A Family of Her Own

by Brenda Novak

  “It’s true.”

  She sprayed his hair some more because it wasn’t wet enough.

  “He’s in town, you know,” he said after a few seconds.

  “That’s what I’ve been told.” She let his hair slide through two of her fingers as she checked to make sure it was even.

  “You haven’t heard from him?”

  “Not yet.” She clipped his hair a little shorter on the left side, where it seemed slightly longer than it should be.

  “Would you ever go back to him?”

  “Would ‘absolutely not’ be too strong a response?”

  He chuckled. “What about the baby?”

  She shook her head but kept cutting. “I’m doing the baby a favor, believe me.”

  “It was that bad, huh?”

  “I should’ve come home a long time ago. Then I wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  “Aren’t you excited about having a child?”

  Katie plugged in her electric razor and started trimming his neckline and sideburns. “In some ways,” she said. If she wasn’t excited, it was only because she felt such a tremendous desperation, felt such responsibility to make the right choice for her child. If things were different, if she and Andy could’ve made a life together, she’d be thrilled to have a baby. It wasn’t as though she was sixteen—she was twenty-five.

  She turned off the razor and set it aside. “Do you know if…if Josh and Rebecca have had any luck…you know, getting pregnant?”

  He seemed taken aback by her change of topic. “Not yet. I think they’re planning to try some alternatives.”

  She removed the cape from around his neck and shook the hair onto the floor, where she could sweep it up. If Josh and Rebecca were looking into alternatives, adoption was definitely one of those…. “Do you think they might be interested in adopting my baby, Mike?” she asked softly.

  Mike held her gaze for several seconds. “Are you serious, Kate?”

  “I haven’t made any firm decisions, but I’m definitely considering it.” She swallowed against the lump that suddenly threatened to choke her and resisted the impulse to put a protective hand over her belly. “I just have so little to give this baby. And they…” Her voice failed her. She covered her face so he wouldn’t see the tears filling her eyes.

  Standing, he pulled her hands away and tilted her chin up so she had to look at him. “Katie, it won’t always be this bad.”

  “I believe that, Mike. I’m really going to do well at my new business. If only I can get through the here and now….”

  “You’ll get through it. Give yourself time and keep plodding along. Things will improve.”

  “I only have a few more months before the baby arrives.”

  “Then accept some help. You can always repay folks later. I admire your independence, but I don’t want to see you make a decision you may regret for the rest of your life.”

  Frustrated by her emotion, she wiped away her tears. “I knew there was a reason I had a crush on you,” she said with a short laugh to lighten the mood.

  He didn’t look the least bit surprised by her confession and, no doubt, he wasn’t. He couldn’t have missed the way she’d followed him around like a lovesick puppy for so many years.

  With a grin, he retrieved his wallet to pay her, but she shook her head.

  “No, I won’t accept your money.”

  “Katie—”

  “I need to feel I still have something to contribute to the world around me. I know that sounds crazy, but there it is.”

  She could tell he didn’t want to take no for an answer, but he finally put his money away. “Can I buy you dinner Friday night, then?” he asked.

  “You let me move in here on a trade. You’re lending me a car—”

  “And you’re going to design me the best damn Web site on the Internet, remember? Don’t undervalue your services. Besides, it’s only dinner.”

  She smiled. She knew Mike well enough to realize he wasn’t offering her anything more than friendship—but a friend happened to be exactly what she needed at the moment. “Sounds like fun,” she said.

  AS SOON AS MIKE LEFT, Katie decided to go to bed. There wasn’t anything on television, she didn’t want to look at her baby books because she felt like crying every time she did, and she couldn’t help wondering what Booker was doing. Was he with Ashleigh? Was he at the Honky Tonk? It was Saturday night. He could be either place….

  Rolling over in bed, she glanced at the keys Mike had given her, fighting the temptation to get up and drive through town, just to see if she could spot Booker’s truck. She’d told herself when she accepted Mike’s pickup that she’d only use it in case of emergency, but the longer she lay awake staring at the ceiling, the more of an emergency finding Booker seemed to be.

  She wasn’t going to town, she decided. For her, Booker was trouble.

  But when she closed her eyes, she remembered there were other sides of Booker that were far from trouble—for anyone. He’d given Delbert a home, a job, friendship. He’d gone to jail trying to protect him. He’d taken her in, even though she’d walked out on him two years ago….

  She stared at the simple white phone next to her bed. She could call the farmhouse under the guise of looking for something she thought she’d left behind, just to see where he was or, better yet, hear his voice.

  No! She fought with the covers twisted around her legs until she straightened them out, then ordered herself to sleep. But a minute later she sat up, grabbed the phone and called Booker.

  “Hi, Katie.”

  Delbert had answered. Katie smiled, feeling even more melancholy. “Hi, Delbert. How are you?”

  “Not good, Katie.”

  Katie blinked in surprise. Delbert was almost always happy—at least he acted as if he was. “What’s wrong?”

  “Booker burned dinner. He threw it in the garbage, Katie. In the garbage. The whole dinner. And the pan. It’s all gone.”

  “It must have been ruined, Delbert. Did you get something else to eat?”

