After four weeks of watching Katie wring her hands, Booker had had enough. When she called him at the shop under the pretext of asking if he wanted chicken and broccoli casserole for dinner—when she knew he’d eat anything she made—he told her the Cadillac had sold. Then he had Chase follow him out to his place, where he hid the old car beneath some scrub brush in a gully about a half mile from the house, and went to the bank.
“YOU MEAN THEY paid full price?” Katie’s expression was one of stunned disbelief as she fanned out the stack of one-hundred-dollar bills Booker had just handed her.
The door slammed, and Delbert and Bruiser came in from playing in the soft swirls of snow that had started to fall earlier in the afternoon.
“Isn’t that how much you need?” Booker asked.
“It is,” she said. “I just can’t believe we got the whole three thousand. I was getting so scared.”
Delbert frowned as he glanced over Booker’s shoulder. “You sold the Cadillac?”
Booker cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
“When?”
“Today.”
Delbert scratched his head in confusion. “Was I there?”
Booker stretched his neck. “You were busy.”
“Oh.” His frown lingered as he tried to puzzle it out, but he didn’t question Booker. After a moment, he shrugged, led Bruiser over to his bowl and sat on the floor next to him while he ate. “Gee, you’re hungry, Bruiser, aren’t you, boy?”
Katie twirled around, oblivious to everything except the money. “And they paid you in cash,” she said. “After all this waiting, it happened just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Thank you, God!”
Not exactly God, Booker thought wryly. Most people pictured Booker T. Robinson with a pitchfork and tail. But he couldn’t help feeling pleased by her excitement. She’d studied so hard. Every night she rambled on about all sorts of Web-related things—whether she should actually get Dreamweaver software from MacroMedia or GoLive from Adobe, the beauty of flash graphics, which allowed such complex animations, writing HTML code. He didn’t understand half of what she said, but he liked seeing how animated she became when she talked about her business.
“Are you going to get your computer tomorrow?” he asked, crossing to the fridge.
“I’m not sure.” She counted out six hundred dollars and handed it to him. “This is yours for the repairs.”
Booker hesitated. He didn’t care about the money, knew she needed it more than he did. But she seemed so proud that she could pay him.
Taking the money, he shoved it in his pocket while she gathered the rest of the bills into a neat stack and put them safely in her purse.
“Boise is probably where I can get the best deal on a computer, at least around here,” she said. “But I don’t have a car anymore. I need someone to give me a ride.”
Someone? He heard the hint and glanced over his shoulder to find her smiling coyly at him. “Oh no,” he said. “Not me. I have to work. You can take the truck or Hatty’s car, if you want.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It isn’t any fun to go alone. I mean, this is sort of a celebration. And I might want another opinion.”
“I don’t know anything about computers.” He got out a glass and poured himself some milk.
“You can still help me.”
He scowled. “I have a business to run.”
“Can’t Chase take over for one day?”
Booker didn’t answer right away because letting Chase take over for such a short time was entirely feasible. She must have sensed this, since she immediately began to press him even harder.
“If I have any money left, I’ll buy you dinner.”
Shopping bored Booker to tears. He’d sooner stab a knife in his foot. But a night out could be fun. For some reason, the Honky Tonk and forward little Ashleigh didn’t hold the same appeal as they used to, which wasn’t a whole lot to begin with.
“It’s my turn to make a deal with you,” he said.
“What kind of deal?” She sounded justifiably leery.
“You forget about going to Hatcher. Start seeing a doctor who really knows what he’s doing when it comes to all the things that can go wrong in a pregnancy, and tomorrow I’ll drive you to as many stores as you want.”
“But Hatcher’s the only doctor close by. Boise’s too far for regular trips, don’t you think? And Boise doctors will probably be more expensive.”
“We’ll work it out.”
She sank her teeth into the soft flesh of her bottom lip. “I don’t know, Booker. I’ll feel too dependent….”
He leaned against the counter. “If you want me to go tomorrow, you’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“Why should I?”
“Because we’re friends, remember?”
“Friends?”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Like me and Rebecca?”
She hesitated for a moment. She wasn’t sure their “friendship” was like his and Rebecca’s at all, but she supposed he was right about Hatcher. “Okay, we’ve got ourselves another deal.”
STEAM ROLLED OUT OF THE bathroom as Booker opened the door the following morning, his dark hair so wet it gleamed.
“What are you doing up so early?” Katie asked, surprised to bump into him at five-thirty.
“I’ve got to go in to work and get things ready for Chase,” he said. “I’ll take my bike. You can pick me up in the truck when you’re ready to go.”
She tried not to let her eyes drift lower than his freshly shaved chin. With only a towel wrapped around his lean hips and that scar on his face, not to mention the tattoos on his muscular arms, he looked like some kind of story-book pirate. A pirate with nice teeth. And one who smelled pretty good, too.
But Katie knew better than to let herself gawk. They seemed to have reached neutral ground. She wasn’t going to let her thoughts, or her eyes, drift in any direction that might jeopardize their tentative peace.
Think of him as no different from one of your girlfriends, she told herself. But he was simply too male to be anything like a girlfriend.
“I think it snowed all night,” she said. “Are you sure it’s safe to take the motorcycle? Why don’t you drive the truck, and I’ll bring Hatty’s car?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Stubborn and reckless. Just as she’d thought—too male. “Do you want me to bring Delbert into town with me?” she asked.