Free A Plain Love Song by Kelly Irvin Page B

go.”
    “You can’t keep me from—”
    “Just promise me you’ll let me play the whole song for you when I finish it.”
    “We’ll see—”
    “You’re my first audience for this song. Besides Cap, of course, and I think he’s tone-deaf. He sleeps through most of it. Don’t you want to hear how it turns out?” He gave her that hangdog expression her brother gave her when he wanted the last piece of fried chicken—the one she’d already put on her plate. She always gave in. “Come on, Adah.”
    “You called me by my name.”
    “I know your name.” He leaned against the opposite wall and rubbed at the spot above the V of his T-shirt where the stitches were. “Come on, I’ll share my song with you and you can share yours with me.”
    “I don’t have any songs.”
    “Sure you do. That’s why you asked me if the words came first or the melody.”
    She struggled with how much to tell him. “So?”
    “So, I’m gonna be a country singer someday, a star. With your voice, you could be too. We could be a duet like Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn.”
    “You’re daft.” Her mind saw it, imagined it, even as she dismissed the possibility as an impossibility. “I’m the Amish girl who cleans your house. You don’t know anything about me. And your parents will expect you to finish college and come work here on the farm. People usually end up doing what’s expected of them.”
    Leastways that had been her experience. As much as the boys and girls she knew ran around when they came to their age of rumspringa, they almost always settled down and did the right thing. They wanted the Plain life. She wanted the Plain life.
    Didn’t she?
    “Not always. They don’t always.” The showboat cowboy from the corral had disappeared. His blue eyes were dark, his expression pensive. “I’m not spending the rest of my life figuring out how many bushels of wheat we’re getting to an acre and how much fertilizer is needed to increase the yield. You want to spend the rest of your life cleaning other people’s houses?”
    “I’ll marry and clean my own house.”
    If she didn’t mess it up.
    “Stick with me and someone else will clean your house for you.” He straightened and took a step toward her, leaving the crutch leaning against the wall. He balanced himself within reach. “You have a huge, beautiful voice. That’s a gift. Not everyone gets that gift. You said yourself you like to write songs. We could write together. We could sing together.”
    She couldn’t drag her gaze from his face. The cadence of his voice mesmerized her. He meant what he said. He was offering her the very thing she’d always wanted. Her dream stood before her in tattered blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and one cowboy boot. “Your song is nice.” Her voice sounded breathless in her own ears. “You have a nice voice too.”
    “So let me play it for you when I finish it? And then we’ll see what happens after that. Just don’t run away from the idea.”
    “I don’t know if I can—”
    “What’s going on here?” Mrs. Hart strode through the hallway, shedding a pair of riding gloves as she stalked toward them in brown leather boots that reached her knees. She wore her jeans tucked into the boots and a crisp white blouse with a button-down collar. Not one red hair on her head moved. “You’ll not get the house spotless standing there chatting with this ne’er-do-well.”
    Mrs. Hart talked like that, like she’d learned English from an old novel. Adah forced a smile. “I’m finished. I was just letting your son know that I’m leaving.”
    Mrs. Hart shook one long, slim finger with a nail painted a deep red at Adah. “Not just yet. The tiles in the guest bathroom look a little scummy. Take another pass at them, will you? And then stop by the kitchen and I’ll pay you.”
    The tiles in the guest bathroom were perfectly clean. The bathroom hadn’t looked as if it had been used since the last time Adah scoured it. “Yes,