Soul Mates

“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 An outdated copy machine sat in the corner, and picnic tables and benches lined the walls.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 Katy’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!”

His parting remarks were heaven and hell in one. She wanted him to stay, to teach her how to mend her broken dreams. Yet she wanted him to walk away and never come back, because she had given up hope so long ago that it was difficult to remember what hope was.

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.

“Yeah, what he said,” John Jessup quickly seconded.

Nate plunked into the bucket seat and turned the key in the ignition. He revved the engine to drown out the scornful words. His knee-jerk reaction was to lay rubber and prove to those snippy old coots that he didn’t give a flying fig what they thought of him. Luckily, Nate recovered his cool before he reverted to his teenage antics and behaved exactly as Brown and Jessup anticipated.

Like a conscientious, law-abiding citizen, Nate veered slowly from the curb and observed the speed limit as he drove toward his new home three miles from this dust-choked, outdated, economically challenged, one-horse town.

Don’t let them get to you, he chanted to himself. Don’t let them whittle away at your pride and self-confidence. You’re a self-made man who came up from rock bottom, and you’ve earned your success. If you start looking at yourself through their condemning eyes, your struggles and hard-won victories will count for nothing. You knew it would take time to prove yourself to the folks in this town. You knew you would have to earn a respectable reputation. Have patience, man. You knew damned good and well this wasn’t going to be easy.

Nate sucked in a cleansing breath and reminded himself that he wasn’t the same bitter, resentful kid who had been spirited out of town in a patrol car.

And Katy Bates sure as hell wasn’t the same lively, optimistic teenage beauty queen he had left behind in a flash of lights and the scream of sirens.

That tormenting thought served to distract Nate from Brown and Jessup’s taunts. Suddenly, his return to his hometown wasn’t about proving something to himself and to the citizens of Coyote Flats. It was about bolstering the spirits of a woman who had all but given up on life. It was time to return the favor Katy had granted him sixteen years ago.

Nate made a pact with himself one mile later. Somehow, some way, he was going to put a smile back on Katy’s lips and return the sparkle to those hypnotic blue eyes that dominated Katy’s pale, thin face. She may have forgotten how to fight back, but Nate sure hadn’t. And by damned, he was going to teach her how it was done!

“My gosh, Aunt Katy, who was that hunk?” Tammy Bates questioned as she propped herself against the office door.

Katy smiled ruefully at her niece, then handed over the letter she had prepared for the city council. “He’s an old friend from high school,” she replied as casually as she knew how.

“Man, and here I thought Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon were incredible to look at! Wow! Talk about tall, dark and handsome!”

Tammy’s love-struck expression was the spitting image of the dreamy smiles Katy had worn a lifetime ago while mooning over Nate Channing. Of course, Katy had had the good sense not to bring up Nate’s name in front of her father, only in front of her friends. Judge Dave Bates had gone ballistic the few times he had caught Katy and Nate together. She had paid dearly for those secret rendezvous, too. Dave had decreed that Nate was off-limits, and her father had dreamed up ways to keep them separated.

Later, when Kate discovered to what drastic extremes her father had abused his power and used his influence to ensure Nate was out of her life for good, she had never forgiven him, had lost all respect for him.

Although Nate seemed determined to strike up a friendship with Katy, she knew it was utterly impossible to mend the broken bridges. She knew that, ultimately, she was the reason Nate had been forced out of town and never permitted to return.

She had also seen Nate’s look of pity when he stared at her. She had nothing to offer the prominent, successful man Nate Channing had become. She was damaged merchandise. Her physical and emotional scars had left her with feelings of inadequacy and unattractiveness that she couldn’t overcome.

Nate deserved better than a mousy female who had been in an emotional coma for years and couldn’t remember how to laugh and smile. He needed someone exciting and attractive, someone who could stand up for herself, someone who could walk without a limp, someone who could look a man squarely in the eye and feel that she was his equal.

Nate had reinvented himself while she had shriveled up inside. She had nothing to offer him now or ever again.

“So, what’s his name, Aunt Katy?” Tammy grilled her.

“Nate Channing.”

Tammy frowned pensively. “I don’t recognize the name. Is his family still around here?”

“No.”

“So he just stopped by to visit you on his way through town?”

Katy shrugged her thin-bladed shoulders. “Please hand-deliver this letter to the city hall. I want the secretary to put my request on the agenda before the council’s meeting.”

“Sure.” Tammy spun around, her ponytail bobbing as she walked away. “But I still think Nate Channing is incredibly good-looking. Maybe you should find out if he’s staying overnight in town and invite him over for supper.”

