by Lisa Jackson
“Maybe it’s just old and worn-out. How many miles you got on her?”
“Two-hundred-and-twenty-some thousand, I think,” she said with a shrug.
He let out a long, low whistle. “As I said, she’s just tired. Think how you’d feel if you’d gone that far.”
“Sometimes it feels as if I have,” she grumbled, and frowned at the engine.
“Get inside and try and start it,” he suggested.
“It won’t go anywhere.”
He cast her a look she couldn’t comprehend. “Maybe not, but I’ll get a better feel for it if I’m watching the engine attempt to turn over.”
“Okay. Okay.” She climbed into the car, twisted the ignition and heard the engine grind laboriously.
“Again,” he ordered, and through the crack where the hood was raised she saw his arms reach deep into the cavern that housed the engine. She pumped the gas and turned the key again. Grinding. Slower and slower, then nothing.
Three more times she tried before he slammed the hood down in frustration. “She’s dead.”
“I knew that much.”
He eyed the sky, judging the daylight. “I think I’d better drive you back to town, and we can call a tow truck.”
“Wonderful,” she muttered sarcastically, but reminded herself that at least she wasn’t stranded or alone.
She hoisted herself into the passenger side of his truck, an older model with new seat covers and a thick layer of dust. Both windows were open, and as Luke steered the rig on to the empty road, late-summer evening air streamed inside, tangling Katie’s hair and cooling her skin.
Glancing at her watch, she frowned. “Oh, this is just perfect,” she said, unable to hide her sarcasm.
“Something else wrong?”
Why did she feel like an incompetent around him? She wanted to look and play the part of the clever reporter—sassy and bright. Instead she felt like a frazzled woman who couldn’t quite get her act together. “I’m supposed to pick up Josh from soccer practice in five minutes.”
She folded her arms across her chest in frustration. “Damned machine.” Casting her would-be savior a glance, she swallowed her pride yet again. “I hate to ask, but would you mind swinging by Reed Field to pick Josh up? It’s pretty close to the high school.”
“Not a problem,” he said, and she fell back against the seat.
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
But she did. She didn’t like owing anyone, especially a stranger she’d barely met. This time, it seemed, she had no choice. Feeling the wind brush against her cheeks, she stared through the bug-spattered windshield and watched as the sun sank behind the western hills to stripe the sky in vibrant shades of gold and pink. All the while she was aware of the man beside her—a sexy stranger with a Texas drawl that seemed to bore right to the very center of her. Angry at the turn of her thoughts, she tapped her fingers nervously on the armrest.
“You okay?” Luke slid a glance her way as he braked for a comer.
She stopped fidgeting. “Fine.”
“So, what were you doing over at the Wells ranch?”
Every muscle in her body tensed. “You saw me?”
With a quick nod, he turned on to the main highway leading into town.
She had no reason to lie, though the question made her edgy. She’d had no idea she was being observed. Well, a private detective she wasn’t. “I thought I’d go check things out,” she admitted, feeling suddenly foolish, like a kid caught with her hand in a forbidden cookie jar. “I’ve been by the place quite a few times ever since Isaac disappeared, but I haven’t really pried much—well, not as much as I’d like to.”
“Nosin’ around for a story?”
“Not just a story,” she admitted, trying to contain the excitement she always felt at the thought of uncovering a mystery and being the first to report it. “I think this is the scoop of the century around here.” She turned her head to stare at his profile as he shifted down. His face, all hard planes and angles, was a study in concentration. “Where were you that you saw me?”
“At my new place.”
“Your new…?” Her throat went dry, and she licked her lips as she realized where he was going to live. At the Sorenson ranch. Dear Lord, no. Her heart turned to stone, and she had trouble breathing for a second. “Don’t tell me you bought out Ralph Sorenson.” She could barely say the name. A sick sensation curled in her stomach.
“That’s it.”
Oh, God. Her fingers clenched into tight fists. Slowly she straightened them. This was no time to fall apart. “You know Ralph Sorenson?”
