Carol Finch – Soul Mates (страница 10)

Despite the fact that Nate had been caught for possession of marijuana and cocaine that night he was arrested, Katy knew he never touched those illegal substances. Because of Gary Channing’s addiction to booze, Nate had developed a fierce aversion to liquor and drugs.

It outraged Katy no end to hear the cruel gossip Brown and Jessup were spreading around town, in an attempt to turn everybody against Nate. If Katy could have found the nerve to confront those two blowhards she would have rushed to Nate’s defense at lunch at the café today. But she had learned the hard way that to contradict a man could incite violence.

Instead of bounding up to refute Brown’s nasty gossip, she just sat there in her corner booth, staring at her plate, listening to that old cuss plant seeds of mistrust and contempt for Nate.

“May I come in?” Nate prompted, jolting Katy from her musings.

She stepped back to allow him inside. How could she refuse him? Nate deserved the opportunity to tour the house that Dave Bates had decreed off-limits to him.

“Wow,” Nate said as he surveyed the spacious living area that was furnished with expensive, refinished antiques. “No wonder the judge didn’t want me in here. He was probably afraid I’d break an irreplaceable heirloom.”

Katy smiled remorsefully. “This room was off-limits to me and my older brother, too,” she confided. “It was nothing but a showroom for Dad’s influential guests. James and I were confined to the playroom until we graduated from high school. I doubt that anyone sat on the flowered fainting couch or hand-carved gliding chair, except our forefathers who originally owned them.”

Nate breathed an inward sigh of relief. He finally had Katy talking. That was the most she had said to him since his arrival in town. He had made it a point to be on the sidewalk outside the library when she went to work the past three days, but she had merely nodded, ducked her head and limped into the library.

Maybe he was being sneaky by dressing as the dirt-poor kid she remembered and preying on her sympathy. But hell, this was the best strategy he’d come up with, even after three nights of profound deliberation. Fortunately, the strategy had worked. He was in the house, and Katy was talking to him, though she still refused to make eye contact for more than a nanosecond at a time.

“I don’t want to impose, but do you have time to give me the grand tour?”

“If you like,” Katy murmured, then ducked her head. “Let me get a vase for the roses.”

Nate followed at a respectable distance behind Katy as she limped through the formal dining room to the spacious kitchen—which had been remodeled and boasted every high-tech convenience. Nate expected that from Dave Bates. Nothing but the best for his children and himself. The sorry son of a bitch.

“Damn, maybe I’m glad I didn’t know what I was missing in the old days,” Nate commented, admiring the shiny oak cabinets, antique Hoosier cabinet and jelly cupboard. I would have been feeling even more sorry for myself when I went home to that pile of rubble that served as my house.”

When Katy failed to comment, just reached into the cabinet to retrieve a vase, Nate gestured toward the casserole dish that was steaming on the stove. “Am I interrupting? Are you expecting guests for supper?”

“No. Alice Rother’s son fell off the slipper slide during recess this morning and broke his arm. I fixed supper so the family would have something to eat when they return from the doctor’s office.”

“Skinny Alice has a kid?” Nate asked. “When I left town, she’d never even had a date, not to my knowledge.”

The comment provoked Katy’s smile. Nate felt as if he had worked a small miracle. There and then, he promised himself to find ways to make Katy smile more often.

“Alice married Cody Phelps after he divorced Mandy Slater. You probably wouldn’t recognize Alice if you saw her. She was a late bloomer who turned out to be quite attractive.”

“Yeah? Well, I’d have to see it to believe it,” Nate said, and chuckled.

Before Katy could take Nate on a tour of the house, a sharp rap resounded on the back door. “Excuse me a moment.”

She scuttled off, quickly closing the door behind her. Curious, Nate tiptoed over to peek through the kitchen window. To his amazement, he saw a teenage boy standing at the bottom of the steps. The kid had his hands crammed in the front pockets of his baggy jeans. He wore his dingy baseball cap backward, pulled down low over his mop of unruly hair.

“Need lunch money, Chad?” Katy asked her visitor.

Nate watched the teenager nod, then shuffle his oversize feet. Nate’s heart twisted in his chest, knowing that he was staring at a younger version of himself. Chad’s clothes and self-cut hair indicated a shortage of funds.

