LITMIR.BIZ

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gazes stabbing him in the back. The minute he stepped outside, he realized he had been holding his breath. He exhaled slowly, congratulating himself for passing the first of what he predicted would be many tests of self-control and character. He hadn’t lowered himself to Lester Brown and John Jessup’s rude, disrespectful level. He had been polite, not belligerent. He had treated the men with courtesy, even though it hadn’t been reciprocated.

      Nate’s tension ebbed and an amused smile pursed his lips when he noticed that Millie Kendrick was waddling toward him. Leaning on a grocery cart for support, Millie toddled across the town square, which was surrounded by shade trees. She circled around the fountain where a statue of a coyote sat on a rock, its concrete head thrown back in an eternal howl.

      Millie and her shopping cart had logged many a mile on these streets, he recalled. The old woman looked exactly as Nate remembered her. Millie was dressed in her usual attire of a flowery cotton smock and tattered straw hat that was adorned with plastic bluebirds, cardinals and sunflowers she had glued to the floppy brim. Folks in Coyote Flats claimed Millie was touched in the head, that she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. But nonetheless, folks tolerated her presence in town.

      Unfortunately, the citizens of Coyote Flats had zero tolerance for Nate Channing—the hoodlum who had bad blood pumping through his veins. Nate, they had concluded, would never overcome his lowly raising. He was destined for trouble.

      Millie halted ten feet away from Nate, propped her elbows on her shopping cart, then angled her head to look him up and down—twice.

      “Nate Channing, ain’t it?” she panted, out of breath from her long hike.

      “Yes, ma’am,” he said politely.

      “Didja come back to kick some butt?”

      Nate met the spry old woman’s mischievous grin and felt himself relax for the first time all day. Millie was one of the few people in his hometown who had ever bothered to give him the time of day.

      “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.

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