Marry A Man Who Will Dance

She put her arms around him and kissed his cheek really fast. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I came to this pond hating life here, hating—I…I…” He stopped himself before he blurted something really stupid. On a different track, he said, “I don’t want you scared of me. And…and…. Hey, there’s a key to the gate in my left pocket. Get it. Take your old horse.”

“Where is she?”

“Over there.” He pointed. “I don’t want her. I never did. I was just teasing you because I wanted to meet your sexy friend.”

“Jet?” Her voice quavered.

“You’re okay…for a skinny kid.”

“But you wish I was Jet?”

“I’ll decide later…when you’re older. You might be pretty. Not that it would matter. You’re a Keller, so you’ll have to hate me.”

“So, you think I…I might be pretty someday?”

He stared at her face as if it were very difficult to imagine her pretty. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”

The fierce hope that shone in her eyes cut him somehow. He closed his eyes to shut her out.

To his surprise he felt her lips, soft and warm and yet fervent somehow hesitantly graze his.

He kept his eyes closed long after the kiss was over, savoring the taste of her innocence. All this from a girl who’d been scared to dance.

He had to forget her.

Somehow he knew he never would.

“Did that boy put his hands in your pants and feel you up?”

“Daddy!” Ritz squealed, her fingers closing around the key Roque had given her. “How could you think that?”

Irish was sitting behind her in the back seat.

Mortified, she covered her eyes. It was an old habit, something she’d done as a child when she’d felt shy and needed to shut out someone or something that was suddenly too much.

“I know his type,” her father said.

“Easy, Art,” Irish mumbled behind her.

Irish had come along to check her knee. He said it was a ruptured ACL, and he’d stabilized it with an old knee brace he’d brought along.

“But you don’t know him,” Ritz said.

Her father grunted.

“Have you ever spoken to him—even once?”

“He wants to kill his own brother. Last year they caught him half-naked in the back seat of Natasha’s car with his hands down her pants.”

“Jet said Natasha had her hands in his—”

“What would you—a fourteen-year-old girl—know about trash like that?”

Irish kicked the back of the seat and then said, “Sorry.”

Art slammed the fist holding his cigarette against the dash and shot sparks everywhere. Ritz had to brush at her clothing frantically.

“You planning to be his next slut, girl?”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Irish admonished.

“Well, are you?” Art thundered. “Did you know he’s been seen riding around with Chainsaw Hernandez, that no-good ex-con?”

You don’t know everything, Daddy!

The rebellious thought crystallized into one of those life-changing epiphanies. Her father was used to giving commands, used to being the last authority on every subject.

“Talk to me.” When she didn’t, her father fumed. “What’s gotten into you?”

Roque Moya, that’s what!

He’d made her braver somehow, and even though she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in before—she wasn’t as scared.

The truck hurled itself down the rutted ranch road like a stampeding bull. For once Ritz was glad her daddy was smoking. The acrid fumes gave her an excuse to cough and sputter and wave her hands. Her eyes teared. Her throat burned.

“You’re just fourteen. I guess that makes you prime for the pickin’ for a low-down Mexican cur like Moya.”

Ritz didn’t dare defend him out loud again, so she coughed and waved her hands.

Her father, who was usually so careful never to smoke around her, took another long drag. Irish opened his window.

Smoke spewed out of her father’s flaring nostrils and spiraled up from the cigarette’s tip. Another coughing spasm had Ritz leaning forward and clenching the dash. Through tears she made out the blur of red ambulance lights.

“Roque…”

“You’re to stay away from that boy—you hear me, girl?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Her voice sounded so weird and small and unreal.

“You should see yourself! Staring after those lights like a boy-crazy fool! He’s no damned good, I tell you! And if you mess around with him, he’ll bring you down to his level! You’re not to think about him—ever.”

Her father yanked the steering wheel to the left. When the truck rumbled over a cattle guard, she whirled around to see if the lights were still there, but Irish’s broad frame blocked her view. By the time she moved, the black night had swallowed the lights whole.

Ritz placed a hand over her heart. “What if he dies?”

Her daddy’s cigarette flamed brighter than an infected boil. “You should be worrying about your mother. She’s frantic about you. Ever since you threw the kitchen rugs on the porch without even shaking them and ran off, she’s been driving the roads and calling everybody.”

“Did Jet put you up to this?” Irish asked softly.

“No!”

Art squashed out his cigarette. Then he rolled down his window. He sighed heavily and pulled another cigarette out of his pocket.

“Boss—”

“Don’t nag, Irish!” But Art didn’t light it. They were nearly home, and Mother didn’t like him smoking because of his high blood pressure.

Ritz glanced his way. In the flying darkness, all she could make out was his white hair and his rigid black shape. She hoped his neck wasn’t that awful bright red—his fighting color, as Mother and Irish called it.

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