A Family of Her Own

It was just plain bad luck that he’d come across her before anyone else had.

Peeling off the heavy coveralls he typically wore over his clothes in winter, he pushed up the sleeves of his long-sleeved T-shirt, lathered his hands and arms with laundry detergent and used a brush to scrub off the grease. In the extra hours he’d spent at the shop, he’d worked on Katie’s car, which he’d towed into town first thing this morning, and finished repairing a Mustang and a Nissan truck. He was tempted to keep working through the night. Heaven knew he had enough backlog. But he had to go home sometime, or he knew he wouldn’t be worth anything tomorrow.

The telephone rang. It had rung at about ten, while he was working under the Mustang, but he hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone badly enough to interrupt what he was doing. Now he thought maybe Delbert hadn’t been able to catch a ride home, as he normally did if Booker wasn’t around, so he headed into the small front office.

“Hello?” He propped the handset against his shoulder while he finished drying his hands on the paper towel he’d brought with him.

“Is everything okay?”

Not Delbert—Katie. Mildly surprised, Booker threw the paper towel in the garbage. “Of course. Why?”

“I thought maybe there’d been an emergency.”

“No.”

“So what’ve you been doing?”

“Working.”

“Just working?”

“Were you expecting something else?”

“You didn’t think to let me know you wouldn’t be coming home tonight?”

“Was I supposed to let you know?”

“Well, I assumed—I mean, I made…” She sighed. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Forget it,” she said and hung up.

Booker blinked at the phone, then called her back, but she didn’t answer.

Rubbing his temples, he gave a long sigh. One day. She’d been there one day. And it was already one day too many—for a variety of reasons.

BOOKER SHOOK HIS HEAD as he read Katie’s note taped to the refrigerator. There are plenty of leftovers if you’re hungry. K.

“Smells good in here,” Delbert said, coming in from the mudroom, where he’d just taken off his boots.

Booker opened the fridge and gazed inside to see a large pan of lasagna, a green salad, a foil-wrapped loaf of garlic bread and a pitcher of lemonade. Judging by the number of pans drying in the drainer next to the sink, Katie had gone to a lot of effort.

He felt a little guilty for not bothering to let her know he wouldn’t be home. He’d considered calling but refused to feel as though he needed to check in. It wasn’t as though he owed her anything. Two years ago, he’d asked her to marry him. She’d turned him down flat, then she’d left town with another man. That hardly obligated him.

“There’s food in the fridge if you want to eat,” he told Delbert.

Delbert was feeding Bruiser, who’d actually started out as Booker’s dog. Earl Wallace, owner of the local feed store, had found him roaming around his back lot. When no one claimed him, Booker stepped in to keep him from going to the pound. But Delbert moved in about the same time, and Booker simply couldn’t compete with the kind of love and devotion Delbert lavished on the dog. Bruiser became Delbert’s dog and began shadowing his every move. Now the pair were almost inseparable.

Delbert got Bruiser some fresh water before pulling the lasagna out of the fridge. Booker headed into the living room, where he could hear the television. He wanted to talk to Katie, to find out whether she’d spoken to her parents today or made any decisions about her future. He recognized the difficulty of her situation. He blamed Andy for much of it. But he was determined not to get personally involved with Katie again—on any level. Which meant they had to make other arrangements as soon as possible.

The television flickered in the corner, providing the room’s only light. Booker could see Katie lying on the couch in front of it, but when he drew closer, he realized she was asleep.

He was just deciding whether to wake her, so they could get their little talk out of the way, when the telephone rang. Who’d be calling at midnight? he wondered and grabbed the cordless phone off its base.

“Hello?”

Whoever was on the other end slammed down the receiver.

“Was that my parents?” Katie asked, obviously struggling to wake up.

“Maybe.” He replaced the phone. “Why? Are you expecting them to call?”

She blinked up at him. Her mascara was smudged, her face bore the imprint of the fabric covering the couch, and her hair stuck up on one side. She looked her worst. But he didn’t care. His mind immediately conjured up the feel of that soft pouty mouth beneath his and the expression in her blue eyes when he’d first cupped her breast….

