Page 25 of Justice for Daesha

“I want to. If you love these animals, I need to get to know them.” He set her down. “Can you manage from here?”

“My crutches are behind the bedroom door. Can you get them for me?”

“Sure!” Amos took off at a run. By the time he got back, she’d made it to the end of the counter. “Here ya go.”

“I’ll be fine from here. I’m getting in the shower. If you get my stuff picked up before I get out, just go ahead and use the shower in the hallway bathroom.”

“Will do.” He headed outside, picked up all her things, and carried them into the house along with his own. As soon as he heard the shower start, he opened the bedroom door and laid everything on her bed, then headed back outside.

Before she finished her shower, the horse was in her stall, her water bucket had been filled, and Amos had tossed a flake of hay in her hay net. He tossed another flake out onto the ground in front of the barn, and the donkey and goat helped themselves. He hadn’t even reached the back steps before he heard a splash and turned to see two ducks in the pond, flapping and quacking, and he shook his head and smiled. That was quite the little handicapped menagerie she had, but seeing those animals helped him understand her better. She wasn’t just kind and giving to people. She wanted to help any way her help was needed.

He could hear her blow dryer going when he got out of the shower, and he was glad he’d brought a tee and some lounging pants. His beer was warm, so he poured it down the sink and got another one, then padded barefoot back toward the bedroom. The bathroom door was open, and she was leaning against the counter, bent over at the waist, drying that headful of hair. She returned his smile with an upside-down one as he walked in and dropped across her bed. “I see you got my stuff.”

He lifted his bottle in a toasting fashion and smiled. “Yep. Horse is in her stall.” She looked like she was about to say something, but he headed her off before she could. “She’s been fed and watered, and I gave the donkey and the goat some hay too.” He was trying hard to remember all their names. “Felix and…”

“Felix is the donkey. Azalea is the goat. And the horse is Ivory.” That made sense?she was white. At least she had been before she got herself mud-coated in the pond.

He grinned. “I saw some ducks too.”

“Yeah, they don’t have names. They’re just, ‘Hey, duck.’ That’s all I’ve ever called them. They showed up one day. No idea where they came from.”

“I guess they looked at the rest of your bunch out there and figured they were welcome,” Amos said and took another draw off the bottle.

“Yep. They are. I’d never turn them away.” She’d finished drying her hair and was trying to brush through it. “Gah, this is a mess.”

Amos patted the bed. “Come here and bring your brush.” When she made her way out on her crutches, she handed him her brush and sat down on the edge of the bed. Amos scooted in behind her, putting a leg on either side of her as she sat there. That was something he’d never done before, brushed a woman’s hair, and there was something rhythmically soothing about it. If it was having that effect on him, he could only imagine how it made her feel. “This is nice,” he whispered, hoping to soothe her. She’d been very upset when she’d seen the horse in the pond, and she still looked a little tense.

“It is. Feels really good.”

He kept brushing, but he wanted to lure her into a conversation. “So I bet you had a lot of boyfriends in high school.”

The snort she let out startled him. “Me? No.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” he scolded.

“It’s true. I had one, and he was a dick. JeremyBlanchard. Told all his football player buddies he scored with me on our first date. Liar. Pretty soon, everybody in school thought I was a slut. I was tall and gangly and had acne, and I wore braces until graduation. High school was awful. College was better.”

“Yeah? Boyfriends in college?”

“A couple. There was one guy I was really into, but he didn’t take his studies seriously and he lost his scholarship. He was from Ohio, so he had to move back. We talked and wrote a bit, but we finally just drifted apart. What about you?”

“I’m embarrassed to say it, but I was a ‘flavor of the week’ man. Whoever walked by. I did have one girlfriend for a little while, but she wound up throwing me over for a guy who was pre-med. Said he’d be a better catch.”

Daesha laughed. “Did she marry him?”

“Nope. Last I heard of her, she was married to a mechanic and had four kids. Four. Not much of a step up, I’m afraid.”

“I’d say not! What about after college?”

“I probably would’ve stayed a ‘flavor of the week’ man, but I’ve been too busy. I love my job, but it takes up a lot of my time, and with nobody steady to come home to, there hasn’t been a reason to slow it down.”

She was silent for a full minute, and Amos wondered if she was trying to work out what she wanted to say. “So would you slow it down? I mean, if you had somebody?”

Amos stopped brushing and rested his hands on the tops of her shoulders. “Well, first of all, yes. I most definitely would. And second, I hope I’ve found somebody who would be worth it. I mean, I know she’d be worth it. I just hope she feels about me the same way I feel about her.”

Without missing a beat, she asked, “Are you the kind of guy who runs when a woman tells you how she feels about you?”

Amos let out a deep sigh. The moment of truth?it was there. “Well, I used to be, but I’m not anymore. I’ve watched everybody around me find someone, and I’ve been left in the dust. Well, except for Matt. He and Tiki… I don’t think they’re ever going to get married. On again and off again has become a way of life for them, according to Jack.”

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