Soul Mates

Nate felt so damned sorry for her that he wanted to weep.

“Wipe that look off your face right this very minute,” Fuzz scolded abruptly.

Nate jerked up his head to see Fuzz wagging an index finger in his face. “What look?”

“That pitying look, that’s what,” Fuzz grumbled. “That is the one thing Katy can’t tolerate from folks. I oughta know, because I made the mistake of feeling sorry for her and telling her so.”

Nate winced when he recalled how he had welled up with sympathy at the library. He remembered how Katy had spun around in her chair and promptly dismissed him. She was sensitive about being looked upon with pity, and he had hurt her feelings unintentionally. Well, damn.

“Knowing how you operate,” Fuzz continued, frowning darkly, “You will probably decide to storm over to Katy’s house and tell her how sorry you are that she suffered through a hellish marriage and lost her unborn child, then endured injuries that left her with a noticeable limp.”

Fuzz pushed forward in his chair to stare Nate squarely in the eye. “Hear me and hear me well, Nate. That is not the proper approach to take with Katy. Am I coming through loud and clear?”

“Crystal clear,” Nate confirmed.

“If you have visions of drawing Katy from her shell, you can’t march over there and tell her that you want to take up where the two of you left off all those years ago. I’m no psychologist, but I’ve dealt with enough traumatized and abused victims to know they bottle their emotions inside, just like Katy does. She will never be able to get on with her life until she lets go of her past, until she feels a strong, compelling reason to let go of her pain. My experience tells me that you will have to earn Katy’s trust and confidence, slowly but surely. The men in her life have abused and betrayed her. Any changes she makes in her attitude toward men will be gradual.”

Nate’s shoulders slumped and he sighed audibly. “Hell, here I was, hoping for instant, miraculous results.”

“Then expect to be disappointed,” Fuzz said as he reached for another chip to dip into the salsa. “It took sixteen years of browbeating, manipulation, physical and mental abuse to turn Katy into a hermit. It may take sixteen years to teach her to trust men, to live and laugh again.” He shot Nate a stern glance. “Don’t start some noble crusade that you might not have the patience and dedication to finish, because you will only make matters worse for Katy if you do.”

Nate flopped back in his chair and scrubbed his hands over his face. Fuzz had read him well. Nate had learned to attack business problems with swift, relentless efficiency. The skills he had perfected on the road to financial success were worthless when it came to dealing with Katy.

“So where do I start?” Nate asked helplessly.

Fuzz grinned broadly. “Right here.” When Nate frowned, bemused, Fuzz made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Bring her out to your ranch, tell her how you burned those bad memories from your past to the ground and constructed this palace, with its panoramic view of the rugged gullies and rocky ravines of West Texas. Maybe if she realizes that you wanted to make a fresh start, she’ll want to do the same thing.”

“Hell of an idea, Fuzz,” Nate complimented him.

“Hey, son, I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I’ve got a gray hair for every damn one of life’s experiences.” His smile faded from his wrinkled features. “I encountered a similar problem when my wife was diagnosed with cancer. Sally was ready to give up the fight, and she tried to push me away, make me angry enough to quit on her, the same way she quit on herself. But I refused to back off. I was determined to eke out every moment of happiness during that last year. We traveled when she felt up to it. We attended every community activity, and we made the most of every day we had left together.

“Maybe if Katy realizes you have no intention of giving up on her she’ll come around,” Fuzz added before he switched on the big-screen TV.

“I’m going for a walk,” Nate announced, rising to his feet.

“Take that mutt with you,” Fuzz requested. “Taz has been cooped up in the house most of the day, trying to coax me into petting him constantly. He needs to chase a few rabbits and burn off some energy.”

When Nate had changed into a T-shirt and jeans, he called to Taz and took a long, meditative stroll across the rolling pasture. Checking on his cattle herd was the least of his concerns at the moment. His thoughts were centered on his campaign of reaching that vibrant young woman who had been his inspiration, his unattainable dream way back when. Nate knew he needed a game plan—the best.

“Got any bright ideas about how to handle this situation, Taz?” Nate asked his four-legged companion.

When a jackrabbit bounded up in front of them, Taz took off at a dead run, yipping at the top of his lungs.

