Ghost of Summer

by Sally Berneathy

  She'd been a little disconcerted at seeing Luke again after all these years, but it wasn't anything that really bothered her. So they'd been friends and playmates once upon a time. That was long ago. Things were different now. They were both adults. Her only connection to him now was that he was her father's deputy.

  ***

  Luke followed Katie outside, into the blast of summer heat. However, it wasn't one damned bit hotter than he'd felt in that office with Katie. What the hell was the matter with him, letting his hormones go haywire over a woman who was not only Sheriff's daughter but also his own best friend, his virtual sister, from years ago?

  When he'd glanced up to see her standing in the doorway, he'd thought for a minute he was hallucinating. He'd just been thinking about her, though her image in his mind had still been that of a skinny, freckle-faced eleven year old girl. The woman in the doorway had looked very much and very little like his old friend, and he'd been so shocked and confused he'd had a hard time making sense out of his phone conversation. He'd finally had to tell the court clerk he'd call her back later.

  For seventeen years he'd yearned to be with Katie again. Now he was, and he felt as awkward as if he were still a teenager.

  He locked the door of the sheriff's office behind them—as if anyone in Briar Creek would bother anything inside the office—then turned to Katie and smiled. "It's really good to see you."

  Oh, yeah, any sophistication and conversational skills he might have acquired over the years had gone right down the drain.

  As they started along the sidewalk, he automatically passed his arm around her waist, his hand coming to rest on the curve of her hip.

  His Katie wasn't supposed to have curves!

  He moved his hand away, aghast at the feelings when he touched her—when he looked at her. This was Katie, for crying out loud. Sheriff's daughter. His friend. He'd lost her once. He wasn't going to let himself do anything stupid and risk losing her again. He was not a teenage boy at the mercy of raging testosterone. He was a grown man with at least a little control.

  He walked beside Katie, careful not to touch her again.

  The sun blazed down as it always did in Texas in the summer, pulling the smells of asphalt and hot concrete into the air. But those odors were overpowered by the delicate scents of honeysuckle and spring rain that drifted to him from Katie.

  He cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind, though the latter wasn't so easy to do. From the moment he'd first decided to move back to Briar Creek, he'd looked forward to seeing Katie again, to the possibility of resuming their friendship, but nothing could have prepared him for the reality of her, her rounded breasts barely concealed by the scooped neckline of her sleeveless white dress, her slender legs that stretched for miles before disappearing under the short skirt of that dress, her full lips...

  He cleared his throat again. "So you live in Dallas now," he said. It was the most mundane thing he could think of to say. The only mundane thing, actually.

  She nodded, the movement sending sunlight dancing in her red-gold hair as it swung about her shoulders—her bare, creamy shoulders that would, he felt sure, feel smooth and satiny beneath his fingers.

  He looked straight ahead, avoiding that silky hair, those bare shoulders, the way the sheer fabric of her dress swirled about her legs.

  Now if he could just shut off the images in his mind.

  "I work for an investment company," she said. "I'm a systems analyst—a computer programmer."

  "That sounds...interesting." Actually, it didn't sound the least bit interesting, and it didn't sound like a career the Katie he remembered would enjoy.

  "It can be interesting," she said. A little defensively, he thought. "It's very rewarding."

  "Rewarding. That's good. So, how long are you staying in Briar Creek?"

  He wasn't looking at her, but he knew she scowled. He could feel it, a disturbance in the air surrounding them. They'd always had that sixth sense about each other.

  "I don't know," she said, her taut tone confirming his thoughts.

  She wasn't happy about this visit. Something was wrong.

  Whatever it was, he'd figure out a way to make it right. He'd let her down once, but he'd make it up to her. He'd take care of her this time and not screw up.

  They reached the faded green building that was Dodie's Diner.

  "Papa and I haven't come here in years. We usually go to one of the restaurants up on the highway. But this place is just like it was the last time we were here. Some things never change," Katie said.

  Luke scanned the wooden screen door, the plastic geraniums in pots beside the front steps, the neon sign that had read D ie's Di er even before he'd left. "Nope, it hasn't changed," he said, then grinned. "I like that in a diner. And a town. Briar Creek is the town where time stood still."

  Katie laughed, and even though it had an edge of tension, the silvery sound tinkled through the still summer day like wind chimes, like music from his childhood. "But you've changed," she said.

  "Yeah," he said quietly, "I guess I have. But only on the outside." He opened the tall, wooden door, then stood back to allow her to enter. "Katie, do you remember our thorn?"

  Her expression softened. "Omigosh! Yes, I remember that. The day before you had to leave, we took a thorn from the big old locust tree down by the creek and each pricked our thumb with it."

  "Then we buried it in the cave floor and swore we'd always be friends, that the mingled blood on the thorn would always bring us back to each other."

