Tygers Page 14

  The week before the big blow-up had been marked by stolen moments of experimentation that left them both distracted and barely in control. They set up a date for dinner with her family, a pre-requisite for dating Katie, it seemed. Since her father was dead, her Uncle Michael—a cop, she warned him, and her father’s former partner—had taken it upon himself to evaluate her boyfriends. Keith was supposed to be the first trial run, the first guy she dated, and he had hoped he would be the last. Even then, the idea of life without Katie was unimaginable. In retrospect, that should have set off warning bells, but his libido was drowning out his reason. It still did where she was concerned.

  Keith could mark the moment it went wrong but never the reason why. It was mid-March, the week before the dinner with her family, a Friday night in lent. He was in the boys’ dressing room for Stations, stripped to his underwear and trying to fasten a Roman centurion’s 'skirt' on his waist. Katie barged in with a box of the boys’ costumes that ended up in the girls’ dressing room by mistake. At first, his heart pounded in excitement that she was there while he was half-dressed, and he made certain that his costume was hiding the evidence of what that thought was doing to him from the other guys.

  Then the cool, hard look struck him full force, breaking him out of the fantasies of what he wanted to do if he could convince Katie to let him drive her home that night instead of taking the bus. She threw the box at his feet and walked out. Katie stayed in the dressing room when she wasn’t on stage, and she wouldn’t talk to him when she was. By the time Keith finished his last scene and changed clothes, she was gone.

  Carol made her apologies—Carol’s apologies, not Katie’s—on the phone Saturday, and Katie gave him a prepared speech the same way on Sunday. She very calmly listed all the reasons why it could never work between them while he tried desperately to get a word in edgewise. Katie told him everything but the truth of why she was pushing him away. On Monday, she avoided him and gave him nothing more than cold looks whenever he approached her.

  By Wednesday, Jordan Roberts had staked his claim on her. Carol gave Keith apologetic looks that said she didn’t like the change-up either—and a little information. Katie wouldn’t discuss why she dumped him, but she was resolute despite her obvious distress with the entire situation. The distress gave him his first kernel of hope, the damned crop that he still held tight to. Uncle Michael hated Jordan, and Keith decided that he liked Uncle Michael quite a bit for that reason alone.

  Jordan was beyond being a juvenile delinquent. He was a felon in training—serious training. It stunned Keith that someone as smart as Katie would get mixed up with him, and the whole thing worried him. Being with Katie gave Jordan an air of respectability that galled Keith. People looked at him in a different light, assuming that there must be hidden treasure within him that others missed but Katie saw. Katie wouldn’t waste her time on someone worthless, they assumed. But Jordan was worthless.

  Worse than worthless, he didn’t appreciate what a good thing he had. Keith tightened his fist around the beer bottle painfully. When Jordan started the locker room stories about her, Keith had been in agony. If he were lying, it would be a relief, though the urge to kill Jordan for the lies would be almost overwhelming. If he was telling the truth, he not only took Keith’s place as her first date, but took her virginity as well. Either way, Jordan was a fool. Once word of his stories got back to Katie, she was sure to cut him off at the knees.

  While she was controlled in her anger at Keith, she possessed no such restraint with Jordan. His first clue that it was over was the book she hurled at his head. After her tirade, Keith still had no clue if Jordan was lying, but the idiot had succeeded in gaining a new notoriety. Being dumped by Katie in so spectacular a fashion won him higher respect from lower quarters than he ever had while dating her—or even professing to have bedded her.

  Still, she wouldn’t give Keith another chance. Katie wouldn’t tell him or Carol what he did to turn her against him. He lived in frustration after that. The fantasies of her plagued him day and night mixed with vivid images of himself taking her as Jordan claimed he had. His nightmares were that the scumbag was telling the truth. Keith watched her endlessly. She didn’t date again before the end of the school year. She only socialized with Sherry and Berta, and Carol confirmed that boys were a most unwelcome subject as far as Katie was concerned.

