the truck around and take her straight back to the clinic. If she needed to go to the hospital, he would go with her. She didn’t have anyone who could take care of her.
Her chin came up in that stubborn expression he’d come to know so well. “Zep, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine. I never meant for you to actually come to my place. I needed to let Armie and Lila off the hook, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t.”
She frowned his way. “They take their responsibilities seriously, and they view me as a responsibility. I needed to make them feel good about letting me leave the clinic so they could go and do their family stuff.”
“I don’t think they see you as a responsibility. I think they see you as a friend.” He was always surprised by her pessimism. She had a whole lot of walls for him to climb, and they were high.
She turned in her seat and stared out the front windshield as he put the truck in drive and started out of the parking lot. “I like them a lot. I think I might fit in with them because they both spent so much time in cities.”
Armie had been a detective in New Orleans for years, and Lila had lived in Dallas until she’d decided to make her home close to her sister Lisa. But it pointed out one of the walls between them. “You don’t like it much here, do you?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t understand it. It was a culture shock.”
“You can’t get over it if you never go out.” Her habit of never going to town functions unless she was working had thwarted many a plan to get her to see him as more than a way to pad her monthly arrests.
“I go out,” she protested.
He knew her habits far too well. “You go to Guidry’s and the bar at the edge of town. You sometimes get breakfast at Dixie’s. That’s not getting to know the parish.”
“I see a lot of the parish. I’ve pretty much driven over every inch of it.”
“For your job. That’s not the same,” he replied. “You see people at their worst and never give them a chance to show you who they really are.”
“That’s not true,” she replied. “I have seen them at their best. I see a lot of drunks and jerks who need to use their words instead of their fists. But I’ve also been there when there’s a storm or an accident. I’ve seen them take care of each other. I’ve seen them make way too many casseroles when someone’s sick. It’s not about the people around me. I like them for the most part.”
He finally figured it out. “You’re worried they won’t like you.”
“Small towns can be hard on a newcomer. They all look at me funny.”
They probably looked at her because she was gorgeous and mysterious, and when she smiled, he felt the whole world light up. The one good thing about the last year was that she hadn’t started dating some super nice guy who could give her everything—who he couldn’t compete with. “What’s funny about it?”
She shrugged. “Nothing, really. I guess I’m not used to standing out like a sore thumb. Where I come from, it’s different. A newcomer can blend in easily. It’s not that people don’t care. They do. The culture is different.”
“You’re not used to people being all up in your business. You’re used to people having a lot to do and not noticing most of what goes on around them.”
“That’s a good way to put it. I’m not used to people being so interested in me. Or having such weird notions,” she admitted. “Did you know there are people here who think if you go to New York, you’ll immediately be murdered or sold into some form of servitude? When I first got here, Helena from the church laid hands on me and thanked the Good Lord for delivering me from hell. I told her I wasn’t from hell. I was from Brooklyn.”
“In their defense they think the same thing about any big city. It’s not merely New York. They worry the big metropolis of Baton Rouge will swallow up their precious babies,” he replied. “And how many of your New York friends found out you were moving to Southern Louisiana and recommended you watch Deliverance.”