Page 4 of Hide My Heart
“Someone’s got it bad.” Devin tosses a peanut into his mouth. “If you’re so keen on her, why’d you let her run away?”
“This town isn’t for her. Too small and cramped. She had big dreams. College, travel, see the world.” I wipe a glass ring from the counter. “Anything else to drink?”
“Nate?” My mother taps my shoulder. “You’ve a phone call on the office line. She says it’s important.”
“Who?”
“Amber.”
I rush to the office and shut the door. Why is Amber calling me? Or is this another prank call? Half the town thinks it’s hilarious that a Riley would crush on a McKay. They egged me on, as if I’d be the one to ruin the precious purity of the preacher’s daughter. They took bets on whether I’d get her drunk, take her virginity, or knock her up.
But I never had the guts to touch a hair on her head. She was too good for me. An angel from heaven. She never looked down her nose at me. She never tried to convert me, never offered to pray for my soul. Instead, she told me her dreams.
I pick up the phone receiver, my hand shaking. Why would she be calling me? Had she good news? A success story to brag about?
“Hello, this is Nate.”
There’s no sound over the line.
“Amber?” I add. “Can you hear me? It’s Nate.”
I can make out people talking in the background, but the line clicks before the drone of the dial tone moans.
“Mom?” I catch her on the way to the bar. “How did you know it was Amber?”
“You mean it wasn’t?” Her eyebrows crease with confusion. “It was a collect call and she said she was Amber. Is there some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know. She hung up.”
THREE
Nate
The next summer.
One look and I knowhe’s trouble. We don’t get many strangers in Divine, Idaho. We’re not off an interstate, no national park in the vicinity, and we’re surrounded by state land used for cattle grazing.
The bar is mostly empty on this hot summer afternoon. A few old-timers hang at the pool table. No women unless you count eighty-year-old Sally who takes her daily nap over a draught of Guinness. Devin and Phil are out tooling around on their motorcycles, and the mid-summer heat is too much for Pastor McKay and his protestors who are nowhere in sight.
The mountain man swaggers toward me and props himself on a barstool. He’s a large man wearing a checkered shirt with dirt under his fingernails. Ever since mining went bust and the sawmill shut, Divine’s main business is catering to campers and hunters who pick up supplies before heading into the mountains and forests surrounding the area.
“What’dya have?” I wipe down the bar top and make eye contact.
“Shot of Jack Daniels,” the stranger says.
“Headed to the mountains?”
“Eventually.” He rolls up his sleeves. His forearms are muscular and scarred.
“You a hunter or a fisherman?” I hand him a shot glass.
“Trapper.” He downs the shot in a single swallow and wipes his lips. “Thinking of settling down here. Know any good churches?”
My breath expels and I almost cough. “Churches? You’re asking me?”
“Yeah, I figure a bartender knows everything around town.”
Something about his elongated smile has me uneasy, especially since he still hasn’t removed the sunglasses he’s wearing in the dark bar.