  Over the years, he missed Katie’s friendship and her passion more than seemed warranted. Carol knew it, and she eased his addiction with stories of what her older sister was up to. When he asked—and to his shame, he usually did—she would tell him whether or not Katie was seeing anyone. It never turned serious, at least that Carol would admit to him, but he was always restless when he knew Katie was dating and elated when he knew she wasn’t.

  It wasn’t that Keith believed Katie would fall into his arms someday, though he hoped and dreamed it. It wasn’t that he had been turned down. Keith had been turned down many times over the years and took it in stride. It wasn’t that he wanted her to be alone. Not really. He could admit that the idea of her with someone else was still painful, though. Just as it was when she was with Jordan, it was closer than Keith ever wanted to get to actually being cuckolded.

  He never believed that she didn’t feel what he did when they kissed and touched. Today was the proof of that. Even after fifteen years, she was running from her feelings. If he had enough time alone with her, Keith could find out what went wrong the first time. Whether or not that would end this limbo he was trapped in, whether or not it would win him his fondest wish remained to be seen.

  When Katie was with him in Carol’s kitchen, he found something to hope for. There was more than anger in her, much more. He could hear her breathing quicken and become ragged, see the blush and the shaky movements, see the uncertainty and—he hoped he was reading this one correctly—longing in her eyes, and smell the unmistakable scent of her arousal. He had forgotten how heady and intoxicating her scent was. The closer he got, the surer he was of it and the harder it was to back away.

  Still, Keith had to back off. Whatever he was seeing aside, Katie was still hostile and confused. It would mean taking his time, but he’d have answers soon. He smiled at that thought and went back to studying the tigers.

  * * *

  Katheryn dropped the pen on her desk and growled her frustration at the empty room as she ran her fingers through her hair roughly. She couldn’t concentrate. Thankfully, she was far ahead of schedule. She always was. Typically when Katheryn wrote, nothing else existed—until she saw Keith. Until she touched him. She knew better than to touch him. Until she felt his arousal when he was close to her, calling to her and responded on some elemental level. Until she remembered what his kisses and caresses felt like and saw what he wanted in his mind. Until she knew she wanted it too.

  Keith was eighteen, then. Every touch was bold and exciting, even when it was fumbled and rushed. He was supposed to be her first—boyfriend, lover, everything. Maybe the only one for the rest of her life.

  Then, she found out what he really thought of her. Damn Scott Wolfe, and damn Keith for agreeing with him! Katheryn always knew that Scott was one of those true lowlifes with too much money and privilege and too little compassion and common sense. She had expected better from Keith, and she had been dead wrong. He was just another one of the snobs.

  He wasn’t different from the other spoiled rich kids from St. Tereasa’s after all. They hadn’t wanted to come to Bishop Boyle when the Diocese closed their high school after Freshman year, but it was a choice between that or going to Sacred Heart or Central Catholic. As distasteful as the thought of finishing high school in working-class Homestead seemed, many preferred it to the alternative of languishing in the gender separation of the more prestigious Oakland schools. The class wars started almost immediately.

  Most of Homestead kids fit in well enough with the St. Tereasa’s and Munhall crowd to make them the cool majority. The mill-row Homesteaders were lumped with the
kids from Greenfield and the DMZ of Hazelwood and Glenwood. That group constituted the 'below the tracks trash'. Funny how below the salt never sounded like such an insult, though it meant the same.

  If the hostility bothered the lower-class students, they swallowed it well or struck back in the styles they were most accustomed to. The alternative for them wasn’t Central or Sacred Heart due to the difference in tuition costs. The students who didn’t live in Homestead wouldn’t even be lucky enough to attend Steel Valley High. For them, the alternative was a high school populated with the same gang members they escaped by not attending Gladstone Middle School, that they ducked for ninety percent of their lives with no regrets for the loss. The students at Boyle, even the lowest-class ones, didn’t have to bring knives to school to protect themselves, didn’t suffer more than a black eye in a fair fight, and didn’t take anyone’s crap despite their respective places in the hierarchy.