  Her eyes—the blue shade of morning glories in the sun's first rays—seemed to mist, but her tone was crisp. "Weren't we silly little kids? It's a wonder we didn't get an infection!"

  "We didn't. And it worked. We've found each other again."

  She turned away abruptly and moved through the door.

  He was right. Something was bothering her.

  He followed her inside and sat down across from her in one of the red vinyl booths.

  Katie wrinkled her nose. "Grease."

  "Be pretty hard to make fries without it. And Dodie's has the best fries."

  She arched an eyebrow. "The best? All this grease has clogged your arteries to the point your taste buds are completely out of kilter."

  A waitress with steel gray hair pulled into a tight bun plunked down two menus and two glasses of water.

  "How's it going, Nadine?" Luke asked.

  "Busy. You want your regular?"

  "Sure. If you've got a good thing going, why change?"

  "How about you, honey? Same thing?"

  "What's your regular, Luke?"

  "Bacon cheeseburger, fries and a cherry Coke." It had been her regular, too, seventeen years ago.

  She grimaced. "Do you have a chicken sandwich?"

  "Sure do."

  "I'll have that and iced tea."

  Nadine left, taking the unused menus with her.

  Luke leaned across the table. "That chicken sandwich is a fried chicken breast."

  Katie tried to grimace again, but a smile tilted the corners of her luscious mouth. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

  Luke shifted uncomfortably. He couldn't recall ever noticing Katie's lips before. Had they always been that full? Did women's lips change as they got older, the way their bodies did?

  "So tell me what you've been doing the past seventeen years," she invited. "How on earth did you end up back here in Briar Creek?"

  Luke shook off the inappropriate thoughts about her lips...and her body. He leaned back against the vinyl of the booth, trying to absorb some of its coolness, and focused on her question. "Well, let's see. Seventeen years in a capsule. After we moved to Houston, I went to school and graduated from school. Got a degree in criminology and joined the Houston Police Department. Got married to my high school sweetheart and got divorced. No kids. Called Sheriff and found out Pete was retiring and he was looking for a new deputy. Kicked the renters out of my old house, bought it from Mom and here I am."

&
nbsp; Katie laughed. "Whew! That's the fastest seventeen years I've ever lived through. I think I have jet lag! So you came back here because Papa needed a new deputy?"

  Luke shook his head. "No. I was coming back anyway. My heart's always been here. I missed all the trees, the clean air, seeing familiar faces everywhere you turn. I never felt like I belonged in Houston. Sheriff needing a new deputy was a fortunate coincidence." If you believed in coincidences. From the first, it had been as if outside forces had facilitated his move here, so much so that sometimes the whole thing felt a little eerie.

  "I guess that worked out well for both of you."

  "Yes, it did."

  "How's your mother?"

  "Mom's fine. She got married again just a few months ago."

  "That's wonderful!" Katie enthused. "I'll have to get her address and send her a card."

  "She'd like that." Irritated with himself, he bit back the pang that thoughts of his mother's remarriage always brought, the irrational worry about her and the equally irrational feeling that her marriage to another man had somehow taken away the last remnant of contact with his dead father.

  "Do you think she'll remember me? It's been so long."

  "Remember you? Hey, you were like her own daughter. When I told her I was moving back, she gave me strict orders to find you."

  Katie smiled wistfully. "Remember how your parents and Papa used to embarrass us by telling everybody we'd been friends so long, we'd worn matching diapers?"

  Luke nodded and turned his water glass between his hands. "I remember. You were like my sister, except we never argued like most brothers and sisters. We never disagreed about anything." He knew comparing the relationship of children to that of adults wasn't fair, but he couldn't stop himself from comparing the bitter fights and even more bitter silences he'd had with his ex-wife, Cindy, to the halcyon days he'd spent with Katie.

  Her eyes seemed hazy with memories, too, and she wrapped slender fingers around her own water glass, unconsciously mimicking his actions just the way she used to do. "No, we never had disagreements in spite of the amount of time we spent together. I stayed at your house a lot what with Papa working such odd hours."

  "When you weren't at my house, I was usually at yours."

  "Until your dad died and you moved to Houston to live with your Aunt Myrtle," she said briskly, lifting the glass of water to her lips, and he could tell the nostalgic mood was shattered.

  He nodded. "I thought surely my world had come to an end when I was forced to leave you and Briar Creek right on the heels of losing my dad. Twelve was the worst year of my life." Except maybe for this past award-winning year. "Katie, the reason I never—"

  Nadine appeared and set their food on the table.

  "I didn't order fries," Katie protested, inspecting her plate.

  "Comes with the sandwich. You don't want 'em, don't eat 'em."

  Katie grinned. "I'll eat them. That's the problem."

