by Carol Finch
Although Lester wouldn’t admit it, not in a million years, he was responsible for the way his son had turned out. But that admission would force Lester to accept blame for all his shortcomings as a man, as a father. It was never going to happen because Lester couldn’t see over, around or through his inflated ego.
Squelching his bitterness and resentment, Nate nodded at the burly farmer who was sprawled carelessly in the front booth. “Hello, Lester, nice to see you again.” Head held high, Nate ambled toward the counter to order a Coke.
“Better get that drink to go,” Lester sneered. “Folks around here don’t take to fraternizing with pond scum. And that’s all you are, no matter how fancy you wrap the package.”
The self-esteem Nate had spent years cultivating wobbled on its foundations. He had convinced himself, promised himself, that he would stand firm against the anticipated ridicule. Unfortunately, his pride was taking a beating on the first official day of his return to his hometown.
“You hear what I said, boy?” Lester taunted unmercifully. “Get it to go, and don’t come back. You aren’t wanted here.”
The teenage waitress glanced uneasily at Nate as she set the soft drink on the counter. “That’ll be seventy-five cents, sir.”
“Don’t waste your breath calling him sir,” John Jessup said. “Channing doesn’t deserve consideration or respect. Just treat him like the mongrel he is.”
Nate endured the insults without flinching. He tossed two dollar bills on the counter for an extra tip, then turned to face Lester and John’s condescending glowers. He was not going to stoop to anybody’s low expectations of him ever again, he promised himself resolutely.
Although he had been in and out of enough hot water as a teenager to pass as a load of laundry and had been picked up for assault, battery and destruction of personal property, Nate had spent his adult life working toward acceptance and respectability. He had surrounded himself with symbols of power and wealth to insulate himself against inferior feelings planted by men like Lester Brown and John Jessup. But damn, standing here, confronting the unwelcoming faces from his misguided youth resurrected all those unproductive feelings he thought he’d overcome.
Nate knew the folks in Coyote Flats were still seeing and judging him by his parentage and his past mistakes. They were not prepared to accept him for the solid citizen he had become, for the dramatic attitude adjustments he’d made. To these people, he was the same as he had been sixteen years ago, the same wayward youth who’d gone bad.
You can’t go home again…
The negative thought skittered through his mind, but Nate rejected it, even while he was being judged and rejected. Somehow, he would earn the trust and respect of these dogmatic folks in this dying Texas town. He would not let them get the better of him, and he would give them no reason whatsoever to compare him to the troubled, hurt, neglected kid he had once been.
Clinging to his battered pride, Nate exited the café, feeling the condescending gazes stabbing him in the back. The minute he stepped outside, he realized he had been holding his breath. He exhaled slowly, congratulating himself for passing the first of what he predicted would be many tests of self-control and character. He hadn’t lowered himself to Lester Brown and John Jessup’s rude, disrespectful level. He had been polite, not belligerent. He had treated the men with courtesy, even though it hadn’t been reciprocated.
Nate’s tension ebbed and an amused smile pursed his lips when he noticed that Millie Kendrick was waddling toward him. Leaning on a grocery cart for support, Millie toddled across the town square, which was surrounded by shade trees. She circled around the fountain where a statue of a coyote sat on a rock, its concrete head thrown back in an eternal howl.
Millie and her shopping cart had logged many a mile on these streets, he recalled. The old woman looked exactly as Nate remembered her. Millie was dressed in her usual attire of a flowery cotton smock and tattered straw hat that was adorned with plastic bluebirds, cardinals and sunflowers she had glued to the floppy brim. Folks in Coyote Flats claimed Millie was touched in the head, that she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. But nonetheless, folks tolerated her presence in town.
Unfortunately, the citizens of Coyote Flats had zero tolerance for Nate Channing—the hoodlum who had bad blood pumping through his veins. Nate, they had concluded, would never overcome his lowly raising. He was destined for trouble.