Resenting how the past two years seemed to fall away so easily, he reminded himself that what they’d had was over. For good.

“Not really.” She tried to smooth down her hair. “I…I thought they might try to contact me. You know, just to check up.”

Her brittle smile and casual tone didn’t ring true, but Booker refused to feel any sympathy. He needed to get rid of her, and he needed to do it fast, before his memories undid all the progress he’d made over the past two years. “Maybe we should call them in the morning,” he said.

She grimaced and stared at the phone. “If they wanted to talk to me, they would’ve done so by now, don’t you think?”

He settled in the recliner. “What about your father? Have you tried contacting him? Maybe he doesn’t feel quite as strongly as your mother does.”

“Maybe,” she said, but her voice held no hope. And Booker knew her father usually took a harder line than her mother did. “I—I’ll stop by the bakery tomorrow.”

“Good.” Booker thought perhaps he should visit the bakery beforehand and try to rouse Don to his familial duty.

“What did you do today?” he asked, even though he already knew a little about her movements. Lester Greenwalt had stopped by to pick up the flat he’d brought over for repair, and mentioned that Katie had visited him looking for work. Why she’d applied at an insurance office, Booker couldn’t say. He’d assumed the beauty shop would be her first stop.

“I put in a few job applications,” she said.

“Did you go by Hair and Now?”

“I popped in this afternoon. Why?”

“Was Rebecca around?”

“For a while. Until she went into the back room to take her temperature. Then she rushed off to meet Josh.”

The baby thing again. Rebecca wasn’t giving up, yet every time it didn’t work out she got that much more upset. “Didn’t she tell you she’d hire you back?”

“We talked about it briefly.”

“And?”

“I’m going to try something different for a while.”

From all indications, she was on her last dollar. Now wasn’t the time to be selective. “Why?” He scowled to let her know he didn’t agree.

She scowled right back at him. “Maybe I need a change of pace.”

“Katie, I towed the Cadillac to my shop and got it running again, but—”

“How much do I owe you for that?” she interrupted, worry clouding her face.

“Six hundred dollars.”

She winced.

“That’s giving you a good deal,” he said because it was true. Six hundred dollars represented his costs in labor and parts, nothing for profit. “You cracked the block, and I had to have the engine rebuilt. It took my top mechanic nearly all day. I worked on it some more tonight, and we’re still not quite finished. I’m waiting for another part to come in.”

“I appreciate the effort,” she said, “but you didn’t even ask me if…if I wanted it fixed.”

“What were you planning to do? Leave it on the side of the road?”

“No, I…” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I hadn’t decided, I guess.”

Silence fell, during which Booker could hear Delbert talking to Bruiser in the kitchen.

“How much is the car worth out here, if I wanted to sell it?” Katie asked after a few seconds.

Booker couldn’t supply an exact figure, but he knew it wouldn’t be much. “I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s probably not worth the $4,000 I paid for it, but as soon as I sell it, I’ll give you the money.”

God, she was that desperate? What had happened in the two years she’d been gone? “I’m not going to let you sell your car,” he said flatly.

Her troubled eyes finally met his. “But I can’t pay you, Booker. Not now, anyway. I don’t even know when.”

Booker had dreamed of running into Katie again, thousands of times. She’d hurt him so deeply when she left that he’d thought he’d like nothing better than to find her penniless and repentant. But he felt no triumph. Only anger, plenty of anger, directed at her and Andy. Maybe he didn’t have a family who’d supported him all the way through college, like Andy’s. Maybe he wasn’t a slick talker with wrinkle-free clothes and a pretty face. But he would’ve starved before letting Katie go without. “What happened in San Francisco?” he finally asked. “Why hasn’t Andy been taking care of you?”

She drew up her legs and hugged them against her. “You can be so old-fashioned,” she said with a slight grimace. “I wouldn’t need anyone to take care of me if it wasn’t for this baby. I was working in a nice salon, making good money. I was the one paying all the bills. But then—”

He waited when her words drifted off, watching the emotions play across her face.

“—then I got pregnant and the pregnancy hasn’t been going well.”

