by Melissa Tagg
All This Time
A Walker Family Novel
Melissa Tagg
Praise for the Walker Family Series
“Tagg gets better and better with each new book. Beckett and Kit’s story is more than just their story; it expands to the entire Walker and Danby families as well as the community of Maple Valley in a way that will cement Tagg as a go-to author in this genre. Told poignantly and with a good deal of toe-curling swoon-worthiness, the reunion of these childhood best friends is sweet and funny and sincere.
—Romantic Times Book Reviews on Keep Holding On
“Melissa Tagg writes with humor, depth and sincerity. The story of Beckett and Kit will keep you ‘holding on’ until the very last swoon-worthy page. Tagg is one of romance’s finest authors.”
—Rachel Hauck, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author, on Keep Holding On
“Tagg captures the familiar cadence of life in a rural Midwest community while bringing gentle compassion to such sensitive topics as grief over the death of a spouse. A thread of historical drama adds an entertaining element of tension to the book’s quintessentially American plot, and its inspirational themes are prominent yet seamlessly woven into the dialogue and relationships. An engaging sequel and satisfying read, especially for fans of small-town romances.”
—Booklist on Like Never Before
“Like Never Before, second in Tagg’s Walker Family series, follows a close-knit, loving family as they struggle with life’s uncertainties and losses. Endearing characters, deft writing, and an interesting historical mystery will intrigue readers, but the real gem is Tagg’s well-handled theme of the need to trust in a loving, sovereign God.”
—CBA Retailers + Resources on Like Never Before
“From the Start embodies Tagg’s best! Delightful. Endearing. And full of engaging characters and tingling moments reminiscent of our favorite films and stories. I’m thrilled this is the beginning of our journey with the Walkers and eagerly anticipate this wonderful family’s next chapter.”
—Katherine Reay, bestselling, award-winning author, on From the Start
“From the Start is guaranteed to win the heart of readers with this delightful story of a retired football player looking for his future, and a writer trying to figure out how to pen his story—while rewriting her own. Colton is downright swoon-worthy, and this first book in this hometown series about the charming town of Maple Valley, Iowa, scores a resounding touchdown! Tagg just gets better and better.”
—Susan May Warren, bestselling, award-winning author, on From the Start
Books by Melissa Tagg
Walker Family Series
Three Little Words (prequel e-novella)
From the Start
Like Never Before
Keep Holding On
Where Love Begins Series
Made to Last
Here to Stay
Enchanted Christmas Novella Collection
One Enchanted Christmas
One Enchanted Eve
One Enchanted Noel (coming November 2017)
“A Maple Valley Romance” in the Right Where We Belong collection
© 2017 by Melissa Tagg
EPUB Edition
Larkspur Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, photocopy, recording, etc.—without the prior written permission of the author. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: ©Jenny Zemanek/Seedlings Design Studio
Formatting: BB eBooks
Connect with Melissa at www.melissatagg.com and stay in touch by signing up for her always fun and never spammy e-newsletter!
To the writing friends who helped me brainstorm this series years ago while we lounged on the bank of the Mississippi River:
Alena Tauriainen
Gabrielle Meyer
Lindsay Harrel
I’m so grateful for your friendship, and I love you lots!
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Praise for the Walker Family Series
Books by Melissa Tagg
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Note to Readers
About the Author
You Might Also Enjoy
1
A single, strained scan of the church’s hollowed interior was all it took for the whispers of Bear McKinley’s past to turn to bellows.
The shards of glass from broken windows. The Portuguese slurs in scribbled neon graffiti on the walls. The scuffs on the pastel clay-tile floor where the furniture must have been dragged away.
Worse, the look on John’s face. The one that told Bear, even this many years later, he’d never leave behind the label—criminal.
“You can’t seriously think I had anything to do with this.” Bear forced down the last dregs of the lukewarm coffee John’s wife, Elizabeth, had handed him before he’d left their shared, cramped apartment this morning. Another failed attempt to fit in with the people here in Brazil—he could never quite hide his distaste for the stuff.
And yet, he kept trying. Maybe that was his problem.
“Of course I don’t think you did this.” John’s eyes, gray as his hair, were weary and worn, revealing so much more than mere disappointment with this latest round of vandalism.
It was the fourth incident since Bear had landed in South America ten months ago. More than one person had pointed out that the fledgling church had never encountered so much as a speck of resistance within the community before Bear’s arrival. John—the well-respected missionary who’d helped start the church—had always stood beside him, waved off the thinly veiled remarks. But now . . .
Resignation weighed heavy in John’s slumped shoulders.