Millie halted ten feet away from Nate, propped her elbows on her shopping cart, then angled her head to look him up and down—twice.
“Nate Channing, ain’t it?” she panted, out of breath from her long hike.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said politely.
“Didja come back to kick some butt?”
Nate met the spry old woman’s mischievous grin and felt himself relax for the first time all day. Millie was one of the few people in his hometown who had ever bothered to give him the time of day.
“No, ma’am,” Nate replied. “I gave up on kicking butt and taking names years ago. It just never seemed to do much good.”
She appraised his appearance carefully, then said, “Pretty fancy duds for a kid from the poor side of town. Didja steal ’em?”
“No, ma’am. Paid in cash,” he assured her, smiling in response to her gruff, no-nonsense interrogation.
“Turned out all right then, did you?” She pushed herself upright and gripped the handle of her grocery cart. “Glad to see it. Figured you would, though. What he did to you wasn’t fair, not fair at all.” When she shook her frizzy gray head, the plastic birds wobbled on the brim of her hat. “Tried to tell him so, I did. But the old fool wouldn’t listen to me. Nobody ever listens to me.”
Befuddled, Nate watched Millie shove off to the mom-andpop grocery store. She was still mumbling to herself when she crossed the street.
Nate had no idea what Millie meant by her parting remarks, and he didn’t have time to stand around woolgathering. The heartbreaking sight of Katy Bates compelled him down the street. Nate damn well intended to confront Katy again, away from the prying eyes of his local hate club—of which Brown and Jessup had elected themselves president and vice president.
Nate made a beeline for the library. Katy Bates was one of the three reasons he had returned to Coyote Flats. After encountering her at the café, she had been elevated to the top of Nate’s priority list. If Katy thought she could duck and run away from him, she thought wrong. Their brief reunion had prompted a hundred questions, and Nate wanted answers—now.
Coyote Library sat a block north of Main Street. As Nate recalled, the small hole-in-the-wall structure had once housed a sleazy bar. The establishment was crying out for a coat of paint, and Nate suspected the town hadn’t allocated much in the way of funds to keep the library up-to-date.
The instant Nate stepped inside the building, his speculations were confirmed. Unstained plywood shelves lined the main room. The floor was covered with vintage, gray-speckled linoleum left over from the days when tavern-goers boot-scooted to the strains of country music. Stains on the ceiling tile indicated there were a half-dozen leaks in the roof. The scarred wooden bar now served as the library counter. An outdated copy machine sat in the corner, and picnic tables and benches lined the walls.
Although the public library was neat and clean, the atmosphere was gloomy. Faulty fluorescent lights—that would drive Nate nuts if he had to spend the day working beneath them—flickered down on him.
This was Katy’s world, Nate realized with a sense of shock and dismay. He took another assessing appraisal of the place and found it sorely lacking. This library was nothing compared to his ultramodern office in Odessa.
“May I help you?”
Nate glanced at the teenage girl who had her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She smiled at him, displaying the braces on her teeth. Something about her reminded him of the visual image of Katy that he had carried around in his head. There was a noticeable family resemblance….
My God…was this K
aty’s daughter? Could this girl have been Nate’s daughter…?
The startling possibility made his knees wobble.
“Were you looking for a particular kind of book, sir?” Tammy Bates asked helpfully.
Nate flashed his best smile. “No, I would like to speak with Katy, please.”
The girl hitched her thumb over her shoulder. “Katy is in her office. You can go on back if you like.”
Nate zigzagged around the picnic tables—for God’s sake!—that accommodated patrons who wanted to sit down and thumb through the limited supply of books on the shelves.
Nate was granted the opportunity to observe Katy unaware while she sat in profound concentration at her outdated computer, which looked exactly like the one Nate had pitched from his office eight years earlier so he could upgrade his equipment. Katy’s shoulders were hunched the same way they had been when he encountered her at the café.