  “We went to the diner.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Booker’s angry, Katie. I know he’s angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you left us. He doesn’t like it. I know.”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with me,” she said.

  There was a long pause. “So he’s angry at me?”

  Judging by the sound of Delbert’s voice, this was an even worse thought.

  “No, of course not! Booker never gets angry at you.”

  “Yeah. Booker’s my friend. But he…he won’t talk, Katie. And he keeps stomping around and stomping around. And he won’t talk. And he keeps stomping around.”

  “Let me speak to him,” she said.

  She heard a sorrowful sigh. “I can’t. He’s gone.”

  Katie immediately pictured Booker with Ashleigh and felt nauseous. “Where?” she asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

  “I don’t know. He left. He was driving real fast.”

  Katie closed her eyes, aching for Booker and wanting somehow to soothe his pain, if she could—despite what he’d done with Ashleigh. Her relationship with Booker was filled with such contradictions. Sometimes he seemed to enjoy having her at the farmhouse; sometimes he seemed to want her gone. Sometimes he treated her as though he still cared; sometimes she was sure he felt bitter and resentful. Her feelings swung in a pretty wide arc, too. But she had to remember that what she’d suffered last night was just a sampling of what she’d endure if she ever allowed herself to get seriously involved with him again. Reputations followed people around for a reason.

  “He’s just blowing off steam,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

  “I hope so, Katie.”

  “I hope so, too,” she said, because no matter how many times she tried to convince herself not to care about Booker more deeply than was wise or safe, it was too late. She was in over her head.

>   THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed quickly. Mike got her Internet service up and running on Wednesday, and she threw herself into creating a Web site for High Hill Ranch immediately afterward. Some days she was satisfied with what she could do. Other days she was frustrated by how much she had yet to learn. But overall, Mike seemed pleased with her progress, and when she looked at the High Hill site, done in green and blue with gold lettering, she felt a growing sense of pride. She’d created rollover buttons on the menu that changed colors and slid to the right, she’d made moving graphics that highlighted the more famous of the Hill brothers’ stallions, and she’d scanned and enhanced photographs of the ranch and its horses.

  Maybe she hadn’t made any decisions about her personal life, but she was earning her keep. She even enjoyed living at the ranch. Mike stopped by each evening around dinnertime. They checked over the most recent changes to the Web site, came up with ideas for improvements, scanned additional photos, or compared what she was doing to other sites already up on the Web. Sometimes they ate with the cowboys, or he took her out to dinner. Quite often they walked over to the ranch house and watched a movie.

  On Sunday, two weeks after she moved in, Mike showed up unexpectedly just after ten o’clock in the morning.

  “What do you have planned for today?” he asked as soon as she answered the door and invited him in.

  “I was just starting a new Web site.” She gestured toward her computer as she closed the door. “I’m beginning to get some business from my on-line marketing efforts.”

  He took off his hat, turning it in his hands as he held it by the brim. “What kind of efforts?”

  “Posting on loops and bulletin boards, visiting chat rooms, things like that.”

  “That’s good. But you know what they say about all work and no play. You need to get out.”

  She pushed a hand through her hair, conscious of the fact that she hadn’t showered before sitting down in front of her computer this morning. “I’ve been getting out,” she said. “You took me to McCall for dinner a few days ago, and it was great.”

  “Well, I’m taking you to breakfast today.”

  “Where?”

  “The diner.”

  The diner? Jerry’s was right across the street from Booker’s auto repair shop and, while he wasn’t technically open for business on Sundays, he often worked seven days a week. Katie hadn’t seen him since she’d moved out of his place. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to face him even now. “Looks like we got a little snow last night,” she said, nodding toward the window. “Why bother going anywhere? We might’ve missed breakfast at the ranch house, but I can make us some omelettes or pancakes right here.”

  Mike put his hat back on. “Are you still thinking about giving up the baby, Katie?”

  She nodded. “I want my child to have a complete family. It’s what I grew up with. It’s the way I was taught life should be.”

  “Then I was wondering if we could invite Josh and Rebecca to go out with us this morning.”

  Alarm raised the hair on the back of Katie’s neck. “Do they know I’m considering adoption?”

  “No, I haven’t told them. That’s up to you.” Before relief could set in, he added, “I just thought it might make the decision easier for you if you were to talk to them as prospective parents. Josh, Rebecca and I are heading to Houston tonight to take a look at a stallion that’s for sale, which would give them a chance to think about the situation.”

  “When I first mentioned that I might put the baby up for adoption, you told me you were afraid I’d regret it, Mike.”

  “I am,” he admitted. “But Josh is worried about Rebecca. She wants a baby and so far nothing seems to be working out.” He straightened his hat. “I don’t want to see you make a mistake, but now that Delaney’s pregnant again—”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  “She’s not saying much about it because Rebecca’s having such a difficult time. Anyway, I thought it might not hurt to talk to both Josh and Rebecca about other options.”

  “I’m not sure talking about it is such a good idea at this point,” Katie said. “I don’t want to get Rebecca’s hopes up before I’ve made a decision.”

