazing kid.”

Stranger things had happened than Sam and Chris being allowed to adopt Jonathan, but Ben didn’t

know how Sam could keep doing it, keep caring and loving and committing himself when he knew how

much pain came from it. “I’d better get some sleep.” The buzzing in his head was back, intermittent, like a

fly battering itself against a window, trying to get out.

“Me, too.” Sam closed the garage door after him. “Don’t be a stranger.”

He drove home thinking about how laughable it was to label Rachel Hill a victim. He understood the

obstacles she faced, a labyrinth of paperwork just to get the documents and identification everyone else in

the world took for granted, but he had no doubt she’d make it. Taking her to open-mike night was just

something else to teach her. A date. A simple date. He could do that. Do that right, he amended. With a little

effort, he could make this first time better than the last.

Chapter Thirteen

The setting sun painted the windshield of Ben’s truck in reds and oranges as it crested the top of the

hill, then disappeared in the valley sheltering Silent Circle’s farm stand. Only a dust plume and the engine

noise signaled his arrival before he made the left turn onto a dirt driveway sheltered by cottonwoods.

Rachel was waiting for him on the bunkhouse’s front porch swing. She rose as he got out of the truck,

carrying a wedge-shaped, paper-wrapped object in his left hand. Behind her laughter and talk rose from the

poker game going on in the apprentices’ bunkhouse. Jess and a friend from Austin were beating the A&M

boys pretty handily.

Rachel had taken time with her appearance, including a shopping trip into Galveston with Jess, who

was all too happy to help her shop after the scene in the parking lot. The dress, straight from the spring sale

rack at Walmart, was made of white eyelet with wide shoulder straps, and daringly fitted to her curves at

breast, waist, and thigh. As she walked down the stairs, wide pleats flipped around her knees. Her flat

brown sandals closed with pink buckles brighter than her lip gloss. She’d loosely French braided her hair

and tucked the end under so the plait ended between her shoulder blades; the relaxed style, gloss, and a hint

of mascara and eye shadow softened her features just a little.

Ben’s steps faltered as he took a long, slow look, and for a moment she thought she’d disappointed him

somehow with the lack of color and revealed skin. Then his gaze met hers, and she saw a hint of wonder

over a very masculine appreciation, as if his own response surprised him.

“You look really nice,” he said, his voice low enough to blend with the dust settling behind his truck.

“Thank you,” she said. “So do you.”

He looked like he always did, dressed in faded jeans and a western shirt. The shirt stretched over his

broad shoulders and was open at the throat and cuffs. The hint of tanned wrist made Rachel’s stomach do a

slow loop.

He seemed to remember he held something, then offered the package to Rachel. “These are for you.”

She smiled and blinked as she accepted the paper. A peek through the stapled paper showed roses. Pink

roses. “You brought me flowers?” she said rather stupidly as her smile grew.

Color stood high on his cheekbones. “Yeah.”

This simple gesture made up for yet another returned letter. “Thank you. Come inside while I put them

in water?”

He followed her up the bunkhouse steps and through the screen door. The poker game chatter stopped

when Ben ducked his head and stepped inside. He stopped by the door, his back to the wall, thumbs

hooked in his belt. Rachel introduced everyone as she hurried to the kitchen, opening cupboards in search

of a vase large enough to hold what turned out to be a dozen roses surrounded by baby’s breath and

greenery.

“Color me surprised,” Jess said in a low voice. She’d found a vase at the back of one of the lower

cupboards.

Rachel thought about this as she emptied the food packet into the cool water. “I’m not,” she said. He

knew the moves. He just didn’t
do
the moves.

“You should be,” Jess said, but added nothing else as she snipped the stems at an angle under running

water before handing them to Rachel to arrange them in the vase. She set the vase not on the dining table,

where it would be in the card players’ way, but on the battered oak coffee table that sat between the couch

and two rocking chairs in the living area. Ben opened the screen door for her. Impulsively, she plucked one

of the stems from the arrangement before she left.

“You want me to check the does at one?” Jess asked, a hint of mischief in her voice.

Rachel flushed and looked at Ben. He gave her an almost-imperceptible lift of his eyebrows that was no

answer or guidance at all. This wasn’t a Sunday sex lesson.

“Oh, no,” Rachel said. “We’re going to open-mike night at Artistary. I’ll be home by then.”

“G’night,” Ben said to the rest of the apprentices.

He gestured to the truck with his hand and opened her door. After she stepped inside, he closed the

door and rounded the hood. Once inside he rolled up the windows and turned on the air-conditioning.

“What’s with the flower?”

Rachel traced the stem of the single bloom she held on her lap, carefully skimming the thorns. “No

one’s ever given me flowers before,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave them all behind.”

“No one’s given you flowers.” The truck roared up the dirt road to the highway and turned south,

toward Galveston.

“We grew them in the garden, so I’d cut them and have them on tables around the house,” she said,

using her side mirror to watch dust lift in their wake. “But brought me flowers? No. I wasn’t in a room

alone with a male, boy or man, other than my father and my pastor, until I left. We weren’t supposed to

even think about the opposite sex, so we would keep ourselves mentally pure for our future husbands.”

He didn’t say much on the trip into town, but she was used to silence. “Do you know where you’re

going?” she asked when they reached the outskirts.

