Love Inspired Suspense.
Dear Reader,
Many of my books end up dealing with forgiveness, whether I plan it that way or not, and I often find myself wondering what God may be trying to tell me.
In the case of CASA, I’ve learned that there are large groups of selfless individuals who put themselves second in order to help innocent children obtain justice. I cannot imagine a more worthy goal. Or a more heart-wrenching task.
Whatever the Lord has given you or me to do in this world, I pray that we will do it with grace and joy. Help is always just a prayer away. All we have to do is ask.
If you wish to contact me, the fastest way is by email. My address is [email protected] or you can send a letter to P.O. Box 13, Glencoe, AR 72539. To see a list of my books, past and future, just go to valeriehansen.com.
Blessings,
Valerie Hansen
Questions for Discussion
This story begins with an unexpected reunion. Is it natural for Samantha to greet John with anger when he once held such a special place in her life? Can you understand her viewpoint?
In the years they’ve been apart, both Samantha and John have changed. Do you think this separation would have been as big a problem for them if they had remained together?
As the story develops, Samantha admits she was angry at God as well as at John after he left town. That’s a normal reaction to not getting the answers to prayer that we expect. Have you ever had to battle those kinds of feelings?
A career of service to others is exemplified by both Samantha’s and John’s professions. Given their past, can you see what those choices were based upon?
Drug problems are not limited to big cities. Did it surprise you to learn that people in small, rural communities share the same ordeals?
Opal is a grandmother who helped raise her grandchildren. Do you think she did the right thing? Did she really have a choice or was the responsibility thrust upon her?
Samantha is very attached to her old dog, Brutus, and thinks of him as family. Have you ever had a beloved pet who seemed to understand you better than other people do?
There are instances in this story when the characters choose to break rules because they believe they are in the right. Was this wrong? Why or why not?
When Samantha stopped going to church, she told herself it was because John had left. Is what someone else has done a good enough reason to stop having fellowship with other believers?
Can you picture an area in the mountains that is so remote it’s rarely visited? Would that be the best place to hide a kidnap victim or would it be easier to blend in where there are crowds?
Ben Southerland’s personal problems caused him to lash out at his family. Would he have been able to regain his family’s trust or was it too late? Why is it never too late for God’s forgiveness? (I John 1:9)
It takes the threat of possible separation via death to awaken Samantha to the full extent of her love for John. How different might her life have been if she had accepted his offer of marriage when she was much younger?
A lot of healing takes place before the wedding. Is it wishful thinking to imagine that Samantha can forgive her repentant father enough to include him in her life again? Will it be easier for her to reach out to others now that she has John by her side and they share the support of their church family, as well?
Small-Town
Romance
Arlene James
ONE
Music filled the darkened sanctuary, the tones of the old upright piano flowing in continuous harmony. Becca Inman sat in the circle of light emanating from the cylindrical lamp affixed to the top of the music desk, thinking that the petite grand at home produced a rounder, cleaner quality of note. As the keys moved beneath her nimble fingers, however, she acknowledged that nothing quite stirred the soul like playing musical praise in God’s house. Perhaps if she could remember that she could get through the worship service on Sunday morning.
It was indicative of Becca’s life that she should be sitting here—alone—on Valentine’s Day night practicing to be a stand-in for her sister, Bethany, as the pianist of the First Church of Eden, Oklahoma. An ice storm had paralyzed the region the week before, and Bethany’s husband, Stark, thought that she needed to be whisked away to Mexico for a break from the cold and gloom. Stark owned his own business and Bethany worked part-time for their father so the couple could pick up and go pretty much as they pleased. Becca, on the other hand, had the care of their disabled maternal grandmother Dorothy Taylor, as well as her job as assistant librarian and choral teacher at Eden Memorial High School to tie her down.
Somehow, at thirty-three, life seemed to have passed Becca by while her twenty-seven-year-old baby sister, adored by her husband, sunned herself on a beach on a whim. Then again, Becca would have been too shy to leave her hotel room. She’d have worried that the streaks of premature silver in her curly pale blond hair would stand out like laser beams in broad daylight, or that her baby-pink skin would instantly burn to an ashy crisp beneath the Mexican sun. She’d have imagined that everyone was staring at her skinny, too-long legs and were whispering that her bathing suit revealed a less womanly shape than that of an eleven-year-old boy. A five-foot-nine-inch tall eleven-year-old boy, at that.
