11 DANCE

"SOMETHING WRONG?"

Other than the fact that Andrew had touched the small of her back and guided her through a crowd of beer-drinking Texans, Rose couldn't think of a thing. Her brain had dissolved the moment his fingertips touched her spine. And it wasn't the first time.

"No," she said, straightening her shoulders and pretending her skin didn't burn under his touch.

"I've just never seen so many.... cowboys in one place before." Obviously Friday nights in Texas were taken seriously----there was serious dancing, serious drinking and serious flirting going on inside the Last Chance Bar, on the corner of Route 128 and East Main Road. Each Western man there looked as if he was doing all three at the same time. And the women---wearing tight jeans and tighter T-shirts---looked capable of keeping up with the men in every way.

Rose hurried to follow Bobby as he led their group to a small table near the bar.

"Do you dance?" Andrew asked.

"What?" she turned slightly, and Andrew's head lowered, his lips almost grazing her ear.

"Dance," he said. "Do you?"

"Oh," she managed to reply, feeling like a teenager on her first date. She needed to get a grip. She needed a pair of boots and two feet that could actually move in unison. She needed to remember age was her to chaperone Francisca. "Not really."

His eyebrows rose and he said something else, but the band's climatic ending to their song drowned out his words.

She thought she'd forgotten about the tiny cleft in his squared chin and the way his breath fanned her cheek with such intimacy.

She wanted to turn toward him and remember what it had been like to kiss him the first time.

And the last.

"Not at all?"

She gestured toward the dance floor, where couples began the next dance. "Not---whatever it is they are doing."

"The two-step," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the music. "It's not that hard if you'd like to try it."

Rose moved toward the table where Francisca and her cowboy had settled and were busy taking to a waitress. "No, thank you."

Andrew pulled out a seat for her before she could do it for herself, so Rose sat and smiled weakly across the at her niece.

"Cool place," Rose said, tapping her fingers on the scarred table in time with the music. It was a song about broken hearts and cowboys, Rose noted before she stopped listening. She leaned forward to hear Bobby's question.

"Drink?"

"Maybe a soda?"

He nodded, then left the table and headed toward the crowded bar. Andrew went with him, which left Rose alone to talk to her niece.

"You are tired?"

"It's been a long day."

Her niece sighed. "Aunt Roro, you really ought to liven up. You are not exactly decrepit."

"No," Rose said, looking around her at the jeans-clad crowd. "But I---we---don't belong here."

"I like it."

"For a vacation, maybe. But for the rest of your life?" Rose shook her head. "You shouldn't make any hasty decisions."

"Decisions about what?" Andrew asked, putting a drink in front of her.

"Nothing," she said, watching Francisca's attention being claimed by Bobby, who set bottles of beer on the table before tugging Francisca to the dance floor. The band had switched to a waltz.

"It's not easy taking care of them, is it?"

Surprised, Rose turned to face Andrew. "Is that what you have done with Bobby?"

"Yeah. Since he was a kid."

She didn't want to have a personal conversation with him. She didn't want to like him or to think they had things in common. And she didn't want him to ask again about Chicago, so Rose took a sip of her drink. "What is this?"

"Whiskey and soda."

"I didn't.... never mind," Rose replied, realizing that Bobby hadn't heard her correctly. The drink didn't too terrible, and a few drops whiskey might be exactly what she needed to numb her senses.

Andrew sat down, and moved his chair closer to hers.

His knee bumped her leg, and Rose quickly took another sip of her drink.

"We can dance if you want."

She didn't look at him and kept her attention focused on the couples on the dance floor. Francisca twirled past, laughing at her handsome young man.

Francisca had always been coordinated and brave. "I'd rather watch."