First Love, Second Chance by Brenda Novak

Author:Brenda Novak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2004-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

KATIE TOYED NERVOUSLY with the Sweet’n Low packets in the middle of the table as she and Mike waited for Josh and Rebecca to join them at Jerry’s. They could’ve all ridden together. They were coming from the same place. But Katie was grateful that Mike had told his brother and sister-in-law they’d meet at the diner instead. The trip into town had given her some time to mentally prepare herself to approach Rebecca with the adoption issue.

“You okay?” Mike said, watching her with a concerned expression.

She cast a surreptitious glance out the window toward Booker’s shop. The garage doors were rolled up and the lights were on in his office. She’d taken note of that the moment they drove up. But she hadn’t spotted him on the way in, and now she was sitting at too much of an angle to see more than a small section of his property. “I’m fine.”

“I guess you’ve heard about Booker,” he said, following her gaze when it returned, almost involuntarily, to the window.

Katie’s eyes went immediately to Mike’s face. “What do you mean?”

“He had his hearing on Friday for that fight with the Smalls.”

“I didn’t know.” Except for her association with Mike, she’d been completely out of circulation. “How’d it go?”

Mike stirred some more cream into his coffee. “He was fined $500 and, ‘in light of his turbulent past,’ the court mandated he attend anger management classes once a week in Boise.”

“How do you know all this?” Katie asked.

“Rebecca told me when I called to invite her and Josh to breakfast this morning.”

“Did anything happen to the Smalls?”

“No. They weren’t even cited.”

“That’s so unfair.” She shoved the sweetener packets away. “Booker didn’t start that fight. He was only trying to protect Delbert.”

“I believe that.”

Katie hadn’t expected Mike’s support. “You do?”

“I don’t really know Booker. Most people don’t. He’s not particularly trusting. But Rebecca would do anything for him. And I can tell you care about him, too. He must be a decent guy.”

“He is.”

Mike slid the menu the hostess had given him off to the side. “I remember seeing you and Booker around town quite often a few years ago. I thought you two were an item.”

“I guess we were,” she said.

“What happened?”

Katie wasn’t sure how to explain. She’d gone over the past again and again, wondering how she’d fallen so far from where she’d always wanted to be. But even now it wasn’t easy to separate the “should haves” from the “shouldn’t haves.” Her love life at that time had been complicated. “When I met Booker, my parents and just about everyone in town warned me to stay away from him, but I still had such a crush on you. I wasn’t worried about falling in love.”

He tipped back his hat and grinned at his part in the story, and she chuckled briefly before continuing. “Anyway, I dated Booker sort of halfheartedly at first. But then things started to get serious. When I realized how much I was beginning to care for him, I thought I had to do something about it.

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