Chapter One

      One year later

      “Nate Channing is back in town.” John Jessup plunked down in the front booth at the Coyote Café and stared grimly at the man across from him.

      Lester Brown slumped against the red vinyl headrest, his jaw scraping his chest. “The hell you say!”

      “The hell I do say. Saw him with my own eyes, Lester. He climbed out of a shiny black Lincoln, wearing one of them expensive Army suits, or whatever you call ’em. He swaggered into the post office. I was still in the barber shop when he walked out and headed for the bank.”

      Lester scratched his hairy chest and muttered under his breath. “Can’t believe that hoodlum has the gumption to show his face in Coyote Flats after all these years. But he won’t hang around here long, I guaran-damn-tee, not if I have anything to say about it.”

      “You might not have a say, Les.” John stared grimly at the leathery-faced rancher. “According to the gossip at the barber shop, Channing is the one who bought the property and built that fancy palace on the farm where he used to live.”

      Lester snorted sardonically. “Yeah, right. Like that no-account could afford that sprawling mansion that’s been under construction for nine months. Pull my other leg, why don’tcha, John.”

      “No kiddin’,” John insisted. “The news broke today, right there in the barber shop. Old Sheriff Havern is the one who made the announcement that the house and land belonged to Nate Channing.”

      “What!” Lester crowed as he bolted upright in his seat. “You swear?”

      John bobbed his bushy gray head.

      Lester swiveled his barrel-shaped body on the seat to address the other patrons in the café. “Y’all hear that? The terror of Coyote Flats is back in town. Nobody around here has to guess where he got the cash to build that ritzy house. Drug money. You can bet your bottom dollar on it. But no matter how fancy No-Account Nate dresses these days, you can’t make silk from a sow’s ear. That bad boy is bad news. Always was. Always will be.”

      While the pillars of Coyote Flats society—such as they were—speculated on Nate Channing’s reasons for setting up a base of operation in his hometown, Katy Bates-Butler sat frozen in the corner booth of the café, listening to a half-dozen conversations taking place simultaneously. Memories she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on for more than a dozen years spiraled around her, smothering her with their intensity.

      Nate Channing was back in town….

      Apparently, Nate had returned to Coyote Flats the same way he’d left—in an uproar.

      Forbidden and doomed were the first two words that popped into Katy’s head. Lord, she thought she had adequately buried all those feelings and sensations attached to Nate Channing’s name. Yet, emotions stirred and shifted inside her. Heartache, outrage, despair…and love. Those poignant feelings were still there, churning, threatening to crumble her carefully controlled composure.

      Katy clasped her trembling hands around her coffee cup, as if it was her salvation, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Nate…” she whispered shakily.

      To Katy, thoughts of Nate were synonymous with a time in her life that bubbled with dreams, promise, adventure, innocence—and torment. She could almost see Nate Channing leaning leisurely against his rattletrap car, wearing a dingy white T-shirt and faded jeans. She remembered how his shaggy hair shone like a raven’s wing, how his midnight-black eyes twinkled down at her with that endearing hint of deviltry….

      That boy has a heart as black as the devil’s, and he has a soul to match. That’s what Katy’s father had said—repeatedly. Stay away from that cocky juvenile delinquent. He’s bad news, nothing but trouble.

      But Nate Channing hadn’t looked like trouble to Katy. He had been her forbidden first love. In some ways he represented all those defiant, rebellious feelings that Katy had experienced when dealing with a domineering father who picked her dates and friends and demanded that she live up to his lofty expectations.

      No one in this dried-up, windblown West Texas town had realized Katy and Nate were kindred spirits, even if they had been raised on opposite sides of the tracks. But Katy knew, remembered with vivid clarity, the kind of connection she’d felt to Nate. While he struggled to overcome his bad reputation and bad breeding, Katy had struggled for her independence. Nate fought back the way she’d wanted to when her father handed down his unreasonable dictates.

      The night Nate was hauled off in the sheriff’s squad car, ridiculed and scorned by the citizens of this rural town, Katy had stopped believing that standing up for herself and battling her father’s high-handed decrees were worth the effort and frustration.

      When Nate Channing left town he took the sunshine from Katy’s life, and she plunged into endless nightmares. Those nightmares still ruled and dictated her life.

      Willfully, Katy battled for composure as she polished off her coffee, then left a tip for her lunch. She felt the desperate need to scurry from the café and take refuge in her private sanctuary before Nate Channing showed up. She couldn’t bear to have him see what had become of her after all these years. She was a shriveled mass of emotional and physical scars. Discovering what her father had done to Nate had been her unending torment. The life the dictatorial, judgmental Judge Dave Bates had imposed on Katy was nearly unbearable, but what he did to Nate was unforgivable!

      Although Katy wanted to bolt to her feet and counter each one of Lester’s snide insults, to defend Nate’s honor, she had been taught the importance of not calling attention to herself, not arguing or debating, for fear of the painful consequences. A riptide of emotion bombarded Katy as she came to her feet.

      With head downcast, Katy skulked toward the exit, trying to ignore the hidebound old fools who were verbally crucifying Nate Channing. She just wanted to scurry back to her office at the library and shut herself off from the world the way she usually did….

      “Katy…? Kat?”

      Oh, God, no! Kate froze in her tracks when his voice, like rich velvet, rolled over her. Katy reflexively shrank deeper into herself, feeling the spotlight of attention beam down on her. All conversation in the café died a quick death. Heads turned in synchronized rhythm to gape at the tall, darkly handsome man who blocked Katy’s escape route.

      “Katy Bates?” he murmured. “It is you, isn’t it?”

      Katy Bates was dead. Katy Bates-Butler merely existed, a fuzzy shadow of herself, one so thoroughly crushed by her nightmarish past that she had become an unperson. Lord, she would have given anything for Nate not to see her like this. Ah, if only he could have remembered her as she had once been, not as she was now!

      “Remember me, Katy?”