  The snow he hadn’t managed to stomp off his boots melted onto the mat near her door. “She’s trying fertility drugs right now so she’s not set on adoption. I just want to introduce the subject, in case the fertility treatment doesn’t work.” He rested a hand on the door knob. “Whether she ends up adopting your baby or someone else’s, it might help her to see that there are mothers out there exactly like you who need a good home for their baby.”

  So he wanted her to show his sister-in-law that all was not lost if she couldn’t conceive, that there were other options….

  Mike had been so good to her that Katie hated to tell him no. She gazed up into his handsome face, the face she’d admired for so long, and decided to take a chance on this being the right thing. “Okay,” she said. “Give me thirty minutes to get ready.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KATIE TOYED NERVOUSLY with the Sweet’n Low packets in the middle of the table as she and Mike waited for Josh and Rebecca to join them at Jerry’s. They could’ve all ridden together. They were coming from the same place. But Katie was grateful that Mike had told his brother and sister-in-law they’d meet at the diner instead. The trip into town had given her some time to mentally prepare herself to approach Rebecca with the adoption issue.

  “You okay?” Mike said, watching her with a concerned expression.

  She cast a surreptitious glance out the window toward Booker’s shop. The garage doors were rolled up and the lights were on in his office. She’d taken note of that the moment they drove up. But she hadn’t spotted him on the way in, and now she was sitting at too much of an angle to see more than a small section of his property. “I’m fine.”

  “I guess you’ve heard about Booker,” he said, following her gaze when it returned, almost involuntarily, to the window.

  Katie’s eyes went immediately to Mike’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “He had his hearing on Friday for that fight with the Smalls.”

  “I didn’t know.” Except for her association with Mike, she’d been completely out of circulation. “How’d it go?”

  Mike stirred some more cream into his coffee. “He was fined $500 and, ‘in light of his turbulent past,’ the court mandated he attend anger management classes once a week in Boise.”

  “How do you know all this?” Katie asked.

  “Rebecca told me when I called to invite her and Josh to breakfast this morning.”

  “Did anything happen to the Smalls?”

  “No. They weren’t even cited.”

  “That’s so unfair.” She shoved the sweetener packets away. “Booker didn’t start that fight. He was only trying to protect Delbert.”

  “I believe that.”

  Katie hadn’t expected Mike’s support. “You do?”

  “I don’t really know Booker. Most people don’t. He’s not particularly trusting. But Rebecca would do anything for him. And I can tell you care about him, too. He must be a decent guy.”

  “He is.”

  Mike slid the menu the hostess had given him off to the side. “I remember seeing you and Booker around town quite often a few years ago. I thought you two were an item.”

  “I guess we were,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  Katie wasn’t sure how to explain. She’d gone over the past again and again, wondering how she’d fallen so far from where she’d always wanted to be. But even now it wasn’t easy to separate the “should haves” from the “shouldn’t haves.” Her love life at that time had been complicated. “When I met Booker, my parents and just about everyone in town warned me to stay away from him, but I still had such a crush on you. I wasn’t worried about falling in love.”

  He tipped back his hat and grinned at his part in the story, and she chuckled briefly before continuing. “A
nyway, I dated Booker sort of halfheartedly at first. But then things started to get serious. When I realized how much I was beginning to care for him, I thought I had to do something about it. I was losing my heart to an ex-con who’d never made me a single promise about anything.” Katie paused as Taylor Simpson, one of the waitresses at the diner, set glasses of water in front of them before bustling off again. “Then Andy moved in with his cousins for the summer.”

  “But Andy’s the exact opposite of Booker,” Mike said.

  “I think that’s what attracted me. I was also trying to start a singles club for the elderly over at the Elks Club, and Andy jumped right in and helped me. He was far more gregarious and demonstrative than Booker. He had a degree in communications and he was a fantastic salesman. Once he pitched in, we had no trouble raising the money we needed to refurbish the dance floor.”

  Mike took a sip of water. “So did you quit seeing Booker?”

  “Yes. I spent more and more time with Andy. He seemed so safe, you know? So close to the family man I’d been looking for—much more like you,” she said with a wry smile.

  “Only he didn’t treat you like a little sister.”

  “Definitely not. Before long, Andy was telling me he loved me and wanted to marry me. And he painted such an idyllic picture of heading to the big city for a few years before starting a family that I bought in to the whole thing.”

  “You’d think your parents would’ve been relieved you got away from Booker. But from what I’ve heard, they didn’t like Andy much better.”

  “No. They’d heard his aunt and uncle grumbling about how lazy he was and that always bothered them. They wanted to know why, if he had a degree, he was living off his family and wasting time in Dundee instead of beginning a career. But Andy was free-spirited and fun-loving, and I didn’t find it so hard to believe he’d take a break after graduating from college.”

  “How did Booker react when you broke off with him?”

  The baby kicked her, and Katie gazed down at her belly, marveling at how much bigger she’d gotten in the past two weeks. “He didn’t say much.” He’d just stared at her with those dark, inscrutable eyes, and a muscle had twitched in his cheek. Katie knew she’d never forget how he’d looked in that moment.