“Sure do.” He slowed as they passed the sign indicating they’d entered Bittersweet’s city limits. A few streetlights had begun to glow as the first shades of evening slipped through the narrow streets and boulevards of Bittersweet. “Ralph helped me out of a jam a long time ago, gave me a job and treated me like a son ever since.”
“Did he?” She felt the color drain from her face, and her heartbeat thudded through her brain. “I suppose you met his son,” she said, trying to sound lighthearted when deep inside she ached.
“Dave?” His smile faded, and something dark and dangerous skated through his gaze as he glanced in her direction.
“Y-yes. Dave.”
“I knew him,” he admitted, his voice suddenly flat. Was it her imagination, or did he suddenly grip the steering wheel more tightly? “Helluva guy.”
“Is he?” she asked, her own question sounding far away when she thought of the one boy she had loved, the one to whom she’d eagerly given her virginity, the father of her only son.
“Was,” Luke said, flipping on his turn signal and wheeling into the gravel lot beside the high school.
Her heart turned to ice at the implication. Luke rubbed his chin as he pulled into a parking spot. He cut the engine and looked at her with troubled blue eyes.
“I thought the news would have gotten back here by now.” She felt a chill as cold as Alaska in January and braced herself for words she’d never expected to hear.
“Dave Sorenson died six months ago.”
CHAPTER THREE
Katie’s world tilted, the underpinnings giving way. All that she’d held true for years shattered, bursting through her brain in painful, heart-slicing shards. No! It couldn’t be. Dave Sorenson was alive.
But the look Luke Gates sent her convinced her that he was telling the truth, that this wasn’t some sort of cruel, hateful joke.
Josh’s father was dead.
“Dear God,” she whispered, her throat raw, the insides of her nose and throat burning with sudden, grief-riddled tears. “I—I…I didn’t know.” She cleared her throat and looked away, blinking rapidly against the wash of tears. Her throat was so thick she couldn’t swallow; her eyes ached. For years she’d considered trying to find Dave Sorenson and telling him the painful but glorious truth that they had a son—a wonderful, lighthearted boy she’d named Joshua Lee—but she never had. She’d always thought—assumed—that there would be time, that the perfect moment would somehow appear for confiding to Josh the fact that his father was a man whose circumstances had forced him to move to Texas; a man who, at the time of Josh’s conception, had been little more than a boy himself; a man who, at that tender age, couldn’t have been expected to settle down. Then she’d thought, in this silly fantasy, that she’d eventually track down Dave and give him the news. She’d told herself he would be mature and would understand, and that Josh would somehow connect with his father. But…if Luke was telling the truth, it was too late. Josh would never know his father.
“Katie?” Luke’s voice startled her.
“It…it can’t be.” She glanced at him and saw a storm of emotions she didn’t understand in his expression. “He was so young—not much older than me.” She drew in a long, disbelieving breath.
“I know.” His face showed genuine concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yes…fine…” But
it was a lie.
“You’re sure?” Obviously he wasn’t convinced.
“No. I mean, yes.” She blinked rapidly, refusing to break down altogether. Inside, she was numb. Shaking. Grieving painfully. But she couldn’t let Luke Gates or anyone else know how devastated she felt. This was too deep. Too personal. Dabbing at an escaping tear with the tip of her finger, she stared out the window. “I, uh, knew Dave…. He was in the twins’—my half brothers’—class in high school, and he hung around the house sometimes. I liked him, and I didn’t know that…that he’d…” She swallowed hard, then let out a sigh that started somewhere deep in her heart. “You shocked me, I guess,” she admitted, trying desperately to recover a bit when her entire world seemed shaken, rocked to its very core. Forcing an empty, faltering smile, she asked, “What…what happened?” Then, as she looked through the windshield, she said, “Oh, no.”
Focusing for the first time on her son’s soccer team, a ragtag group of kids in shorts and T-shirts who were coming off the dusty field, she saw trouble. The boys’ faces were red, perspiration darkened their hair and grass stains smeared their jerseys. Part of the team was still kicking a ball around, a few others were gathering up their bags and water bottles, but what held her attention was the group huddled around the coach who was helping a sweaty kid who bit his lip as he limped toward the parking lot.
