“Oh.” He gave her a puzzled look, but didn’t ask why. He just stood there, blinking at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Booker said to tell you—” his brow furrowed in concentration “—he said the keys to Hatty’s old Buick are on the counter, if you wanna go anywhere today.”
“How nice of him.”
“Booker’s never hit me. Not once.”
That announcement made Katie wonder how Delbert’s father had treated him. But she wasn’t about to ask. She wasn’t sure she could take the answer right now.
“Delbert, let’s get going,” Booker called from downstairs.
“Tell Booker thank you,” she said.
“Sure, Katie. I’ll tell him.” Delbert gave her a sloppy grin as he and Bruiser hurried from the room, obviously anxious to reach Lionel & Sons.
Outside, the engine of Booker’s truck roared to life. Katie stood at her window and watched the dog jump in the back before they drove off. Then she ate, grateful for the meal in a way she’d never been grateful for such simple things before, and showered. Without Booker, she wouldn’t have had any clean clothes this morning, she realized. He’d been the one to retrieve her suitcase from her parents’ porch.
Carefully folding his sweats, she set them aside, wondering if her mother had gone out looking for her last night. If so, why hadn’t Tami contacted Booker? Surely she’d seen him at the end of the walkway. If her parents cared about her, if they were worried about her at all, they would’ve called to see whether—
A job. She needed a job, she reminded herself, steering her thoughts away from her parents’ hurtful behavior. If she didn’t remain focused on practical considerations, the sting of their rejection would quickly immobilize her.
Opening the larger of her two suitcases, on the floor because it was too heavy to lift onto the bed, she tried to decide what to wear. When she lived in San Francisco, she’d combed through the factory outlet stores at least once a week and found garments worthy of New York, Paris or Milan, all for pennies on the dollar.
But she’d had to sell most of her clothes, along with her shoes. Gone was the Jones of New York sweater with the faux fur. Gone was the low-riding, tight-fitting pair of Bebe jeans with the trendy dirty-denim look. Gone were the cool jackets, Ann Taylor blouses, Kenneth Cole boots and fine Italian leather heels.
Good thing she didn’t need much in Dundee. Wranglers were considered high fashion in this part of the country.
That brought her back to the issue of earning a living. The sooner she found work, the sooner she’d have options. The sooner she had options, the sooner she could stop taking help from Booker.
Unfortunately news of her illegitimate pregnancy was going to travel fast, which would definitely have a negative impact on her chances. Especially in a town so conservative and so small.
Hoping to beat the gossips, she pulled on a simple black dress so she wouldn’t look quite so silly wearing the sandals that were her only shoes. Then she put on some makeup and fixed her hair in a much more conservative style than she generally wore in the city, and located the key for Hatty’s Buick.
“Welcome back to Dundee,” she whispered.
KATIE SPENT THE MORNING searching for a job. She approached the real estate office on the edge of town, hoping to get a receptionist position or a secretarial job, but Herb Bertleson, the broker, wasn’t hiring and his only agent, Fred Winston, couldn’t afford any help. She tried Lester Greenwalt, an insurance agent located not far from the real estate office, but he was content to have his daughter answer the phones and his wife do the filing.
After Greenwalt’s office, she visited the local elementary school to see if she could take lunch tickets or something. But the school year was more than half over and all they needed was a temporary crossing guard because Rosie Strickland had come down with mononucleosis a few days earlier. Standing out in the rain and cold was something Katie couldn’t do while she was pregnant, so she moved on, but the answer was the same everywhere she checked.
Jerry’s Diner was at the very end of her list. When she’d stopped by Finley’s Grocery a few minutes earlier to see if anyone there had heard of any openings, Louise, the cashier, told her to talk to Judy at the diner. Louise said she heard Judy’s daughter was quitting her job at the video store to go back to school. Katie wondered if working there would require her to be on her feet much and if the position would pay her enough to get by.
Managing to squeeze the boatlike Buick into the only parking space available at the diner, Katie got out.
“Isn’t that Hatty’s car?”
Katie shaded her eyes to see Mary Thornton standing beneath the small overhang of the restaurant. “Hi, Mary,” she said. Six years older than Katie, Mary walked and talked as though she considered herself some kind of perennial prom queen. But she was really just the divorced mother of an eleven-year-old boy—a woman with the single-minded ambition to capture one of Dundee’s eligible bachelors.
“Don’t tell me you’re back with Booker,” Mary said, eyeing the Buick.
Everyone who saw the Buick was going to jump to the same conclusion. Katie hated that. She had enough disadvantages already. But she needed some way to get around. She couldn’t seclude herself at the old Hatfield place for long. Not if she planned to survive. “Booker and I are just friends. He—he’s helping me out.”
“Booker’s not the type to do favors for free.” A taunting smile curved Mary’s freshly glossed lips.
“How do you know?” Katie asked, but before Mary could retort, Mike Hill strode out of the restaurant. He was in the process of returning his credit card to his billfold, but when he glanced up, his face lit with recognition.
“Katie! I didn’t know you were back.”
While she was growing up, the sight of Mike Hill had always made Katie’s knees go weak. Even when she was only five or six, she’d stand on her front lawn and wait for him to come by on his bicycle while he was delivering papers.
He was still the handsomest man she’d ever met, in a predictably pleasant, hometown sort of way. With the long thin body of a basketball player, he was always clean-shaven and kept his fine brown hair neatly trimmed. Better yet, his green eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, which he did quite often—far more often than Booker, for instance. But as attractive as he was, he was thirteen years her senior. He’d always treated her like a baby sister. And she was through with men. At least for a few years.
“Hi, Mike,” she said. “How’ve you been?”
“Good. What brings you to town?”
The fact that she was broke and pregnant came to mind, but Katie knew he’d find that out soon enough. “I moved back yesterday.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Really? So you’re home for good?”
She nodded.
“That’s great.”
In the past, his words would’ve left Katie stewing over the sentiment behind them. “Great” as in he missed her? Or “great” as merely a generic “that’s nice”? Today she took them at face value. Cynicism had its advantages.
“It’s good to be back,” she lied. Then she realized that Mary hadn’t moved and was looking up at Mike as though—as though they were together. When Katie left town, Mike had been dating someone from McCall. They’d been seeing each other for months, so everyone had expected them to get married. That must not have worked out. But Mike was thirty-eight and had never even been engaged, so maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised. “You two just have lunch?” she asked.
Mary smoothed her hands over a suit