Not that it mattered. She could not have gone swimming in the ocean anyway. Who knew what the salt spray would do to her glasses or contact lenses?
Grandpa Inman liked to say that God made us all for a purpose, and it seemed entirely evident that Becca’s purpose was to live meekly in the shadows. Thankfully, those shadows offered a measure of respite for a woman too shy to bask in the light.
At the moment, she was happy that those shadows cloaked the pews. Just thinking about them being filled to capacity on Sunday made her fingers fumble the notes. To get herself back on track, she began to sing the familiar words of the hymn.
Gladness lifted her heart as her voice rose, and she let the words swell and roll with all the power of the love that she bore for her music and her God. There in that darkened sanctuary she poured that love at the Savior’s feet, taking solace in the Lord Who did not care what she looked like or how inadequate she felt.
As the last mellow note floated heavenward, she sighed in contentment. Then applause erupted out of the darkness and she jerked back in panicked shock.
For one insane instant, Becca wondered if she had dreamed her solitude. Perhaps in her debilitating fear of performing before an audience she had merely convinced herself that the pews sat empty and the darkness did not hide staring eyes and listening ears.
The next second, the voice of Grover Waller, her pastor, came to her. “The angels must rejoice when you sing and play! If I were a less principled man, I’d have told my brother pastor here that I didn’t know another soul who could play the piano besides our own Bethany. Ah, well,” he sighed, stepping into the aura of light around the piano. “That’s what comes of sharing a ministry.”
As usual, Becca sat like a deer caught in headlights, knowing she should thank the man for his complimentary words but at a complete loss as to how to go about it. Her mind was stuck on those two words: “brother pastor.” Sure enough, just as the phrase suggested, a second man appeared at Grover’s elbow.
Reaching beyond her, Pastor Waller turned the brass cover on the piano lamp, directing the light upward and casting back the shadows well enough to allow Becca to see her listeners. Middle age had thinned Grover’s ash-brown hair and softened his kindly face. Diabetes had rounded his body, making him appear shorter than she knew him to be. The flat-front pants and bulky sweater that he wore beneath a puffy down-filled jacket only added to the illusion. The younger man looked like a classical Greek sculpture by comparison—despite the dark slacks and full-length black wool coat that he wore. Wi
th the prominent jut of his squared chin, hair like dark chocolate and eyes of the lightest, most electric blue, he seemed almost otherworldly. Becca began to tremble even before he extended his long, square-palmed hand.
“Becca, this is Davis Latimer,” Grover said, “the new pastor of our satellite church over on Magnolia Avenue. Davis, Rebecca Inman.”
She briefly pressed her damp palm to his.
“I’ve never heard better,” the young pastor said in a low, deep voice that skated across Becca’s nerve endings like a hot wind over a frozen pond.
“Ah, I— I teach.” Duh. As if that had anything to do with his compliment. And were words of thanks foreign to her vocabulary?
“Your students must count themselves blessed,” he said, easing back a step.
You’d never know it, Becca thought. Her choral students, most of whom were looking for an easy A, counted themselves free to talk, smack gum, throw things and generally ignore her. The piano students tended to be more cooperative, but she worked with them on a one-to-one basis.
“We’re going to put it to you plainly, Becca,” Grover said, leaning a shoulder against the end of the console cabinet. “The Magnolia church needs a pianist.”
Becca began shaking her head, hiding her quivering hands in the loose, ankle-length skirt of her simple, long-sleeved, gray-knit sack dress.
“One of my sisters has been filling in since the first of the year,” Davis Latimer explained, “but she’s pledged herself to the mission field and expects an assignment any day now. We’re a small congregation as yet, without a large talent pool to pull from. We were hoping you might consider the position.”
Becca felt the heavy, messy bun at the nape of her neck wobble precariously and croaked out, “Oh, I really don’t think I should try.”
“You’ll probably want to pray about it first, of course,” Grover pronounced, just as if she hadn’t spoken.
“Let us both pray about it,” Davis suggested gently, placing his hand on her shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice the slight jerk his touch evoked as he smoothly went on. “Then in a couple days we can meet and discuss it. Would Saturday morning suit you?”
Saturday would not suit her grandmother, Becca knew. Grandma Dorothy hated being stuck alone in her little house all day while Becca worked. The only thing she hated worse was actually going somewhere. Getting her wheelchair through the door, down the narrow ramp and into Becca’s minivan was an ordeal, but Grandma only made it worse by gasping in alarm every other second. Becca, of course, said none of that, so naturally Davis Latimer took her silence as acquiescence.