A trickle of unease heightened Booker’s senses, telling him the story was about to get a hell of a lot worse. “What does that mean?”

She shrugged, but it was hardly a careless movement. “I can’t work on my feet.”

“Or…”

“Or I could lose the baby, okay? That’s why I can’t cut hair. That’s why I can’t go back to Hair and Now.”

Releasing a long sigh, Booker wiped his face with one hand. “And you have no savings.”

“No. Andy made sure of that. He barely waited until I could make the money before he spent it.”

“Wasn’t he bringing home a paycheck of his own?”

She shook her head. “I tried to get him to work, but—” She fell silent. “Never mind. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that.”

Booker’s heart was pounding against his chest. He wasn’t even sure why. Maybe it was because, painful though it might be, he did want to hear the details. “What about Andy’s parents?”

“What about them?” she asked. “Have you ever met them?”

“No, but from what his cousins say, they’re pretty damn supportive of their only boy. According to LeAnn and her brother, Todd, he never had to work a day to put himself through school.”

“His parents cut him off a few months after we reached San Francisco.”

“Why would they do that after paying his way until then?”

She turned her attention to the remote and muted the television, but he got the impression it was just to give herself something to do so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “They had…reason.”

“Are you going to tell me what that reason is?”

She dropped the remote into her lap. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I’d like to know.”

“Fine.” A touch of belligerence entered her voice. “They came to visit us in San Francisco and were pretty disappointed by what they saw, okay? At that stage, Andy was hardly someone to be proud of.”

He raised his eyebrows in place of demanding an explanation, but she got the point. Groaning, she rested her forehead on her knees. “Andy rarely bothered to come home. When he did, he was usually wasted.”

“You mean drunk?”

“High, although he drank, too. He got involved in the party scene almost the first week we lived there.”

Booker didn’t feel he could say much about Andy’s partying. There’d been a rough patch in his own life when he’d deadened the pain with whatever he could beg, borrow, buy or find. And he’d acted out in other ways, too, and paid a heavy price. Only now, years later, was he glad his actions had caught up with him. Prison had changed him. Forced him to realize that his behavior was more self-destructive than anything else. Taught him to appreciate the simple things in life. He wasn’t proud of his past, but he’d finally come to terms with who and what he was.

“By the time his parents left, his mother was crying,” Katie went on. “And Andy’s father told him not to bother calling with any more sob stories about being laid off or losing his last paycheck. He said they weren’t going to send him any more money and, as far as I know, Andy hasn’t heard from them since. I’m guessing he’ll contact them now, though. I’m not sure he can survive without me there to pay the rent.”

“So his folks don’t know about the baby?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“I don’t know. Andy wanted me to have an abortion. Right now, I feel the baby’s pretty much exclusively mine.”

Wonderful. Katie’s life was the complete mess he’d been hoping for since she’d rejected him, yet Booker couldn’t feel good about it.

He got slowly out of the recliner. “Don’t worry about paying for the car. You need some way to get around.”

“Booker, I can’t accept—”

“We can settle up whenever you have the money,” he said brusquely and started to leave before he could ask the one question that burned in his mind. But he only got as far as the door. Then he stopped, turned, and asked it anyway. “You love this guy?”

Katie twisted a lock of hair around one finger as she stared at him. He could see a shine in her eyes and thought maybe they were filling with tears, but the room was too dark to tell for sure. “I don’t think I even know what love is,” she said softly.

THE SMELL OF freshly baked doughnuts enveloped Booker the moment he entered Don and Tami’s Bakery the following morning at six o’clock. The bell went off over the door, but Don barely glanced up before going right back to what he was doing—transferring fresh apple fritters, glazed doughnuts and maple bars from rolling metal trays to the display case.

“I need to talk to you,” Booker said.

“We don’t have anything to say to each other,” Katie’s father responded.

Booker knew Don didn’t like him. Don was one of the locals who still took his car to a neighboring town or to Boise for service and repair. But Booker wasn’t asking for his business. He just wanted Don to take Katie off his hands and to see that she was safe and well cared for. “I think we do,” he said. “Katie’s staying out at my place.”

