take to fraternizing with pond scum. And that’s all you are, no matter how fancy you wrap the package.”
The self-esteem Nate had spent years cultivating wobbled on its foundations. He had convinced himself, promised himself, that he would stand firm against the anticipated ridicule. Unfortunately, his pride was taking a beating on the first official day of his return to his hometown.
“You hear what I said, boy?” Lester taunted unmercifully. “Get it to go, and don’t come back. You aren’t wanted here.”
The teenage waitress glanced uneasily at Nate as she set the soft drink on the counter. “That’ll be seventy-five cents, sir.”
“Don’t waste your breath calling him sir,” John Jessup said. “Channing doesn’t deserve consideration or respect. Just treat him like the mongrel he is.”
Nate endured the insults without flinching. He tossed two dollar bills on the counter for an extra tip, then turned to face Lester and John’s condescending glowers. He was not going to stoop to anybody’s low expectations of him ever again, he promised himself resolutely.
Although he had been in and out of enough hot water as a teenager to pass as a load of laundry and had been picked up for assault, battery and destruction of personal property, Nate had spent his adult life working toward acceptance and respectability. He had surrounded himself with symbols of power and wealth to insulate himself against inferior feelings planted by men like Lester Brown and John Jessup. But damn, standing here, confronting the unwelcoming faces from his misguided youth resurrected all those unproductive feelings he thought he’d overcome.
Nate knew the folks in Coyote Flats were still seeing and judging him by his parentage and his past mistakes. They were not prepared to accept him for the solid citizen he had become, for the dramatic attitude adjustments he’d made. To these people, he was the same as he had been sixteen years ago, the same wayward youth who’d gone bad.
You can’t go home again…
The negative thought skittered through his mind, but Nate rejected it, even while he was being judged and rejected. Somehow, he would earn the trust and respect of these dogmatic folks in this dying Texas town. He would not let them get the better of him, and he would give them no reason whatsoever to compare him to the troubled, hurt, neglected kid he had once been.
Clinging to his battered pride, Nate exited the café, feeling the condescending gazes stabbing him in the back. The minute he stepped outside, he realized he had been holding his breath. He exhaled slowly, congratulating himself for passing the first of what he predicted would be many tests of self-control and character. He hadn’t lowered himself to Lester Brown and John Jessup’s rude, disrespectful level. He had been polite, not belligerent. He had treated the men with courtesy, even though it hadn’t been reciprocated.
Nate’s tension ebbed and an amused smile pursed his lips when he noticed that Millie Kendrick was waddling toward him. Leaning on a grocery cart for support, Millie toddled across the town square, which was surrounded by shade trees. She circled around the fountain where a statue of a coyote sat on a rock, its concrete head thrown back in an eternal howl.
Millie and her shopping cart had logged many a mile on these streets, he recalled. The old woman looked exactly as Nate remembered her. Millie was dressed in her usual attire of a flowery cotton smock and tattered straw hat that was adorned with plastic bluebirds, cardinals and sunflowers she had glued to the floppy brim. Folks in Coyote Flats claimed Millie was touched in the head, that she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. But nonetheless, folks tolerated her presence in town.
Unfortunately, the citizens of Coyote Flats had zero tolerance for Nate Channing—the hoodlum who had bad blood pumping through his veins. Nate, they had concluded, would never overcome his lowly raising. He was destined for trouble.
Millie halted ten feet away from Nate, propped her elbows on her shopping cart, then angled her head to look him up and down—twice.
“Nate Channing, ain’t it?” she panted, out of breath from her long hike.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said politely.
“Didja come back to kick some butt?”
Nate met the spry old woman’s mischievous grin and felt himself relax for the first time all day. Millie was one of the few people in his hometown who had ever bothered to give him the time of day.
“No, ma’am,” Nate replied. “I gave up on kicking butt and taking names years ago. It just never seemed to do much good.”
She appraised his appearance carefully, then said, “Pretty fancy duds for a kid from the poor side of town. Didja steal ’em?”
“No, ma’am. Paid in cash,” he assured her, smiling in response to her gruff, no-nonsense interrogation.
“Turned out all right then, did you?” She pushed herself upright and gripped the handle of her grocery cart. “Glad to see it. Figured you would, though. What he did to you wasn’t fair, not fair at all.” When she shook her frizzy gray head, the plastic birds wobbled on the brim of her hat. “Tried to tell him so, I did. But the old fool wouldn’t listen to me. Nobody ever listens to me.”
Befuddled, Nate watched Millie shove off to the mom-andpop grocery store. She was still mumbling to herself when she crossed the street.
Nate had no idea what Millie meant by her parting remarks, and he didn’t have time to stand around woolgathering. The heartbreaking sight of Katy Bates compelled him down the street. Nate damn well intended to confront Katy again, away from the prying eyes of his local hate club—of which Brown and Jessup had elected themselves president and vice president.
Nate made a beeline for the library. Katy Bates was one of the three reasons he had returned to Coyote Flats. After encountering her at the café, she had been elevated to the top of Nate’s priority list. If Katy thought she could duck and run away from him, she thought wrong. Their brief reunion had prompted a hundred questions, and Nate wanted answers—now.
Coyote Library sat a block north of Main Street. As Nate recalled, the small hole-in-the-wall structure had once housed a sleazy bar. The establishment was crying out for a coat of paint, and Nate suspected the town hadn’t allocated much in the way of funds to keep the library up-to-date.
The instant Nate stepped inside the building, his speculations were confirmed. Unstained plywood shelves lined the main room. The floor was covered with vintage, gray-speckled linoleum left over from the days when tavern-goers boot-scooted to the strains of country music. Stains on the ceiling tile indicated there were a half-dozen leaks in the roof. The scarred wooden bar now served as the library counter. An outdated copy machine sat in the corner, and picnic tables and benches lined the walls.
Although the public library was neat and clean, the atmosphere was gloomy. Faulty fluorescent lights—that would drive Nate nuts if he had to spend the day working beneath them—flickered down on him.
This was Katy’s world, Nate realized with a sense of shock and dismay. He took another assessing appraisal of the place and found it sorely lacking. This library was nothing compared to his ultramodern office in Odessa.
“May I help you?”
Nate glanced at the teenage girl who had her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She smiled at him, displaying the braces on her teeth. Something about her reminded him of the visual image of Katy that he had carried around in his head. There was
