by Brenda Novak
With a sigh, he rolled down his window. “Is there something else?”
“Actually I’m here a little earlier than planned and—” she hugged herself, shivering “—well, it’s possible that my parents won’t miss me for a while. I think I’d be better off taking that ride you offered, if you don’t mind.”
Everything’s fine…. She’d said so when he first pulledup. Why couldn’t he have taken her at her word and let her remain anonymous?
The pain and resentment he’d felt two years ago, when she’d closed the door in his face, threatened to consume him again. But considering the circumstances, he had to help her. What choice did he have?
“What’s with the sandals?” he asked.
She gazed down at her soaked feet. “I bought them in San Francisco. They’re one of a kind, designed especially for me.”
They were still only sandals, and it was raining, for Pete’s sake. She must have realized that he didn’t understand the full significance of what she’d just said because she added, “The day Andy and I bought these was the best day of the past two years. And the only day that turned out anything like I’d planned.”
So they were a symbol of her lost illusions. Well, thanks to her, Booker had a few lost illusions of his own. Not that he’d possessed many to begin with. His parents had taken care of that early on. “Hop in,” he said. “I’ll get your luggage.”
KATIE SAT WITHOUT TALKING, listening to the hum of the heater and the beat of the wipers as Booker drove into town. Of all the people in Dundee, he was the last person she’d wanted to see. So, of course, he’d been the first one to come along. It was that kind of day—no, year.
Clasping her hands in her lap, Katie stared glumly out at the familiar buildings they passed. The Honky Tonk, where she used to hang out on weekends. The library, where her friend Delaney, who was now married to Conner Armstrong, used to work. Finley’s Grocery. Katie had once knocked over a whole display of Campbell’s soup there, trying to get a better look at Mike Hill, a boy she’d had a crush on all the time she was growing up.
“You warm enough?” Booker asked.
He’d already removed his jacket so she nodded, even though she was still chilled, and he turned down the heat.
“So,” she said, hoping to ease the tension between them, “how’ve things been since I went away?”
She could see the scar on his face that ran from his eye to his chin—souvenir of a knife fight, he’d once told her—and the tattoo on his right biceps. It moved beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt as his hands clenched the steering wheel more tightly. But he didn’t respond.
“Booker?”
“Don’t pretend we’re friends, Katie,” he said shortly.
“Why?”
“Because we’re not.”
“Oh.” Booker’s friends had always been few. He regarded everyone, except maybe Rebecca Wells—Rebecca Hill since she’d married Josh—with a certain amount of distrust. So considering their history, Katie knew she shouldn’t be surprised. She’d lost his good opinion along with everything else. If she’d ever really had it. Even when they were seeing each other before she left, she’d never felt completely certain that he cared about her. He’d driven her around on his Harley and shown her one heck of a good time. But he was somewhat remote, and she’d always approached their relationship with a sense of inevitability, believing that it wouldn’t—couldn’t—last. Then he’d shown up at her door and proposed! She didn’t know how to explain it, except that his widowed grandmother, Hatty, had just died. He and Hatty had been so close throughout her final years that Katie could only suppose his sudden marriage proposal was triggered by his loss.
Now he was obviously holding a grudge that she’d turned him down at a difficult time, or been the one to cut things off between them. “I make a left at 500 South?” he asked after several minutes.
She pulled her attention from the rain beading on the windshield. “What?”
“Your parents still live in the same place, don’t they?”
Last she’d heard they did. But she didn’t know. She hadn’t talked to them since a year ago last Christmas, when they’d told her not to call again. “They’ve been on Lassiter nearly thirty years,” she said, infusing her voice with as much confidence as she could muster. “Knowing them, they’ll be there another thirty.”
“Seems I heard your father say something not too long ago about building a cabin a few miles outside of town.” He shifted his eyes from the road to study her. “They give up on that?”
Apprehension clawed at Katie’s insides. Her folks still had the same telephone number. She’d definitely heard her mother answer when she used the pay phone yesterday. She’d wanted to tell her family she was on her way home. Only she’d lost her nerve at the last moment and hung up.
“Yeah.” Having the same number didn’t necessarily mean they hadn’t moved within a certain geographic area, but Katie was sticking with the gamble. Doing anything else would reveal a rift she preferred to keep private. “They like living so close to their bakery. That bakery is their life,” she added.
The Arctic Flyer appeared on the right, evoking bittersweet memories. Katie had worked there the summer of her junior year because she’d wanted to try something besides her parents’ bakery, and she’d broken the ice-cream machine her first week. Harvey, the owner, had complained every day about the money she was costing him, until the part to repair the darn thing finally came in.
Booker turned up the radio, and she glanced surreptitiously in his direction. Her memories of him didn’t go back nearly as far as her Arctic Flyer days. She’d heard tales of him visiting for several months when he was about fifteen; he’d raised enough hell that the entire town still regarded him as trouble. He’d mentioned a few things about that visit himself, like stealing Eugene Humphries’s truck and wrecking it only a few hours later. But Katie was nine years old at the time. She hadn’t met Booker until years later when he moved in with Hatty.
