Finally, the sheriff gave him a ride home. Sheriff Wheeler had said he would be back to check on him, and the sheriff had stayed true to his word. A couple of times a year, he’d stop by Uncle Mark’s house, get the oil changed in his car, and check on Brett.
“What are you doing with yourself nowadays?” Brett asked.
“Aw, fishing mostly and enjoying the grandkids.” Before he went to join his son, who was waiting on him, the sheriff gave Brett a final nod. “I’m glad you didn’t let me down, boy.”
Brett nursed the bottle of beer. No one had expected much out of him. A kid with nothing. No parents to speak of. But he hadn’t let anyone down. Not his uncle Mark, not Sheriff Wheeler, and most of all, he had not let himself down. He had beaten the odds.
Could he beat them again? He thought about the Laytons with their big castle. They were like their own monarchy in Lafayette Falls. Could he charm the queen? What about the princess who didn’t want to give him the time of day?
“Hey, Hot Rod.” Jerry Powell strode toward the bar. A NASCAR ball cap concealed Jerry’s thinning hair, and his chunky body resembled a beer keg on legs. The owner of Powell’s Auto Parts, Jerry could tell you exactly what you needed to rebuild a motor.
Brett had known Jerry forever. As a kid, he had handed tools to Jerry and Uncle Mark when they were working on a car together. Jerry was a down-to-earth guy who had rolled through the ups and downs of life, including three divorces and one bankruptcy, by sticking to his motto: It ain’t the end of the world.
Jerry sidled up beside Brett and motioned for the bartender. “I’ll take a beer and a large order of fries. Crispy. Just out of the fryer.” Jerry had a passion for fresh, hot fries. He claimed the only reason he still missed his second wife was because she could make amazing fries.
He turned to Brett. “Look at you,” Jerry noted Brett’s polished appearance. A dove-gray sports coat topped off his dark navy broadcloth shirt and twill pants, and the sporty scent of his aftershave still clung to his skin. “Either somebody’s died or you’re hoping to get laid.”
“It’s business,” he told Jerry. Business it was, and business it always would be where Natalie was concerned.
“You seem pretty serious about it.”
“I’m as serious as they come.” He checked the time. Almost five. She should be here any minute now.
“I heard Mozart finished that red thirty-two Ford coupe today and sold it right off the bat. With an hour.”
“I believe it,” Brett said. As he and Jerry discussed the merits of the street rods built by Mozart, who sold them faster than he could build them, minutes slipped by. A pair of double doors with circular windows, original to the old building, swung back and forth, as happy hour ushered in brisk business.
Jerry thanked the bartender, who brought him a beer, a red plastic basket filled with hot, golden-brown fries, and a small bowl of ketchup. He smothered a fry in ketchup. “One of life’s true delights.”
Brett frowned as he checked his phone. Ten after five. She was late. Of course, women were always late.
“Have a fry.” Jerry pushed the basket toward Brett. “Looks like you’ve had a bad day.”
“It started out a great day.” Brett eyed the basket of fries. He advised his patients not to eat french fries due to the high fat content and blah, blah, blah. What the hell. He plucked a fry from the basket. “I thought I had a chance at being the next chief of cardiology. Then shit blew up in my face.”
“Is it that asshole running the hospital?”
“No. Not this time.” Brett stuck the fry in his mouth and groaned. “I love it when they’re crunchy.” He ate another one because once he started, he couldn’t stop. “It’s not Lockett. I wish it were. I know how to handle Lockett.”
He dumped some salt over the fries, and Jerry motioned to the bartender. “Bring us another basket of fries. Crispy.”
The bartender returned with another basket of golden fries, straight from the fryer, and Jerry sighed. “Ain’t it a shame that the best things in life are always bad for you?”
“Always.” Brett tapped his phone again. It was almost five-thirty. “Damn, she’s not coming.”
“You waiting on a woman?”
“Yeah.” He told Jerry about his meeting with Harry Layton and Dr. Neal Sheldon. “As allies, Harry and Sheldon are invaluable. It’s like if you’re on their team, you win. I want to be on their team, and it should’ve been easy. Then Natalie Layton got thrown into the mix.”
He explained that Natalie was the key to his meeting the old lady. Groaning, he reached for another fry. “I knew Natalie in high school, and she’s holding a grudge against me because I picked on her a lot.”
“Why did you pick on her?”
“I didn’t like her. She was annoying,” he said. “She was willing to coast through life on her last name, and I wondered how she could be so worthless? How could she have so much opportunity and not even care about her grades? Looking back, I guess I was resentful of her,” he admitted.
“She’d stare out the window during class when she wasn’t busy being the cutest girl in class. I don’t know that she ever studied for a test. One year I got stuck with her for a lab partner, and I had to do all our lab projects. Like dissecting a frog.” He screwed up his face and spoke in a girly voice, mimicking her, “Eww. Eww. Do I have to touch it?”
“Don’t you hate it when a woman says that?” Jerry swiped a fry through the ketchup.
Brett stared at him for a moment, then glanced at his phone again. Surely, she would have the decency to call if she wasn’t going to show up.