Nate realized, and not for the first time in his life, that he was on his own when it came to solving his problems. Turning Katy’s life around would have to be a one-man crusade, and it would take him a few days to work out his plan of action.

Katy was in the process of pulling a bubbling chicken casserole from the oven when the doorbell rang. It had become her habit to let Tammy answer the door in the evening, but Tammy had gone back to school to design posters for the basketball king-and-queen coronation and dance that was scheduled for the upcoming weekend.

Setting aside the casserole, Katy limped to the front door. Her breath gushed from her lungs when a vision from the past returned to haunt her. Nate Channing, dressed in faded blue jeans and a T-shirt that had seen better days, was standing on the porch—the exact place her father had refused to let him set foot all those years ago.

His dark hair, ruffled by the evening breeze, drooped on his forehead, giving him a devil-may-care appearance. He was leaning against the supporting beam of the porch in a negligent stance that had been his trademark as a teenager. A knock-’em-dead smile pursed his lips, and Katy reacted instinctively to it.

He held a bouquet of roses in one suntanned hand and a box of candy in the other. It was difficult for Katy to maintain the distant, remote attitude she practiced in the presence of men. This was one devastatingly attractive man, and despite the fact that Katy knew it would be better for her and Nate not to renew their friendship, there was a lot of history between them—and no closure whatsoever. Nate had been whisked from her life, never to be seen or heard from in sixteen years.

“I always wanted to do this, Katy Marie,” Nate said in that sexy Texas drawl that turned her knees to the consistency of tapioca. “But sixteen years ago I didn’t have enough cash to shower you with gifts.” He glanced at the wrought-iron railing surrounding the porch. “Never thought I’d even get this close to your front door, either.”

Katy inhaled a steadying breath, only to be assailed by the alluring scent of expensive cologne—a vivid contradiction to his bad-boy appearance. Nate looked tough, invincible and adorably appealing to her, just as he had in the old days. His appearance resurrected memories and sensations that Katy hadn’t allowed herself to revisit for fear of driving herself crazy.

But here stood Nate Channing, looking larger than her life-size memories, smelling absolutely wonderful, filling up all her senses to overflowing. God, how she had missed him those first few years, lived on the hope that he would contact her, save her from the life her father had mapped out for her.

Nate extended the box to her. “Chocolate-and-pecan Turtles,” he said in that husky baritone voice that sent gooseflesh flying across her skin. “Your favorite, if memory serves.”

Katy accepted the candy, unable to meet Nate’s gaze. “Thank you.”

“And roses,” he murmured softly, taking a whiff of their fragrant scent. “I wanted to ask you to the prom my senior year and present you with a bouquet of roses and a box of candy, but I never got the chance.”

The reminder caused Katy to flinch as she accepted the flowers. Because of her father, Nate hadn’t been allowed to attend the prom or graduate with his class. God, how would Nate react if he knew the truth about that night he was spirited out of town? Katy wasn’t sure she could find the nerve to tell him.

“May I come in, Kat? I always wondered what the inside of this house looked like. Heaven knows I spent countless evenings staring at it from the street, wishing I was welcome here.”

The admission startled her, and it must have shown in her expression, because Nate’s obsidian eyes twinkled down at her. “I confided a lot of things to you in the old days, Kat, but I guess I was too embarrassed to tell you how I sat by the curb in my bucket-of-bolts car. I used to stare at your house, wishing…”

He shrugged impossibly broad shoulders in that lackadaisical way that once upon a time concealed his feelings of inferiority and frustration. Yet, this handsome hunk—as Tammy had referred to him—had nothing to be ashamed of now. He had obviously made something of himself. Not with laundered drug money, as Lester Brown had everybody thinking.

Despite the fact that Nate had been caught for possession of marijuana and cocaine that night he was arrested, Katy knew he never touched those illegal substances. Because of Gary Channing’s addiction to booze, Nate had developed a fierce aversion to liquor and drugs.

It outraged Katy no end to hear the cruel gossip Brown and Jessup were spreading around town, in an attempt to turn everybody against Nate. If Katy could have found the nerve to confront those two blowhards she would have rushed to Nate’s defense at lunch at the café today. But she had learned the hard way that to contradict a man could incite violence.