Don shifted to the bottom shelf and start lining up custard and jelly-filled doughnuts. “That’s what I hear.”

“She’s pregnant.”

Don craned his head around, as if he expected Tami to come out of the back room where they did their baking, but no one appeared. “I’m afraid that’s her problem. We tried to tell her what she was in for with Andy, but she wouldn’t listen. He lived here in Dundee, off those cousins of his, for months and never got a job. What does that say about him?”

Booker didn’t want to get into an argument over Andy. “You’re her parents,” he said. He knew from experience that parents didn’t always care. But from what he’d seen in the past, Don and Tami Rogers were certainly more supportive than his own parents had been.

“She’s of age.” Don finally stopped long enough to catch and hold Booker’s gaze. Eyes narrowing, mouth tightening, he added, “So don’t come in here thinking you can criticize us. She probably wouldn’t have made the mistakes she made if she hadn’t gotten involved with you first.”

Booker felt the old anger—the dark kind of anger he hadn’t felt for years—coil inside him. He’d loved Katie. That should have redeemed him somehow. But because of his reputation, it didn’t seem to matter. Even though his reputation didn’t have a damn thing to do with any of this. “Don’t you care what happens to her?” he demanded.

“We love her enough to let her feel the natural consequences of her actions.” Don wiped powdered sugar from his hands onto a towel. “How will she ever learn if we’re always there to rescue her?”

“There’s a baby involved,” Booker said. “The baby hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Tami poked her head out from the back. “I’ve been reading some of those parenting books that are so popular these days,” she said, “and they all say you’ve got to have tough love.”

“What’s tough love? Telling someone you care about, ‘tough luck’?” he asked.

“I’m sure Rebecca will hire her back at Hair and Now,” Don said. “Katie will pull herself up by her bootstraps eventually.”

“And when she does, she’ll thank us.” Tami nodded self-righteously. “She’ll gain perspective and confidence from working through her own problems.”

The only catch was that Katie couldn’t work. Obviously they didn’t know that. Booker considered breaking the news to them. He wanted to see their faces when they realized they were expecting the impossible. But something inside him rebelled. The only reason they didn’t know about the difficulty with Katie’s pregnancy was that they’d treated her so poorly. They hadn’t even bothered to ask how she was doing. In his view, they didn’t deserve contact with her or the baby.

“Forget it. She’ll be better off without the two of you,” he said and walked out.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PHONE RANG, finally waking Katie at eleven o’clock. She’d actually opened her eyes earlier, when she heard Booker and Delbert leave for work, but she hadn’t been able to drag herself out of bed. She didn’t have anything to get out of bed for. No job opportunities. No one to see. She didn’t even know if Booker and Delbert would be home for dinner, or if she’d spend the entire day alone.

She remembered that Mona had offered to give her a manicure….

A manicure was a hopeful thought. But when she considered the logistics of getting to the salon…She’d have to get up. Then she’d have to shower, which meant washing her hair and shaving her legs. Then she’d have to brush her teeth and put on makeup….

It was simply too overwhelming. Besides, by now, word of her pregnancy would’ve spread, and she had no way of knowing who she might encounter at Hair and Now. She could run into her own mother, for crying out loud. Or Mike and Josh’s mother, who wouldn’t think any better of her than Tami did. Or worse, the smug Mary Thornton.

It no longer felt safe to go anywhere. When had the world become such a dangerous place?

With a groan, she pulled the covers over her head. She wasn’t going to answer the phone. Whoever was calling could leave a message on Booker’s answering machine. It was probably for him, anyway.

After another few moments, blessed silence fell, and Katie began drifting off to sleep—only to have the phone start ringing again.

“Go away!” she yelled at it. But whoever was calling wouldn’t give up. If she wanted any peace at all, she had to answer.

Stumbling out of bed, she moved slowly into the hall. Hatty’s house was too old to be wired for a phone in the bedroom, and Hatty had been too set in her ways to change that.

“Hello?” Katie snapped.

“Katie?” It was Booker.