“The Strand.” When she nodded, he added, “I’ve been a cop for eight years. If I can’t tell you the best

way to any given address in the city, I don’t deserve the badge.”

She looked at him. He hadn’t shaved, so sunlight glinted off the dark stubble that covered his jaw and

his eyelashes. The right word was
brooding
, she realized. Light seemed to glance off him, unable to

penetrate the darkness shrouding him.

“Because speed matters?”

“Speed matters because if I get a call, bad shit is going down somewhere. No one calls first responders

for a backyard barbeque unless a guy pulls a deer-skinning knife on his ex-wife and threatens to gut her in

front of their kids.”

Her eyes widened a little. “Is that a real example?”

“Yesterday,” he said.

She made a little noise to indicate she’d heard him as she studied him. He was tense, strung tight, but

not as tight as she’d seen him. Something else lay under Ben’s terse response.

The Strand’s streetcar rumbled by as Ben parked in the lot behind Artistary and came around to her side

of the truck. When he opened the door he held out his hand, and Rachel put hers in it.

“No,” he said, then nodded at the flower.

Confused, she handed it over.

He pulled a pocket knife from his jeans, deftly trimmed first the length of the stem, then the thorns. He

held out his hand again. “Out you come.”

Clutching her purse in her other hand, she gripped his fingers and set one foot on the running board,

then the other on the blacktop. Heat simmered up her bare legs, but it wasn’t hot enough to stop shivers

from running down her spine when Ben set his hand on her shoulder and turned her. He gently worked the

rose into the loose braid, his fingers brushing her nape, ensuring the stem wouldn’t scratch her skin. When

he seemed finished she lifted her hand and checked to be sure the flower was secure.

It was. “Thank you,” she said as she turned to face him. “I can smell the scent.”

“I’m surprised you can smell anything over the asphalt cooking,” he said dismissively.

She went on tiptoe and kissed him, just a sweet brush of lip on lip. “Thank you,” she said again.

“You’re welcome,” he said more softly.

They stepped into golden evening sunlight gleaming on the original hardwood floors. Bookshelves

lined three walls and stood in neat rows in the back half of the store, while windows along the front wall

rose from knee height to the loft ceilings, tiled with historically accurate white tin. In one corner glass cases

held sandwiches, salads, fruit-and-yogurt cups, and an array of desserts ranging from flourless chocolate

tortes and custard pies to truffles. Bench seating lined the front half of the store, and square wood tables

and white-painted wrought-iron chairs clustered around the performance space created by speakers and a

microphone. Only a few were unoccupied. Beside the stage artists carrying notebooks, iPads, guitars, and a

wide range of other instruments checked in with the emcee.

“Grab a table,” Ben said behind her. “What do you like?”

“Anything but the egg salad or the roast beef,” Rachel said. She claimed the empty seat and put her

purse on a chair for Ben. She peered over her shoulder, watching Ben order at the counter from the woman

who owned Artistary. He carried over two sandwiches, three different kinds of salads, and cups of fresh

fruit, more food than she could possibly eat, even if she was responsible for just half.

He hitched his chair around and sat down. “So you don’t like egg salad and you don’t like roast beef.”

“I like both,” she said as she examined the sandwiches. Thai chicken. His plate held ham and Swiss.

“But I want to try something different each time I come.”

Without saying a word he swapped half his sandwich for half of hers. Rachel added a bit of each salad

to her plate, and studied the emcee, still lining up the acts.

“How does this work?” Ben asked as he twisted the top off a bottle of beer.

She finished her mouthful of salad before she answered. “Anyone can play or perform. You put your

name in with Kent,” she said, nodding at the emcee. “He introduces each act, and then you perform.”

“How do you know people are any good?”

“You don’t. This isn’t about being good enough to have a paying audience. It’s about having the

courage to get up on stage and perform.”

Ben looked around, then shifted his chair again. “Everything all right?” Rachel asked.

“Fine,” he said, then he shot her a wry look. “Next time you pick a table, go for one that’s against the

wall, or at least at the perimeter. I’ve got this thing about sitting in the middle of a crowd.”

And they were right in the middle of the crowd. She’d snatched up the seat because it was the best place

in the room to watch the performers. Craning her neck to scan the room, she asked, “Do you want to

move? I see a table at the back.”

“Yeah,” he said.

They settled into another table at the back of the space. The performances started not long after Rachel

finished her half of the Thai chicken sandwich. After that, she ate absently, focused on absorbing a series of

poets and musicians. An hour later the emcee gave the audience a break to pick up dessert or more wine.

“What do you think?” she asked, conscientiously trying to be a good date.

He collected their dishes on the tray and slid it under his seat, then leaned back and draped his arm over

the back of her chair. “It’s okay. Tell me why you like coming here.”

She considered this for a moment, working through answers in her head. “I like watching them,” she

said. “I can tell that some of them are scared, but being brave. Some of them are so confident I’m envious.

Emotion is so close to the surface here. They’ve chosen the song or the poem or whatever because it’s

meaningful, so there’s that. Then there’s all the emotion that goes into going up on stage and performing.

Fear, dread, anxiety, hope, pride, shame, humor, everything.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “I don’t get it.”

People were returning to their seats carrying desserts, wedges of the cafe’s specialty carrot cake, crème

brûlèe, or truffles. She used the increased noise and activity to cover the length of time it took to gather her