Instead of bounding up to refute Brown’s nasty gossip, she just sat there in her corner booth, staring at her plate, listening to that old cuss plant seeds of mistrust and contempt for Nate.

“May I come in?” Nate prompted, jolting Katy from her musings.

She stepped back to allow him inside. How could she refuse him? Nate deserved the opportunity to tour the house that Dave Bates had decreed off-limits to him.

“Wow,” Nate said as he surveyed the spacious living area that was furnished with expensive, refinished antiques. “No wonder the judge didn’t want me in here. He was probably afraid I’d break an irreplaceable heirloom.”

Katy smiled remorsefully. “This room was off-limits to me and my older brother, too,” she confided. “It was nothing but a showroom for Dad’s influential guests. James and I were confined to the playroom until we graduated from high school. I doubt that anyone sat on the flowered fainting couch or hand-carved gliding chair, except our forefathers who originally owned them.”

Nate breathed an inward sigh of relief. He finally had Katy talking. That was the most she had said to him since his arrival in town. He had made it a point to be on the sidewalk outside the library when she went to work the past three days, but she had merely nodded, ducked her head and limped into the library.

Maybe he was being sneaky by dressing as the dirt-poor kid she remembered and preying on her sympathy. But hell, this was the best strategy he’d come up with, even after three nights of profound deliberation. Fortunately, the strategy had worked. He was in the house, and Katy was talking to him, though she still refused to make eye contact for more than a nanosecond at a time.

“I don’t want to impose, but do you have time to give me the grand tour?”

“If you like,” Katy murmured, then ducked her head. “Let me get a vase for the roses.”

Nate followed at a respectable distance behind Katy as she limped through the formal dining room to the spacious kitchen—which had been remodeled and boasted every high-tech convenience. Nate expected that from Dave Bates. Nothing but the best for his children and himself. The sorry son of a bitch.

“Damn, maybe I’m glad I didn’t know what I was missing in the old days,” Nate commented, admiring the shiny oak cabinets, antique Hoosier cabinet and jelly cupboard. I would have been feeling even more sorry for myself when I went home to that pile of rubble that served as my house.”

When Katy failed to comment, just reached into the cabinet to retrieve a vase, Nate gestured toward the casserole dish that was steaming on the stove. “Am I interrupting? Are you expecting guests for supper?”

“No. Alice Rother’s son fell off the slipper slide during recess this morning and broke his arm. I fixed supper so the family would have something to eat when they return from the doctor’s office.”

“Skinny Alice has a kid?” Nate asked. “When I left town, she’d never even had a date, not to my knowledge.”

The comment provoked Katy’s smile. Nate felt as if he had worked a small miracle. There and then, he promised himself to find ways to make Katy smile more often.

“Alice married Cody Phelps after he divorced Mandy Slater. You probably wouldn’t recognize Alice if you saw her. She was a late bloomer who turned out to be quite attractive.”

“Yeah? Well, I’d have to see it to believe it,” Nate said, and chuckled.

Before Katy could take Nate on a tour of the house, a sharp rap resounded on the back door. “Excuse me a moment.”

She scuttled off, quickly closing the door behind her. Curious, Nate tiptoed over to peek through the kitchen window. To his amazement, he saw a teenage boy standing at the bottom of the steps. The kid had his hands crammed in the front pockets of his baggy jeans. He wore his dingy baseball cap backward, pulled down low over his mop of unruly hair.

“Need lunch money, Chad?” Katy asked her visitor.

Nate watched the teenager nod, then shuffle his oversize feet. Nate’s heart twisted in his chest, knowing that he was staring at a younger version of himself. Chad’s clothes and self-cut hair indicated a shortage of funds.

“You know the deal, Chad,” Katy said. “No drugs, only food. Don’t let yourself be sucked into the pressure put on by the kids you hang around with. I know they are razzing you, but don’t give in to them. Promise me?”

Chad bobbed his shaggy head. “Yes, ma’am.”

Katy pulled a twenty dollar bill from the pocket of her jeans and handed it to the teenager. “I’ve requested funds from the city council to hire a janitor. If the funds are approved, the job is yours. It will give you an excuse not to get involved with those troublemakers who have befriended you.”

