by Carol Finch
Time spun backward, halting on one of those nights he remembered as a frustrated teenager. He’d gone to meet Katy, deciding to call it off because her father had ordered him to keep his distance, insisting that he wasn’t fit to associate with her. Katy had told him that he was the only boy she wanted to be with, needed to be with. She had built his confidence, held him and convinced him that he mattered to her, that he was somebody special….
Suddenly, Katy was touching him intimately, and Nate lost himself in the magic Katy spun around him. He felt like a swimmer going down for the third time, and he didn’t care if he ever came up for a breath of air. Katy’s arousing touch was more than enough to sustain him.
When Nate reached for her, Katy stilled his hands. “Tonight I intend to seduce you and return the pleasure you gave me when we first made love. But when you touch me I forget how to think, so don’t distract me, sugar.”
“Katy, you don’t—”
“Ah, but I do,” she contradicted as her lips coasted down the column of his neck. “I have to, because pleasuring you gives me pleasure, too.”
Nate’s body constricted with need when her petal-soft lips drifted over the padded muscles of his chest. Sensual lightning speared through him, intensifying his ravenous hunger for her. When her hand trailed around the band of his jeans to ease down his zipper, Nate forgot to breathe, couldn’t think of one good reason why he needed to.
His legs wobbled unsteadily when she pushed down his jeans and left him standing in a pool of denim—and bubbling with desire.
When Katy gently cupped him through the fabric of his briefs, stroking the hard length of him, Nate felt the floor shift beneath his feet. He was trembling in an effort to maintain his balance, shaking with profound need.
A tormented groan rumbled around in his throat when Katy trailed tantalizing kisses along the wedge of hair on his chest. Nate clenched his teeth to keep from moaning when she knelt before him to slowly, evocatively remove the fabric that separated his aching flesh from her moist lips.
Her butterfly kisses fluttered over him while her hands drifted from thigh to ankle. Nate quivered helplessly when she measured him from base to tip with her tongue. With each erotic kiss and caress, pleasure burgeoned inside him. When she took him into her mouth, nipping gently with her teeth and teasing him with that wicked tongue, sharp talons of desire raked over him.
Nate wheezed as he braced his hand against the wall for support. “You trying to kill me or something?”
“Or something,” she teased impishly. “Is it working?”
“Mmm,” Nate rasped hoarsely. “I—”
His voice shattered when she nuzzled her cheek against the sensitive skin of his thigh, then stroked him until he gasped in barely controlled restraint.
A silvery drop of need betrayed his attempt to hold himself in check. He reached out with his free hand to cup her chin, trying to discourage her from plying him with more exquisitely tender torture, but Katy refused to be restrained. Her lips and fingertips brushed over his rigid length again and again. She tasted his need for her, suckled him gently, caressed him until his lungs shuddered in an attempt to draw air. Maddening pleasure buffeted him, threatening to knock him to his knees.
“Katy…stop,” he groaned in unholy torment.
She ignored him. She drew his hand along with hers as she touched him intimately. Nate nearly went out of his mind. The gentle pressure of her warm lips, the brush of her tongue and fingertips sent white-hot flames racing through him. She was melting him down to liquid fire, and he swore he was going to erupt like a volcano if she didn’t stop what she was doing to him.
“Katy…” Nate wheezed when bulletlike sensations overwhelmed him. He needed her now—a minute earlier would have been even better! “Katy…!”
He didn’t remember how he’d gotten Katy’s clothes off so quickly—didn’t really care. All he knew was that they were on the sofa, naked in each other’s arms, panting to draw breath while a multitude of hungry sensations descended on them. Lights from the big-screen TV flashed across their joined bodies as he buried himself deeper and deeper with each desperate thrust that sent him into wild, reckless abandon. He knew he was moving too fast, must have deprived Katy of the pleasure he wanted to offer her, but she had taken him too far past the point of self-control. With a tormented cry of ineffable pleasure, Nate clutched Katy to him and felt his need for her explode…then burn down the night in a holocaust of fiery flames….
