“Why else? Maisey had an idea.”
Anna Louise had to laugh at the resigned expression on his face. “I’m surprised she sent you to do her bidding or that you agreed to come.”
“We’re having an Indian summer heat wave. It’s eighty-eight degrees out there and she threatened to walk down here herself, if I didn’t come.”
“You might have suggested she call.”
“I did. She had the idea you wouldn’t agree unless one of us was here in person to persuade you.”
Anna Louise regarded him suspiciously. “Persuade me to do what?”
“She thought maybe you’d like to come by later for a dip in Willow Creek and a picnic. It could be the last chance before cold weather comes.”
The thought of a relaxing, cool swim tempted her just as Maisey had known it would. She’d been swimming in the creek almost every afternoon before Richard had come home. Since his arrival, she’d been uncomfortable with the idea and had stayed away. The thought of his experienced, womanizing eyes assessing her body when she was clad in nothing more than a bathing suit, no matter how unrevealing, had disconcerted her. It still did, especially since she could see he was viewing the prospect with some interest.
“I’d better not,” she said. “I have a busy day.”
“Too busy to take time for dinner?”
“Will you be there?” she inquired bluntly.
He grinned at that. “Oh, yes, I am definitely part of the package. Maisey saw to that, right off. She’s making Virginia ham sandwiches on homemade biscuits and potato salad, two of my favorite things.”
Anna Louise’s mouth watered. Maisey’s potato salad was the best she’d ever had, with its bits of bacon, celery seed and a touch of mustard.
“Tempted?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said without thinking, then added hurriedly, “No.”
“Which is it?”
“I’m tempted, but I’m turning you down. Tell Maisey I’m sorry.”
He looked troubled by her refusal. “Anna Louise, don’t stay away on my account. There’s no reason to.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” she said softly, letting him interpret that however he liked. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
To her relief he didn’t argue. At the door he paused. “If you change your mind, we’ll be at the creek about five. That’ll give us a bit of time before the sun sets.”
“I won’t change my mind,” she said firmly.
“We’ll see,” he said in that smug way that set her teeth on edge.
She didn’t watch him leave, didn’t even permit herself to think about him for the next few hours as she caught up on paperwork. It was four o’clock when she finally yawned and stretched, then put down her pen and shoved aside the calculator she’d been using to balance the accounts. They were still several hundred dollars short of the amount needed for a new roof. For the life of her she couldn’t think how they were going to raise it. Everybody in town was stretched to the limit. Kiley, never particularly prosperous, had been hard hit by the recession of the early nineties and had never fully recovered.
Well, she reminded herself sternly, the Lord had a way of providing. She’d just have to have faith that an inspiration would come to her.
Walking through the doorway that connected the office to her private quarters, she paused by the answering machine, startled by the sight of a blinking light. Almost everyone in town knew they could reach her at the church office during the day. Why would anyone have left a message on her personal machine?
The first thought that crossed her mind was that something had happened to one of her parents. But she dismissed that almost as quickly as it occurred to her. They would have called the office, as well.
The obvious way to find out was to punch the Play button, but she did it with some reluctance. Her unvoiced fears were validated when she heard the first condemning words of the message.
“You’re defiling the church of Kiley,” the strained voice began. “Unless you give up and go back where you belong, you will be damned forever and the people of Kiley along with you.” The man added several passages of Scripture to support his claim, all in a righteous tone.
Anna Louise listened to the rambling diatribe all the way through to the end, then sighed wearily. The caller hadn’t said anything she hadn’t heard a hundred times before. From her own pastor in Tennessee to her colleagues at seminary, just about everyone had told her she was wrong to insist on becoming a preacher. They didn’t understand that the calling had been every bit as powerful for her as it had been for them. Or if they did understand that much, they thought she should have been satisfied with a more traditional role.
“Teach Sunday school,” one friend had suggested.
“Graduate from seminary, if you must, but just take a chaplaincy in a hospital. Folks are used to being cared for by women there. They won’t blink an eye if you come to pray with them. Just don’t force yourself into a job that God never meant to be held by a woman.”
She’d countered that one by reeling off passages of Scripture of her own. Unfortunately she couldn’t fight an anonymous caller who left messages and never confronted her face-to-face. Listening to the all-too-familiar criticism didn’t frighten her nearly so much as it exhausted her. She wondered if there would come a day when she would no longer have the strength to fight those who opposed her, people who shared Pastor Orville Patterson’s beliefs.
She doubted that had been Orville on the phone. He didn’t waste time with anonymous harassment. He was vocal and obvious about his objections. She doubted there was a soul in the entire Shenandoah Valley who didn’t know where Orville stood on the subject of her being pastor of the Kiley church and his five-year fight to have her removed. Up until now, though, he hadn’t had the votes. Those two new pastors had seemingly changed the balance of power.
Erasing the message, she drew in a deep breath and made up her mind to go to Willow Creek, after all. Somehow the prospect of spending a night alone in this house, perhaps getting even more threatening calls, was more than she could bear.
