Page 57 of Devoured

The dance happened just before sunset.

She saw him coming this time, across the whole yard, not hurrying, not stopping for the three people who tried to catch him. She watched Pearl actually reach for his sleeve and miss.

"No," Lara said, when he was close enough to hear it.

"I haven't said anything."

"You've got a look. I'm declining the look."

"Dance with me."

"I'm working. Somebody has to do the tea, and apparently it's the woman whose actual job is bookkeeping."

"Helen!" Dean called, not loud, not looking away from Lara. "Lara's done with the tea."

"Lara's done with the tea!" Helen sang back from the porch, without missing a beat, like she'd been waiting all afternoon to say it.

"That's cheating," Lara said.

"That's delegating." He took the dish towel out of her hands and hung it over the nearest chair and held his hand out, palm up, in front of God and the county and half his family. "Dance with me, Lara."

"You know the whole town is standing right here."

"Counting on it. Quit stalling."

So she did.

He pulled her in close. Not careful anymore. Not pretending there was a foot of daylight between them the way he had at the Cattlemen's Dance. One big hand spread flat and warm against the small of her back, and his palm moved there in a slow absent circle like he didn't know he was doing it. The other folded around hers against his chest, where she could feel his heart going steadier than her own. She put her free hand on his shoulder, and then slid it up to the back of his neck because she wanted to, and his breath changed.

"People are going to talk," she said into his collar.

"People have been talking since before the dance." His chin moved against the top of her head. "Pearl's already booked the church, remember."

"First Methodist. She wants the fall light."

She felt him huff a laugh, low in his chest. "Course she does."

He turned them slow under the live oaks, and his fingers found a curl that had come loose from her twist and wound it around one of them, played with it, tucked it back behind her ear with his knuckle grazing her jaw on the way down. She about forgot her own name.

"Everybody's watching, Dean."

"I know."

"You don't care."

"No." Simple as that. No hesitation, no apology. And something in her gave way at the plain certainty of him, because this was the same man who'd sat at her kitchen table and warned her about walls and endings and the things he'd never be able to give her, and here he was holding her in the middle of his dead parents' barbecue with his mouth in her hair, in front of every soul in the county, like he wanted each one of them to know exactly where she stood with him.

The song ended. He didn't let her go. His forehead came down to hers for a second, both of them just standing there in the middle of the other dancers, and then he kissed her — soft, brief, public, the first one he'd ever given her where anyone could see — and her heart just about stopped.

"There are still children present," she whispered, not steady.

"Counting the minutes anyway." And he squeezed her hand and let it go and went back to being the host, smiling a little to himself, and left her standing in the grass feeling visibly ruined.

The porch happened by accident.

She came around the side of the house with a tray and stopped cold, because Clay was standing beside John's chair. Hat in hand. Standing, not sitting. Even Lara knew what that meant. Standing meant he wasn't staying.

The conversation was heartbreakingly ordinary. Cattle. Rain. The chowder Stephanie had sent in her own dish that she'd want back. Two old men talking carefully around a wound too big to touch.