The Loves of Ruby Dee Read Online Free PDF

mineral-rights buyer from Amarillo.
    After that, when Lonnie would cry at night, Will would take him into his bed. “Come on, Lon. You don’t need her...you got me, now, don’t ya? You’ll always have me.”
    Lonnie had made Will swear never to go away, and Will never had.
    When the leaving did happen, it was always Lonnie doing it. When he just couldn’t stand the old man’s meanness or the coldness of the house, he would take off. Sometimes for a week, sometimes for several months. But he always came back.
    Without fail, when Lonnie would turn and come up the drive, his heart would lift. For some really stupid reason, he would have convinced himself that the old man would be glad to see him and that being home would ease the ache inside him. But each time, within five minutes he would discover that the old man was as obnoxious as ever and the house cold and empty as ever.
    Still, Will was always there.
    That’s what was eating at Lonnie now. He thought it true what he had said to Will, that his brother was growing too much like the old man. Will was withdrawing, going away, just like their mama, and even the old man.
    Lonnie didn’t want that to happen to Will. He didn’t want that to happen to himself. He didn’t want to lose Will.
    But he couldn’t ever have explained that to anyone. Just thinking it all embarrassed him.
     

Chapter 4
     
    When Ruby Dee came back into the kitchen, Will Starr handed her the glass of Dr. Pepper. The glass was dripping sweat. He quickly apologized, grabbed a towel and wiped it for her. His hands were dark and rough—the strong, banged-up hands of a man who worked hard for a living and then came inside and scrubbed raw to get clean, making his hands drier and rougher still.
    He braced himself against the counter, looked at her and said, “Look, Miss D’Angelo, there’s some things we have to get straight.”
    She piped up, saying, “I’m not what you expected, am I, Mr. Starr?”
    That gave him a start, causing his blue eyes to widen for an instant. And then he breathed deeply. “No, ma’am, you’re not quite what I expected.” His eyes rested on hers; then they skittered down her body. Quickly, before he realized what he was doing, and shyly, too. Ruby Dee felt something touch her as he did that, something of surprise and pleasure.
    He wiped his hand on the taut thigh of his jeans. She noticed his eyes had taken on more of a blue color from his shirt. He was a quietly handsome man, probably too quiet, too plain to turn a woman’s head, until a woman caught sight of his eyes. His eyes would arrest any woman, or man.
    They were striking, seeming to burn out of his deeply tanned, craggy face like two beams of light. And his was a strong face. The face of a man, not a boy.
    His hair and mustache were a rich brown. His mustache leaned toward red, but he had no noticeable gray in either his mustache or in his hair. That was a bit uncommon for a man who had to be over thirty-five. She gauged his age by the fine lines around his eyes and by the way he filled out his clothes with the thick muscles a man got only when he came into his prime. And Lordy, the man had muscles—his shoulders were wide and thick.
    Will Starr wasn’t as handsome as his brother, she thought, but she liked the look of him better. She had a thing about older men. Miss Edna said it was because she had never had a father.
    She was looking at his wide shoulders when he said, “Look, I owe you an apology. I didn’t fully read your résumé. Had I read it as carefully as I should have and seen that you were only thirty, I could have saved both of us a lot of time and you a lot of trouble. But I did specify when we spoke on the phone that the job was on speculation. Either one of us was free to change our mind after we met.”
    Will remembered that he had stressed that. He didn’t think he needed to feel bad that she had up and taken it upon herself to bring everything she owned with her.
    “Oh,” she