Upstairs, she put on her swimsuit under a pair of knee-length shorts and a shapeless blouse that she knotted at the waist. Only at the last second as she drove up the hill did she wonder if she wasn’t leaving the frying pan to jump straight into the fire.
* * *
Richard spread a blanket on the bank alongside Willow Creek where it curved behind Maisey’s property and formed a cool, shimmering pond. He moved the heavy picnic basket to the middle of the blanket. When he looked up, he spotted Maisey making her way along the bank, lugging a folding chair. He rushed to take it from her.
“I told you I’d come back to get the chair,” he scolded.
“It doesn’t weigh much more than a feather,” she argued. “Besides, I feel better when I’m being useful.”
“Wasn’t fixing this picnic useful enough? That basket weighs a ton. What’s in there, anyway? Did you make a batch of biscuits that turned out like bricks?”
“Very funny. You know my biscuits always turn out light and fluffy.”
“Then how many ham-and-biscuit sandwiches did you put in there? Enough for the whole town?”
“I know how you eat, young man, especially after you’ve put in a hard day’s work. You’ve been tussling with the wallpaper for the parlor all day. And Anna Louise can usually be persuaded to eat several.”
“I told you she wasn’t coming,” he reminded her.
“We’ll see,” she said, just as he had to Anna Louise earlier.
He’d had time to think about it since then and had decided that he’d been overly confident about her having a change of heart. “Do you want to wade a bit now or are you hungry?” he asked Maisey.
“You go for your swim. I think I’ll sit right here in the shade and rest a bit.”
Richard was in the middle of the creek, enjoying the way the refreshingly cool water slid over his bare skin when he heard Anna Louise’s vo
ice.
“Well, I’ll be,” he muttered, his gaze fixed on her as she sashayed into view. He kept his eyes on her as she chatted with Maisey, then slowly stripped off her shorts and blouse to reveal a black, one-piece bathing suit that she obviously thought was sedate.
Somebody ought to explain to her that she was still baring enough skin to make a man’s heart thunder in his chest. And what was covered wasn’t exactly a mystery. That suit molded itself to her in a way that revealed every tantalizing curve, from her generous bosom to her nipped-in waist and her rounded bottom. He dove beneath the surface of the creek in the misguided hope that the water would cool his suddenly overheated brain.
Finally he surfaced and a ripple in the the water warned him barely an instant before Anna Louise swam into view beside him with long, clean strokes that cut smoothly through the water.
“I’m surprised to see you,” he said as she stood up and brushed the strands of red hair back from a face that was so breathtakingly perfect it almost brought his heart skidding to a halt. He studied each feature, lingering at her full, tempting lips, before finally settling his gaze on her eyes. That’s when he detected the faint hint of dismay. He had a gut feeling that it wasn’t his blatant survey that was troubling her.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure,” she said blithely. Too blithely.
“What’s going on, Anna Louise? Something’s wrong. I can see it in your eyes.”
She shook her head, spraying him with droplets of water. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
He was troubled by the sense that she was all bravado. “Would you ask for help if you needed it?”
“I’m not a fool,” she said stiffly. “Of course I would.”
He gave a curt nod of satisfaction. That would have to do for now. He forced a challenging note into his voice. “Race you to the willow tree at the curve.”
Her expression relaxed at once, and laughter danced in her eyes. “You’re on.”
Richard had expected to win easily, but she matched him stroke for stroke. When they were within a few feet of the finishing mark and he was in danger of being beaten or at least tied, he deliberately swam into her path. The slight brush had her sputtering with indignation as their legs tangled and they both went under.
“You rotten cheat,” she said to him when she could catch her breath.
“It was an accident,” he swore.
“Right.”
“I saw that, Richard Walton,” Maisey called from the shore. “You deliberately bumped into Anna Louise to keep her from beating you.”
“Did not,” he said, but he couldn’t help laughing at the sight of both women standing up to him with such fierce determination over a silly race. He turned back to Anna Louise. “I’ll race you to the blanket. Loser fixes a plate for the winner.”
“A fair race?” she countered.
“Cross my heart,” he said, making the gesture.
While he was trying to reassure her, the sweet pastor of Kiley’s oldest church splashed a handful of water into his eyes and took off for the bank of the creek. He was still blinking when he looked around and found her standing triumphantly in the middle of the blanket.
“Don’t forget to put mustard on my sandwiches,” she called out cheerfully.
He climbed out of the creek and tried to keep a menacing glare in his eyes as he approached her. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t cram them down your throat,” he warned.
She laughed at him. “You’re all talk, Richard Walton.”
“I must say I have to agree with her,” Maisey said, clearly egging Anna Louise on.
He scowled at his grandmother. “Et tu, Brut;aae?”
Clearly unintimidated by the accusation, Maisey sat back and smoothed her skirt over her knees. “I believe I’m ready for dinner now,” she informed him primly.
“Me, too,” Anna Louise chimed in.
“Then, by all means, let me serve you.” He dished up the potato salad, added the ham and biscuits and fresh tomato slices, then passed the first plate over to Maisey. When he gave Anna Louise hers, he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I will get even with you, Pastor Perkins.”