“Well, darn it,” Katy muttered a long while later, when she could finally think straight. “I remembered to bring protection, and then I forgot to use it.”
“Katy, we need to talk about that,” Nate said huskily, easing down beside her on the sofa.
Katy didn’t want to discuss it because she was prepared to accept responsibility if consequences arose. Furthermore, she wasn’t sure this was the night to look too far into the future. Tonight, Nate needed to regain confidence in himself. This wasn’t about tomorrow or nine months from tomorrow. It was here and now.
“You want to sit around chitchatting while my expensive new bathing suit goes to waste? No way, buster. The thing makes me look like Dolly Parton. You wanna pass up something like that?”
“Well no, not if you’ve fussed,” Nate said, chuckling. “You win, Boom-Boom Bates. I’ll meet you at the pool in a few minutes.”
She winked saucily. “Okay, tiger, but don’t bother dragging out a swimsuit on my account. I wasn’t planning on either of us wearing a suit for too long, anyway.”
Nate came to his feet, profiled by the strobelike lights from the TV. Lord, he was magnificent. He had a body like an Olympic athlete and a smile that beguiled.
“I’ll bring the wine,” Katy said, rising to her feet.
“I’ll bring the glasses,” Nate volunteered, then let his gaze glide possessively over her. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Make it four or you’ll miss the Dolly Parton look-alike fashion show.”
He grinned at her. “I’m definitely there, darlin’. Four minutes flat.”
Katy scurried into the bathroom to don her suit. She surveyed her reflection in the mirror, assured that the push-’em-up-so-he-won’t-fail-to-notice halter top displayed her feminine assets to their best advantage.
The thong didn’t cover much skin and revealed the unsightly scars, but Katy had gotten over feeling self-conscious about it. Nate had assured her that the patches of slick, discolored skin on her hip and thigh didn’t bother him. Because of Nate, she was okay with it. Because of him, she was finally content with herself. She was no longer a victim of her hellish past. She was alive and free and unrestrained in her emotions. She was never going back to that self-imposed shell where she’d hidden out for a dozen years.
Katy sauntered to the indoor pool and struck a provocative pose in a cushioned lawn chair. When Nate arrived, wearing a skin-tight black suit that indicated he was still eager, willing and aroused, Katy grinned mischievously. She came to her feet, strutted her stuff, then struck another eye-catching pose.
“Well, hello, Dolly.” Nate leered outrageously at her. “That suit is everything you claimed it would be. Your future clients will definitely get their money’s worth with you.”
Katy preened playfully, as if posing for a photo session for the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. Nate threw back his head and howled at the moon.
Giggling like a couple of silly teenagers, Nate and Katy made out in the lawn chairs, then skinny-dipped in the pool.
Katy couldn’t remember spending a more carefree, enjoyable evening. There were just the two of them wrapped in the gentle rush of water, the echo of murmured voices, the sensual glide of their bodies.
Nate made love to her in the water, as if he had all the time in the world. He discovered each place she liked to be touched, brought her to the brink of mindless abandon, then drew her back from the edge to arouse her again…and again. And when he came to her, standing four feet deep in water, wrapping
her legs around his hips and setting the rhythmic cadence of passion, Katy cried out in shimmering pleasure—and he answered as they tumbled into ecstasy together.
A pack of coyotes yipped as they loped across the pasture, then the sounds died into silence. Nestled in Nate’s arms, Katy pressed a feathery kiss to his lips.
“You know I’ve always loved you, Nate,” she whispered. “It was the one thing that kept me sane all those years. I’ll go on loving you until I breathe my last breath. You are everything I’ve conjured up as the perfect man. You’re considerate, generous, dedicated to your causes, an unsung hero.”
She cupped his face in her hands and stared deeply into his obsidian eyes. “Unconditional love, Nate, the kind without boundaries and limitations. I will always be here for you, just as you have been here to bring me back to life. Don’t ever give up on yourself,” she implored him. “Don’t ever give up the fight, because goodness is on your side. No one around here is half the man you are. Believe that. I do, because it’s true.”
