“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.”