  There were the debutante cheerleaders and their sporty boyfriends, the upper-class brains who attended special tutoring to help them toward that expensive prep school or Ivy League college, the probation squad, and the track trash including the occasional sports hero that managed to fit in with the in-crowd. Finally, there were the small groups of social misfits. That was Katheryn’s place. She was a poor brain with a list of extra-curriculars as long as your arm. Still, she wasn’t upper crust, and Keith never forgot it.

  Only good for one thing— And she was well on her way to proving him right when she found out what he thought of her. She swallowed her hurt and moved on. When Jordan showed up with his line about how she didn’t fit in with that crew, Katheryn had to agree. She set her sights on her own social class and hoped for the best, but Jordan only proved to her that jerks know no class division.

  What she suffered from Jordan was worse in some ways but better in only one. Her heart wasn’t involved. Not really. For the worse, neither was his. While Keith seemed to revel in the pleasure he could give her, Jordan only seemed to want to pleasure himself. Her hopes that it would get better once she lost her virginity were in vain, though he only lasted once more before he betrayed her utterly.

  Uncle Michael was the paragon of discretion in what he did on her behalf. He never asked her or anyone else if the stories Jordan told were true, and he never took the issue to her mother. He never discussed any of it with her, but suddenly Jordan found himself cited for every conceivable thing he did wrong in his beat-up Camaro and picked up for every offense he even started to commit.

  Michael reserved personal intervention for when Jordan broke down and threatened her for his perceived persecution. Apparently, the thought that he could only be cited or arrested if he was breaking the law was a foreign concept to him. Jordan never approached her again after his “discussion” with Michael. If he told her uncle anything of consequence, it was left between the two of them, but she was embarrassed by the possibility anyway.

  Keith showed up after that—predictably. Jordan succeeded in proving them right where Keith had failed, though she never confirmed it for them. With Keith’s renewed interest, her heartache deepened. He knew he was right now. Of course, he wanted in on the action.

  As much as she craved his touch, so very different than Jordan’s, her heart wouldn’t survive it when he betrayed her, and he would. Keith said he would by agreeing with Scott. There would be no happily ever after for them together. Her self-confidence and reputation were shot. All she had left was her self-respect. She couldn’t trade that in just because she wanted to feel his hands and mouth on her again.

  Katheryn still wanted it, and Keith still wanted a piece of the action. Part of her argued that they were both adults now. For the most part, Mama Toni and Carol stayed out of her affairs. What was there to stop Katheryn from having a consenting fling with a man she desired?

  The answer was obvious. Her heart. Katheryn didn’t have to worry about self-confidence or public ridicule. The self-respect issue was a bad excuse these days. As long as she was pursuing as well as being pursued, that wouldn’t suffer. It could be nothing more than simple, uncomplicated pleasure if it weren’t for her heart.

  Despite the long arguments the heroines in romance novels had with themselves, Katheryn couldn’t promise herself that she could accept that pleasure and walk away to nurse the heartache while savoring the memories left behind. She wanted to savor the memories making more memories. Failing that, Katheryn didn’t want memories that would only torture her with the things that could have been, but she already had those.

  Chapter Seven

  “Hope is not a dream but a way of making dreams become reality.” L.J. Suenens

  Keith looked up at Mallory. “No, I have some work to finish up. Go on. Just leave the light on out there for me.”

  Mallory smiled, but her tone was chastising. “You work too hard, Doc. You need to find a woman and have a reason to leave here at night.”

  He smiled at the fiery forty-year-old woman, who was more of a mother than a secretary, and shook his head in amusement. “Trying to fix me up again?” he teased. “Shame on you.”

  “Nothing of the sort. It was just a suggestion.” But, her eyes glittered playfully. Mallory had a woman in mind, all right. She just wasn’t going to push it on him.