And then she kissed him with all her heart and soul, with all that she was. She offered him her encouragement, her strength and her support. Then she untangled herself from his arms, kissed him good-night and glided away to retrieve her clothes. She left him there with the assurance that even when his spirits hit rock bottom there was someone who believed in him, someone who cared about him—for who and what he was.
Nate watched Katy evaporate into the shadows like a fading fantasy. Silence descended, but this time it wasn’t the lonely kind of silence that had hounded him most of the evening. The night was filled with the promise that he would never truly be alone, that he was wanted and appreciated, and that his efforts weren’t in vain.
Because Katy inspired Nate not to break stride, he drove off the following morning, intent on his destination. While Lester Brown was sprawled in his favorite booth at the Coyote Café, sipping coffee and shooting off his mouth, Nate was at the trashy farmhouse, armed with paint, garbage bags and a crew of teenagers who assisted him. Nate had decided to defy Lester’s cruel taunts and follow Katy’s suggestion of plotting a humdinger murder.
And that is exactly what Nate did. He killed Lester Brown with kindness.
He cleaned up the lawn, and painted and repaired the house so thoroughly that Lester barely recognized the place when he got home.
To Katy’s amusement, she heard about Nate’s good deed, right from the old coot’s mouth. Lester was ranting and raving at the café when Katy arrived for lunch Monday morning. Lester was carrying on about how Nate and his hoodlums had sneaked out to whitewash his house and spiff up the yard without permission. Lester was threatening to call Sheriff Peterson to arrest Nate for trespassing.
“You mean to say the very man you have bad-mouthed did what you are too lazy to do?” Katy asked him, right to his face. “Nate cleaned up that eyesore by the highway? My goodness, what a wonderfully generous thing for Nate to do.” Katy glanced at the patrons in the restaurant. “It kind of makes me ashamed that none of the rest of us thought to make that generous gesture. How about y’all?”
The patrons hesitated, then nodded their heads.
“None of us pitched in to paint the other seven houses Nate and his crew tidied up, either, did we?”
Another round of bobbing heads.
“We haven’t reached out to our fellow men as we should have, have we?” Katy continued. “There are underprivileged children in town who live a hand-to-mouth existence, and we have looked right past them. We shake our heads and say, ‘Gee, that’s too bad.’ But Nate Channing is doing something about the problems we face here. He dipped into his personal funds to beautify this town and make it a better place to live and raise children. I think he should be applauded, not condemned for it.”
On that parting remark Katy sailed out the door. Let Loudmouth Lester refute what she’d said. If he tried, he would come off sounding exactly like the jerk he was.
Katy was still operating on an adrenaline high when she returned to the library. Throughout the day she continued her campaign to see Nate elected Citizen of the Year. Each time someone entered the library she sang Nate’s praises for the computers, tables and fresh coat of paint. She was determined to counter every word of Lester’s bad publicity, notifying everyone she came in contact with of the truth about Nate’s civic-minded efforts.
If nothing else, the folks in Coyote Flats were going to hear both sides of the story. Given the facts, maybe people would realize they hadn’t treated Nate fairly.
Shortly before five o’clock, Chad Parker burst into the library, his eyes wide with alarm, his face white as yogurt. “Katy, come quick!” he said, panting for breath. “Nate had an accident!”
“Oh, God!” Katy was on her feet in a single bound. She grabbed her purse and shot toward the door with fiendish haste. “Tammy, close up for me. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
Katy took the steps two at a time to reach her car. Chad flounced on the passenger seat, cursing under his breath.
“What the blazes happened? Where’s Nate?” she asked anxiously.
“He’s at Jake Randolph’s house,” Chad muttered. “We got permission from Jake’s mom to paint the house. She picked sunshine yellow. Then Jake’s dad came staggering out the door, bellowing like a moose, ordering all us boys off the property. Nate was on the ladder—”
Visualizing the worst, Katy’s heart dropped to her ankles.
