Kate's Secret (Bluegrass Spirits Book 2)

by Kallypso Masters

  Arriving at the restaurant a little after seven, they found that the dinner crowd had begun to thin out, but Travis asked if she minded being seated at the table in the corner near the kitchen. “Just like old times.”

  “There’s no bad spot in here.” Settled in, they began looking over the menu, which hadn’t changed much since their college days. “She serves all the things I don’t like to cook. This is going to be a treat.”

  “I hope you can find items that won’t mess with your glucose, but with all this protein, I doubt you can go wrong.”

  “Hardly. The amount of breading is negligible.” She had her heart set on fried catfish, hush puppies, kale, and fried green tomatoes.

  “You look so healthy that I sometimes forget what you’re dealing with.”

  She shrugged off his concern. “You can get used to anything when you have no choice.” Just like she’d had to adjust to not having Travis in her life.

  But you had a choice.

  After he ordered pork chops, mashed potatoes, and cornbread, he reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “Katie, I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you when you needed me over the years.”

  So am I.

  “Actually, Monday aside, I haven’t had that much trouble with it. Besides, you were here the other day—arrived just in the nick of time, I’d say.”

  “I only did what anyone would have done in an emergency.”

  “But no one else was around to do anything. If you hadn’t shown up…” She couldn’t even say the words. Chelsea could have been left motherless or left with a mother lying in a diabetic coma. Her neighbors and good friends, Lidia and Jason, had agreed to be Chelsea’s designated legal guardians and would have stepped in immediately in that event. But the thought of Chelsea growing up without her mother made Kate nauseous.

  “You okay? You look a little pale. Should you check your sugar?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.” Her close call gave her all the more reason to tell Chelsea about her biological father. He should be the one taking care of her if something unthinkable happened to Kate.

  Soon. But she didn’t want to ruin tonight by revealing it now.

  “I certainly don’t want a repeat of the day I showed up,” he said. “Man, you scared the life out of me. At first,” he looked down and grinned before meeting her gaze again, “I wondered if you hadn’t been hitting the apple-pie moonshine again.”

  “Heavens, no!” She laughed. “Once was enough for that. Remember how sick we both were that weekend? Daddy thought I had the stomach flu. That was the last time I touched the stuff, though Lidia still makes it as potent as ever for her friends.”

  While they waited for their food, she tried to come up with other dinner conversation. She hadn’t been on a date in a long time. Wait. Was this really a date? Flustered, she asked, “What kinds of things do you do for fun in Nashville?”

  “Boating. Fishing. Hiking. Being out in nature is phenomenally relaxing. I inherited Danny’s golden retriever, Sadie. She keeps me company and commiserates with me.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her with you?”

  He chuckled before taking a sip of his sweet tea. “Poor thing gets carsick on long trips, although she manages up to an hour or so at a time. My foreman, Jackson, is taking care of her while I’m gone. She’s hung around the crew so much that she’s content being with any of us. Sadie’s an amazing dog, though. There’s something calming about being around animals. She can turn a bad day around in no time, and lately, she’s been alerting me to problems on the work sites as if she were a service animal.”

  “You take her to work with you?”

  He nodded. “I have long days and wouldn’t want to leave her alone that much. I think she has a few demons of her own to battle. I’m sure she misses Danny, too.”

  Her heart went out for him, but before she could offer further condolences, he sat back in his chair. “Anyway, it’s good having her around the workplace. She can sense when one of the guys is having problems. But I don’t try to put her on duty all the time. Mostly we go for hikes, go fishing, or just lay around my house. She loves it when we sit side by side on the couch and I pet her or rub her belly.”

  Don’t even think about getting jealous of his dog, Katie.

  Not wanting to take him back down a sad path, she brought up the time he’d taken one of her livestock classes with her.

  “You know I just wanted to be close to you,” he admitted unnecessarily. “But you could have warned me they would be castrating pigs during one class.”

