Read Online A Plain Love Song by Kelly Irvin - Free Book Online

guitar, its honey-colored wood burnished to a lovely sheen. A white bandage peeked from the V of his black T-shirt and the bruise around it had darkened to an angry green and purple. Adah didn’t know where to look first, so she glued her gaze to the intricate designs stitched into the soft brown leather of the cowboy boot on his right foot. Something about his bare left foot made him seem…young.
    “I’m serious. You have a beautiful voice—what my music teacher calls a natural vibrato.” He shook his head, his mouth hanging open for a beat. “Don’t stop. Go on, keep singing.”
    She had no idea what a vibrato was, but she wanted to know. She wanted to know everything his music teacher had taught him. Shewanted a music teacher. Stop it! Her job was to clean the house and Jackson was getting in her way. “What are you doing here?”
    “I live here.” The force of his gaze didn’t lessen. “Thought you knew that.”
    Before she could answer, a dog hobbled into the room, circled Jackson, and halted in front of him, as if standing guard. He was a medium-sized dog with a white face, black ears, and a patch of black over one eye. He also had a limp. “This here is Captain. Captain, this is Amish Girl. Captain! Slow down, there’s a good boy, take it easy.” Jackson spoke to the dog much the same way he’d spoken to the horse in the corral. “He’s laid up like me.”
    Englisch folks had interesting names for their pets. “Why Captain?”
    “It’s short for Captain Jack—you know, the pirate. Patch on his eye, wooden leg.” He grinned. “My sister named him. She gets a kick out of calling the dog Jack, you know—like me, Jack, short for Jackson.”
    Englischers also had a strange sense of humor. “He seems pretty spry to me. What happened to his leg?”
    “My dad accidently ran into him with the truck. He’s a border collie, a working dog, so he tended to herd everything. He can’t work no more so he went off to school with me. He’s pretty psyched to be home, though. Living in an apartment with city boys ain’t his thing. Mine neither, come to think of it.”
    Captain sidled up to Adah and sniffed. She held out her hand. He sniffed again, woofed, and circled back to Jackson, dragging one back leg.
    “You passed inspection.”
    “That’s good. I’m cleaning in here so you’d both better not have dirt on your feet. Don’t be tracking up my carpet.”
    “We wiped our feet, didn’t we, Cap?”
    Captain woofed again and laid down at Jackson’s feet, plopped his head on his paws, and fixed Adah with a quizzical stare.
    Adah returned the look. Captain had intelligent eyes and a snout that made him look as if he had a perpetual grin. Dog and owner…they looked a lot alike. She balled up the dust cloth and smoothed it out.Work, she needed to work. She grabbed another bronze horse, this one heftier than the others, and gave it a quick swipe with the cloth. “Your mother said you went in to town with your brother.”
    “I did. He dropped me off and headed out to mend a fence that the cattle busted down last night.”
    “I see.”
    “So you won’t sing for me?”
    Back to the subject she’d rather avoid. Jackson was turning out to be as stubborn as a heat rash in summer. Sort of like herself. “I don’t sing for an audience. Just to keep myself company while I work.”
    “That’s a shame. A waste. Maybe you’ll sing for me later, when you get to know me.”
    Would she get to know him? Nee. She couldn’t. She focused on dusting, ignoring the sudden trembling of her hands.
    Jackson hobbled into the room and laid the guitar on one end of the chocolate brown sectional sofa. Captain popped up and followed, circling the sofa and settling in front. With a grunt, Jackson lowered himself next to the instrument, tossed the crutch aside, and propped his leg on the rustic pine coffee table—the one she’d just cleaned. He wiggled his toes. He had big toes. Big feet, really. “You aren’t even