Instead of asking the questions taunting him, Micah called through the open door on the driver’s side of his buggy, “Don’t you want to get out of the rain?”
She nodded, biting her lower lip.
For a moment, he wondered if he was wrong about her being Katie Kay Lapp. The Katie Kay he knew never had been abashed or quiet. Instead she’d had a quick retort and an easy laugh. This pale wraith might look like the woman he’d known, but where had her bright sparkle gone?
He was being silly. The woman was Katie Kay Lapp. She was walking in the direction of Paradise Springs, where both her family and his lived.
“Komm in,” he said as he reached across the buggy to open the passenger side door. He shut the one on his side while she hurried around the buggy. The rain was falling harder, and he didn’t want to get soaked before he reached home. He would have been there by now if he and his business partner, Sean Donnelly, hadn’t needed to meet with a new client tonight.
He hoped he and Sean would get the job installing solar panels for a new client. Otherwise, it would have been a waste of an evening and a slow, cold ride home. Sean’s wife, Gemma, had asked Micah to stay at their house overnight, but he hadn’t wanted his family to worry when he didn’t return to the farm.
And Katie Kay would have been left to walk along the road connecting Paradise Springs and Ronks in the heart of Lancaster County. He hadn’t seen another vehicle, other than a couple of cars driving at an unsafe speed along the twisting road. Certainly no buggies, because any person with sense would be inside on an inclement night.
When Katie Kay climbed in and slid the door closed, she sat as far from him as possible in the small buggy. Which wasn’t very far. If they both put their hands on the seat between them, their fingers would overlap.
As they used to when he took her home after a singing.
That’s over and done with, he reminded himself. She’d made it clear the last time he took her home in his courting buggy that if he disappeared from the face of the earth, she’d be fine. Instead, she had gone away, jumping the fence to live with Englischers.
She didn’t look at him or speak, but in the glow from the buggy’s lights, he saw she was shivering.
“Here.” He stretched his arm behind the seat and pulled out a towel he kept among his tools. He used it when he washed up after a hot day of working on a roof while installing solar panels.
“Thanks.” She hesitated as if he’d be upset her first word to him wasn’t in Deitsch, the language of the plain people, and he’d order her out of the buggy. Before he could ask why she acted like a beaten pup, she added in not much more than a whisper, “Danki.”
“Sounds like you’ve gotten used to talking to your Englisch friends.”
“They aren’t my friends,” she snapped and then turned away to dry her dripping hair.
At last! A glimpse of the self-assured Katie Kay, though he wished he hadn’t had to be irksome to get her to respond. When they’d first started walking out together, he’d admired that aspect of her. He’d thought then that she could be the special one for him. When she’d selected him from among her admirers, he’d believed it meant something. What a fool he’d been!
Taking the reins, he slapped them on Rascal’s back. The horse was the same dark gray as the storm clouds overhead. Rascal stepped on the road. Micah didn’t need to convince him to a faster pace. The buggy horse was eager to get home and dry.
Katie Kay didn’t say anything as they drove through the night. From the corner of his eye, he saw her squeezing water out of her hair and into the towel. She never glanced in his direction. He might as well have been invisible.
He pulled on the left rein to turn Rascal onto the road to the Lapp farm. The horse resisted.
“Let’s go, Rascal,” Micah said past clenched teeth. He couldn’t let his irritation with the woman beside him make him upset at the buggy horse. Rascal wanted to go right to reach his dry stable.
A damp hand settled on his left arm. He hated the tingle erupting out from where Katie Kay touched him. After a year, she had the same effect on him. He was a bigger fool than he’d thought.
“Go some other way,” she ordered. “Any other way.”
“This is the fastest way to your house.”
“No! You can’t take me home.”
“Of course I’m taking you home.” He frowned. “Where else did you think I was taking you?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere else.” Her voice broke, and her whisper was raw. “Just not home. Please, Micah. Don’t take me home.”
He didn’t bother to hide his shock. What had happened to her? He’d never heard her beg anyone for anything.
“You need to go home, Katie Kay. Your family has been beside themselves with worry about you. I’m taking you home.”
“No, you’re not!” She grabbed the passenger side door. “If you think I won’t jump out of this buggy, then you’re wrong.”
“Don’t be silly. You could hurt yourself.”
“I didn’t before,” he thought he heard her mutter, but before he could ask if he’d heard her correctly, she said, “If you’re going to be like that, Micah, stop and let me out.”
“I’m not leaving you out here in the middle of a stormy night.”
“And you’re not taking me home.” Again her voice broke. “I’m not ready to face them. Not yet.”
Hardening his heart to her was impossible. They’d known each other all their lives. He’d counted her among his gut friends before he’d fallen for her. Her daed was marrying his mamm in a month.
Was that why Katie Kay had returned? For the wedding? If so, Reuben and Mamm would be overjoyed to see her. But why didn’t she want to relieve her daed’s fears? Too much didn’t make sense.
“Micah,” she said softly, “please take me somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any money? One of the hotels out on Route 30 might not be completely booked on a weeknight.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have enough to pay for a room.” Opening her soaked purse that sat in a damp spot on the seat, she gasped.
“What’s wrong?”
“He took my money! I thought he was just taking my cell phone.”
Micah’s hands tightened on the reins. “He? Were you robbed?”
“Not exactly.”
If she was trying to be baffling tonight, she was succeeding. Maybe if he tried a different approach...
“Katie Kay, I don’t want to have to lie to Reuben when he talks about wondering where you are.”
“I’m not asking you to lie. I’m asking you not to say anything about seeing me.”
“That’s splitting hairs.”
“Maybe it is.” Again she looked away. “But I can’t face my family right now.”
It was the second time she’d said those words. He wanted to ask why she intended to avoid her family, but she looked dejected and lost, so unlike the girl he’d known. He pushed aside his objections. The Bible taught that they were supposed