The Loves of Ruby Dee Read Online Free PDF Page B

said. Her right eyebrow rose, and she gave him a look, a look that jangled him, and he didn’t like that. “So you want someone older, more experienced...Maybe someone with a wart on her nose would qualify.”
    So then Will felt foolish, and highly irritated. Straightening, he set his glass on the counter and gave her a look of his own.
    “Ma’am, I just don’t think this is a job for a young and pretty woman such as yourself. You’ll be the only woman in this household. As you saw on the drive out, there’s no one livin’ right next door. The closest female neighbor is three miles down this road, and she’s eleven years old. You’d have this house to take care of, as well as seeing to my father, and he’s a downright crotchety old man. Many days you’ll be stuck here with him from dawn to dusk, or even for several days at a time, when I have business away. If you run out of milk, you have a ten-mile drive one way to get some. For a full grocery store, you’ll have to drive about forty miles, and there certainly aren’t any big shopping malls like you have down in Oklahoma City.
    “If you’re anticipatin’ meeting some of those cowboys like you see in the movies, you’re gonna be disappointed. This isn’t one of those big Texas spreads, and the only time I have a lot of help around here is for a few days in the spring and fall. From now until then I have one full-time hand, and he’s nearly twice your age and married.”
    And then he added, “There is my brother, of course, and you might as well know he likes the ladies, which is another reason I think it just wouldn’t work out to take you on.”
    There it was. He never had been much of a diplomat. He had said what he had to say, and as nicely as he could, and he searched her face, wondering if he had hurt her feelings.
    Then he realized she didn’t look hurt at all. She looked like she was fixing to jerk him up and set him straight.
    In that slow way she had of moving, she propped a hand on her hip, took a stance that showed what she had to give, and, with her eyes bright as two drops of hot crude oil on a plate, she said slowly and precisely, “Mr. Starr, if it was cowboys I wanted, I could’ve had my pick down in Oklahoma City.”
    With her eyes holding his, Ruby Dee let Will Starr take that in.
    “Yes, ma’am, I imagine that’s so.”
    “Oh, yes, sir, that is so. I feel about men pretty much the same way I do about television—something I can live without. It’s okay for a bit of entertainment, but mostly I prefer a radio—heard but not seen.”
    He didn’t say anything to that, just kept looking at her. He was flushed, and she sensed he was embarrassed, as well he should be.
    “Well,” Ruby Dee said, and let that sit for a few seconds, while she gathered steam. “Bein’ isolated and stuck with a grouchy old man—you explained that when we spoke on the phone, Mr. Starr. I understood fully what I would be dealin’ with. I came out here as a professional. Now, perhaps I don’t appear to be what you were expectin’, but I can tell you a few facts that aren’t in that résumé.”
    She leaned forward, holding his eyes with hers. “If it’s experience you’re wantin’, I have it. I have been an LPN for six years, but I’ve been a healer for all of my life, startin’ with holdin’ my daddy’s head and keepin’ him from drownin’ in his own vomit when I was just three years old. At the age of five I was takin’ care of my crazy great-grandma—just her and me livin’ together. I did such a good job of it that for four years no one knew my great-grandma had gone to live back in 1936 most of the time. We didn’t get caught, until one day a developer came, wantin’ to buy her land, and insisted on talking to her. For some reason she thought he was her dead husband, and before I realized what she was about, she’d shot him. She missed anything important, and got him in the leg.
    “They took her away to the nursing home, and I