Love Inspired June 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Single Dad CowboyThe Bachelor Meets His MatchUnexpected Reunion

by Brenda Minton

  He was waiting for her answer.

  Ruthie smiled and stuck out her hand. “It’s a deal,” she said as he closed his fingers around hers. She couldn’t prevent a joyful smile at the rightness of his touch. “We have a lot to learn. Don’t we?”

  Chapter Four

  The next night, Ruthie arrived at Sobo’s hospital room just as Gray was leaving. He wore slacks and a jacket, an indicator he had just come from work. Shadows hung under his dark eyes, a telltale sign that his desire to protect this loved one was just out of his reach. He nodded toward the visitor area at the end of the hall, where they could talk without disturbing his grandmother.

  She followed him and settled onto one of the two scuffed blue chairs in a tiny nook outfitted with a table, a lamp, and a few books and magazines apparently left there by previous visitors. He took the seat opposite her and smoothed his slacks. Without ado, she blurted the question that she feared to ask. “How is Sobo?”

  He shook his head. “Not better, not worse. There’s a lot of pain in her leg, but she’s trying not to show it. Just keeps asking to go home.”

  “That’s a Bristow for you. Stoic all the way.” It concerned Ruthie that Sobo wasn’t improving. She wished things were different between Gray and her so they could pray together. Instead, she offered up a quick silent request for God to watch over Sobo and speed her healing.

  “Any luck with those phone calls?”

  She shook her head. “I called every customer in my database, and none of them had purchased the doll.” The good news was that many took the call as a nudge to come back to the shop. As much as she appreciated the business, she would much rather have found Sobo’s doll.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper on which a photo of their parking area had been printed and handed it to her. “The guitar shop across the street captured this image on their security camera.” He jabbed a finger at a small older-model foreign car. “That is most likely the car that your mystery shopper drove.”

  Ruthie moved the light under the lamp and leaned in. “No one’s in the car and the only person in the area is a workman climbing a ladder in front of the bookstore to wash windows.” She squinted and looked closer. “And it’s impossible to see the make and model of the car, much less the license number.”

  “Exactly, which is why you should have your own security camera. If this were taken from the vantage point of the Abundance shops, we could have gotten a clear picture.”

  Coulda, shoulda, woulda was what her mother used to say whenever anyone focused on might-have-beens. Although her mother had suffered some hardships, first raising a young daughter by herself, then marrying a man who turned out to be nothing like the charmer he’d initially presented himself as, Ellen had maintained a cheerful attitude of love and hope. Even when money was tight, steering her to work in a factory job that ultimately claimed her life, she had encouraged Ruthie to focus on what was possible and go after the blessings God had in store for her. Ruthie had taken her mother’s lessons to heart as a young girl and had mostly managed to avoid stewing in regrets and wishful thinking. Until Gray, that is.

  “I’ll do something about security at the shop. I promise.” Although her promise came out sounding slightly testy, she really did appreciate his concern for her safety. “When you talked to people at the neighboring businesses, did anyone mention having seen an elegant-looking Asian lady?”

  His lip twitched in a tell that revealed he had something more to share. Ruthie tried not to focus on his lips. Just looking at his firm mouth made her think of the kissing dolls...and of all the kissing the dolls had witnessed.

  “We’re in luck,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Sort of.”

  Her heart did a mini surge then plummet. Not so much because of the addendum to his first statement but because there once had been a day when he hadn’t believed in luck. If something good had happened, he would have attributed it to “divine providence” or an “unexpected blessing.” Rather than acknowledge luck, Ruthie preferred to believe that God was in control and, therefore, deserved the credit.

  “The classic-car guy happened to see the car pull into the parking area and was like a bee on nectar.”

  Ruthie’s hopes soared. “Did he see the woman? Better yet, does he know who she is?”

  “Not up close, but he told me the car is a 1961 Mazda Coupe. He drooled over it while the woman went inside to shop.”

  She blinked, trying to understand how that information could possibly bring them closer to the owner of the car. And closer to Sobo’s doll.

  “Now that we know what kind of car it is,” he said, connecting the dots for her, “we can call local antique automobile clubs and ask if they have a member with that make and model. And if so, we’ll just ask them to put us in touch with the owner.”

  Okay, that made sense. Gray offered to make the calls, for which she was grateful, and promised to let her know when any information turned up.

  “Thank you,” she said, and wished she could snap her fingers and clear away the mystery of where the doll might be. Just as she wished she could clear away the cloud of confusion that had settled over Gray’s heart four years ago. And while she was snapping her fingers, it would be nice to clear away the distance that had come between them.

  Their briefing over, they stood together. After making arrangements for their first self-defense lesson tomorrow, they said their goodbyes. As naturally as they had done a thousand times before, Gray leaned in to her—close enough for her to smell the unique, warm scent of his cologne. Close enough to resurrect dreams she had no business dreaming.

  And then, just as suddenly, he apparently remembered the Dear Jane letter and the four years that stood between them and stopped himself, leaving Ruthie yearning for the goodbye hug and kiss that never came.

