Rachel Lee - Defending the Eyewitness

When he watched her talk, he wondered how her lips would taste. When she laughed, something inside him sparked with pleasure. When she grew pensive, he had the worst urge to reach out.

She couldn’t have been more off-limits if she’d been surrounded by barbed wire, but he kept wanting to jump that fence and bed her. He hoped she didn’t suspect.

How could she? he reassured himself. He’d been staying out of her way, keeping their meetings as light as he could manage. If he’d been doing it right, he’d become the nearly invisible roomer in the background.

But he knew he wasn’t entirely invisible. A time or two he’d seen an answering spark in her. A flicker of interest that she quickly buried. So he wondered just what it would take to get past that woman’s fence. As near as he could tell, no one ever had. She’d come back to this town as a child, and nothing she said led him to believe she had ever left it again.

That struck him as sad. There was a whole world out there, good and bad, but mostly good, and she’d nailed herself to this tiny town because she was afraid of the dragons outside the gates.

He wished for her sake that they’d been able to catch the perp who had killed her mother. Maybe then, not being able to remember wouldn’t be so crippling.

And what the hell did it matter, anyway, he asked himself irritably. He needed to find his own forgotten self, and he’d be moving on once he settled his own mental and emotional tab. Right now he was useless to everyone, himself included.

So leave Rapunzel safely in her tower, and get his head out of his groin.

Rapunzel? Really? He was losing it.

The thought made him laugh out loud, which drew a few looks his way as he strode down the street. He didn’t care. A few of the people even smiled.

As long as he didn’t run around town giggling like a lunatic, it would probably be okay.

Autumn just tinged the air and he noticed how much shorter the days had grown in the week he’d been here. Oh, they were still long, but the change was more noticeable here than down south. Maybe he was dealing with more than culture shock. Maybe he was dealing with climate shock, too. Desert nights at high altitude could get surprisingly cold, but he was used to hot days. No such thing up here, at least not now. People walked around looking perfectly comfortable in shirtsleeves when he was wishing for sweaters and a jacket.

Well, he’d been raised in places that rarely saw snow or ice. San Antonio had a kind of winter, but he suspected that if he stayed here for long, he might be in for some new experiences. After all, when he’d shopped for clothes, he’d seen some jackets that he had hitherto seen only in movies. He hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to buy one yet, but inside the denim jacket he had chosen, he realized he had some adapting to do. What would have worked most places he’d lived was already failing him.

Amused by his own thoughts, he started whistling as he walked, cheered by the prospect of a totally different experience. Maybe that would help jar him out of the past.

He unlocked the front door of Corey’s house and stepped into aromas that immediately snapped him back in time. He froze, working on centering himself, even as the scents called to mind another time and place.

“Austin?”

He closed his eyes, gathering himself.

“Austin?”

The voice came closer. He opened his eyes and drank in Corey, in all her Nordic beauty. She definitely didn’t remind him of the past. Today she was wearing her golden mane in braids that wreathed her head. With a wrench that felt almost physical, he felt himself land in the present once again.

“Hi,” he said.

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” She was smiling with delight.

“I can smell it.”

“Tortillas,” she said, looking as pleased as if she were giving him a huge gift. “My friend made them. Some with white flour and some with cornmeal because I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer. Come tell me if I’m cooking them right.”

“Sure.” He followed her, trying to shake off a sudden woodenness in his legs. Ridiculous reaction. Stupid reaction. Just some tortillas, for crying out loud.

Apparently she had taken him at his word about stacks, because there were large ones sitting on two plates. Another plate held the ones she had cooked.

“I don’t have a grill,” she chattered. “So I’m making do with a skillet. Will that work? And you said they were cooked fast, so I assume the fire was hot?”

“Just enough to heat them and maybe give them a touch of brown.”

“Try one and let me know what you think.”

He wondered if he would even be able to swallow. What had possessed her to do such a thing for him? What had possessed her friend? They didn’t know him, and Corey had this thing about men, so what the hell? Suspicions began to arise in him. Strings were always attached.

But her face looked so open and pleased. Maybe she was just trying to be nice, although he couldn’t imagine why.

Just as her smile began to shrink, he made himself go to the table and pick up one of the tortillas. White flour. He’d loved them as a kid, but in Mexico he’d more often eaten corn. He bit into it, aware that she was watching, and in an instant was slammed back into his youth in San Antonio.

“Damn, this is good,” he said truthfully. He looked at her again, and saw her smile had returned full force. She spoke. “Melinda says she’ll be happy to make them whenever you want. And despite your doubts, there is a market here. She sold a bunch of them this morning. So, did I cook it right?”

“Perfectly.” He forgot his manners and just shoved the rest of his tortilla into his mouth.

“Do you have a favorite thing to put on it? I didn’t know about that for sure.”

“I’ll put almost anything on a tortilla.” He pulled out the chair and sat, reaching for one made of corn. Another flash of the past as the flavor hit his mouth. “Wow. Just wow.”

“Should I make more?”

“Lady, you can keep on cooking. But you might want to eat, yourself.”

She laughed. “I’ll get to it. They’re really great this fresh, but I keep wanting to add something. Beans? Meat? Peppers? I mean, I guess people around here cook with tortillas, but I’ve never had any Mexican food. We don’t have a restaurant here that serves any.”

He gobbled down the corn tortilla, then rose and headed for the pantry. “I went shopping, remember?”

“How could I have failed to notice? My pantry is bursting.”

“Well, here we go.” He pulled out a can of green chilies, remarking that he wished they were fresh, a can of pinto beans and some seasonings. “Allow me to introduce you to refried beans. The best kind.”

It apparently surprised her, but she let him take over her kitchen. Sitting at the table with coffee, she asked him questions about everything he was doing, and he was glad enough to share. “Just understand, I’m not a master chef. This came from the need to survive.”

He liked the sound of her laughter, even as concerns niggled at the back of his mind. What had made her decide to be so friendly? “We’re skipping a step here, by the way. The canned beans are already cooked, so basically I’m going to be doing only the last half of the job.”

He pulled a half onion out of her fridge where it sat wrapped in plastic, then found the bacon. “Better yet. Fatback would be the choice in Mexico, but bacon...yum.”

“Do you put the bacon in the beans?”

“Just the fat.”

After he’d cooked a couple of slices of bacon, he set them aside on a paper towel, then tipped the frying pan. “About right. You don’t need a whole lot of fat, just the flavor.”

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