A Love Like Ours (14 page)

Jake examined everything, including the collection of picture books she herself had written and illustrated. They stood in a row beneath the window. “These are yours?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He set down his mug with extra care, as if worried that he might spill coffee on her work. Then he picked up the boy’s book that featured a knight with his helmet askew on the front cover. “Did you go to art school?”

“I got a degree in fine art from the Art Center College of Design. It was close to where we lived in California.” She lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t want to leave Mollie.”

He opened to the middle, studied one illustration, then flipped to the next page. “How do you do this?”

“Once I have an idea for a story, I write it out in longhand in a notebook.” She showed him her current spiralbound notebook, a big one, beautifully bound with fanciful flowers. “Then I do the ink drawings at my desk. When I get a drawing how I want it, I move the paper to this easel and watercolor it in.”

“Where do you sell the books?”

“From my website. My company’s called Starring Me Productions because all the books can be customized with a child’s name. Parents can also choose formats that suit kids who have special needs.”

“What kind of formats?”

“For example, the dyslexie font seems to make reading easier for kids with dyslexia. Parents can specify that they want that font when they order the book.”

Carefully, he flipped another page. “Do you manage the website yourself?”

“I took a few courses, so I’m not a stranger to website management and design, but the answer’s no. The complexity of my site is above my pay grade.” She smiled. “I hired a tech guy to host and update the site for me.”

“And once a parent orders a book online? What happens then?”

“The order goes straight to a printer I contract with, and he prints and ships.”

“Can I read this one?” he asked.

He wanted to read one of her books? The idea hit her in a sentimental spot and simultaneously made her nervous. What if he thought it was junk? She hadn’t exactly written them for the target audience of thirty-two-year-old war vets. “Sure.”

“While I’m at it . . .” He picked up two more of her books and took a seat in the room’s chair, a well-loved pale blue velour number. Privately, she thought of the chair as her Throne of Dreams because she often sat in it to read. That was TMI, though. No doubt he thought her oddly whimsical already.

She clicked on the floor lamp beside the chair. Buttery light fell across him and the overstuffed bookcase behind where he sat.

“Were you working when I knocked?” He motioned with his chin toward the piece on her easel.

“I was, but I can work anytime.”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

She gave him a questioning look.

“Go back to work.”

“Okay.” Because, yes! She was accustomed to having a man that made her heart wring sitting on the Throne of Dreams behind her while she painted.

She lifted her paintbrush and started back to work on autopilot. Her hand did what it wanted while her brain focused solely on praying.
Lord, he’s here. He’s here and it has to be a
good sign. Move in his life, God. Rescue him from
his darkness and reveal to him the unimaginable depth of your love for him, of your mighty grace. I believe
, God, in your power to redeem. And not just your
power to redeem, but your power to redeem Jake.

———

He set the books on the tiny round side table and studied Lyndie. Delicately, she swirled color over the paper on the easel, making one of the fairy’s dresses purple.

She had an imagination he couldn’t fathom. She named her animals ridiculous names. She had soft and girly nonsense music playing.

And against his wishes, she fascinated him.

Lyndie was talented and unique. He’d never met anyone like her. He didn’t think there
was
anyone like her.

No matter how often he tried to will himself or talk himself out of it, he couldn’t stop wanting to shield her from hurt, from reality. He’d learned the hard way, though, that he didn’t have that power. Her fall today proved it. Foolish emotion expanded around his heart.

She reached for a pen and added more definition to the hill rising in the distance behind the fairy. How did she do that? Make paper come to life with ink? Finished with the pen, she capped it and stuck it into the bun on top her head.

He couldn’t stop staring at her. It felt like a gift, to be able to sit behind her like this, and simply watch her.

Without warning, one of her dogs jumped onto his lap. He jerked reflexively.

Lyndie swiveled. “I’m sorry. I can get him down.”

“No.” He wished he had better control over his reactions to sudden noises and motion. The dog’s bulgy, liquid dark eyes were looking at him like he’d hung the moon. “He’s fine.”

Lyndie turned back to her easel. Her dog grunted and settled across Jake’s lap, resting his chin on the chair’s arm.

Awkwardly, trying not to disturb the animal, Jake balanced one of the picture books on top of Lyndie’s dog. He read every page, taking his time. Then he read the next. And the next.

They were incredibly good. Both the stories and the very detailed feminine drawings.