Josh.
Her already-battered heart sank even further.
Luke reached for the door, but Katie was ahead of him, out of the pickup like a shot. “Josh?” she called, waving her arms madly. “Over here!” His face was so red she could barely make out his freckles, and every time he started to put some weight on his right foot, he winced, then bit his lower lip. He had one arm slung around his coach’s shoulder, and he hobbled slowly. Though tears swam in his eyes, his chin was jutted in determination as he made an effort not to cry.
“What happened?” Katie asked when she reached him. Luke had gotten out of the truck and was leaning on a fender.
“Little accident,” the coach explained. “Josh and Tom were fighting for the ball, and Tom tackled him. Josh went down and twisted his ankle.”
“Let me see—” She bent over and eyed the injured foot. His shin guards had been stripped off, but the swelling was visible through his sock. She clucked her tongue, and when she tried to touch his leg, Josh sucked in a whistling, pained breath.
“Heck of a way to start the season,” the coach, a man by the name of Gary Miller, said.
“I can still play,” Josh protested.
“Only if the doctor says so.” Gary helped Josh to Luke’s truck. “I think he should have that ankle x-rayed.”
Katie nodded. “We will.”
“Where’s the car?” Josh asked as he slowly climbed into the bench seat of Luke’s truck.
“It’s a long story.”
“Don’t tell me. It broke down again.”
Katie’s head was beginning to throb. She didn’t want to think about what else might go wrong. First the convertible had broken down, then she’d heard the devastating news that Dave had died, and now Josh was hobbling, his ankle twice its normal size. “Yep, the car conked out again.”
“I thought Uncle Jarrod was gonna fix it—Ooh!” Josh sucked in his breath as he shifted and tried to slide across the seat.
“He did. Sort of. Come on, let’s get you to a doctor.” She squeezed on to the seat with her son and slammed the pickup door shut.
“I’ll call you later and see how he is,” the coach said and reached through the open window to rumple Josh’s sweat-soaked hair. “It was a great practice until you and Tom got into it.”
Luke took his place behind the wheel. “Where to?”
“Cawthorne Acres, I suppose.” Katie was already thinking ahead “My mom’s probably there, and we can borrow her car.”
Luke twisted the key in the ignition. “That’s clear out of town.”
“I know, but—”
“Isn’t there an emergency-care place around here somewhere where we can get that ankle looked at?”
“About half a mile that way,” she said, pointing up the street. “But I hate to bother you—”
“No bother at all,” he insisted and rammed the truck into gear. There was no reason to argue with him, so Katie guided him to the small clinic and felt pretty useless as Luke carried Josh into the emergency area. She’d been here before, not long ago, when John Cawthorne had collapsed and her mother had been worried that he’d suffered a second heart attack. Fortunately his condition had been diagnosed as heat stroke and he’d survived.
Josh’s injury wasn’t life threatening. The worst that would happen was that he’d be in a cast for a few weeks. Yet she hated the thought of him being in any kind of pain or laid up. Katie wiped her hands on the front of her shorts.
“Look, you can go now,” she said to Luke, once the paperwork was finished and a nurse had come with a wheelchair to whisk Josh to the X-ray lab. “I’ll call Bliss or Tiffany or Mom or someone to come get me.”
“No reason.”
“But it could be a while. He might have to see a specialist.”
Luke eyed her. “Why bother someone else,” he drawled, “when I’m here already?”
“You probably have better things to do.”
He lifted a shoulder as if his own life were of no concern. “If there was something pressing, I’d let you know.”
She was too worried to argue, and while Luke sat on one of the plastic couches and thumbed through a sports magazine that was several months old, she fidgeted, paced and tried not to worry. A jillion thoughts rattled through her head, most of them mixed up with Luke, Josh and Dave Sorenson. How could Dave have died and she not have heard about it? It was true that he and his folks had moved away over ten years before and they had little contact with anyone in Bittersweet, but they’d still owned the ranch next to Isaac Wells’s place. Usually, bad news had a way of filtering back to a small town. Katie’s heart ached, and her head pounded with an overwhelming and desperate grief. What could she tell Josh?