“I know about the rumors, John. I know what people are saying about me.”
That helping build a church was one thing, but what was a guy with no training, no seminary degree, and a decidedly lacking Portuguese vocabulary going to do once the new building was finished? Worse, that maybe he was only here because those felony convictions made it too hard to get a job in the States.
The faint call of an illegal street vendor, offering his key-cutting services from the bustling sidewalk outside, jarred Bear’s already taut nerves. He kicked at a Brahma beer can, probably left by the vandals, sending it clanking across the vacant room that should’ve been filled with new teakwood chairs. Who stole chairs?
And here he’d thought the unopened letter in his pocket would turn out to be the worst part of this day.
John dabbed a handkerchief over his forehead. The morning had already turned sweltering, Amazon humidity clawing through gaping windows, unusual for fall in Sao Paulo. It was still hard to think of the end of May as autumn. Back in Iowa, spring showers and mild temperatures likely still held summer at bay.
Iowa
. Such a faraway place—another hemisphere, another lifetime—but it lingered at the borders of his heart. Happy memories for a soul that wasn’t supposed to be this parched. He’d lived there only for five years—waiting out his probation until he could join John and Elizabeth in South America—but it’d become more of a home than his birthplace, Atlanta, had ever been.
More than, it seemed, Brazil might ever be.
“Bear—”
“They want me to leave, don’t they?” He wasn’t even sure which they he meant. Church members who’d learned one too many details about Bear’s background? Leaders with the international outreach mission John represented? They’d only reluctantly allowed Bear to help with the church construction in the first place.
He’d been hopeful his temporary position might grow into something permanent. Once completed, the new building would include an attached community center where they planned to host an afterschool program for kids and a free clinic a couple days a week. He’d counted on being the one to run the place down the road. Might even allow him to finally make use of his paramedic background and—
But no. He could see reality etched into every crease in John’s face. “I’ve had two calls from the mission board already this morning,” John admitted.
Bear paced to a broken window. The cloud-veiled Jaragua Peak, Sao Paulo’s highest mountain, rose in the distance. So much beauty overlooking so much disparity. From its glass-gilded high-rises to the sprawling favelas—slums, they’d have called them in the States—this city had beckoned to him once upon a time. He’d thought the things so far out of reach for so long—purpose, passion, belonging—might catch up to him here. Had been so certain that serving alongside John and Elizabeth was his answer, the fulfillment of the promise he’d made in that dank prison cell:
I’ll go. I’ll finish what Annie started. I’ll do what she couldn’t.
Brazil was supposed to be his fresh start, his second chance.
Instead, this now-sullied cement structure seemed to stand as a monument to his own huddled childhood memories—the litter, the glass, the loud street outside.
And the writing was, quite literally, on the wall: Vaza! Go Away.
Some people simply didn’t get second chances.
“Bear, you have to know how much Elizabeth and I have loved having you here.”
John’s past-tense wording was enough to eradicate any lingering remnant of hope. Bear toed a jagged piece of glass away and dropped to perch on an overturned bucket.
“We look at you and we think of our Annie.”
Her name squeezed the air from his lungs. “Please don’t—”
John strode to his side and clamped one palm on his shoulder. “We love you like our own. You know that.”
He should return the sentiment. Tell John all that his and Elizabeth’s support had meant to him over the years. Even from afar, they’d gotten him through the darkest days of his life back in Atlanta and then continued to buoy him through those in-between years in small-town Iowa. By inviting Bear to join them in Brazil, Annie’s parents had given his life meaning, made it possible to believe a man really could erase all that was behind him.
He should tell John that the man’s constant belief in him meant the world. But he couldn’t get past the anger, or maybe hurt, tightening his throat now. “Go ahead and say the but.”
“The but?”
Bear stood, his movement so swift the bucket knocked over behind him. “But even you are starting to wonder if there’s something to the accusations.”
John blinked, the lines in his face deepening under sunburned blotches.
“You, more than anyone, know where I come from.” Bear hated the hard bite in his own tone, hated his inability to turn it off. “You, more than anyone, have reason to doubt.”
“I don’t doubt you, Bear, but you once used the term ‘far-reaching’ to describe your family’s . . . activities. The thought has crossed my mind—”
“Far-reaching as in Atlanta’s outskirts, not another continent.”
“You told me how much they resented you leaving.”
Resented wasn’t nearly strong enough a word. “This has nothing to do with them.” He wouldn’t even entertain the thought. It was too ridiculous. “I left Georgia six years ago.” Mere hours after the last prison cell buzz he ever hoped to hear. “I haven’t even talked to any of them since.”