  * * *

  Pop met her at the door to Sobo’s room. The worried frown that crossed his features indicated he must have seen the unsettled emotions that still swirled around her, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Ruthie knew that nothing he could say would help anyway.

  He put his arm around her. Grateful that one of the Bristow men was still willing to hug her, she snuggled into the kindly embrace. His gray-stubbled cheek scratched against her temple.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Of course she wasn’t. It seemed that every encounter with Gray was an opportunity for him to reject her again. The optimistic side of her clung to the possibility of their getting back together. Even so, she wondered how many times he’d have to push her away before she gave up the notion of their becoming a couple again. At first she’d been excited about the possibility of spending more time in Gray’s company, excited that God seemed to be using their search for the doll as a means to bring them together, but now she wondered if the negatives would outweigh the positives. Even so, she still believed that God meant for her and Gray to be together. She still clung to the verse that promised God had “plans to give you hope and a future.” On days like this, hope seemed mighty thin while she waited for the future.

  Her heart-adopted grandfather already had one woman to worry about, so she wasn’t about to add her comparatively small frets to his concerns. Besides, Sobo was the number-one priority right now. “Sure. I’m good.”

  He looked as though he didn’t believe it.

  Lowering his voice, he said, “Let’s not mention the doll yet. Naoko needs to concentrate on healing right now, and I don’t want any bad news to set her back.”

  “Of course.” She gave him a brief recap of her conversation with Gray and tried to sound more optimistic than she felt about the possibility of the doll’s reappearance.

  Ruthie entered the small private hospital room, Pop on her heels. The tiny woman looked even smaller than usual, with white sheets and blankets covering all but her red, swollen left
leg and one shoulder that revealed part of a not-so-fashionable cotton gown that tied at the neck. She wore no makeup, and the lack of her trademark dark eyeliner made her look unusually pale. On seeing Ruthie enter the room, Sobo started to pull the blanket over her leg, then seemed to think better of it. She covered it with the sheet instead. Pop had mentioned that her leg was painful, so Ruthie assumed that even the light weight of the blanket must have been too much.

  Ruthie eased herself onto the bed, taking care not to jostle it, and sat just as Sobo had done when she, as a teen, had been in bed with the flu and again after wisdom-tooth extractions. She took the hand of her honorary grandmother and held it between her own. The usual pale pink nail polish had been scrubbed clean, and the fingers that had once seemed so strong and sure now felt thin and frail.

  Sobo pursed her lips. “If you eat this hospital food,” she said with a sweep of her free hand toward the barely touched dinner tray, “you have no appetite.”

  To take their minds off the frustrations of hospital confinement, Ruthie chatted about the happenings at Abundance: Savannah’s latest alterations to the wedding dress she’d been tinkering with since her teens, Paisley’s successful experiment with smoked-salmon-and-sour-cream finger sandwiches, and her own acquisition of an antique iron grate that she planned to repurpose into a decorative end table. She steered clear of any mention of the dark-haired man who had graced her shop with his presence nearly every day this week.

  Sobo lifted her head. “That’s good. Very good. You sell the barley table? And ranzatsu?”

  Well, she’d taken the other woman’s mind off of hospital troubles, but now her own thoughts had been steered back to the one who’d taken home the barley table and the memories they’d shared over it.

  “Yes, the table went to a good home where it will sit in the new owner’s kitchen.” She hurried on before Sobo could question her further. “Your hats have been a big hit. Several will be worn in the Monument Avenue Easter parade later this month, and a couple of ladies are planning to wear them to church.”

  “Gray’s sister played with them when she was little. Catie stood in front of mirror and put hand on her hip.” Sobo’s expression softened and she appeared to drift down memory lane. “Big brother Gray snatched it off her head and ran through the house. He say she squeal like a pig. But he give it back,” she added, quick to redeem her grandson’s reputation as the protector everyone knew him to be.

  Ruthie sighed. Just as he had taken the hat from his sister, he had snatched her heart right out of her chest. Then, in an apparent act of honor, he had tried to give it back. As far as she was concerned, he still owned it.

  From the vinyl chair in the corner of the room, Pop clicked the remote and switched the channel away from the celebrity-gossip program it had been on. She wished it were as easy to switch the subject with Sobo. The channel landed on a game show, which immediately switched to a commercial urging viewers to watch the eleven-o’clock evening news to find out more about the prowler that had been spotted in the Museum District the previous evening. He zapped the channel again, but not soon enough.

  Sobo pointed to the TV screen. “I already heard about that man,” she informed her husband. She squeezed Ruthie’s hand in a grip that was much stronger than expected for a woman who was so ill. “You and the girls lock your doors. Don’t come out at night, no matter what.”

  “I will,” she promised, not bothering to mention that she and her roommates already took plenty of precautions. After what Paisley had been through as a teen in an unsupervised situation with a boy she had unwisely trusted, her roommate was relentless about urging the rest of them never to take chances with their safety. “And Gray is going to teach the Abundance gals and me some personal safety and self-defense tips tomorrow.”

  Rather than calming Sobo as planned, the last statement seemed to trouble her.

  “Sunday is for going to church. You do safety tips another day.”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday, Sobo.”

  Pop leaned forward in his chair.