For years she’d kept the name of her child’s father a secret. Only she and her mother knew the truth. Even her twin half brothers, Nathan and Trevor, who had known Dave in high school, had been spared the bitter fact that one of their friends had done a love-‘em-and-leave-‘em number on their half sister. Her hands felt suddenly clammy, her heart as cold as the bottom of the ocean.
“Josh is gonna be all right,” Luke said as she passed by him for the thirtieth time. He gestured toward her anxious pacing. “You know, if you’re not careful you’re gonna wear a patch right through the floor.”
He smiled, but it seemed guarded somehow, and she wondered about him. From the minute he’d blown into town he’d been a mystery, a man without a past—a tall, lanky Texan with a sexy drawl and, seemingly, no ties. She’d fantasized that he’d held some deep, dark secret that she, as the local reporter with her ear to the ground, would uncover. Instead, he’d dropped a bomb that threw her life into unexpected and unwanted turmoil.
Luke studied her over the top of his magazine. “Can I get you something? A cup of coffee?”
“The last thing I need is caffeine.”
“Decaf then.”
“Or maybe a tranquillizer.” She knew she was overreacting, but she was a jumble of nerves today.
His grin widened a bit, and the crow’s-feet around his eyes deepened. “This is probably the place to get one.
“I was kidding.”
“I know.” He slapped his magazine closed. “I think we should call a tow company for your car.”
“Oh…good idea, but I need to be here.”
“As soon as Josh is released.” He snapped his magazine open again and turned his attention back to the article he’d been perusing. Katie sat down, but couldn’t endure the inactivity. Seconds later she was pacing again, her brain pounding with the problem of how she was going to tell Josh that his father was dead. She wanted to ask Luke what
had happened to Dave, but thought she had better wait until they were alone, and she felt more in control.
Within twenty minutes Josh was wheeled back into the room. He was wearing a brace on his leg, and a woman doctor with short brown hair, wide eyes and round glasses approached. “Are you Josh’s mom?”
“Yes. Katie. Katie Kinkaid.”
“Dr. Thatcher.” The doctor extended her hand and shook Katie’s. “I think Josh here is going to live a while longer,” she teased. “Nothing appears to be broken, but I’m going to send his X rays to a specialist for a second opinion, just in case. What I see is a pretty severe sprain. He’ll need to lie down and elevate his foot for a couple of days. The ankle should be iced, to begin with. I’ve prescribed some mild painkillers that he can take for the first forty-eight hours or so, and I’d like to see him use crutches until the swelling goes down.”
Katie listened and nodded but wondered how in the world she was going to keep an active ten-year-old off his feet. Short of strapping him to the bed, she didn’t have many options.
With Luke’s help, Josh hobbled to the truck, and they drove straight to the pharmacy where they picked up Josh’s prescription and rented crutches five minutes before the place closed for the night.
By the time they pulled into the driveway of her little bungalow, night had fallen and the streetlights gave off an eerie blue glow. Crickets chirped softly, and from a house down the street music wafted—some piece of jazz that seemed to float on the breeze. Blue, lying on the back stoop, growled his disapproval of the newcomer as Katie unlocked the door and Luke helped Josh up the steps.
“Hush!” Katie said sharply, and the old dog gave off one last indignant snarl. “Don’t mind him, he’s getting old and grouchy,” she said, but fondly patted Blue’s head. She snapped on the porch light, and the aging dog tagged after them as they entered the kitchen.
Once Josh was in his room and lying on his bed, Katie propped his leg on pillows, then rinsed a washcloth with water in the bathroom. “I guess you’ll have to use this to clean up,” she said as she handed him the wet cloth and eyed his cramped room. “You know, Josh, if you agree to keep up with your homework and don’t abuse the privilege, I’ll bring in the little TV set that’s in the kitchen.”