“It’s not easy to break loose from them when nobody else will accept me,” Chad grumbled sourly, then swiped a hand across his faded shirt. “I can’t dress well enough to be accepted by the ‘in’ crowd in town.”

“You can spiff up your wardrobe when you get the job,” Katy encouraged him.

“I can’t afford to buy duds fancy enough to make Tammy sit up and take notice,” Chad challenged.

Nate watched Katy bless the kid with a tender smile. “She notices now, Chad, but she is old-fashioned enough not to chase after boys, and she is just as self-conscious and unsure of how to approach you.”

“Yeah?” Chad asked hopefully.

“Uh-huh, so you’ll have to do the asking when it comes to dating.”

“Right, like I have pocket change for that,” Chad said, then scowled. “What am I supposed to do? Borrow the neighbor kid’s bicycle and ask Tammy out? Like, that would really impress her, wouldn’t it? Like, she’d leap at the chance to go out with a guy from the poor side of town to have a Coke date, because that’s all the cash I could scrape together to spend on her.”

Nate stepped away from the window and resumed his position by the door, so he wouldn’t get caught eavesdropping. Katy returned a couple of minutes later.

“Sorry for the interruption,” she said.

“No problem.”

When Katy limped upstairs, Nate followed in her wake. He appraised the grand old home, finding it as neat and tidy as he expected. It was a far cry from the disheveled, filthy shack where he’d grown up. His mother had never been around much. When she was, it was only to sleep off the most recent hangover. Nate had been responsible for all the handyman jobs he could manage and for tidying up the place. There was only so much you could do with a drafty old shanty that should have been condemned during the Dust Bowl days.

Nate wondered if the kid named Chad who came calling at the back door hailed from a similar background. Probably.

Nate halted abruptly at the door that was filled with Katy’s soft scent, then studied her bedroom. Vivid images leaped to mind; he wondered how the two of them would look cozied up in that priceless antique four-poster bed, improving on those intimate secrets they had shared in the back seat of his car.

Those stolen moments had been indelibly etched in Nate’s memory. Despite his bad reputation, his first experience with sex had been Katy’s first experience. He hadn’t known what the hell he was doing, only that his feelings for her demanded to be communicated physically, emotionally.

To this day Nate could still remember how sweetly and trustingly she had responded to him. And he wished with all his heart that he and Katy could have spent the past decade learning all the intimate ways of pleasuring each other. Instead, Katy had been used, abused and treated so abominably that she had lost faith in men, in herself.

The thought caused Nate to grind his teeth until he practically wore off the enamel. He clenched his fist, wishing he could retaliate against the men who had brought Katy such pain. Judge Bates and Brad Butler should consider themselves extremely fortunate they were dead, because Nate would have gladly reverted to his old habits and beat the living hell out of them.

Chapter Four

“Something wrong?” Katy guessed when Nate stared silently at her bedroom.

Nate flashed a smile he didn’t feel. “I was just thinking how I used to sit in my car and stare up at the lights in your bedroom window. You must have spent most of your time up here. Either that or you didn’t need to worry about conserving on the electric bills the way I did.”

“This was my haven,” she admitted quietly. “I only went downstairs when it was time for one of Dad’s many lectures.”

Katy was amazed how easily she had slipped back into confiding in Nate. For years she had kept her own counsel. But when Nate arrived to stroll down memory lane it seemed only natural to tell him about those difficult years with her tyrannical father. She always wondered, if her mother hadn’t died shortly after childbirth, if Victoria Bates would have served as a buffer and go-between for Katy and James, if things had turned out differently…As it was, the judge had handed down his decrees and sentences to his children the same way he delivered legal rulings from the bench. The man had never been able to separate his personal and professional lives.

“Come on, Kat. I’ve seen your place, now I would like to show you mine.”

When Nate reached for her hand, Katy reflexively withdrew. And felt like a fool. Although she expected to see a look of confusion or sympathy on Nate’s face, he merely smiled and patiently held out his hand a second time.

“Still the best of friends?” he asked softly. “I would like to have two allies in this town. Sheriff Havern is one. I would very much like for you to be the other, Katy.”