  Okay, maybe she chose that topic because it might keep them from becoming too amorous tonight. Her heart was dangerously close to melting with affection for him. Kate shook her head. “You turned as green as the olives I ate earlier; I thought you were going to pass out.”

  “Let’s just say you sure know how to test a guy.”

  “Me? The course description in the catalog was very clear. You just didn’t look.”

  “Guilty as charged. I was only out to impress upon a country girl that I could handle life on the farm.”

  “Well, you succeeded, didn’t you? I was so taken by the fact that you’d go through that class with me that I invited you out to the farm soon after.”

  “I’d been out there lots of times before that.”

  She leaned closer to whisper, “But we both know what happened the weekend after that particular class up at the springhouse.”

  His eyes smoldered, and before she could retreat, he closed the gap and placed a kiss on her lips. She hadn’t expected to have this become a romantic dinner, especially with the topic she’d brought up. Thankfully, their kiss was interrupted when the server brought them their dinners. Her lips tingled where he’d touched them. Before things went too far, she needed to get a grip.

  They ate in relative silence, except for moans of appreciation. Travis was easy to be with, something she hadn’t fully appreciated back when they were young. They’d both been so intense then, wanting to live life to the fullest and do everything imaginable in as short a time as possible.

  They managed some chitchat and laughed about other college memories, but all too soon, the meal had come to an end. It was pitch dark when they got back on the Mountain Parkway to return to Midway.

  “Think your dad will pay another visit tonight?” He must still be trying to sort out what to make about Daddy’s visit last night.

  “Can’t say.”

  “Well, I don’t intend to lose any sleep over it, even if he does. As long as he doesn’t change tobacco flavors, I’ll assume the smell of vanilla pipe tobacco is his and not a barn fire.”

  She laughed. “Daddy was set in his ways on this side of the veil, so I can’t see why he’d bother to change over there. But I do have cameras and smoke alarms all over the barn that would pick up any hint of a real fire.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He glanced her way a moment then back to the road before asking, “Did it bother you when you became an adult that he still treated you like a kid? You always had great ideas for how to run the place, but he disregarded each one out of hand.”

  She sighed. “Of course it annoys me now that I waited so long, but I was a different person before he got sick than I am now. So afraid of everything, especially responsibility and losing his respect and approval. I was willing to let him control my every move because that meant I wouldn’t have to make the wrong decisions and live with the consequences.”

  “Was it hard on you when you had to start running the place?”

  “Was it ever! I still had him around for guidance during those first couple of years. While bedridden, his mind was as sharp as ever almost to the end. I tried to learn everything I could before the day came I could no longer ask him anything. But I do things so differently than he did that it’s hardly the same place.”

  “Trust your instincts,” he said as he drove up the lane to her house. “They haven’t failed you yet.”

  Oh, but they had.

>   But to Travis, she said, “Thanks.” Although she’d often wished she’d had Travis with her to share the successes and failures, it was probably for the best that he hadn’t been forced to live out his life on her small farm in the country. He’d made a difference in a lot of people’s lives. Still, he could have changed hers and Chelsea’s lives, too. “If only I hadn’t sent you away.” Oh, God, no! As soon as the words tumbled from her mouth, she cringed inwardly. Her heart pounded as she prayed he hadn’t heard her. How could she let her guard down like that?

  He cut the engine and turned toward her. “Why did you call it quits between us?” No such luck. “Especially in an impersonal voicemail. Then you refused to take my calls or to see me when I came back from New York the next weekend.” She heard the pain in his voice, felt it viscerally, but couldn’t speak. “I’d thought what we had was good. We could have made a great life together.”

  He waited for her to say something, but still she had no words. What excuse could she give him that wouldn’t reveal Chelsea’s existence? How could she justify depriving Travis of knowing their daughter—and Chelsea of forming a close bond with her daddy? Travis would have made a wonderful father.

  He still can.

