Assuming they still lived in the Valley of the Sun, why hadn’t she spent the night with her folks or one of her sisters?
“When I got here,” she continued, “I made a mistake of stretching out for an intended quick nap. Only I woke up not long before sunset to several inches of snow. Who knows what it will be like tomorrow? So off I went.”
He glanced at her, hoping she’d elaborate on what she’d been doing with her life. But she didn’t. Incredibly, she wasn’t married, but were her sisters? Did her university professor folks still take short-term mission trips during semester breaks? It saddened him that the cabin was to be sold, although to his knowledge the family hadn’t gathered there as a whole since her grandma’s health abruptly deteriorated and she eventually passed away.
Jodi's mitten-clad hand patted the dashboard. “What’s with the monster truck?”
“A loaner from Hunter’s Hideaway.” That was the family business that had catered to outdoor enthusiasts since early in the last century. “With this cold snap, Grady and I’ve been delivering firewood to those in need.”
She laughed. “So you are a do-gooder now.”
Did she have to sound so surprised? Admittedly, growing up he’d been forever into mischief. Always pushing boundaries and looking for a good time wherever he could find it. Not a whole lot into thinking of others. But still...
“You even took time from your do-gooder efforts,” she noted, “to help this poor old lady stumbling along the side of the road.”
“You gotta admit you looked the part.” But she sure didn’t right now, with that silky hair cascading around her shoulders and a smile lighting her brown eyes. Those very assets had been his downfall the night a transformed sixteen-year-old Jodi showed up in town after a few years’ absence, leaving him stupefied and devoid of common sense.
Sort of how he was feeling at this very moment.
Not good.
After his most recent disappointment in the romance department, he’d steered clear of serious involvements. And for an interim pastor, this wasn’t a good time to start rethinking that choice. So why had it popped into his head that her arrival in town might be the answer to a prayer he’d uttered but twenty minutes ago?
His office assistant Melody Lenter—an energetic lady about his mom’s age—had called around lunchtime, informing him her father in Texas had a heart attack and she and her husband were on their way out of town. She’d have to bail out on overseeing the annual Christmas project she’d single-handedly spearheaded for the past twenty years. Between wood deliveries, he’d spent the afternoon phoning church members, trying to find someone to fill her shoes—but to no avail. He’d barely called out to God that someone had to cover for Melody—he sure couldn’t take on one more thing—when the capable and ever-dependable Jodi appeared on his doorstep.
Answered prayer? Or a desperate, not-too-bright idea?
“So where’s the motorcycle? And—” She peeked at the back of his head. “What happened to the ponytail?”
Although still waiting for her to zero in on Grady’s “preacher” comment, he managed a laugh. “The tail’s a thing of the past. I have an SUV now, but a motorcycle’s stashed for the winter in a Hunter’s Hideaway barn.”
The motorcycle made some in his congregation uneasy, which wasn’t surprising considering the noisy nuisance he’d made with one as a teenager. No doubt he hadn’t been high on the church’s interviewee preferences list for a few members. But his Grandma Jo, a force to be reckoned with, convinced them—and him—that his filling in while they searched for a permanent ministerial replacement would benefit all involved.
Coming back, though, hadn’t been easy. Nobody in town had a clue what it took to regularly face his old friend Drew Everton and the accusing stares of those who held him responsible for Drew’s debilitating injuries. While Drew insisted he wasn’t to blame, others weren’t so forgiving.
But his year’s commitment at Christ’s Church would be up at the end of the month, and he was more than ready to move on. Ready to live the dream Drew had been forced to abandon.
“Here we are.” He turned the truck into a pine-lined lane leading up to the Thorpe cabin, a wave of nostalgia washing through him as it often did when he drove by. While the porch light lent a cheery note this evening, in broad daylight the place always struck him as melancholy. Lifeless. Although a guy at the church kept an eye on it, that didn’t make up for the absence of the warm hospitality and sound of laughter he remembered. Or for missing familiar faces peeping from the dormered attic windows and the sight of his and Jodi’s grandmas relaxing on the broad front porch.
He turned to Jodi. “I felt really bad when I heard your grandma passed away.” He couldn’t imagine not having his Grandma Jo or Grandma McCrae around. That was one of the blessings of Hunter Ridge he’d sorely miss when he left.
“It’s funny,” Jodi said as she unbuckled her seat belt, “but even though I haven’t been here since high school, when I arrived I almost expected to see her step out on the porch to give me a big hug.”
“Smelling of freshly baked cupcakes and that honeysuckle hand lotion she always used.”
Surprise lit her eyes. “You remember that?”
“I remember a lot of happy times at this cabin.”
While his younger sister and Jodi’s siblings gravitated to each other to do girlie things, he and Jodi had teamed up to shoot baskets, climb trees and build woodland forts. It was difficult to reconcile memories of the somewhat stout, rough-and-tumble freckle-faced tomboy of his youth with the sixteen-year-old beauty who’d blindsided his eighteen-year-old self—and with the woman who sat beside him now.
“What do you say we get your stuff inside?”
But should he ask her if she could spare time for a project her grandma had at one time helped with—providing Christmas cheer for unwed mothers in the region?
Still undecided, he watched as she retrieved the backpack at her feet. Then just as he gave up on the idea and reached for the door handle, her gentle hand settled on his forearm, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Thank you—Preacher.”
Copyright © 2016 by Glynna Kaye Sirpless
ISBN: 978-1-474-06404-0
THE COWBOY’S CHRISTMAS BABY
© 2016 Carolyne Aarsen
Published in Great Britain 2016
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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