“Maybe you should stop playing matchmaker and mind your own business,” Katy called after her.

Tammy pirouetted, then grinned unrepentantly at her aunt. “I’ll mind my own business if you will admit that Nate is one great-looking guy.”

“Okay, he’s a knockout,” Katy admitted honestly. “Happy now?”

“I would be if you would chase him down and invite him to supper,” Tammy said before she whipped around and sauntered away.

Katy scrunched into her chair and stared at the blank wall where Nate’s handsome face had superimposed itself. “Too vital, too good-looking. Far too deserving of someone like me,” she said sensibly to herself.

There had been a time when Katy had dreamed of her darkly handsome knight riding back into her life to rescue her from a disastrous marriage and whisk her away from a domineering father who offered no moral support, who constantly sided with her husband. But no one had come to her rescue, and her own attempts to fight for her freedom earned painful blows.

It was too late for her to start fresh, too late to mend all her shattered dreams. This was as good as her life would get, she assured herself fatalistically.

Resolved not to let Nate make the mistake of trying to reestablish their friendship, Katy forced herself to concentrate on her work. For Nate’s sake she had to discourage him from future contact. Katy had nothing to offer him now. Too much water had flooded under the bridge of her life. She had learned to accept what she hadn’t been able to change, and she had learned to center her life around the books that lined the library shelves. The characters on the pages of those books were her friends and acquaintances. They were safe, and she was secure inside the walls of this building.

Eventually, Nate would realize that the happiness and confidences they shared a lifetime ago were like closed chapters in a book. He would look elsewhere for a fulfilling friendship and leave her to the life she had grown comfortable with. It was too late to change, Katy told herself. She wasn’t even going to try.

Nate strode into his new ranch-style home to see Fuzz Havern, the retired sheriff of Coyote County, sprawled on the leather recliner. Fuzz had traded his police-issued pistol for the remote control to the big-screen TV.

Fuzz was all smiles when he glanced up to see Nate stride into the spacious living room. Nate wished he felt half of Fuzz’s obvious pleasure and satisfaction. Unfortunately, seeing what had become of Katy Bates had turned Nate wrong-side-out. He still couldn’t believe Katy had changed so dramatically.

“Pinch me, Nate,” Fuzz insisted. “I swear I must be dreaming all this. How can I possibly be sitting in this luxurious house, living like a king?” Fuzz swiped a meaty hand over his military-style gray hair and beamed in pleasure again. “After all the tense situations in the line of duty, here I am, kicked back, surfing channels and loving every minute of it.” He glanced around the expensively furnished room. “This place is really something else, Nate.”

“I’m glad you agreed to our arrangements,” Nate said as he plopped down on the matching leather sofa. “I told you sixteen years ago that I would repay you for what you did for me.”

Fuzz nodded, remembering. “Yeah, well, all I did was give you the break nobody around here was willing to give you. You took the opportunity I arranged for you, and you ran with it.” He tossed Nate a knowing glance. “I don’t imagine you thought I was doing you any favors those first few months after I left you in Bud Thurston’s charge.”

Nate returned the grin. “No, I didn’t,” he recalled. “That ex-marine sergeant knew how to put a wayward youth through the drills, didn’t he?”

“Amen to that,” Fuzz agreed. “But Bud taught you discipline, the value of a hard day’s work, just as I asked him to do.”

Nate remembered the big, burly, gruff-mannered man who stood six feet six inches tall and weighed in at two-eighty—every pound solid, unyielding muscle. Bud Thurston had clamped a beefy fist around the ribbing on Nate’s T-shirt, jerked him off the ground and told Nate what was what. Bud had also taught Nate to be courteous, considerate, respectful and cooperative—or else.

Way out in the middle of nowhere, on Thurston Ranch, Bud was a law unto himself, and he was man enough to back up any command or threat he spouted. Nobody in his right mind messed with Bud, not if you planned to walk away from a confrontation in one piece.

Then, of course, there was Fuzz Havern, who checked on Nate once a month like a parole officer. Between the two men who had served together in the military, Nate had been nudged down the straight-and-narrow path and gotten his miserable life on course. It had taken a year for a bitter, mule-headed kid to change his ways, but it had been worth the effort. Nate was eternally grateful somebody was willing to help him make the needed changes in his behavior and attitude.

“You’ll notice that I didn’t extend the same generosity to Sonny Brown that night I hauled your sorry butt out of town,” Fuzz remarked, then channel-surfed to his heart’s content. “That boy never could overcome his raising, not with Lester there to defend him every time he made a bonehead mistake. The only way to save Sonny would have been to shoot his father. I couldn’t stretch the law that far.”