“There’s nothing that can make a man more miserable than a vengeful woman. Take it from an expert,” Jerry said. “They know stuff to do that we ain’t never thought of.”
Brett dug into the basket of fries. “She’s messing with the wrong guy.”
“That’s thinking positive.” Jerry helped Brett finish off the fries.
He nudged Brett. “Is she a good-looking girl? Kinda fancy like?”
“What?”
“There’s a fancy girl over by the old gas pumps. Never seen her here before.”
Brett looked over his shoulder at the small group of people standing in front of the gas pumps. His gaze zeroed in on Natalie, who was chatting with two older couples. She wore a casual black dress with long sleeves, a neckline that dipped low, and a hem brushing her knees. A shimmering fringed shawl of silver, red, and black silk draped over her shoulders. She had her golden hair pinned up, and tucked into the side of the updo was a hair ornament that sported gems and black feathers.
Brett watched as she smiled and dazzled those around her without any awareness on her part. He had seen the same reaction years ago when Natalie lit up a classroom with her charisma. There had always been an unidentifiable something that drew people to Natalie. It had drawn him, but he had fought it. He was fighting it now.
She posed with the group in front of the old service station backdrop for a picture. One of the guys was using a selfie stick. Natalie stood to the right, not in the center, yet out of all those in the group picture, she would be the one you noticed first. Just like in school.
He shook off the thought. He was not seventeen anymore. He turned back to the bar and reached for his beer. “That’s her.” He groaned.
“She ain’t bad. Could be worse. She could be an ugly woman.”
He didn’t make any comment as he took a drink of his beer.
“Put your game face on,” Jerry said. “Group’s split up, and she’s heading this way.”
Every muscle in his body tensed. He had to handle this right. The chief of cardiology position was on the line, and he needed control of the situation. Just remember, she’s not the brightest chick in the world.
She walked up to where he and Jerry stood by the bar. Brett noted how she radiated freshness as if she had just stepped out of a shower. She flashed Jerry a smile, and he went to mush. Brett squared his shoulders like a soldier preparin
g to face the enemy.
“Natalie,” he acknowledged her. “I was starting to wonder. I’ve been waiting for almost thirty minutes.”
“Just like in a doctor’s office?” She winked, and Jerry let out a chuckle.
Brett gave her a tight smile. He was not going to allow her to bait him or drive him crazy like she’d done in school. He had this. “I’m glad you came.”
He introduced her to Jerry, and the bartender appeared without having to be summoned. Another one of her subjects. “Hi. What can I get for you?”
She laid the megawatt, I’ll-charm-your-balls-off smile on him. “Just a Coke will be fine. Thanks,” she said while Brett looked her over.
The black dress was a soft cotton blend with seams that made it fit her breasts and torso snugly before it fell into loose folds over her thighs. She still had a nice rack. He remembered how he had found her breasts disconcerting during lab class when he was trying to work on a project and she hovered close beside him. Just like now.
She cut her eyes toward him as if she had felt his gaze upon her. He noticed that the feathers on the hair clip brushed against her ear. “What is it you wanted to talk about?” she asked as the bartender served her soft drink.
“Let’s get a booth.” He left money on the bar, told Jerry he would see him later, and swiped his bottle of beer off the counter. He ushered her away from the bar to the south side of the restaurant area, where booths hugged the wall, offering shelter from the openness and noise of the main floor.
In the past, he had often escorted a woman to the corner booth. It was the place to share dinner, talk, laugh. It was where he tested the waters a bit to see how far he wanted to go. Get a phone number. Ask for a date. Or suggest they go someplace else because the vibes were right for casual sex.
He had never sat in this booth with a woman who was the key to his success, so to speak. Uncertainty flowed through him, powered by the thump of his heart. He hated the feeling. He had never embraced weakness or trepidation. Not in himself.
He seated himself on the red vinyl bench seat, directly across the narrow table from her. Ceiling spotlights sent shafts of light over her face as she placed her shawl in her lap.
“You look different.” He voiced his thoughts as he tried to pinpoint exactly what it was. He couldn’t say that he remembered her that clearly, yet most of the time when you see someone from the past, your memory connects with an image. But not hers.
She sipped on the straw stuck in the plastic cup, and then she let it slide from her lips. The tip of the straw was colored with her cherry lipstick. He wondered if the lipstick was flavored and how her mouth would taste.
“Time has a way of changing people,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, it does.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve changed.”
“I don’t think you’ve changed very much.”
“How do you know? This is the first you’ve seen me in, like, fifteen years. Stuff happens in fifteen years.”
She looked at her soft drink as she toyed with the straw. “True.”
“Okay, so do you want me to apologize?”
“Apologize?” Her gaze sought his. “For what?”
“For being an asshole in school.”
She leaned forward, folded her arms on the table, and asked, “Brett, are you serious?”
“Of course.” He raked his hair off his forehead. He needed a haircut. “I know I was a jerk back then. I want to set things right,” he said as he cradled the beer bottle.
She rested her hand across his wrist, and he found himself wanting to tell her he’d missed her. “Brett, I left high school behind the day of graduation. I’ve never looked back.”