  For a few minutes they ate in silence.

  Then Katie lifted her morning-glory eyes to his, and he saw the urgency there. Maybe now he was going to find out what was bothering her so he could help her, so he could make it up to her for abandoning her all those years ago. "How long have you been working as Papa's deputy?"

  It wasn't a very urgent question.

  "Two weeks. I moved back a month ago, but it took me that long to get the old house cleaned up. It's sure a nice change of pace working here after all the big-city crime and drugs in Houston."

  She swirled the straw in her tea, watching the activity intently as if were somehow important. "A month and he never mentioned it to me."

  "Maybe he thought you wouldn't want to see me, that you were still angry at me for not writing or calling."

  She looked up at him. "Of course he didn't think that." She bit her lower lip while the straw continued making its rounds in her glass of tea. "Has Papa...umm...has he changed much?"

  "Sure, some. He's older, his hair's almost completely gray and there's less of it. He's gained a few pounds. About what you'd expect in seventeen years. But you know that already."

  "What about mentally? Do you think he's losing any of his mental acuity? He's at least seventy, you know."

  "Really? I had no idea he was that old. No, mentally, he hasn't changed at all. He's as sharp as I am." He grinned. "Probably sharper."

  She continued to play with that straw. She was definitely nervous, and it had something to do with Sheriff.

  "I don't think he's ever really accepted Mama's death. Has he said anything to you about her?"

  "Your father's always talked about your mother. Of course he hasn't accepted her death. How can anyone ever accept the loss of someone they love?"

  "People can. They do. They have to." Her voice was brittle like the leaves in winter.

  "Katie, are you worried that your father's senile? Is that what's bugging you?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Well, he isn't. He always talked about your mother like she was waiting on the other side of the door. You know that. You certainly never thought he was senile when you were a little kid and he made her live for you. He gave you a mother. He did it because he's a good person. There's nothing wrong with him. Because your mother died, you're being overly-protective of your dad."

  She looked up and gave a weak smile. "You're right, of course. I shouldn't worry so much. It's just that—" She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. "No matter who else came and went in my life, Papa's always been here. I can't bear to think that one day he might not be."

  She picked up her sandwich and took a huge bite, changing the subject by her action, veering away from the thought of losing her father.

  "Sheriff's got a lot of years left," he said, as much for his benefit as hers. He didn't want to think about losing Sheriff, either. It would be like losing his own father all over again.

  What he wanted to do was take Katie's slim hand in his and explain why he'd never contacted her after he moved, beg her forgiveness, reassure her that he was back for good, that he'd always be there for her now, that their relationship would be an unchanging reality they could both hang onto for the rest of their lives.

  Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You could go home. He'd done it.

  He was back in Briar Creek, living in his old home, doing the job his father had done, and Katie, his surrogate sister, his best friend, was sitting across from him.

  Katie, wearing a thin summer dress that clung to her rounded breasts so he could see them swell with every breath she took. Katie, who somehow made sensual the act of closing her lips around the straw in her tea.

  He chomped viciously into his burger, biting down on those thoughts he shouldn't be having about Katie.

  He was home, back where he'd been happiest, and this time he wasn't going to screw it up or let any of it slip away.

  Chapter Three

  When Kate and Luke returned to the office, Evelyn was still gone, but Papa was waiting.

  A huge smile spread over his face as he rose from behind the same big old wooden desk he'd had for as long as Kate could remember. "There's my favorite daughter and my best deputy!" He came around and wrapped her in a bear hug. "Ah, Katie-girl! It's so good to see you!"

  For the first time, Kate noticed that he was only a couple of inches taller than she was. He'd always seemed like a giant, larger than life.

  When he stepped back, still with one arm about her, Kate was dismayed to see that his twinkling blue eyes seemed a little faded and his hair was, as Luke had said, gray and thin.

  When had he gotten old? She'd seen him every couple of weeks since she'd moved to Dallas, but she supposed it had happened so gradually, she hadn't noticed...or maybe she just hadn't wanted to notice.

  "We're your only daughter and deputy, Sheriff," Luke said with a grin.

  Papa waved his free hand. "Insignificant details. Did you two have a good lunch?"

  Luke crossed his arms over his chest and gave Papa a mock-glare. "Sheriff, you wo
uldn't, by any chance, have planned to be out of the office when Katie got here, now would you?"

  Papa winked and wrapped his other arm around Luke. "I knew you'd make a good law enforcement officer. See how easily you solved that one?" He looked from Luke to Kate then back again, his face glowing with happiness. "You have no idea how good it is to see you two back together. Luke, you were barely a year old when we brought Katie home from the hospital. You toddled right over to where she sat in her mama's lap and gave her a big kiss! From that day until your dad died and you had to move, you two were inseparable. You even wore matching diapers."