Katy stared at his long, lean fingers. She hadn’t liked to be touched, had avoided contact every chance she got. The remembered pain and humiliation had taught her to keep her distance from men. In years past a touch had become an insulting grope, a slapping reprimand for disobedience, then blessed oblivion from the pain.

Suddenly, Katy remembered what Nate had told her the first day he returned to Coyote Flats. He had reminded her that he had never hurt her, that he would never hurt her. Could she trust him to keep his word when the other men in her life hadn’t?

Hesitantly, she slipped her hand into his, though she couldn’t quite meet his gaze. Her heart bled when he brought her hand to his lips and grazed her knuckles with a kiss. The old Katy would have pressed up on tiptoe, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. The new Katy didn’t dare take initiative, because old habits died hard.

“Thanks, Katy, you’ll never know how badly I needed to do that. Just touch you, I mean.”

Gently, Nate squeezed her clammy hand. He could tell she was self-conscious, wary and nervous as hell. Already, he was moving so slowly and cautiously with her that it nearly killed him. But if slow and cautious were the only ways of drawing Katy from her self-imposed shell, then he would damned well inch along like a snail.

Never in his life had he expected to count his progress in inches. But hey, even a snail got somewhere—eventually—Nate reminded himself.

Hand in hand, Nate and Katy strode down the hall. Nate was careful not to pull her behind him, because he suspected that bastard she’d married had pulled and dragged her around constantly. Nate made damned sure he and Katy remained on equal footing.

“I’m anxious for you to see my house,” Nate continued on the way down the steps. “I built it on the same spot where the shack used to sit. It seemed symbolic and necessary to erect my future on the ashes of the past.”

She slipped her hand from his, then limped toward the kitchen. “Maybe I can come out some other time, Nate. I have to deliver the casserole and pick up Tammy from school.”

“I’d be glad to drive you.” Nate flashed what he hoped was his most engaging grin. “Surely you aren’t going to deprive me of the chance of seeing Skinny Alice again, are you? A real knockout these days, you say?”

It came again. A smile—one shade brighter than the first. Still, though, it didn’t reach Katy’s eyes and make them sparkle with the inner spirit he remembered from the old days. But when a man was counting his progress in quarter-inch increments, he took what he got and was glad of it.

Katy knew it was a mistake to allow herself to associate with Nate, even for a few hours. They were too different these days, and she had nothing to offer except limited friendship. But darn, it was hard to say no to that charming grin, to the incredibly handsome man who appealed to her on so many levels. The fact that she was still impossibly attracted to Nate assured Katy that not all her emotions were frozen solid. She simply couldn’t resist that compelling field around him that offered strength, comfort and pleasure.

“You and Tammy can stay for supper,” Nate invited. “Fuzz would love the company. He spent so many years cruising around all by his lonesome in the patrol car that he’s practically talked my ears off since he moved in with me.”

“So the rumor circulating around town is true? Fuzz does live with you?”

Nate nodded. “Yep, I designed the house to accommodate him. It is my way of repaying him for giving me a second chance, though I had to promise not to make contact with you or anyone else after I left. Otherwise, I would face punishment at the judge’s hands.”

Katy flinched. Her father had gone to extremes to ensure that she had no future contact with the young man she had fallen hopelessly in love with at the tender age of sixteen. Dave Bates had known how to break her spirit and bend her to his will. He had taken away the only person who meant something to Katy. Her father had made Nate disappear and left her with no hope of his return.

Katy shoved aside the bitter thoughts to inform Nate of what he was up against in town. “According to Lester Brown, you moved the former sheriff in with you so you would have good connections, in case you ran into trouble with the law during your drug dealings.”

Nate blinked in surprise. “That’s the scuttlebutt in town? Well hell, Lester doesn’t miss a trick, does he?”

“I wanted to pop him in the mouth when he blurted out that lie at the café today,” Katy muttered.

The comment, spoken with more emotion than Nate had seen, or heard, Katy display, gave him hope. Katy had obviously become a master at maintaining a neutral tone for fear of igniting her husband’s volatile temper. But she was obviously offended by Lester Brown’s attempt to turn the town against Nate.