He stared into eyes that were deep blue, the color of a summer sky just before sunset. Everything seemed different about her. Natalie had changed. Not only on the outside, but also on the inside. He sensed it, and he wanted to know more, but she wasn’t talking.
“I just want you to understand I did all kinds of crap back then that I wouldn’t do now,” he said. “Once I graduated, I moved on with my life, too. I grew up.” He spread his hands. “I became a doctor.”
She studied his face. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you become a doctor? I never pictured you being the doctor type.”
“That’s because you never knew me.” She had never known the boy from Trinity Road, who had grown up wondering who his father was.
He had been born an illegitimate child. His mother had gotten pregnant while she was working at a bar in Florida one summer. When he was a little boy, his uncle told him that his mother had said his father was a brilliant man. A doctor.
Whether that was the truth or not, Brett didn’t know. His mother had died when he was five, and his birth certificate listed his father as unknown. But what his uncle had said about his father had stayed with him, and he couldn’t say that it had not influenced his choices in life.
It may have even been in his genes. “I love my work. Some students drop out of the program the first year of med school. They realize the job’s not for them,” he explained. “I found it challenging and realized it was my calling.”
Natalie settled back against the seat, more in the shadows than the light. She didn’t say anything. Overhead, Thomas Rhett sang about dying a happy man.
“What about you?” he asked, wondering what the cutest girl in class had done with herself since high school. “Did you find your calling?”
Again, she didn’t say anything. She gazed at the people coming into the Thunderbird. The work week was over, and it was time for fun. Couples walking hand in hand sought out a table, while a lot of the singles stopped at the bar. Their smiles and laughter created a sensation of energy that only a Friday night could produce.
He noticed that she studied the lively crowd with a wistful look on her face as if she wanted to join them or something. “This place turns into one big party on Friday nights,” he said, suddenly deciding on an unbelievable course of action. “They’ll open up the dance floor in a little while, and there’ll be music. Mostly country music and some old rock. Are you up for dancing?”
She remained in the shadows. “The position at the hospital, what will you be doing?”
So much for dancing with Natalie. “It’s like a supervisor position. The chief of cardiology oversees the department. The development of policies and procedures. Dealing with staff privileges and complaints. National regulations. Things like that. A lot of doctors aren’t interested in being a department chief because it’s more work on top of what they’re already doing.
“At one hospital where I worked when I was in school, they just rotated the chief position from one doctor to another every couple of years, so no one was stuck with it long.”
“But you want to be stuck with it?”
“Yeah. It looks good on the CV,” he joked, and then he became serious. “I want to be more than a figurehead, which is what we have now. Doctor Collins has been chief for years, and in my opinion, he never goes to bat for the department, especially in budget meetings.
“He’s always brushed off my suggestions for improvements in the department.” Brett didn’t elaborate, but neither Collins nor Lockett liked him. Collins had referred to him as an upstart. “Collins knows how to play politics, and he’s a favorite with the administration and the board. I’m not good at sucking up.”
“But you’re a good doctor?”
“Yes, I would say so. I graduated summa cum laude, and I’m board certified.” He projected confidence in his voice as he continued, “I’m more than qualified to take care of your grandmother. Half my patients are over seventy.”
“Listen, I’m not questioning your qualifications. I’m sure you’re all you say you are and more,” she said. “But that won’t matter to Nana.”
“She can’t be that bad.”
“I’m just trying to prepare you. She’s opinionated and strong-willed. You won’t win her over easily.”
/> “All right. I’ll keep that in mind.”
She nodded and shifted on the bench seat to drape the shimmering shawl over her shoulders. The ceiling spotlight streamed across her, and she brushed a loose tendril of gold hair from her cheek. He noticed the delicate shape of her fingers, tipped by clear glossy nails. No rings.
“How come you’re not married?” He vocalized the thought and regretted it when he saw the sudden pain in her eyes. Not even the likes of Natalie Layton had gotten through life without a broken heart. “Forget I asked.”
She gave her head a slight nod as she watched the people crowd around the bar. Then she directed her attention back to him. “I was married once.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes things don’t work out.”
“He was murdered.”
Shocked, Brett glanced up. After an awkward silence, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“He left late one afternoon, walking to the library. He was working on a research paper. He never came back.” Her voice trembled. “I waited. Every day I waited, hoping he would come home. The investigation led detectives to believe he had been the victim of a robbery and an assault he didn’t survive. Three months passed, and finally a couple of detectives were at the door. They had found what was left of his body in a wooded lot north of the city. That was over ten years ago now and his killer remains unknown. I still haven’t made sense of why such a terrible thing happened.”
“You’ll never make sense of it,” Brett told her. “Human behavior can be unpredictable and dangerous. His killer might not even be able to make sense of why he did it.”
She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. “I need to be going. I promised Nana I’d be home in time to play Monopoly.”
“Natalie, can I count on you?”
She took a final sip of her drink. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“It’s like you said. I’m Type A.” He offered her a grin, hoping for a truce.
As she slid out of the booth, the gems in her hair ornament sparkled amid the black feathers. “Okay, you can count on me, but that doesn’t mean all is forgiven.”
Everything His Heart Desires Page 5
