A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

years since I’d been in a pickup. I felt very down-home.
    ‘We ought to have a beer in our hands and country music on the radio,’ I told Cully as we bucked along the dirt road that led to the county landfill. It was good to get out of the hot kitchen.
    ‘It
is
kind of fun,’ Cully admitted cautiously. He was shifting gears with a certain macho air that tickled me. I had a feeling that if he’d been alone, he’d have been going ‘Brroom, brroom,’ pretending to be a cross between Mario Andretti and the Marlboro man.
    When we got to the dump and Cully had let down the tailgate, I heaved garbage bags with tremendous panache.
    ‘That’s the one with all the cat litter and the broken glass in it,’ he protested when I grabbed the gathered neck of the last bag.
    I gave him a scornful look. Since Cully was not only a man and a southerner but also a jogger, he tended to be smug about his superior strength. Pooey on you, Cully! I’m tall and I exercise every day – well, almost every day – and I’m not going to play clinging vine.
    My training in the control of my facial muscles came in handy. I managed to swing the bag off the tailgate and onto the pile of dumped garbage with the requisite gusto, but I was glad Cully had to shut the tailgate. That gave me a moment to hop back into the pickup and have a blissful second to relieve my anguish by some down-home cussing.
    I let out a few more unprintables when I discovered I was bleeding. Some of the broken glass had pierced the bag, and me. I believed the cut was small; but as hand injuries will, it bled profusely, and I couldn’t be sure. When Cully climbed in beside me, he may have had the hint of a smile on his face, but it vanished (fortunately for him) when he saw the blood.
    ‘Charles has a first-aid kit in the glove compartment, since he takes this pickup when he hunts.’ He reached across me, his arm touching my knee, and pulled out the kit.
    I was angry and embarrassed. ‘It’s just a little cut,’ I said through tight teeth.
    Cully was already pulling a gauze pad from the kit. He pulled my arm over as if it weren’t attached to a body. Dabbing carefully, he blotted the blood with the gauze. His eyes flashed sideways once, but his look bounced off mine and back to the cut.
    It came to me that Cully was a wound healer. That was a beautiful trait in a psychologist, or a brother, or a bosom friend; but fairly dismaying in an object of lust. If I could manage to survive a pretty bad car accident, I conjectured, I might even rate a kiss.
    ‘What did you start to say to me that day that Alicia was over at the house?’ I asked, just to remind him that I was indeed at the end of my arm.
    ‘Oh.’ He was absurdly intent on the little cut. He got out a bandage and ripped off those irritating strips of paper that guard the adhesive. ‘I just wanted to tell you to be sure to lock up at night, and just sort of watch out in general for Mimi.’
    I frowned. ‘Maybe I’m being dense, but why?’
    ‘Well, she’s been through a lot lately; Grandmother and Richard and all.’
    Mimi was about as frail as an innerspring. Though Cully might not see her that way; after all, he was her dearly beloved and only brother. There’s more here than meets the eye, I told myself wisely, and twirled an imaginary mustache until Cully looked up and caught me.
    ‘What on earth are you doing?’
    ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ I parried.
    He straightened and looked thoughtful. I wondered if I could have my arm back, since it was obvious this was not going to be one of those electric movie moments when the hero suddenly gives way to passion after touching the girl, usually when she’s dismounting. I didn’t have a horse to slide off of; the best I could do was cut my hand.
    ‘No,’ Cully decided out loud. He bent back over my cut, meticulously applied the bandage, and handed my arm back to me.
    ‘No, what?’ I asked nastily. My muscles were aching from the