“Aren’t you curious to know what I’m doing back?” she asked, turning to conversation to stanch the flow of memories.
He looked pointedly at her two suitcases, which he’d wedged into the back seat of his extended cab. “That’s pretty obvious.”
“Actually, it’s probably not what you think. San Francisco was fabulous, for the most part,” she said. Which was true—if she confined her comments to the city itself.
When he made no reply, she plunged ahead. “It’s just that I’m a country girl at heart, you know? I decided that San Francisco is a great place to visit, but nowhere I’d want to stay.”
He slung one arm over the steering wheel, and she supposed it was his rebel attitude that made him look both bored and on-edge at the same time.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked.
His toothpick moved as he chewed on it. “Where’s Andy?”
“He—” she scrambled for something to crack Booker’s reserve “—he’s laid up and couldn’t come along.”
Booker arched an eyebrow. “Laid up?”
“He was…um…hit by a cable car,” she said with a grin to let him know she was joking.
She’d hoped to elicit a smile, but the line of Booker’s lips remained as grim as ever. Slowly he slid the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You mean life in San Francisco wasn’t the nirvana you expected.”
She resisted the urge to squirm in her seat. “We all make mistakes,” she muttered as he parked in front of her parents’ white-brick rambler.
He easily yanked the suitcases that she could barely lift out of his truck, carried them to the door and punched the doorbell. Then he pivoted and headed back, leaving her on the doorstep without so much as a “goodbye” or a “good luck.”
“Haven’t you ever done anything you regret?” she called after him. She knew he’d done plenty; she just didn’t know if he regretted any of it. He certainly had never acted as though he felt any remorse.
But she didn’t l
isten for a reply. The door to her parents’ home opened almost immediately, and her stomach knotted as she saw her mother’s face for the first time in two years.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, praying that Tami Rogers would be more forgiving than Booker.
Her mother’s expression didn’t look promising. And when Tami glanced at Booker and his truck, her features became even more pinched. “What are you doing here?”
Katie peered over her shoulder at Booker, too, wishing him gone, well out of earshot. “I…” The pain inside her suddenly swelled. She couldn’t even remember, let alone recite, the eloquent apology she’d prepared on the way from San Francisco. All she wanted was for her mother to reach out and hug her. Please…
Her mouth like cotton, she searched for the right words. “I…I need to come home, Mom…just for a little bit,” she added because she thought it might make a difference if her mother understood she didn’t expect any long-term help. Just a place to stay and some kind of welcome until she could find a job that wouldn’t require her to be on her feet.
“Oh, now you want to come home,” her mother replied.
“I know you’re angry—”
“Andy called here looking for you,” she interrupted.
“He did?”
“He told us you never got married.” She folded her arms and leaned against the lintel. “Is that true?”
“Yes, but only because—”
“He also said you’re five months pregnant.”
Instinctively Katie’s hand went to her abdomen. She hadn’t gained any weight yet, so the pregnancy wasn’t apparent, especially in Andy’s baggy sweatshirt. “It—it wasn’t something I planned. But once it happened, I thought maybe Andy would—”
Her mother put up a hand to stop her. “I don’t want to hear it. I raised you better than this, Katie Lynne Rogers. You used to be a good girl, the sweetest there was.”
Katie tried not to blanch as her mother’s rejection lashed a part of her that was already terribly raw. “I’m still the same person, Mom.”
“No, you’re not the girl I knew.”
Katie didn’t know how to combat such a statement, so she switched topics. “Andy had no right to tell you anything. He’s the one who—”
“He’s a bum, just like we said. Right?”
Andy was handsome and debonair. He certainly looked like a stand-up guy. But he was full of empty promises and false apologies. She couldn’t refute that, either, so she nodded.
“We tried to tell you,” Tami went on. “But you wouldn’t listen. Now you’ve made your bed, I guess you can sleep in it.”
The door closed with a decisive click.
Katie blinked at the solid wood panel, feeling numb, incredulous. Home was the place that had to take you in, right? She’d hung on to that thought for miles and miles. She didn’t have anywhere else to go. She’d spent nearly every dime she possessed reaching Dundee.
She considered the last twenty bucks in her wallet and knew it wouldn’t be enough to get a room. She couldn’t even walk back to town, where there was a motel, without risking the baby.
Slowly it dawned on her that Booker hadn’t pulled away from the curb. Which meant he’d probably heard the whole thing.
Embarrassment so powerful it hurt swept through her as she turned. Sure enough, he was standing at the end of the walk, leaning against his truck with the rain dripping off him, staring at her with those shiny black eyes of his.
His learning about the baby this way, seeing what Andy had reduced her to—it was more humiliating than Katie could’ve imagined. She’d broken off her relationship with Booker because she’d wanted more than he could give her. And here she was….
A lump formed in her throat and her eyes began to burn. But she had a few shreds of pride left.
Bending, she picked up her small suitcase. She couldn’t lift the large one. It was too heavy to carry with any dignity, and she wouldn’t get far trying to drag it. So she sucked in a quick, ragged breath in an effort to hold herself together a little longer, threw back her shoulders and started down the street.