  “Go home, Mallory. When I meet the right woman, I’ll know it.”

  “Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it. Goodnight, Doc.” She closed the door behind her on her way out.

  Keith sighed. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he should have come up with something else. But what else was there? Katie wouldn’t meet him at his place or hers.

  He couldn’t blame her for that one. If Katie was even half as affected as he was, the idea of being alone with her in a house with no interruptions and a bedroom close by— It was all Keith could do to keep his hands to himself with Carol and Kyle interrupting.

  He couldn’t talk to her at Carol’s place. If Katie wasn’t being straight with Carol—and if Carol believed that, he had no doubts that it was true—she certainly wouldn’t with Carol over her shoulder. Public was out. He owed Kyle more confidentiality than that.

  If Keith could have gotten her to his office when the workday was in full swing, Katie might have felt less threatened, but mornings weren’t her thing and his afternoon had been booked solid. When Katie suggested five o’clock, he jumped at it. Now, Keith realized all they had gained themselves was the lack of a bed, and that had hardly been a deterrent in the past. Shortly after she arrived, they would be the only ones on the floor. Already, it was all but deserted.

  His indecision was cut short as he heard her voice through the closed door.

  “Excuse me. I’m looking for Keith Randall,” Katie asked someone uncertainly. “Do I have the right place?”

  “That’s his office right there,” Evan answered.

  “Thanks a lot.” There was a pause before she knocked on his door lightly.

  “Come in,” he called.

  The door opened, and Katie stepped across the threshold, looking as nervous as he felt. She wore a black jean skirt, a sleeveless black button-down shirt, black leather sandals with a low heel and a matching purse thrown over her shoulder. She had the matching black jean jacket folded over her arm.

  Katie glanced back at the empty desks in confusion. “Bomb threat?” she joked weakly.

  “No. People going home. Everyone staggers out of here between four thirty and five thirty, so most of them have cleared out in the last half-hour. There are still a few people around.” Keith knew he was lying to her, but he thought Katie would bolt if she knew that they actually staggered out between four fifteen and five fifteen, and if Evan was leaving, that was probably the last of them.

  “Oh,” she replied quietly. Katie met his eyes and shut the door before dropping her jacket and purse into an empty chair. She scanned the room and moved to run her hand over the bookshelves full of games and art supplies. Katie looked at the matching ones full of toys and books, and a smile touched her li
ps. “Quite a setup. I like it.”

  “That’s good.” He smiled at the realization that he was glad she liked his office.

  She turned to face him. “So, you said you needed some information. What did you need?” she asked lightly.

  Keith motioned to the chair across the desk, hoping that gave him enough time to collect himself. What did he want? Much more than Katie was willing to give, that was sure. He wanted— He needed the information Carol was sure she had, but there was more than that.

  Katie sat in the chair and crossed one knee over the other smoothly, placing her hands in her lap and her elbows on the arms of the chair. Keith gave himself a mental slap in the face. As appealing as she looked, Katie did not come here to be ogled.

  “I need to know what you know about Kyle,” he said calmly.

  She furrowed her brow. “I’ve sent you the e-mail about the tigers.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. That information was great. Don’t get me wrong. It’s helping wonderfully, but—you know what is really going on here. I need to know.”

  Her eyes widened. Paydirt.

  She recovered quickly. “I can’t help you, Keith.”

  He looked at her in shock. “You said anything,” he reminded her.

  “There’s nothing I can tell you. I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”

  “That’s interesting,” he mused.

  “What is?”

  “You aren’t saying you don’t know anything. You’re telling me you can’t or won’t tell me what you do know. Why is that, Katie? I can only assume that means you don’t really want to lie to me.” Keith raised an eyebrow pointedly.

  Katie bit her lip and stared away into space for a moment. “You’re asking me to tell you everything I know about Kyle. That’s formidable. Try taking a piece at a time, and I’ll see what I can do.”