  “It’s complicated,” she blurted out. Lame answer, but what could she say.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Did he mean tonight or forever? Oh, dream on. Obviously just tonight.

  “Would it help if I said I was wrong about the reasons?”

  He thought a moment. “Not particularly. I should have pressed you for answers a long time ago, but why can’t you just tell me?”

  Perhaps a half-truth? “I didn’t want to tie you down.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? We were in love. That doesn’t result in tying someone down. Just the opposite.”

  “You have an ideal view of marriage, but in my experience, it doesn’t always work when two people come from different background and personalities.”

  “You’re basing that theory on what, exactly?”

  She’d never told him the details about her mother, either, too ashamed to. Instead, she’d hinted that Mom had died rather than tell him she’d deserted her and her father. How could she possibly explain her lies of omission?

  But exhaustion overcame her, so she didn’t intend to get into that tonight. “It doesn’t matter now.” She reached for the door handle and escaped briefly until he met her again at the side of the truck as she pulled the backpack from the backseat.

  “I’m really tired. We’ll talk more tomorrow.” Not about these topics. Again with the half-truths. What was the matter with her? “Good night, Travis.”

  His hand warm on her cheek nearly brought her to her knees. “Someday, Katie, I hope you’ll give me the courtesy of telling me why you ended the relationship. Why you threw away what we had—what we could have had.” With a shake of his head, he turned and walked toward the barn without giving her a chance to respond.

  Her throat closed up, and her eyes welled with tears as she started toward the kitchen door. She’d hurt him. Tonight, she needed to do some thinking. Maybe by tomorrow, she’d know what she should tell him.

  Kate was in for another sleepless night, for sure.

  Chapter Ten

  Travis thought about what Katie had refused to tell him the entire next day. Apparently, she had no intention of revealing what went wrong with their relationship back then. If she couldn’t open up to him, did he even want to try to rekindle anything? How could he avoid the same pitfall if he didn’t even know what had happened?

  Today, she’d mostly avoided him, immersing herself in training sessions. Forty-five minutes ago, he’d heard her come into the barn, saddle up Neptune, and leave. While he’d love to go for a ride, he stayed in the barn apartment, not trusting himself around her.

  So how was he supposed to fix things and move forward if they couldn’t talk to one another?

  He’d spent the afternoon installing the tailboards on the walls of Moonbeam’s stall at Katie’s earlier request, opting to drive the nails by hand in an attempt to relieve his frustration. Despite being physically tired at only six o’clock, he was far too restless to stay cramped up in the apartment. Maybe he’d take a ride on Angus after Katie returned so he could expel some of this pent-up energy burning inside.

  Frustrated, and with no sign of Katie returning, he decided to go for a good run. Not on the road, but in the fields where no one would bother him and the hills could kick his ass. He might run into Katie, but so be it. Even if she wouldn’t give him the time of day, he could make sure she was all right. Okay, so he was worried about her. She’d been gone a while now.

  He’d left his good running shoes and workout clothes at home, but could make do with his tennis shoes. He removed his button-down plaid shirt altogether—draping it around his neck for later—and changed into a pair of shorts. Danny would have busted his chops for wearing cotton to exercise. He gave a mental shrug and set off up the hill behind the barn.

  Travis hadn’t been much into running unless he had to, but his buddy insisted it was a great way to escape the demons. Not that Travis’s problems were anything compared to the ones Danny had tried to outrun on his blade prosthesis. But he’d have done anything to get Danny off his pity pot at that point.

  One thing was certain; Travis needed a rigorous physical outlet tonight. When he dropped into bed this evening, he didn’t want to be haunted by thoughts of Katie. And the physical release he wanted most—with her—was out of the question.

  Maybe it was time to give up and head home tomorrow.

  Nah. Like Sadie with her rawhide bones, he wasn’t giving up until he’d gnawed it down to nothing. He deserved answers.

