She wanted to talk about it all right, but not to Ma. She would have to leave essential parts out or disappoint her. If only she had a friend - a girl her age - to talk to about it - and a lot of other things. In that way, she felt isolated. Maybe that was why Jim Bob took up with the Hudson boys. There were some things you just didn't talk about with your parents.

She shook her head. "No. I think I'll go write some on my book."

Ma watched Mary Jo trudge off to her room. This was the bad part of living out in the middle of nowhere. Mary Jo couldn't meet decent men her age. Monroe seemed like a nice young man, but Mary Jo had nothing to compare him to - and he was the only person around who was close to her age.

It was a good thing Pa was coming home tomorrow. They had to do something before Mary Jo went the way of Jim Bob. Mary Jo didn't know anything about men and she could get hurt badly by Monroe. They hadn't been out there long enough to get into much trouble. Did Monroe make a pass at her? Pa could talk to Monroe in a way no woman could.

Barrett sat in a lawn chair outside the trailer, staring into the darkness. He'd made Mary Jo feel cheap and unimportant. She was inexperienced and, at least to a degree, uninhibited. He had no experience dealing with someone like that. Most of the women he'd met were pretentious and manipulative. Mary Jo said exactly what she was thinking and expected him to respond the same way. He'd never considered himself affluent or cultured. He wasn't sanctimonious - was he? He hadn't been turned off by her temerarious approach. In fact, he had found it so inviting that he didn't know how to respond. It was pretty bad when a person didn't know how to be candid.

He admired and respected Mary Jo and her description of how she felt was precisely the way he felt. The only difference was that he didn't think he was falling in love with her. He knew he had already fallen. There were two reasons that he hesitated revealing his feelings for her. The first was that she was too sheltered to know what she wanted. The second was that he had deceived her. She didn't know who he was because he was pretending to be something he wasn't. Hopefully he wouldn't forget who he was before this job was over - and that wouldn't be soon enough for him. He was never going to take a job like this again. He should have listened to his instinct in the beginning.




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