What the sweet loving hell had happened to that bubbly teenager he had fallen head over heels in love with all those years ago? Katy had been spirited and enthusiastic. A vivacious cheerleader. A snappy dresser with a dazzling smile. Katy had been the heartthrob of every male in town—Nate included.
Pity and disappointment slammed through Nate as he stared at this new and dramatically different Katy. While he had scratched and clawed to make something of himself, desperate and determined to rise above his miserable raising, hell-bent on making a triumphant return to this crummy little spot-on-the-road town, Katy had been backsliding.
What life-altering incident had broken her spirit, made her coil in on herself, as if she had all but given up on life?
God, seeing the hunch-shouldered woman with her downcast head and unsmiling face was agonizing for Nate. He had wanted to return to find Katy exactly as she had been—full of life, the picture of innocence and hope.
Ah, how many times had she delivered pep talks to him, assuring him that he could become anything he wanted, that he shouldn’t let the stigma attached to his name get him down? She had believed in him when no one else saw the slightest potential. She had encouraged him when everyone else wrote him off as No-Account Nate who was destined for welfare checks and stints in prison.
“Katy?” he murmured, trying not to startle her as badly as he had at the restaurant.
She instantly flinched, then swiveled her head around to stare at him. Her huge blue eyes—eyes that he’d drowned in a thousand times as a kid—widened in surprise. She sat rigidly at the computer, her fingers frozen on the keyboard. Two lines of Ks bleeped across the monitor.
Nate tossed her a grin. “You might want to ease your finger off the letter K, unless you plan to print out an entire page of them.”
“Oh.” She snatched her hand off the keyboard, as if she’d been snake-bitten, then stared at her lap, not him.
The fact that she refused to make eye contact for more than a split second annoyed and confused Nate. Sixteen years of separation and all she could think to say to him was oh? Nate’s expectations of their reunion had been exceedingly high, he was the first to admit. But as far as reunions went, this one was the absolute pits.
The truth was that Nate had visions of Katy bounding from her vinyl chair—which was wrapped in duct tape to prevent the padding from sticking out—and launching herself into his arms to shower him with welcoming kisses.
So much for fantasy. This encounter was as huge a disappointment as the one in the restaurant.
Katy silently cursed the fact that Nate had tracked her down. She was thoroughly embarrassed and humiliated to have him see her at her worst. She looked like a blob of lime gelatin quivering on her chair, while he appeared dashing and vital and alive.
Why wouldn’t he go away and leave her to her misery? It was killing her to know she had made nothing of her life and that he had taken the world by the tail and given it a whirl. She was delighted for him, of course, had always known that he was teeming with potential, if only someone would give him a chance to make a fresh start.
She, on the other hand, had spiraled downhill, landed hard and never recovered. For two young kids who had made an emotional connection sixteen years ago, they had certainly ended up on opposite ends of the spectrum.
“Talk to me,” he urged as he strode forward. “What happened to you, Kat?”
He filled her cubicle office with a strength and vitality that had become a distant memory to Katy. Heavens, she couldn’t remember what spirit and enthusiasm meant these days, without looking them up in the dictionary.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked with cool reserve. “If you need reference books, Tammy can help you at the front desk. I’m very busy, Nate. I’m typing a letter to the city council to request funds so I can afford to order more books and retain Tammy as my part-time employee.”
“We haven’t seen each other in sixteen years and all you can say is, ‘I’m busy’?” Nate asked. His gaze bore into her with such intensity that she looked the other way. “No one else in this town is thrilled to see me. I didn’t expect anything from them, but I guess I expected something more from you.”
His voice rumbled with anger and Katy reflexively shrank away. When he abruptly jerked up his hand to rake it through that shiny crop of coal-black hair, Katy embarrassed herself by ducking and flinching. Oh, God, now he would know for sure that she was a sniveling little coward who was afraid of her own shadow.
