Homeward Bound. Marin Thomas

as they struggled to catch their breath.

      Royce turned the corner and drove south on Conner Avenue, where most of the homes on the street were university rentals. She pointed out the windshield. “The bright yellow one.” He parked at the curb in front of the house.

      “What are those guys doing on your property?” he asked, referring to the two males sitting in rocking chairs, drinking beer on the porch.

      “‘Those guys’ are my roommates.”

      “Roommates?”

      His jaw worked as if he’d gotten a six-inch piece of rawhide caught between his teeth.

      She hustled out of the truck and shut the door, cutting Royce off in mid sputter. Taking a deep breath, she marched up the sidewalk, determined to act like an adult even if he couldn’t. A chorus of “Hey, Heather” greeted her as she climbed the porch steps. Ignoring Royce’s hot breath fanning the back of her neck, she handled the introductions. “Seth, Joe, meet Royce McKinnon. He’s the mayor of Nowhere, Texas.”

      “Cool,” the two grunted in unison. Neither student stood or offered a hand in greeting. No one had ever accused Heather’s roommates of having too much on the ball.

      “Follow me,” she muttered, moving across the porch. Once inside, she veered right, through a pair of French doors. “It’s a two-bedroom house, but I converted the front parlor into a third bedroom.” She set her purse on the chair in the corner.

      Royce stopped in the doorway and glanced around. He cleared his throat. “Do you mind?” Without waiting for an answer, he stepped farther into the room and shut the door.

      She held her breath as his hand hovered over the door-knob. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved when his large masculine fingers fell away without securing the lock.

      Shoving his fists into the front pockets of his jeans, he rocked back on his heels. The stubborn lug looked so out of place standing in the peach-colored room with flower-stenciled walls and a mint-green velvet canopy hanging over her bed. Barbed wire was definitely more his style.

      “Your room’s nice, Heather.”

      A compliment? Admiring comments from Royce had been few and far between over the years. “Anything is better than that hovel I grew up in.”

      “If I’d known you cared, I’d have given you money to spruce up the trailer.”

      A knot formed in her chest. She had cared. Once, she’d started to paint the kitchen a soft buttercup yellow, but her old man, in one of his drunken rages, had stumbled and fallen against the wall, smearing the paint and cursing her for ruining his clothes. After enough of those “instances,” she had realized caring was a waste of time and energy. Besides, acting as though living in a trash dump hadn’t mattered to her gave Royce one less thing to butt his nose into.

      She sat on the end of her bed, smoothed a hand over the white lace spread and swallowed twice before she could trust her voice.

      “Have a seat,” she said, motioning to the chair at the desk by the window.

      As he crossed the room, she noticed the way his western shirt pulled at his shoulders. Noticed his backside, too. The cowboy was in a category all his own. Ranching was physical work, but most of the ranchers she’d known growing up didn’t have bodies like Royce. She’d touched a few of his impressive muscles when they’d kissed long ago, and this cowboy was in a category all his own. She wondered how he managed to stay in such great shape. She knew for a fact there wasn’t a health club within fifty miles of Nowhere.

      Some fool named Sapple had opened a small sawmill in the 1920s south of town, but like so many other East Texas sawmills, the place closed up five years later. Sapple and most of the loggers and their families had moved on, but a few people stayed behind. The town was officially named Nowhere when the interstate went in twenty-five miles away, leaving the local residents out in the middle of…nowhere. Aside from a barbershop, a bank, her father’s feed store and a couple of mom-and-pop businesses, the town, surrounded by miles of ranchland and pine forests, boasted little else. If a person wanted excitement they had to get back on the interstate to find a popular restaurant or a honky-tonk.

      Royce sat on her desk chair, expelled a long breath, then clasped his hands between his knees and stared at the floor.

      Stomach clenching with apprehension, she asked, “What’s so important you couldn’t have told me over the phone?”

      Her question brought his head up, and she stopped breathing at the solemn expression in his dark eyes. “What I have to say should be said in person.”

      She almost blurted, Three years ago you had no trouble telling me that our kiss had been a terrible mistake. That you didn’t want to see me again. That you didn’t want me to come back to Nowhere. Instead, she settled for “A long time ago you had no trouble telling me over the phone to get lost.”

      He stiffened, then cleared his throat and studied the Titanic movie poster hanging on the wall beside her bed. He turned his attention to her face, embarrassment and regret pinching his features. This time she looked away.

      “How are you situated for money?”

      The news must really be bad if Royce was stalling. “If I get the job that I applied for at the law library, I’ll be able to make ends meet this summer.” She’d already exhausted all the partial scholarships and government grants she’d been eligible for during the first four years of school. From then on, she’d had to work to pay for tuition and books, expenses and rent. She hated admitting it, hated that she was still dependent on him, but without Royce’s more-than-generous Christmas and birthday checks she would have had to drop out of college long ago.

      Shifting on the chair, he removed his checkbook from the back pocket of his jeans. She had only one pen on her desk, a neon-pink one with a bright yellow feather and beaded ribbon attached to the end. She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling at the disgusted expression on his face when he tried to see around the feather as he wrote out the check.

      “I don’t want your money, Royce.” Her face heated at the lie, but she felt compelled to offer a token protest.

      He didn’t hand the check to her. Instead, he set the draft on top of her psychology text. “For someone who had to be forced to go to college, you’ve hung in there and beaten the odds.”

      Two compliments in one day. This must be some sort of record for Royce. But knowing that she’d done something he approved of made her feel good. Proud. Vulnerable. She smiled sheepishly. “To be honest, I’m a little surprised I didn’t drop out my first year.”

      “Just think. If you hadn’t been involved with that group of misfits who held up the Quick Stop, you might never have gone to college.”

      Heather groaned. “Please. Let’s not bring that up.” She’d just as soon forget that fateful July night seven years ago when Royce had bailed her out of the county jail after being arrested in connection with the gas station holdup. She’d been using the restroom, unaware that the other teens had planned to rob the place. Because she hadn’t been in the store during the robbery, Royce had been able to convince the judge to let her off the hook. But the judge had added a condition of her own—college.

      “The expression on your face when the judge announced your sentence was priceless. One would have thought you’d been sentenced to death, not college,” Royce chuckled, then his face sobered.

      “What are your plans after you get your degree in August?”

      “I want to work with children. Socioeconomically disadvantaged kids.”

      He started to protest, but she held up a hand. “You’re thinking I wouldn’t be a good role model, right?” Why was it so hard for Royce to believe she’d changed since going away to school?

      Shrugging, he slouched in the chair. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been the one receiving help, not giving it.”

      Ouch.