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“Still mad?” he asked.
For effect and to stop the crazy thoughts running through her head, she glared at him. “Yes.”
After a beat of silence she laughed. “Not really. I just wanted to see your reaction. In fact, I want to apologize.”
He arched a very dark eyebrow. “For?”
“Breaking and entering. Conduct unbecoming. Rude behavior.”
“You were surprised. No big deal.”
“You were surprised, too, but you didn’t get angry.”
“No, but I pointed a loaded gun at you. That would make me a bit testy.”
“Stop being easy on me. I was a brat and I’m sorry.”
“You’ve always been a brat, but I like you, anyway.”
He’d said like as in the present tense. Could he really not hate her?
“I came to apologize to you,” he said. “I was rude.”
He made himself at home on her steps, crossing his ankles and leaning an elbow on the rough planks. A cell phone dangled at his hip instead of a weapon and a shiny badge glinted over his shirt pocket. He looked relaxed and comfy, a lot like the teenage boy she’d once known.
“Does that mean you’re willing to give me back my cabin?”
He made a noise, half chuckle, half scoff. “Nope. ’Fraid not.”
“That’s what I figured. Go away.” But she smiled when she said it.
“Can’t do that, either.” He removed the dark glasses and hung them on the edge of his shirt pocket while he studied her with a thoughtful gaze. “I really do want to apologize. I had no right to be rude to an old friend.”
“Apology accepted.”
“So does that mean we can be friends again?”
Friends? Could she be friends with a man whose presence brought back the most agonizing time in her life?
The memory rose between them, hovering like a red wasp waiting to sting. Did he feel it, too? Or was she the only one who still battled the guilt?
Maybe men weren’t affected in the same way a woman was. Maybe he’d moved on and forgotten. Maybe he’d never been filled with the same sense of guilt and shame.
And just maybe the time had come for her to stop thinking this way.
An expert at compartmentalizing, Kat pushed the thoughts down deep. She would always care about the boy she’d known in high school, but she wouldn’t open the painful Pandora’s box that had been their relationship.
Still she wanted to know how he’d been, if he’d been happy, if all his other dreams had come true.
“I heard you were divorced.” The thought, half-formed, had become words before she could think better of saying them.
He blanched, and some of his ease disappeared. He stared out at the serene lake, his face in profile, serious and rugged and maybe even a bit tragic.
Kat wished she’d kept her mouth shut. No one walked away from a divorce unscathed.
After a painful beat of silence in which Kat tried to think of a way to take back her unfortunate words, Seth released a gusty breath. “Two years later I’m still in shock.”
“Unfortunately, divorce happens.” All the time, from what she’d seen, but she felt bad that a broken home had happened to Seth. He’d suffered enough of that as a teenager.
“Not to me. I don’t believe in divorce. I hate it, hate even saying the words.”
So Susan had been right. “So I guess that means the split wasn’t your idea.”
“No.” The word was flat and hopeless. “Not my idea, but probably my fault. Cops don’t always make the best husbands.”
“I’m sure you did the best you could.” The words were platitudes even to her ears.
“I did. That’s the agony of the thing. We had a Christian home, a Christian marriage. Or so I thought. All the time, Rita was going through the motions, playing church but seeing someone else on the side. I was a fool without a clue. Not a single clue until I came home from shift one morning to find her lover drinking coffee in my kitchen. They wanted to tell me together.”
Emotion darkened his light-green eyes to the color of grass. His ex-wife had wounded him terribly. No surprise there. Seth was the sticking kind. The surprise was that he’d become a Christian.
Instinctively, as she often did with patients, Kat reached out and placed her hand over his. Seth’s skin was warm and masculine tough against her fingertips. “What an awful thing to do to you. I’m sorry, Seth. Truly.”
“Me, too, Doc.” He gave her a lopsided grin and carefully slid his hand from beneath hers and rubbed at his smooth-shaven jaw. The action was intentional, Kat was sure, his way of letting her know that he did not welcome her touch. “But a broken marriage is something even a good doctor can’t fix.”
