“Sweats.” Of all the things he’d pictured his young companion in at night, that was the last thing.

She looked down at his big hand in the light from the living room. It burned out onto the porch like yellow sun in the darkness, making shadows of the chairs behind them on the dusty boards of the porch. He had good hands, big and strong-looking, with square nails that were immaculate. “I guess the women you know like frilly stuff.”

They did, but he wasn’t walking into that land mine. He turned her hand in his. “Do you date?”

Her heart jumped. “Not since the almost-broken-nose thing.”

He laughed softly. “Sorry. I forgot about that.”

“There aren’t a lot of eligible boys in my school who live in the dark ages like I do,” she explained. “At least two of the ones who go to my church are wild as bucks and go to strip parties with drugs.” She grimaced. “I don’t fit in. Anywhere. My parents raised me with certain expectations of what life was all about.” She turned to look at him. “Is it wrong, to have a belief system? Is it wrong to think morality is worth something?”

“Those are questions you should be asking Carlie’s dad,” he pointed out.

“Do you believe in...in a higher power?”

His fingers contracted around hers. “I used to.”

“But not anymore?”

His drawn breath was audible. “I don’t know what I believe anymore, ma belle,” he said softly. “I live in a world you wouldn’t understand, I go to places where you couldn’t survive.”

“What kind of work do you do?” she asked.

He laughed without humor. “That’s a discussion we may have in a few years.”

“Oh, I see.” She nodded. “You’re a cannibal.”

He stilled. “I’m...a what?”

“Your work embarrasses you,” she continued, unabashed, “which means you don’t work in a bank or drive trucks. If I had a job that embarrassed me, it would be involved with cannibalism.”

He burst out laughing. “Pest,” he muttered.

She grinned.

His big thumb rubbed her soft fingers. “I haven’t laughed so much in years, as I do with you.”

She chuckled. “I might go on the stage. If I can make a hardcase like you laugh, I should be able to do it for a living.”

“And here I thought you wanted to be a reporter.”

“I do,” she said. She smiled. “More than anything. I can’t believe I’m actually going to work for a newspaper starting Monday,” she said. “Minette is getting me my own cell phone and she’s going to teach me to use a camera...it’s like a dream come true. I only asked her for a reference for college. And she offered me a job.” She shook her head. “It’s like a dream.”

“I gather you’ll be riding with Carlie.”