“—because he volunteered to paint the high peak so none of us guys would have to risk falling. Nate said his life insurance and health insurance were all paid up so he was the most likely candidate for the job,” Chad continued shakily. “When Jake’s old man started cursing at us, Nate tried to explain that we were donating our time and supplies for the project. But Jake’s dad was drunk out of his gourd, and there was no reasoning with him. He let out a roar, then shoved the ladder sideways.”
Katy clamped her fists on the steering wheel and accelerated. If Nate had been permanently paralyzed, she was going to take that crazy drunk apart like a jigsaw puzzle.
“Nate fell into a tree, then catapulted to the ground. He’s hurt pretty bad,” Chad diagnosed. “He just laid there gasping for breath. Then Jake went berserk. He lowered his head and plowed into his old man’s belly and knocked him to the ground. Jake was throwing punches and yelling about how the old man wasn’t going to hurt anybody else ever again. We pulled Jake off when his old man passed out.
“But that stupid Lester Brown was standing across the street, carrying on about how the whole lot of white trash on the wrong side of the tracks was getting what we deserved.”
“Chad, do you think your mother would let Jake spend the night with you?” Katy asked. “I don’t think Jake should be near his dad until things simmer down.”
“Sure,” Chad said with a shrug. “It’s not like my mother will be around. She hasn’t been home in two days.”
Katy gaped at him. “And you didn’t report her missing?”
Chad glanced out the side window. “She’s shacked up with her latest boyfriend. Happens all the time.”
Katy wheeled into the driveway at Jake’s house to see the boys hovering around Nate. Jake’s dad lay spread-eagled in the grass, sleeping off his latest binge.
Vaulting from the car, Katy raced toward Nate. There wasn’t a speck of color in his face, and he was holding his ribs, sucking in labored gasps of air. His leg was bent at an awkward angle. Katy’s inexperienced diagnosis was that Nate had broken his leg—or at the very least, suffered a serious sprain. She wasn’t sure about the condition of his ribs, but if he had punctured a lung…The frightening thought put her into immediate action.
“Help me get him into my car,” Katy ordered hurriedly. “Gently, boys. Let’s not make things worse than they already are.”
“I’m so sorry, Nate,” Jake said through broken sobs. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “I wish my old man was like you! You give a damn and look how you get paid for caring!”
/> Grimacing, Nate reached up to ruffle Jake’s coal-black hair. “You give a damn, too, Jake,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “That’s what makes you the better man. Don’t let anybody tell you different…. Oh, geez!” He sucked in his breath as Katy and the boys lifted him off the ground. “I don’t have time for this, damn it.”
“You don’t have to worry about a thing,” Katy insisted, backing carefully toward the car. “The boys will finish this project. No sweat, right, guys?”
Heads bobbed rapidly in agreement.
“Tammy and I are volunteering to help in whatever capacity we’re needed. Your crew knows the drill at the construction site, so they can continue doing their jobs.”
Through his pained gaze, Nate stared at Katy. She thought he was trying to smile, but the expression wobbled on his ashen lips. “Thanks,” he wheezed.
When the boys loaded Nate into the back seat, Katy scurried into the driver’s seat. She dearly wanted to back over Lester Brown, who was still standing on the curb, a smug smirk plastered on his doughy face.
“Jerk,” she muttered at him.
“Katy,” Nate said in a pained hiss, “maybe it would be best—”
“Save your breath,” she interrupted. “Let’s find out what’s broken and what’s not, then we’ll talk.”
Katy drove to Dr. Wilson’s small clinic and pulled up beside the rear exit. The physician was on his way out when Katy hailed him. He gave Nate a quick examination, then unlocked the door to retrieve a wheelchair.
Nate hissed in pain as he struggled to situate himself in the wheelchair. God, he felt awful. Every breath was the equivalent of inhaling darts. His knee felt as if it had been twisted from its socket. If getting his knee back into place hurt as badly as knocking it out, Nate would just as soon leave it where it was. The intense pressure in his chest was nauseating, but since he’d skipped lunch he figured he wouldn’t embarrass himself by upchucking.