When her dog started to snore, Jake set the final book aside and combed his fingers into the dog’s fur. Heat traveled up into his hand. He gazed at Lyndie as she painted, beyond grateful that today’s fall hadn’t injured her.
She’s safe
, he reassured himself.

The stillness, the music, and her nearness caused him to feel the weight of his exhaustion. He rested the back of his head on
the chair and let his eyes sink closed. A minute or so later, he felt more than heard Lyndie glance at him. He didn’t need to open his eyes to confirm it. If they’d been in a pitch-black room together and she’d looked at him, he’d have been able to feel it.

He cracked one eye open and found her staring at him.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said.

“I am asleep.”

She laughed, a soft and tempting sound.

And suddenly, he had to go. He wanted desperately to stay, just a little while longer. But he couldn’t be here, in this place, with her. It was calm here. She was innocent and beautiful and perfect.

He was not. He didn’t want his mess or his mental illness or his past anywhere near her. He wanted to protect her from a lot of things, but most of all from himself.

He helped the dog off of him and went to the front part of the apartment. Lyndie followed.

He found his jacket and pushed his arms into it.

“You’re welcome to stay longer. You can rest with your eyes closed in my chair anytime.”

“I have to go.” He paused, studying the flecks of caramel in her intelligent brown eyes. “Your books are great.”

She didn’t answer for a moment, then her cheeks turned pink with pleasure. “Thank you.”

A piece of curling blond hair had come loose. She swept it behind her ear. His attention traced down to her chin. Then up to her lips. His hunger for her intensified, demanding. More than sanity or sense, he wanted to kiss her.

His body—his body had become hard to control when he was near her. Which made him furious. “You really are fine?” he asked. He’d been sick with worry and regret all day long. “After the spill?”

“Yes,” she assured him.

“What can I do? I mean it.” The three words came out sharp-edged. “I want to do something for you.”

“Because you feel responsible for the fall? It wasn’t your fault. If anyone’s, it was mine.”

“What can I do?”

She looked as if she was going to wave it off and tell him she didn’t need anything. But then she pulled herself up and seemed to think better of it. “Actually . . . Now that you mention it, I can think of two things that you can do for me.”

T
his is where I was imagining the deck,” Amber said to Will the following afternoon. She indicated the little flagstone patio at the back of the Candy Shoppe.

“Okay.” He took in the site.

This was very bad of her! Very bad, because, of course, Amber had no intention of hiring him to build her a deck. Not unless she won the lottery, that is. She shouldn’t have stooped to calling him and asking for an estimate. But she’d seen him now three different mornings at Cream or Sugar. Each time, Celia had secretly texted Amber to alert her to Will’s appearance at the bakery. And each time, she and Will had enjoyed great conversations spiced with plenty of chemistry. The more she learned about him, the more she liked him.

Amber hadn’t wanted to wait for Will’s next donut craving before seeing him again. So she’d called him and asked for an estimate.

“What kind of deck were you thinking of?”

“Maybe an L-shaped deck?” God have mercy, she’d given this some thought. She walked out a few paces, indicating how she wanted her not-going-to-happen deck aligned. “That way, I could put a table and chairs in this area and a grill over on the short side?”

Will pulled out a tape measure and extended it from the back wall of the Candy Shoppe. His jeans fit him perfectly, and his T-shirt advertised a fireman’s chili cook-off for charity. The fact that she could still see fold marks in the cotton of his T-shirt gave her a fluttery sentimental feeling toward him—she supposed because those fold marks had come from his own efforts at laundry, not his wife’s.

“Is this about right?” He stopped several yards from the house, holding the tape against the ground.

“Yep.”
You’re about right
. She slid her hands into the pockets of her cutest pair of capris.

He set a rock in the spot and continued measuring off the perimeter of the deck, asking her along the way for her input and opinion.

It gave her a giddy feeling, to have Will here. Genuinely good guys with killer bedroom eyes were hard to find.

He finally zipped his tape measure inward and stepped beside her. “How about I work up an estimate and email it to you in the next day or two?”

“That’d be great. I’d love to have a deck out here, I’m just not sure when I’ll be able to swing it financially.”

“I understand.” He gave her a crooked half smile that made her nerves sizzle.

“Thanks for coming today. You’ve proved that you do exist outside of Cream or Sugar. Until now, I wasn’t sure.”

His smile grew. “I wasn’t sure you existed outside of there, either.”

“Well, I do.”