“I know.” She folded her fingers into a fist.
This was the frustration of being a doctor. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fix everything. And there were always people who couldn’t accept that fact, including her.
Her visitor gave the porch railing a shake. The old wood wobbled like a bobble-headed doll.
“I can, however, fix this for you.” He nodded toward the rickety old fishing dock projecting out into the lapping water. “And that, too.”
“Feeling guilty about stealing my house?”
“Maybe a little, though dock inspection and repair is part of my job. Safety on the lake, first and foremost. Fix it or tear it down.”
“Doesn’t matter to me.” Nothing much did these days. “I really don’t care one way or the other.”
“The next renter might. I’ll fix it.” He slid the sunglasses back into place. “You sound a little down. Everything okay?”
Like she was going to tell him all her troubles. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t look as if he believed her but he had the grace not to say so. “Well, I guess I better get moving. There’s always work to do on the lake.”
“Not to mention the fact that you’re the only thing resembling law enforcement in Wilson’s Cove.”
“That, too. But I don’t mind. Policing both the town and the lake was part of the deal when they hired me. I’m more cop than I am lake ranger, anyway.”
“The county sheriff has always taken care of Wilson Cove.”
“That was before the lake grew so popular. Sheriff Trout has an entire county to cover with four men.”
Not to mention he was stationed thirty miles away in Henderson. “Any luck with finding out who’s responsible for the recent break-ins?”
“Not yet. Nothing’s been reported for a couple of weeks so maybe the perps were short-term visitors. But just in case, keep things secured and be alert.”
She’d worked in an inner city for years. A physician knew about secure and alert.
She tilted her head in a teasing smile. He sounded so incredibly macho. “Will do, Officer.”
“I mean it, Kathryn. You’re a woman alone. If you should need me…”
“I know where you live.” She couldn’t resist saying, “In my house.”
Some of his seriousness left and he shook his head in amusement. “Still the same sassy mouth.” He slapped the top of the railing, said, “And I’ll be back to work on the dock as soon as I can.”
She’d try not to be here. She didn’t say that, either. But being near Seth resurrected too many memories. She was depressed enough as it was.
“Thanks.”
“So, I guess I’ll see you at church on Sunday?”
“Church?” Her conscience pinched. She hadn’t been to church in years. Hadn’t even thought about going.
“Does that surprise you? That I go to church now?”
She tilted her head to one side. A robin swooped to the ground beside the porch and nabbed a worm.
“A little.”
“All those times you talked about your faith finally soaked in,” Seth said. “I took a while to get the message, but the first time I looked down the wrong end of a nine millimeter and came out alive, I promised God then and there to follow Him. I wouldn’t have survived the last couple of years without Him.”
One of the few things they’d fought about as teens was Seth’s lack of a relationship with God. Somewhere along the way, while she’d been losing her faith, Seth had discovered his.
The irony wasn’t lost on Kathryn, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.
The gentle breeze stirred, sending a lock of hair into her eyes. Her hands were so dirty, she left it.
“So what do you say?” Seth pushed the curl aside and leaned in, green eyes aflame, lips tilted. “See you Sunday morning? Ten-thirty? If you’re nice, I’ll let you sit by me.”
The brush of his hand against her cheek warmed Kathryn more than the seventy-degree day. And that was neither good nor acceptable. She backed away, breaking contact as he’d done earlier.
“I appreciate the invitation, Seth. Really. But I won’t be coming to church.”
A slight frown puckered his dark, slashing eyebrows. “Why not? Don’t want to sit by me? Or are you already heading back to OKC?”
“I don’t know an easy way to say this.” A knot formed beneath her breast bone, like a hand squeezing her heart, but he might as well hear the truth directly from her so he wouldn’t be asking. “I don’t go to church anymore, Seth.”
He stilled, alert and watchful. “Care to explain that a little better?”