She didn’t know where she was going. But at the moment, anywhere was better than here.
CHAPTER TWO
BOOKER COULDN’T BELIEVE what he’d just heard. Katie wasn’t only down on her luck, she was pregnant. Andy Bray, that sorry son of a bitch who’d come through town bragging about everything he was and everything he was going to be, when he wasn’t anything at all, had gotten her pregnant and left her to cope on her own.
Booker longed to make Andy pay for what he’d done. Then he reminded himself that he had no stake in Katie’s life. He might have loved her once, but she’d chosen someone else. Someone with all the trappings of respectability—the preppy clothes, the supportive family, the college degree. That removed Booker from the picture completely. He should head over to the Honky Tonk, he told himself, and forget he’d ever seen her.
Climbing into his truck, he decided to do exactly that. But that damn suitcase sitting alone on the front porch nagged at him. Surely Tami Rogers would change her mind and take her daughter in. Any moment now, the door would open and some member of the family, Katie’s little brother perhaps, would go after her.
Booker waited, but the door didn’t open. Lightning darted across the sky, thunder boomed in the distance, and the wind rose before Tami so much as peeked out a window. Booker felt a moment of hope when he saw her glance furtively into the street. But when she realized he was still there, she jerked the curtains shut.
“She’s not my problem,” he finally muttered, punching the gas pedal. But he didn’t get farther than half a block before Katie’s parting words came back to him: Haven’t you ever done anything you regret?
He’d done plenty of things. He’d been so angry as a kid that he’d been kicked out of more schools than he could remember. He’d put a guy in the hospital simply for looking at him the wrong way. He’d spent two years in a jail cell for stealing a car he didn’t want in the first place. When he reflected on everything he’d felt and done before the age of twenty-five, he knew it was a miracle he’d ever reached thirty. If not for his grandmother, he might never have turned his life around.
In his rearview mirror, he watched Katie round the corner at the end of the street. With her wet clothing and sandals, she had to be freezing. And she was pregnant.
Slamming on his brakes, he spun around and pulled into the driveway of the Rogers house. He retrieved Katie’s suitcase, then rocketed down the street.
KATIE HEARD BOOKER’S truck coming up from behind and instantly improved her posture. She hadn’t managed to hold back her tears for long, but with the rain she doubted he’d notice.
He slowed as he drew parallel, and shoved open the passenger door. “Get in!”
She refused to look at him. She had to live with what she’d made of her life, but she didn’t have to show Booker her pain. “Go away.”
“I’ll put you up for a few nights until you can work things out with your folks,” he hollered. “Just get in before you catch pneumonia.”
“I’ll be fine,” she replied. But she didn’t feel fine. She felt sick at heart and angry and ashamed….
“Where are you planning to go?” he asked. “It’s after eleven o’clock.”
She didn’t answer because she didn’t know. She had friends in town, people she’d grown up with, gone to school with, worked with at the Hair and Now. She was sure someone would take her in for a night or two. But asking wouldn’t be easy when she hadn’t been in touch with anyone since she’d left—except her best friend Wanda, who’d married and moved to Wyoming.
“It’s going to start snowing soon,” Booker added.
“I realize that.”
“You’ll ruin your sandals.”
“They’re already ruined.” Everything was ruined and had been for a long time. The sandals were just the last to go.
Booker gunned the engine. The truck lurched forward but came to a squealing sto
p right in front of her. Leaving his door open despite the rain, he got out and walked over to confront her. “Give me your suitcase.”
She held her suitcase away from him, but he caught her hand and relieved her of it. Then they stood facing each other in the pouring rain and, as Katie gazed up at him, she was suddenly so hungry for one of his rare smiles she could have cried for that alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
The harshness in his face eased. “We’ve all done things we regret,” he said, and loaded her suitcase into the truck.
THE OLD HATFIELD PLACE hadn’t changed much. Booker went for a towel as Katie stood dripping in the mudroom off the back, remembering the woman who’d lived here, alone for the most part, for so many years. Hatty had been a fixture in Dundee for Katie’s entire life. She might have had blue-gray hair and looked as fragile as a bird, but she was more headstrong than anyone Katie had ever met. Hatty generally wore bright-red lipstick and a red suit to match, drove a giant Buick—if one could call what she did behind the wheel driving—and had a no-nonsense approach to everyone and everything.
But Hatty was gone now. She’d died just before Katie left. Katie had been so intent on getting away that she hadn’t given Hatty’s passing much thought. But she knew Hatty’s death must have hit Booker hard.
“Here,” Booker said, returning with a plush burgundy towel and a pair of sweats. He’d peeled off his own wet shirt and was wearing another simple T-shirt that stretched taut across his wide chest and showed the bottoms of the tattoos on his arms. He hadn’t bothered changing his jeans.
“I’ve got some sweats of my own,” Katie said when she realized the pair he’d handed her were probably his.
“I didn’t want to dig through your suitcase. You can give them back to me in the morning.”
He left her to dry off and went into the kitchen. Katie could hear him moving around, opening cupboards and drawers while she changed. She was still freezing and knew it would take some time to warm up, but she was glad to be out of the storm.