“Where’s Jayden today?”

“He’s up at Whispering Creek, gardening with their landscaper.”
So you see, Will, this is a perfect time to ask me to join you for an early dinner if you wanted
. Since their last conversation at Cream or Sugar, Amber had been hoping that he’d ask her out on a date. Dinner, however, might be aiming a little too high. So far, he hadn’t even invited her out for a cookie.

“I remember those days,” Will was saying, “when the girls were small and one or both of them would be out of the house for a few hours. It felt like a vacation.”

“Exactly.”

“And then I’d feel guilty for being relieved, since I was already away from them every third day.” He scratched the side of his head. “I don’t know why I felt guilty. That was dumb.”

“It might just be a single-parent thing. Or maybe it’s just a parent thing. I constantly feel guilty about putting Jayden in daycare. Did you use daycare for your girls?”

“My mom lives in town. For the last twelve years she’s taken care of them when I’ve been at the station.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I don’t know how I would have done it without her help. She comes to my house and stays in the guest bedroom on the nights I’m gone so that the girls don’t have to mess up their routine.”

“Is your father still around?”

“No, he died when I was in college.” Sadness flickered in his face. “I think that’s part of the reason why my mom’s been so involved in Madison and Taylor’s lives. She would’ve been lonely without them. Do you have family nearby?”

Old hurt stung her. “No. They live in West Texas, and I haven’t spoken with them in years.”

He regarded her with concerned kindness.

“I keep telling myself I should go and see them and . . . fix things.” Her laugh fell flat. “I’m a little bit afraid, I guess.”

“You seem brave to me.”

“I don’t rush into burning buildings.”

“You have your own kind of bravery.”

“Winston Churchill once said, ‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.’ It seems like you and I have both faced some hard things and had the courage to continue.” A heated pause, full of what felt like mutual attraction, opened between them. She remained silent, because at this particular moment, she worried that failure with Will might actually prove fatal.

“I better go.” He checked his watch. “I have to take Taylor to softball practice.”

“Sure.”

“See you soon.” He looked back as he walked along the path that led to the front of the building. “I’ll email you the bid.”

“Thanks!” She waved.

When he’d disappeared from view, Amber wrapped her arms around herself and turned, looking out into the budding spring captured by their tree-filled lot.

In her younger days, she’d had one boyfriend after another. What she’d realized, since giving her life to Christ four years ago, was that everything she thought she’d known about romance wasn’t actually about romance. She had no knowledge of real romance at all. She had a bucketload of knowledge about sexual attraction.

There’d been a time when she’d been able to put her hand on a man’s arm, lean into him, and get him to ask her out just that simply. She’d been able to proposition men with her eyes. She’d worn low-cut shirts and high-cut shorts.

All of that had made her a great success at snagging boyfriends. They’d come as easily to her as a ball bouncing into her hands. What she’d never been able to do?

Keep them.

Not a single one of her boyfriends had lasted past a year. Even the primary man in her life, her father, had let her go. At eighteen, restless and full of stupid confidence, she’d fought with her dad and then left her hometown on a Greyhound bus. Three years and three boyfriends after that, she’d hit bottom: alone, broke, and pregnant.

Until Meg had taken her in and until she’d met the God of unconditional love, she’d never thought she was worth much. Back then, her little books full of famous quotes had given her the only imitation of intelligence she’d been able to scrape together.

For the past four years, she’d taken classes and studied, held
down a part-time job, and spent every free second mothering Jayden. Knowing that men spelled disaster for her, she’d stayed away from them. The whole time she’d been learning and relearning how to accept God’s forgiveness. Even harder and more gradually, she’d begun to find her worth in God’s view of her.

Amber made her way to the hero house that Lyndie and Jayden had made from a hollow tree stump. They’d added more to it since Amber had seen it last. A homemade ladder of twigs led to one of the windows. A dollhouse chair sat out front as well as two flower pots the size of thimbles. The flower pots even had green shoots growing from them.

Unexpectedly charmed, Amber stooped to blow dirt speckles off the upside-down funnel roof. She picked a few leaves off the pathway and uprooted a weed.

It could be that her dream of one day marrying was like this imaginary house. Sweet to look at. But wholly, entirely empty.

She’d given herself permission to date again now that she’d reached a point of financial independence for herself and Jayden. And in Will, she’d even found someone she’d like to date. But Amber wasn’t sure how this new person she’d become should communicate her interest to Will, and she wasn’t sure whether Will had any interest in her.