  Sobo pulled her hand from Ruthie’s and pushed it through her mussed hair. “No. Is Sunday.”

  Now Pop rose from the chair and moved to the bed, where he carefully placed his big palm on his wife’s forehead. “Not running a fever. Do you know what year this is?”

  “Of course I do.” Sobo squinted at him as if he was the one with the problem, not she. But to appease him, she named the year, month and calendar date but was off by one day.

  Worry filled Pop’s eyes. He was overreacting, but the pair had been together for many years, and Ruthie knew him to be as protective as—if not more protective than—Gray.

  “When you’re in the hospital, time blurs,” Ruthie assured him. “There are no laundry days, grocery days or gardening days to keep track of the passing time.”

  Sobo nodded. “It’s all the time poke me, give me pills and make me eat bad food. All same-same, every day.”

  Pop accepted what they said, but it didn’t seem to calm his nerves much to hear that her temporary memory lapse was normal. He paced a bit, then moved toward the door. “I’m going to get some coffee,” he said. “Do either of you want anything?”

  At their negative replies, he abruptly left the room.

  “He’s worried about you,” Ruthie said, stating the obvious.

  “I know. He’s a good man.” Sobo drew her gaze away from the door and fixed her brown eyes on Ruthie, who took the chair he had vacated. “He all the time looks out for me, looks out for his children and his grandchildren. Gray is just like him. He takes care of people. Even when he was a little boy.”

  Ruthie knew about his protective nature and how it had been shaped by his father’s military service. Sometimes he’d taken his assigned duty a little too seriously, according to Catie, who had complained the time he interrogated her date and intimidated the teen so that he never asked her out again. Although Gray’s little sister had been annoyed at the time, she later confessed to Ruthie that it had been for the best, since the guy had gone out with her best friend and turned out to be a jerk.

  “All the Bristows served in army,” Sobo continued. “Gray fight in Afghanistan. Father fight in Desert Storm. And grandfather fight in Korea.”

  Ruthie cleared her throat. “Is that how you met Pop? When he went to Korea?” He’d never talked much about his time over there, and other than a short study of the war in a history class, Ruthie knew little about what he must have experienced. The episodes of M.A.S.H. reruns she’d watched on television gave her the impression Pop must have gone to Tokyo for the occasional weekend leave, but since neither of them had ever answered her questions, she was left to imagine a delightfully romantic love-at-first-sight kind of meeting.

  Sobo looked away, leaving Ruthie to continue imagining how the pair came to be together. “War changed Gray.” She lightly touched two fingers to her swollen leg, letting Ruthie know the pain remained. “He’s not the same now. To you. To us.”

  Ruthie didn’t want to talk about this. Didn’t want to be reminded of all she’d lost. Of the eager, energetic man who’d left to do his duty and returned with the light in his eyes now hidden behind dark memories that he refused to share.

  Sobo must have noticed Ruthie’s concern. “He will be back. He will find peace again. He will look at you and smile.” The elderly woman leaned on her elbows and pushed herself up in bed, as if she would muscle her way through her grandson’s difficulty just as she was trying to muscle her way through her own physical recovery. “I know, because I pray. I pray you will someday be my granddaughter-by-law.”

  Ruthie’s heart tightened at the familiar misspeak of the term granddaughter-in-law. When she had come to live with the Bristows, they had immediately started referring to her as their honorary granddaughter. Soon after she and Gray had become engaged, Sobo delightfully claimed her as a “grand
daughter by love,” an affectionate acknowledgment that even though she and Gray weren’t yet legally joined, her union in the family was officially sealed by love.

  “God listens to prayers,” Sobo said. “And He will answer.”

  Ruthie had no doubt about that. She just wished she knew when and what the answer might be.

  Chapter Five

  Gray was still pushing furniture out of the way in the reception area when Ruthie propped her bicycle in the common hallway and opened the door to his suite of offices. He took a deep breath and reminded himself to focus on the goal for the next couple of hours...to teach Ruthie and her friends self-protection, all the while trying to protect his heart from her. Or, more important, keep her at a safe arm’s length.

  He kept his eyes on the chairs that he pushed against the wall, but his peripheral vision traitorously afforded him a view of her removing her bicycle helmet, releasing her reddish-brown hair to tumble to her slim shoulders. She popped a pair of white earbuds out of her ears, tucked them into the helmet and set everything on a table near the door. Then she turned slowly in place, apparently taking in the size of the room, the decor, its sole other inhabitant...whatever it is women do when they size up a place.

  Why had he invited her here? Why had he opened the door to his inner sanctum? He turned his back to her and shoved the coffee table against the wall. Maybe if he pretended she wasn’t there, she’d disappear. Better yet, maybe the urge to take her in his arms and kiss away four lonely years would disappear. Sure, he’d broken up with her and dated other people, as he was certain she must have done, but he’d always subconsciously compared them to Ruthie. No matter how nice or pretty or nonreligious those women were, they never quite measured up to the standard set by his first real love.

  Human will was only so strong, and he turned toward the woman who’d been a source of pleasure and pain over the years.

  “Nice lair.” She bent and removed a rubber band from the ankle of her yoga pants.