“You know the deal, Chad,” Katy said. “No drugs, only food. Don’t let yourself be sucked into the pressure put on by the kids you hang around with. I know they are razzing you, but don’t give in to them. Promise me?”

Chad bobbed his shaggy head. “Yes, ma’am.”

Katy pulled a twenty dollar bill from the pocket of her jeans and handed it to the teenager. “I’ve requested funds from the city council to hire a janitor. If the funds are approved, the job is yours. It will give you an excuse not to get involved with those troublemakers who have befriended you.”

“It’s not easy to break loose from them when nobody else will accept me,” Chad grumbled sourly, then swiped a hand across his faded shirt. “I can’t dress well enough to be accepted by the ‘in’ crowd in town.”

“You can spiff up your wardrobe when you get the job,” Katy encouraged him.

“I can’t afford to buy duds fancy enough to make Tammy sit up and take notice,” Chad challenged.

Nate watched Katy bless the kid with a tender smile. “She notices now, Chad, but she is old-fashioned enough not to chase after boys, and she is just as self-conscious and unsure of how to approach you.”

“Yeah?” Chad asked hopefully.

“Uh-huh, so you’ll have to do the asking when it comes to dating.”

“Right, like I have pocket change for that,” Chad said, then scowled. “What am I supposed to do? Borrow the neighbor kid’s bicycle and ask Tammy out? Like, that would really impress her, wouldn’t it? Like, she’d leap at the chance to go out with a guy from the poor side of town to have a Coke date, because that’s all the cash I could scrape together to spend on her.”

Nate stepped away from the window and resumed his position by the door, so he wouldn’t get caught eavesdropping. Katy returned a couple of minutes later.

“Sorry for the interruption,” she said.

“No problem.”

When Katy limped upstairs, Nate followed in her wake. He appraised the grand old home, finding it as neat and tidy as he expected. It was a far cry from the disheveled, filthy shack where he’d grown up. His mother had never been around much. When she was, it was only to sleep off the most recent hangover. Nate had been responsible for all the handyman jobs he could manage and for tidying up the place. There was only so much you could do with a drafty old shanty that should have been condemned during the Dust Bowl days.

Nate wondered if the kid named Chad who came calling at the back door hailed from a similar background. Probably.

Nate halted abruptly at the door that was filled with Katy’s soft scent, then studied her bedroom. Vivid images leaped to mind; he wondered how the two of them would look cozied up in that priceless antique four-poster bed, improving on those intimate secrets they had shared in the back seat of his car.

Those stolen moments had been indelibly etched in Nate’s memory. Despite his bad reputation, his first experience with sex had been Katy’s first experience. He hadn’t known what the hell he was doing, only that his feelings for her demanded to be communicated physically, emotionally.

To this day Nate could still remember how sweetly and trustingly she had responded to him. And he wished with all his heart that he and Katy could have spent the past decade learning all the intimate ways of pleasuring each other. Instead, Katy had been used, abused and treated so abominably that she had lost faith in men, in herself.

The thought caused Nate to grind his teeth until he practically wore off the enamel. He clenched his fist, wishing he could retaliate against the men who had brought Katy such pain. Judge Bates and Brad Butler should consider themselves extremely fortunate they were dead, because Nate would have gladly reverted to his old habits and beat the living hell out of them.

Chapter Four

“Something wrong?” Katy guessed when Nate stared silently at her bedroom.

Nate flashed a smile he didn’t feel. “I was just thinking how I used to sit in my car and stare up at the lights in your bedroom window. You must have spent most of your time up here. Either that or you didn’t need to worry about conserving on the electric bills the way I did.”

“This was my haven,” she admitted quietly. “I only went downstairs when it was time for one of Dad’s many lectures.”

Katy was amazed how easily she had slipped back into confiding in Nate. For years she had kept her own counsel. But when Nate arrived to stroll down memory lane it seemed only natural to tell him about those difficult years with her tyrannical father. She always wondered, if her mother hadn’t died shortly after childbirth, if Victoria Bates would have served as a buffer and go-between for Katy and James, if things had turned out differently…As it was, the judge had handed down his decrees and sentences to his children the same way he delivered legal rulings from the bench. The man had never been able to separate his personal and professional lives.