Will McGrath had integrity. Her own intuition and everything she’d learned about him assured her of it. Perhaps, even after all her years of trying to better herself, he could tell that she was white trash and not good enough for him. He knew for certain, of course, that she was no virgin.

She set into motion, walking along the fence that marked the yard’s boundary. Will himself hadn’t had a perfect past. But she couldn’t really compare his history to hers. The consensus around town was that his divorce had been the fault of his wife, who’d been self-centered and unready to settle down. According to Amber’s friends’ opinions, Will had done nothing wrong.

See? Different. Because she’d done a thousand things wrong.

Amber really liked Will, and it was awful how horribly tempted
she was to slip back into her old, familiar ways in hopes of making him like her in return. She had confidence in those ways. She could try putting her hand on his arm, leaning into him, and propositioning him with her eyes—

“Amber. Quit thinking like that.” She continued to walk, working through the kinks in her heart, watching her flip-flops crush the grass. She had a strong relationship with the Lord. So how come her old way of thinking about men wanted to creep into her new life?

Experience had taught her that her old way of thinking didn’t work. If you gave a man your body for free, then it cost him nothing to discard you when he was done.

God, help me remember that you bought me for a price,
she prayed.
If I’m uncertain, then I don’t need to rush to do anything except trust in you. You’ve given me a second chance, and
I don’t need to look to anyone or anything else to determine my value
. She was a daughter of the King, even with her scratched-up past. She wasn’t just poor Amber Richardson from the wrong side of Sanderson, Texas, anymore. And she refused to exchange the future she wanted for the man she wanted right now.

Jake had looked forward to counter-insurgency ops more than he was looking forward to this.

Last night, when Jake had visited Lyndie at her apartment, he’d insisted that she tell him what he could do for her. She had. Now he was stuck and had no one to blame but himself.

He’d arrived at Lyndie’s parents’ place a few minutes before two o’clock, which was when he and Lyndie had agreed to meet. He’d parked his truck in the driveway and stood leaning against its side, his boots crossed at the ankle, trees shading both him and the house.

Of all the things in the world Lyndie could have asked of him, she’d asked for two things that were hard for him to give.

First, she’d asked if she could tag along with him for an hour or so each day after she finished her riding responsibilities. She’d
said, with such an innocent expression that he didn’t know whether to believe her or not, that she’d shadowed other trainers she’d worked for. She claimed that she’d learned a lot by studying their different training methods and styles of operations management.

So, great. He’d be dealing with more of what he already couldn’t handle: nearness to Lyndie.

Second, she’d asked him to come with her to visit Mollie, which was the request he was about to fill.

Mollie. He remembered her as a small child who’d lain in bed or been wheeled around in a special wheelchair. Whenever his mom or Lyndie had wanted him to talk to her, he’d done so out of politeness. He’d always been uncomfortable around Mollie as a kid. She’d made him feel sad.

He’d aged, but he didn’t expect that twenty years were going to make this visit between him and Mollie any less awkward.

Jake pulled off his Stetson, set it inside the truck’s cab, then ran his fingers through his hair a few times.

Lyndie had arrived at work and ridden for him today just like she always did, despite her fall. She’d hidden her pain from him very well. Which only concerned him more, because his sixth sense told him that she
was
hurting. She just wasn’t showing it to him.

The whole time he’d watched her exercise his horses he’d dressed himself down for hiring her in the first place. Her riding had made him miserable with worry before; now it literally caused his heart to pound, his muscles to lock against waves of anxiety.

Lyndie’s Jeep rounded the bend in the long driveway. He let out a slow breath.

She parked and approached. “Have you been waiting long?”

“No.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

Her hair was down, six shades of blond, and incredibly pretty. She wore shorts, a roomy black and white top with zigzags on it, and earrings so long they almost touched her shoulders. He didn’t
think he’d ever get used to her beauty. It hit him fresh every time he saw her.

She opened her passenger-side door, revealing reusable grocery sacks. Before she could lift any of them, Jake looped two around each hand.

“Thank you.”

“What’s all this?”

She led him onto the deck that surrounded the house. “My mom doesn’t cook or grocery shop. Since I don’t want any of the people living here to starve, I supply food.” She held the front door for him, and he passed through into a house that smelled faintly of dryer softener. “Jake and I are here,” Lyndie called.