  Travis set out toward the hill behind the barn. By the time he reached the crest, his legs and lungs burned, but at least the pressure in his chest had decreased. He picked up the pace, and soon his mind went numb.

  They used to challenge each other to sprints and longer races while in boot camp, Iraq, and after Danny had come to work for him. Running helped them both cope better.

  Why didn’t you ask me to go for a run that night, Danny?

  Travis blinked the sweat from his eyes. He had to stop thinking about him. Slowing to a walk, he glanced down at his watch. He’d been out for more than an hour. Looking around to get his bearings, he saw the springhouse at the bottom of the hill with Neptune grazing near the steps.

  Don’t go near there, man.

  Too many memories. Of the past. Of that kiss the other night. Travis couldn’t help himself, though. Always a sucker for punishment, he walked toward the limestone block building with its silver metal roof. After the heat of the run, he could use some cold water and a place to cool off. Then he’d head back to the barn. Maybe he’d be able to sleep now.

  As he came around to the front of the building, he saw Neptune’s reins trailed through the gaping doorway into the springhouse. Likely, Katie’d secured them to the rusty ring on the wooden plank door. She was nowhere in sight, though. She had probably sought relief from the heat of the evening, too.

  “Oh, Chelsea. Will you be able to forgive me?” Katie’s voice, raw with anguish, echoed from inside the springhouse.

  Who was she talking to? Wasn’t Chelsea one of her students? He was fairly certain Katie had ridden out here alone tonight, and there was no sign of another horse. Maybe he ought to leave—or at least make his presence known.

  Worried about her, he called out. “Katie? You in there?”

  Duh. What do you think?

  If he hadn’t been thinking about Danny during his run, he doubted he’d be plagued with hearing his buddy’s voice right now. Would he ever be able to stop his mind from playing these sadistic tricks on him?

  The door creaked open wider. Katie stepped closer to the opening, but didn’t reveal her face to him. “Travis? What are you doing out here?” The wariness in her voice made him wonder what she feared he’d do or say.


  “I was just finishing up a run. Thought some spring water might hit the spot.” Not a complete lie.

  She avoided his gaze and waved him inside. “It is a lot cooler in here.”

  He walked down the limestone stairs and into the ancient structure where the temperature dropped about twenty degrees. Passing by her and acting as though he’d only come for a drink, he knelt on the foot-high wall surrounding the trough of cold water and picked up the dipper. Might not be the most sanitary way to get a drink, but he’d made do under a lot worse conditions. After drinking his fill, he swished the dipper in the water and hung it back on the wall hook before standing and smiling at her.

  “I haven’t been in here in forever.” Other than in his fantasies.

  Silhouetted against the door’s opening, Katie’s body was ramrod straight, her chin held high. No warm smile, no softness in her gaze. Was there no spark left of the old flame between them?

  “Thanks for the drink. I’ll leave you to your…thoughts.” He didn’t want to say conversation because that would clue her in that he’d listened outside a few minutes ago.

  The longer his eyes had to adjust, the easier it became to make out her features in the dim lighting. Her eyelashes were clumped. Had she been crying? He wanted to…no, he needed to ask. This might be his last opportunity to get the answers he’d come to Midway for. He’d never been one to run away from a problem.

  “Katie, we need to talk.” The wall surrounding the trough of water appeared to be dry, and he indicated that she should take a seat.

  After some hesitation, she complied, sitting several feet away. He stepped closer before sitting down, and she wrapped her arms around her waist.

  Where should he start? Danny, maybe? “Katie, I didn’t fully explain why I chose to come back and see you now, but…” Lordy mercy, let the words come out sounding better than they did when he’d practiced in his head. “The night before I arrived, I had a dream in which an Army buddy of mine came and told me I needed to find you again. He didn’t say why, but indicated it was urgent. Hell, I still don’t know why. Maybe he just wanted me to think about someone living for a change and let him rest in peace.”