Brenda Novak - A Family of Her Own

“Actually, it’s probably not what you think. San Francisco was fabulous, for the most part,” she said. Which was true—if she confined her comments to the city itself.

When he made no reply, she plunged ahead. “It’s just that I’m a country girl at heart, you know? I decided that San Francisco is a great place to visit, but nowhere I’d want to stay.”

He slung one arm over the steering wheel, and she supposed it was his rebel attitude that made him look both bored and on-edge at the same time.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked.

His toothpick moved as he chewed on it. “Where’s Andy?”

“He—” she scrambled for something to crack Booker’s reserve “—he’s laid up and couldn’t come along.”

Booker arched an eyebrow. “Laid up?”

“He was…um…hit by a cable car,” she said with a grin to let him know she was joking.

She’d hoped to elicit a smile, but the line of Booker’s lips remained as grim as ever. Slowly he slid the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You mean life in San Francisco wasn’t the nirvana you expected.”

She resisted the urge to squirm in her seat. “We all make mistakes,” she muttered as he parked in front of her parents’ white-brick rambler.

He easily yanked the suitcases that she could barely lift out of his truck, carried them to the door and punched the doorbell. Then he pivoted and headed back, leaving her on the doorstep without so much as a “goodbye” or a “good luck.”

“Haven’t you ever done anything you regret?” she called after him. She knew he’d done plenty; she just didn’t know if he regretted any of it. He certainly had never acted as though he felt any remorse.

But she didn’t listen for a reply. The door to her parents’ home opened almost immediately, and her stomach knotted as she saw her mother’s face for the first time in two years.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, praying that Tami Rogers would be more forgiving than Booker.

Her mother’s expression didn’t look promising. And when Tami glanced at Booker and his truck, her features became even more pinched. “What are you doing here?”

Katie peered over her shoulder at Booker, too, wishing him gone, well out of earshot. “I…” The pain inside her suddenly swelled. She couldn’t even remember, let alone recite, the eloquent apology she’d prepared on the way from San Francisco. All she wanted was for her mother to reach out and hug her. Please…

Her mouth like cotton, she searched for the right words. “I…I need to come home, Mom…just for a little bit,” she added because she thought it might make a difference if her mother understood she didn’t expect any long-term help. Just a place to stay and some kind of welcome until she could find a job that wouldn’t require her to be on her feet.

“Oh, now you want to come home,” her mother replied.

“I know you’re angry—”

“Andy called here looking for you,” she interrupted.

“He did?”

“He told us you never got married.” She folded her arms and leaned against the lintel. “Is that true?”

“Yes, but only because—”

“He also said you’re five months pregnant.”

Instinctively Katie’s hand went to her abdomen. She hadn’t gained any weight yet, so the pregnancy wasn’t apparent, especially in Andy’s baggy sweatshirt. “It—it wasn’t something I planned. But once it happened, I thought maybe Andy would—”

Her mother put up a hand to stop her. “I don’t want to hear it. I raised you better than this, Katie Lynne Rogers. You used to be a good girl, the sweetest there was.”

Katie tried not to blanch as her mother’s rejection lashed a part of her that was already terribly raw. “I’m still the same person, Mom.”

“No, you’re not the girl I knew.”

Katie didn’t know how to combat such a statement, so she switched topics. “Andy had no right to tell you anything. He’s the one who—”

“He’s a bum, just like we said. Right?”

Andy was handsome and debonair. He certainly looked like a stand-up guy. But he was full of empty promises and false apologies. She couldn’t refute that, either, so she nodded.

“We tried to tell you,” Tami went on. “But you wouldn’t listen. Now you’ve made your bed, I guess you can sleep in it.”

The door closed with a decisive click.

Katie blinked at the solid wood panel, feeling numb, incredulous. Home was the place that had to take you in, right? She’d hung on to that thought for miles and miles. She didn’t have anywhere else to go. She’d spent nearly every dime she possessed reaching Dundee.

She considered the last twenty bucks in her wallet and knew it wouldn’t be enough to get a room. She couldn’t even walk back to town, where there was a motel, without risking the baby.

Slowly it dawned on her that Booker hadn’t pulled away from the curb. Which meant he’d probably heard the whole thing.

Embarrassment so powerful it hurt swept through her as she turned. Sure enough, he was standing at the end of the walk, leaning against his truck with the rain dripping off him, staring at her with those shiny black eyes of his.

His learning about the baby this way, seeing what Andy had reduced her to—it was more humiliating than Katie could’ve imagined. She’d broken off her relationship with Booker because she’d wanted more than he could give her. And here she was….

A lump formed in her throat and her eyes began to burn. But she had a few shreds of pride left.

Bending, she picked up her small suitcase. She couldn’t lift the large one. It was too heavy to carry with any dignity, and she wouldn’t get far trying to drag it. So she sucked in a quick, ragged breath in an effort to hold herself together a little longer, threw back her shoulders and started down the street.

She didn’t know where she was going. But at the moment, anywhere was better than here.

BOOKER COULDN’T BELIEVE what he’d just heard. Katie wasn’t only down on her luck, she was pregnant. Andy Bray, that sorry son of a bitch who’d come through town bragging about everything he was and everything he was going to be, when he wasn’t anything at all, had gotten her pregnant and left her to cope on her own.

Booker longed to make Andy pay for what he’d done. Then he reminded himself that he had no stake in Katie’s life. He might have loved her once, but she’d chosen someone else. Someone with all the trappings of respectability—the preppy clothes, the supportive family, the college degree. That removed Booker from the picture completely. He should head over to the Honky Tonk, he told himself, and forget he’d ever seen her.

Climbing into his truck, he decided to do exactly that. But that damn suitcase sitting alone on the front porch nagged at him. Surely Tami Rogers would change her mind and take her daughter in. Any moment now, the door would open and some member of the family, Katie’s little brother perhaps, would go after her.

Booker waited, but the door didn’t open. Lightning darted across the sky, thunder boomed in the distance, and the wind rose before Tami so much as peeked out a window. Booker felt a moment of hope when he saw her glance furtively into the street. But when she realized he was still there, she jerked the curtains shut.

“She’s not my problem,” he finally muttered, punching the gas pedal. But he didn’t get farther than half a block before Katie’s parting words came back to him: Haven’t you ever done anything you regret?

He’d done plenty of things. He’d been so angry as a kid that he’d been kicked out of more schools than he could remember. He’d put a guy in the hospital simply for looking at him the wrong way. He’d spent two years in a jail cell for stealing a car he didn’t want in the first place. When he reflected on everything he’d felt and done before the age of twenty-five, he knew it was a miracle he’d ever reached thirty. If not for his grandmother, he might never have turned his life around.