Katie softened her voice. “Yeah?”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Uh…in the shower,” she said, because she didn’t want to tell him the pathetic truth.

“Are you going over to the bakery to talk to your father?”

“I was thinking about it.” Not. She’d pretty much decided it was useless. Her parents hadn’t even called to check on her. She could be living on the streets for all they cared. Which was a distinct possibility for the future. But she wouldn’t think about that. That made her feel even more tired, and she was barely moving as it was.

“Well, don’t bother,” he said.

She could hear the wind outside, the trees brushing against the house. If she hadn’t been staring at the sun streaming in through the window of the closest bedroom, she would’ve thought it was storming. “Why not?”

“I’m working on a different plan. We’ll talk about it when I get home.”

“Fine.” She covered a yawn, too indifferent to wonder what he meant, let alone ask. Nothing Booker did would make any difference. Straightening out the mess she’d made of her life was something she’d have to do on her own. Only she couldn’t manage it today. She’d deal with it tomorrow, when she felt better.

“I’ll be home at six o’clock,” he told her.

“Okay. I’ll have dinner waiting,” she said. But then she went back to bed and slept the entire day.

WHEN BOOKER AND DELBERT got home, there was no dinner on the table. The place was dark and seemed empty.

“Where’s Katie?” Delbert asked as he and Bruiser followed Booker inside.

Booker couldn’t hear anything. No TV or radio. No one speaking on the phone. “Katie?” he called.

“She’s gone,” Delbert said, and Booker felt a trace of hope. He’d been planning to offer her a bookkeeping job at his garage. Even though he knew it wouldn’t be easy to spend so much time around her, he hadn’t been able to think of anything better. But maybe someone had come to pick her up. Maybe she’d found another place to stay and a job that wouldn’t require her to be on her feet. If so, her problems, which had become his problems, might already be solved….

If only he could be so lucky.

Heading upstairs, he knocked on the walls as he neared Katie’s bedroom to announce that he was coming. “Anyone home?”

No answer. Darkness had fallen outside, but her door was shut, and there wasn’t any light glowing beneath it. “Katie?”

“Did you find her?” Delbert asked, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Not yet.” Booker turned on the hall light and knocked softly on her door. No answer. He looked inside to see a round lump in the middle of the bed—a round lump that was beginning to stir.

“What? Who is it?” Katie sounded groggy. Shoving herself into a sitting position, she blinked against the light spilling into her room.

Booker let the door swing wide, and leaned against the lintel. “This shouldn’t come as any kind of a shock, since I own the house, but it’s me.”

“Booker?”

“You got it.”

She groaned and fell back. “God, I thought I was only dreaming that I was pregnant and broke and having to rely on the pity of someone who hates me.”

Booker felt a wry smile claim his lips, and stuck his toothpick in his mouth to stave it off. He wasn’t about to let his heart soften where Katie Rogers was concerned. Not after the way she’d thrown his proposal back in his face two years ago. “What did you do today?”

“Nothing.”

“Is she there?” Delbert called up to him.

“She’s here,” Booker said. “Go ahead and make yourself a sandwich.”

“Oh, good, she’s here,” Delbert told Bruiser, as though the dog was especially worried, and galloped to the kitchen.

“What time is it?” Katie asked.

“Six-thirty.”

“Six-thirty!”

He pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “Time flies when you’re having fun, hmm?”

“Ugh.” Her voice sounded muffled because she’d ducked completely under the covers.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I just slept the whole day away and I still feel too tired to move.”

“Tell me that has something to do with the pregnancy.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been pregnant before. But then, I’ve never been shunned and penniless, either. This is all new to me.”

Booker couldn’t help chuckling. “You’ll get through it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she told him, now sullen. “You’ve never been pregnant.”

“No, but I’ve been shunned and penniless most of my life.”

No response.

“Are you getting up?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do you think you might get up later?”

“No.”

“You’re not making me feel particularly comfortable here.”

Nothing.

Booker searched his mind for something he could say or do. “Can you feel the baby move yet?” he asked at last.

The question obviously took her off guard. Rising onto one elbow, she stared at him. “I felt the baby move for the first time while I was driving here.”