A Family of Her Own. Brenda Novak

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СКАЧАТЬ got up and raced from the kitchen, and Katie slanted a questioning glance at Booker. “Delbert lives with you? How did that come about?”

      “I met him at the shop once I took over.”

      “And?”

      “You heard him. His dad died.”

      “So you took him in?”

      “He works for me,” he said. “I’ve actually been able to teach him quite a bit about cars.”

      Teaching Delbert anything had to be a slow, frustrating process. That Booker would have the patience and go to the trouble when almost everyone else in town—including the local minister—barely acknowledged Delbert impressed Katie. “There must be more to the story than that.”

      “Not really,” he said. “Delbert’s dad was all he had. Once he died, there wasn’t anyone left to care for him.”

      Katie shook her head as she toyed with the salt and pepper shakers in the center of the table. Somehow Booker never failed to surprise her. “That’s really nice,” she said. “What would’ve happened to him if you hadn’t stepped in?”

      “He would’ve gone to a special home in Boise.”

      “Most people would’ve let him go,” she said.

      He set her eggs on the table and went to the counter to butter the toast that had just popped up. “Maybe, but it didn’t make any sense to me. He grew up around here. Dundee is comfortable and familiar to him. And they wouldn’t let him have a dog or work on cars. Delbert lives for those two things.”

      As if to confirm his words, Delbert returned with a model of an antique Ford. “See?” he said. “This is a Model-T, one of the first cars ever made. It came in pieces. Booker helped me put it together.”

      “He did, huh?” Katie watched Booker clean up the mess he’d just made.

      “Yeah.” Delbert gazed lovingly at his model. “Booker can do anything.”

      Katie lifted her eyes to meet Booker’s and found him wearing a wry grin. “Some people are easier to please than others,” he said.

      

      “WHERE ARE YOU?” Rebecca demanded as soon as the bartender at the Honky Tonk brought her to the phone. “Josh and I have been waiting here for over an hour.”

      Booker returned the frying pan he’d dried to its place beneath the stove. “I ran into a slight complication.”

      “What kind of complication?”

      He looked toward the kitchen door to make sure he was still alone. “Katie.”

      “What?” Rebecca nearly screamed the word. The fact that she could scarcely hear above the music pounding in the background probably had something to do with it. But he knew hearing Katie’s name on his lips had more impact than anything.

      “Katie Rogers is back in town,” he explained.

      “No way!”

      “It’s true.”

      She fell silent for a moment. “I thought you were over Katie. Just last week, you told me to quit bugging you about her. You said she was never going to contact you, and it didn’t matter anyway because you didn’t—”

      “I remember what I said,” he interrupted.

      “And now she’s back? Out of the blue? How do you know?”

      “I found her stranded on the side of the road a few miles outside town.” He didn’t add that she’d been driving a hunk of junk, had dark circles under her eyes, looked as thin as a rail and was five months pregnant.

      “Was Andy with her?”

      “What do you think?”

      “I think they lasted longer than I ever dreamed they would.”

      They’d lasted longer than Booker had thought possible, too. For a while, he’d held out hope that Katie would reconsider his proposal and come back to tell him she’d made a mistake. But as month marched on to month, he’d finally realized he was stupid for continuing to hope and had forced himself to get on with his life.

      Only now she was back. She just hadn’t come back to him.

      “She should never have let you get away,” Rebecca said.

      “Let me get away? Hell, she practically ran in the other direction.”

      “Maybe it’s because you don’t give many people a chance.”

      “She had more than a chance.”

      Rebecca wasn’t listening. “You’re not unsociable, exactly. Just a little rough around the edges, stubborn—definitely stubborn—and a bit of a cynic.”

      “That’s pretty funny, coming from you,” he pointed out, but Rebecca’s mind had already shifted gears.

      “Hey, do you think she’ll want to work at the salon again?”

      “Aren’t you ready to give up managing that place? It’s not as though you need the money.”

      “I’m not managing the salon anymore, I’m buying it. I like having something that’s all my own. It helps me hold on to Rebecca so she doesn’t get lost in being Mrs. Joshua Hill.”

      “You expect me to understand that psychobabble bullshit?”

      She laughed. “You understand, and you know it.”

      He only understood that Rebecca was one of the few people he could trust, and he valued her friendship. “So you want me to have Katie call you in a day or two if she’s interested in coming back to work?”

      “Wait a second.” Suspicion entered Rebecca’s voice. “She’s staying at her folks’ house, right?”

      Booker blew out a sigh. “Wrong.”

      “Don’t tell me she’s staying with you!”

      “I had to bring her home,” he said. “Her parents refused to take her in.”

      “Why?”

      If he’d been talking to anyone else, he might have said, “Because she’s pregnant and not married.” But he wasn’t talking to just anyone. He was talking to Rebecca, and she was very sensitive these days about who was having a baby and who wasn’t. Mostly because she wasn’t. She and Josh had been married a couple of years and they’d been trying to have a baby the whole of that time, but nothing they did seemed to work. Booker knew Josh had gone in for testing because Rebecca had shown up on his doorstep, when the doctors determined that she was the one facing fertility problems, and ranted about the unfairness of life. Of course it would be her, she’d said; Josh was never to blame for anything. Then she’d done something he’d never seen her do before—she СКАЧАТЬ