Explain? How did she explain what she didn’t understand herself?
Even through the sunglasses, his gaze bored into her, earnest and concerned. She didn’t want his concern. She didn’t want anything from him.
Turning her head, she stared out over the silvery lake. In the far corner of a nearby cove, a single boat bobbed above the gentle current. The soft murmur of voices, sprinkled with laughter, carried across the water. The scene was a happy one. Serene. Peaceful.
Kathryn couldn’t feel that peace, hadn’t felt peace in a long time.
“Somewhere along the line I lost my faith,” she said to the wind, though she could feel the intensity of Seth’s gaze burning a hole in her conscience. “I wish I still believed that God was the answer to everything. I wish I believed He cared. But the truth is, Seth,” she said, swinging her gaze to finally meet his, “I don’t believe in anything at all.”
Chapter Four
Lost her faith. Kat’s bald statement rolled round and round inside Seth’s head as he drove along the lake’s edge checking for problems and then into town.
Kat no longer believed in God? He couldn’t take it in. All through high school her Christian stand had impressed him. So much so that he’d carried the seed of her witness to Houston and ultimately to a relationship with the Lord.
What could have happened to steal Kat’s faith?
A sick foreboding started low in his belly and climbed, full grown, into his mind.
He pulled the truck into the slanted parking spot in front of O’Grady’s Hardware Store and killed the motor. Hands gripping the steering wheel, he squeezed his eyes closed and huffed a painful sigh.
Today he’d gone to Kathryn’s to apologize and maybe to be a friend. He wanted nothing else from her. In fact, he never wanted anything from any woman again except friendship. Not with his track record. Somehow he’d destroyed his marriage and let God down. And a long time ago he’d failed Kathryn.
The reckless kid he’d been back then had blamed her as much as himself. Maybe more. She was the one who had ultimately walked away, who wanted a career in medicine more than anything else, including him. He’d resented that so much.
But now he wondered. Had the wounds they’d inflicted on each other caused her to question God?
The only sensible answer was yes.
He was the reason Kathryn no longer believed. Because of what he’d done, what he’d caused her to do, seventeen years ago.
“Lord, I could use a little guidance here,” he murmured. “I’ve messed things up again.”
He made the same confession a lot lately.
When his prayer brought no immediate answer, he exited the truck, habitually snicking the locks. Half the people in Wilson’s Cove still didn’t lock their cars or houses, a worrisome practice he was trying to change.
For the most part, the sleepy little town experienced few crimes and the townsfolk were convinced no one would steal from them personally. Summer people, they claimed, caused all the trouble, pointing to the rise in problems from Memorial Day to Labor Day. After years of working the streets of Houston, Seth might be cynical, but safety first was not a cliché.
As he stepped up on the sidewalk, he was greeted by passersby who called him by name and asked how he was doing. This was one of his favorite things about moving back to Wilson’s Cove. Here he had a name, a dozen people he called close friends and many more acquaintances, folks he’d known all his life. Though years and miles had separated them, the town embraced him again as soon as he declared his intent to stay. He’d never leave here again, ever. He was home and this was where he wanted to live out his life. Nothing could drag him away again.
His single status was the object of the town’s gossips, but he didn’t mind much. In a town this size, talking about each other was the major source of entertainment. As long as the conversation remained truthful, no one was hurt. Anyway, that was his way of thinking.
He appreciated the motherly ladies, too, who handed him foil-wrapped lasagna and slices of homemade pie or invited him to dinner after church each Sunday. Many of them had known his mother during the hard times and seemed to enjoy spoiling Virgie Washington’s boy. Life was good here in Wilson’s Cove, and as the only law-enforcement official for miles around, Seth planned to keep it that way.
This was one of the reasons the break-ins worried him so much. Four in less than two months, all on weekends, which led him to suspect lake weekenders or their kids. Other than a few unidentifiable tire tracks and nonregistered fingerprints, he had exactly zero evidence.
