Brenda Novak - A Family of Her Own

Besides, she was so hungry she could almost eat cardboard, and she wasn’t about to help herself to Booker’s food without working to earn it.

Unfortunately Booker’s cupboards weren’t well-stocked. Salt, cold cereal, a few cans of tuna, the heel of a loaf of bread…Probably he and Delbert ate out a lot.

What was she going to do?

She opened the refrigerator. Beer, a cube of butter and some eggs. Not much better.

Sitting down, because her empty stomach was making her a little light-headed, she considered her options. She could make tuna salad. Or she could go to the store, spend her last twenty dollars on groceries and make a meal of which she could be proud.

Somehow, after her mother’s poor reception, the rejection she’d experienced while attempting to find a job, and facing one of Andy’s cousins, she needed to be able to contribute—even more than she needed money. Getting up, she grabbed her purse and headed back into town.

GLANCING AT HIS WATCH, Booker realized it was nearly eleven o’clock. Much too late to tear apart the wheels and repack the bearings on Helen Dobbs’s Chevy Suburban, which was next on his list.

Shoving himself out from beneath the red Mustang he’d just fixed, he dodged the space heater that hummed nearby and crossed to the sink at the corner of the shop. He’d let his full-time mechanic, Chase Gardner, leave hours ago. Delbert had taken Bruiser and wandered over to the Honky Tonk at nine o’clock to play some pool. But Booker had kept working. For once, he wasn’t interested in hanging out at the Honky Tonk. And he sure as hell didn’t feel like going home. Not with Katie there. Word was spreading that she was staying with him. He’d been hearing about it all day.

“Hey, I hear Katie’s in town…You two back together…? Is she finished with Andy…? Why is she staying with you instead of her parents?”

In retrospect, Booker wasn’t sure exactly how he’d wound up with Katie under his roof. There was her smoking car, then the rain, then her mother standing at the door looking down her nose at both of them. And suddenly he had a roommate.

It was just plain bad luck that he’d come across her before anyone else had.

Peeling off the heavy coveralls he typically wore over his clothes in winter, he pushed up the sleeves of his long-sleeved T-shirt, lathered his hands and arms with laundry detergent and used a brush to scrub off the grease. In the extra hours he’d spent at the shop, he’d worked on Katie’s car, which he’d towed into town first thing this morning, and finished repairing a Mustang and a Nissan truck. He was tempted to keep working through the night. Heaven knew he had enough backlog. But he had to go home sometime, or he knew he wouldn’t be worth anything tomorrow.

The telephone rang. It had rung at about ten, while he was working under the Mustang, but he hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone badly enough to interrupt what he was doing. Now he thought maybe Delbert hadn’t been able to catch a ride home, as he normally did if Booker wasn’t around, so he headed into the small front office.

“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.”