Nate froze to the spot when he witnessed Katy’s instantaneous reaction to his exasperated tone and sudden movement. It didn’t take a genius to realize she had suffered from physical abuse. She reminded him so much of Taz, the mutt that he had taken into his home. The poor animal had been starved and kicked around by its previous owners. Taz tucked his tail between its legs and slunk from the room when Nate raised his voice. The mutt had seemed the perfect pet for a man who shared the same lowly breeding, and Nate had developed a natural affinity to underdogs in this world, because he’d been one for more than half his life.
Katy, he suspected, had been struck and browbeaten until she had all but given up on hope and happiness. It was there in the desolate expression in those beautiful blue eyes, the lines of grim acceptance that bracketed her mouth, in her braced posture.
My God, she behaved as if she expected him to storm over to her desk and backhand her! She should remember that he had never laid a hand on her, should know that he would never lay a hand on her.
Dear God in heaven, who had done this to her? Who had reduced her to an insecure, fearful, shrinking violet of a female?
Tears welled up in Katy’s eyes when she saw that look of sympathy cross Nate’s ruggedly handsome face. It was killing her, inch by anguishing inch, for him to see what she had become. For every positive step Nate had taken toward his future, she had taken two crawdad shuffles backward.
“Please leave, Nate,” she whispered brokenly. “We have nothing in common anymore, except that we grew up in the same hometown. But know this…” Katy inhaled a deep breath and forced herself to meet his sympathetic gaze—at least she did for a few seconds before glancing at the air over his head. “I’m very proud of you. I admire you for turning your life around. I wish all the best for you. Never doubt that.”
She spun around in her chair to delete the two lines of Ks, then continued typing her letter, praying he would take the cue and beat a hasty retreat from her office before she broke down and blubbered.
He didn’t budge from the spot.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve carried your memory around with me, heard the words of encouragement you offered me when times were so bad I could barely tolerate them? You inspired me to make something of myself.
“Sheriff Havern gave me the chance that no one else in this town was willing to give me. I have you and Havern to thank for turning my life around. I’m not going to turn my back on you, Katy Marie Bates, you can count on it. And you know damned good and well that I never broke a promise to you. I’m sure as hell not about to start now!”
When Nate finally turned around and walked away, Katy slumped over the keyboard. Nate had no idea how hard these past sixteen years had been on her. He refused to admit that the girl he remembered no longer existed. But Katy knew that enthusiastic teenager had not survived. That vibrant young woman was nothing more than a distant memory who lived in the past.
Overwhelmed by emotion, Katy did the very thing she promised herself she wouldn’t do. She broke down and bawled her head off, just like the weak coward she was.
Chapter Two
Nate shot through the library and stormed down the street. If Katy didn’t have the courage to tell him what—or who—had broken her spirit and made her give up so completely on herself, the former sheriff of Coyote County would. Fuzz Havern was another reason Nate was back in town, and Fuzz was going to help Nate understand what had turned his sweet, adorable Katy into a pitiful, drab-looking librarian who holed herself up in an office, surrounded by books.
He suspected that she had become content to live through the pages of all those books, watching the dreams of fictitious characters come true because her own dreams had fallen short. Those damn books had become her world, her only reality.
Well, Katy Marie Bates had another thing coming if she thought Nate was going to let her continue on the pathetic course she was on! He owed her more than he could possibly repay, but that wasn’t going to stop him from doing whatever was necessary to help Katy.
Nate pounded the pavement to reach his car, totally ignoring Lester Brown and John Jessup, who had moseyed from the café to monitor his activities like a couple of tails staking out a known criminal.
“Been to the library, I see,” Lester taunted. “Bet it’s the first time you’ve set foot inside one, isn’t it?” He flicked his thick wrist as Nate walked by without breaking stride or acknowledging his presence. “Atta boy, Nate. Climb back in that fancy-schmancy car and hightail it out of Coyote Flats. You’re the reason my boy turned sour, and I don’t need any reminders of that. Sonny was a good kid until you poisoned him with your bad blood. Get the hell out of here and don’t come back!” he all but shouted at Nate’s departing back.