John righted a tipped-over garbage can and started picking up the trash strewn about the empty space. “That’s not true, though. What about those letters from your sister-in-law?”
Bear swiped a can from the floor, crunched it with one palm, and chucked it into the bin. He’d rather not talk about Rosa. Or her repeated letters—including the one in his pocket now. The one that probably said the same thing as all the rest: Rio’s in trouble again. I don’t know what to do. The kids . . .
“You can’t just keep ignoring it, Bear.”
He tossed another can. It hit the rim and clanged against the floor. “Ignoring what?” His family? He’d been doing that just fine for years now. He sent Rosa money when he could, but that was it.
“The fact that this isn’t solely about the vandalism or the rumors or the accusations of a few misguided people.”
“That’s exactly what it’s about.”
John stepped around the garbage bin to face Bear. “You forget how well I know you. You were torn up inside even before the vandalism began. Between your family, Annie, those letters . . . you’re hiding.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” The words ripped from him, harsh and punishing, echoing in the cavernous building. “I came here to help people—to help you.” Because he owed John and Elizabeth. Owed them more than he could ever possibly hope to repay. And because of that promise. “I’m not hiding.”
The storm inside him hit a fever pitch, too many thundering emotions all clambering for precedence. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The shambles of his past were never supposed to have a place here.
He was supposed to build a church. He was supposed to serve people in need. He was supposed to change lives the way John and Elizabeth—and yes, their Annie—had changed his so many years ago.
Instead, here he was once again—living with the shame of a branding he didn’t deserve.
“The mission board has decided to take applications for the community center position.”
The news dropped with a thud.
“You’re welcome to apply, of course, but the board won’t be hiring until October or November. In the meantime . . .” John’s posture drooped. “They feel you should return to the States for now.” A ripped piece of tarp waved in the breeze from the door-less opening behind him. He waited one labored beat. “It’s not only the mission board that’s asking you to leave.”
Bear forced himself to meet John’s eyes. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I care too much about you to see you like this—so tightly wound. How can you effectively serve others with so much still gnawing at you? This doesn’t have to be forever. But for now . . . I think you need to go back. You need to go home.”
Bear lowered his head into his hands, his fingers rubbing his temples before scraping down his cheeks. With his back against the cement wall behind him—somehow cold despite the day’s heat—he slid down to sit on the floor, knees bent, Rosa’s letter crinkling in his pocket.
Home? He didn’t even know where that was anymore.
2
Raegan Walker’s siblings were unbelievable. All of them—the two sitting across from her in the rattan chairs and the one whose pixelated face watched her from the computer screen. Darn technology.
“An intervention?” The porch swing creaked as she shifted to cross her arms in front of her denim overalls. At least her gardening gloves hid the fact that her hands had balled into fists. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
A late-May breeze hummed through the wind chimes dangling above, and sunshine gushed over the ra
mbling lawn in front of Dad’s house. Mom and Dad had picked the perfect place to build their home, nestled into a clearing a few miles outside Maple Valley.
Rural Iowa outdid itself today—rested and revived after a long winter, hints of summer present in fully clad trees and so much vibrant green. The cobalt, cloudless sky, the tingle of warmth, the damp, earthy scent in the air—it had all seemed so promising an hour ago. She’d pulled on the faded overalls she found at the back of her closet and tucked her hair under one of Mom’s old straw hats, intent on a peaceful Sunday afternoon of yard work.
But then Kate and Beckett had rolled down the gravel lane in Beckett’s classic convertible, toting along Logan all the way from Chicago thanks to a laptop and the internet. Unbelievable!
“It’s not an intervention, Rae.” Even fuzzy from straining wi-fi, Logan’s eyes radiated concern. Up until today, she might’ve considered it impossible to ever get all that annoyed at her oldest brother. He was the quiet one, the gentle one.
Turned out it didn’t matter how gently a person told you your life was a wreck. It stung all the same.
“You showed up here out of the blue. You took turns telling me all the things I’m doing wrong in my life.” She pulled off Mom’s hat and plunked it on the seat beside her. “Sounds like an intervention to me.”
“Raegan, you’re not listening.” This from Kate. Kate the newlywed with the handsome husband and the flourishing writing career. Easy for her to talk about the importance of “having direction in life.”
“Oh, I’m listening. So far, we’ve covered my lack of college degree. How I can’t possibly be satisfied working multiple part-time jobs. How I’m too old to still be sleeping in my daybed.” Because apparently being a couple months from twenty-seven and still living in her childhood bedroom spelled pathetic.
Kate leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “We did not say those things.”
