The Outer Edge of Heaven Read Online Free Page B

you know." He handed her a glass of milk and she asked, "So what should I do tomorrow?"
    Luke sat on the rug in front of the couch near the coffee table and stretched his legs out. "Just go up to the house in the morning at breakfast and ask Madge what to do. Tell her what I have in mind and ask for her ideas. She'll know where to start. She'll probably be forever grateful. She spends half her time trying to do just what I'm asking."
    "What's Angela going to think about this?"
    Luke shrugged. "She probably won't even notice. She's only here about two days a week, and when she is here, she's usually shopping and having her nails and hair done in Whitefish. She probably won't even realize you're here for a while.” He paused and then asked, “Is your name really Charlie?"
    “No, but my real name is awful, so don’t even ask what it is. I never use it.”
    "Shoot!" Fo interrupted their discussion, "I lost my Oreo down in my milk. I hate that!" He tried to fish it out with his fingers and overflowed the milk in the glass. "Dang it. I do that every time!"
    Charlie laughed. "You'd think you'd learn, Fo. You gotta hold on like this." She demonstrated how to hold the cookie with just her pointer and tall man. As she went to dip the cookie, she lost hers too and they all laughed. "Okay, so maybe not. When I grow up, I'm going to design the perfect Oreo dipping cup. It'll be wide and short."
    She drained her glass and then tapped on it to get the soggy cookie to come out, which it promptly did and plopped onto her face. "Aahh!" She tried to catch the remnants before they dripped onto the cowhide couch as Fo jumped up and grabbed a paper towel. When he helped her wipe her face, he smeared mushy Oreo all over her cheek and they both laughed while Luke looked on placidly.
    Getting to her feet, she sniffed tentatively. "I now have Oreo in my right sinus. I think that means I should call it a night."
    She took her glass to the sink and just as she made it to the paper towel roll, she gave a dainty sneeze and a small scream. She wiped her face with a paper towel as she headed for the door with Fo laughing and Luke wondering what was up with these two. At the door, she turned and waved. "It was nice to meet you, Luke. Night, Fo." She went out the door and the screen slammed behind her in the quiet Montana night.
    Fo chuckled and Luke got up to put the cookies and milk away. "You two act more like brother and sister than friends. I still can't believe Charlie is a girl. What’s her real name?"
    “Charlene, but don’t you dare tell her I told you. She’s always hated it, but then several years ago when that song came out about the guy who wrote “Billy Bob loves Charlene” on the water tower in John Deere Green, she was thoroughly disgusted and now she hates it even more.”
    Luke laughed. “That is a pretty deep, thought provoking song. How did I miss the fact that she was a girl all these years though?”
    "She's not just a girl. She's a machine. You'll find that out. Your family will never be the same. In a good way. You'll see. Even Chase will wonder what happened."
    ****
    Charlie woke up that first morning to the birds just beginning to sing in the dark before dawn and felt alive on a whole new level. She paused for a second to breathe in deeply of the breeze coming in her bedroom window. The air smelled of the woods and river and a farm, and was a smell she was sure she would always remember as the aroma of Montana.
    As she stretched like a kitten she thought about the man she’d met last night in the bunkhouse. When she'd finally realized there was someone standing there when she'd been looking for Fo, she'd been almost star struck at the vision in front of her. The sight had been fairly breathtaking honestly.
    Luke definitely had the physique of the ultimate male. She still wasn't sure if he had black hair or just dark brown because the lights in the bunkhouse had been low, but she knew he had quietly topped Chase's proudly