Her brown eyes widened at the teasing threat in his voice. She swallowed hard, but her gaze remained unblinking. “I guess that means I’ll have to stay on my toes, then, doesn’t it?”
He grinned. “You bet.”
The conversation shifted then to easy, uncontroversial topics. Maisey drifted to sleep after a while, leaving Richard and Anna Louise talking softly about childhood memories.
“I recall the time I wrote an essay about wanting to be a preacher,” she divulged. “I must have been about ten. We’d been asked to describe what we wanted to be when we grew up. I was so proud of that essay. My parents had read it and thought it was wonderful.”
“Did you get an A?”
He could see the shake of her head in the gathering twilight. “I failed.”
He regarded her with a sense of shock. “Why?”
“The teacher tore it up. She said I had no business writing such blasphemous things. The way she said it, I felt as if I’d done something terrible, as if I’d written that I wanted to be a murderer or something.”
“What did your parents do?”
“When I told them, they explained to me that if I was serious about becoming a pastor, then I had to learn to deal with people like that teacher. I think that was the day I grew up. I know it was the day I resolved never to let what other people think rule my decisions.”
“And you never wavered from your dream?”
“Never once,” she said quietly. “Never once.”
Richard recalled how fervently he had believed in his own dream of traveling the world, reporting on things that needed changing, making a difference.
Proving himself, he realized suddenly, just as Anna Louise meant to do. In that moment of self-discovery, he saw that there was at least one thing he and Anna Louise had in common. They both fought tooth and nail for what they believed in, against what some would see as insurmountable odds.
Silence fell around them then, but it was the compatible silence born of budding friendship and understanding. For just about the first time since he’d met Anna Louise, he felt totally comfortable. As always, he was sharply aware of her as a woman, but he was even more aware of her as a person of strength and character, a person deserving of admiration.
The pleasant mood was disrupted only minutes later by the splatter of the first fat drops of rain.
“You get Maisey up to the house,” Anna Louise said, her face turned up to the rain as if she were a flower in need of healing moisture. “I’ll bring the picnic things.”
Richard nodded. He woke Maisey, helped her up, and with an arm around her waist, led her back to the house. He was on his way back to the creek when he saw Anna Louise coming. She wasn’t rushing. If anything, she looked as if she was enjoying every drop of the cleansing shower. Richard took the picnic basket from her.
“Don’t you want to come in and dry off?” he said when she immediately turned toward her car.
“No. I’d just get wet all over again when I do leave. I believe I’ll be going on home.”
For the first time in as far back as he could remember, Richard suddenly felt tongue-tied. “I’m glad you decided to come tonight.”
She turned slowly back at that. Her gaze rose and clashed with his. “Me, too,” she said softly. “I feel more peaceful now.”
As she walked away, Richard was left to wonder exactly what she had meant. Peaceful? Not him. He felt as if he’d been poleaxed from a direction in which he’d least expected it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was the sixth straight day of rain. It had started the night of Anna Louise’s picnic with Maisey and Richard and hadn’t let up for a minute since. Her spirits were almost as gloomy as the weather.
Worse than her own building depression, Willow Creek was rising, testing the limits of the soggy banks. Word from ups
tream was even more worrisome, with weather forecasters predicting another two or three days of pounding, soaking deluges.
Anna Louise walked through the shadowy aisles of the church, shifting the pitiful assortment of pots and pans to collect water from the worst of the leaks. She’d already spread plastic tarps over most of the pews, hoping to save the wood. The carved altar was shrouded in plastic, as well.
Anna Louise sighed at the mess. Another six months and they would have had the new roof. As it was, she’d be conducting Sunday services in an atmosphere as damp and uncomfortable as an open-air pavilion in the midst of a hurricane.
When she’d done what she could, she walked to the vestibule and looked out the front door. The creek appeared to be creeping up inch by inch even as she watched. Fortunately, most of the houses in Kiley were on higher land and weren’t threatened by a flood. Only her church, sitting barely a hundred yards from the creek, where the land leveled off, stood directly in the path of the rising water.
She had two choices and it was time to make one of them. She could call on God to stop the rain or call on her parishioners to divert the flooding waters. Since she never liked to push too hard in asking God to alter His plans, she headed for the phone in her office to call on her human resources. But just in case He wasn’t entirely set in His ways this time, she did murmur a fervent request toward Heaven while she was at it.
An hour later the rain hadn’t let up, but there was a scene of organized chaos on the sloping front lawn of the church. More than a dozen men and women were filling bags with sand to shore up the creek banks. Luke Hall and his wife had closed down the store and come at once, bringing Jeremy and their other sons. Maribeth had followed Jeremy. Tucker Patterson, the Monroes, the Hensons and even old Millicent Rawlings were doing what they could.
But as hard as everyone was working, Anna Louise recognized that their energy and know-how were pitifully inadequate. The water was already up to Anna Louise’s ankles and she was a good three yards from what had been the creek bank until just a little while ago.
“You’ll never save the church at this rate,” Richard observed, voicing Anna Louise’s own fears.
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