“Shall we say about eleven o’clock then? I’ll just meet you in the church parking lot there at the intersection of Magnolia Avenue and Iris Street.”
Becca opened her mouth to say that she didn’t think she could, but his warm hand lightly squeezed her shoulder, strangling the words in her throat.
“I look forward to it,” he said, bending low so that his softly spoken baritone filled her ear. “God has blessed you with a tremendous talent.”
Nodding his thanks at Grover, he strode into the murky darkness. Grover, meanwhile, turned the shade on the lamp once more, saying, “I wish I could stay and listen, but I have a special Valentine’s supper waiting for me. Do you know there are some very fine sugarless chocolates now?” He smiled and hurried away, leaving Becca sitting spotlighted behind the tall piano.
Even Grover and his wife are celebrating Valentine’s Day, Becca thought morosely. An unexpected image of Davis Latimer sitting across a candlelit table popped into her head and she felt her cheeks flush.
Suddenly, of all the problems the meeting on Saturday would cause her, one inane thought struck her hardest. Even in February, eleven o’clock in the morning came with full daylight. He could not fail to see it. She put a hand to her wildly disobedient, silver-streaked hair and wondered if she had the courage to dye it. But what would Grandma say? Not to mention her parents and the other teachers and her students and…
She wished with all her heart that she was sitting on a beach in Mexico.
Well, in a Mexican hotel room, anyway. It doesn’t matter, anyway, she reminded herself. Not in the least. A man like Davis Latimer could never be interested in her.
Bowing her head, she told first herself and then God just how stupid she was to worry about a foolish thing like a little gray in her hair when she somehow had to fight her way through the music of a popular Sunday worship service without throwing up on her sheet music. Provided, of course, that she didn’t die of mortification on a bright Saturday morning in the parking lot of Magnolia Christian Church at the intersection of Magnolia and Iris, beneath the pale blue gaze of the most handsome man she’d ever met.
TWO
The problem with living in a small town, Davis Latimer told himself as he waited inside his car on that cold Saturday morning after Valentine’s, was the lack of resources. Were he back in Kansas City, he would simply apply to the local seminary for a pianist for his fledgling pastorate, Magnolia Christian Church. The music majors there would jump at the chance to earn a few extra bucks plying the keyboard two or three times a week.
But he was quite sure that none of them could come anywhere near what he had heard the night before last in the darkened sanctuary of the First Church of Eden, Oklahoma.
He had thought at first that he must be listening to a recording, a piece of perfection engineered in a sound booth. The tonal purity, strength and fluid range of that rich soprano would be the envy of an operatic diva. And her playing! He had heard renowned concert pianists whose music had moved him less. Enraptured, he’d stood there in the darkness, imagining the musician—an ultimate artistic creature, she would be a ravishing beauty of inspirational power.
But what had he found sitting there at that piano in a halo of light? A timid, slender waif of a woman who hid her gentle prettiness behind a pair of large glasses. Becca Inman couldn’t have looked more terrified if he and Pastor Waller had come out of the darkness with guns blazing instead of applauding. Davis had elected to take a less bluff approach with her than Grover, but he knew that he had bullied Becca into today’s meeting nonetheless.
He had little experience with timorous women. The women of the Latimer family tended toward the headstrong, outspoken variety. He adored them all, including the twenty-one-year-old twins who had accompanied him to Eden for his first senior pastorate some six weeks ago. Caylie and Carlie had been of invaluable help to him, setting his house to rights, organizing the women’s activities, charming his congregants and providing the music for Sunday services. But both were due to leave shortly—Caylie was getting married and Carlie was off to the missions—leaving him in urgent need of a pianist.
He knew that Becca Inman would fill that need perfectly, playing his grandmother’s lovely old baby grand with skill and passion. But first, however, he had to convince her to do it.
Davis checked his watch, hunching his shoulders inside his black wool coat. Eleven o’clock. Where was she?
Moments later, a battered minivan equipped with a wheelchair lift turned into the parking lot, swung a wide arc around his late-model sports coupe and came to a rocking halt in front of the cream brick facade of the sanctuary. Delighted to see Becca emerge from the vehicle, Davis sent up a quick prayer of thanks before getting out of his shiny black car to greet her.
She was taller than he’d realized and looked as slender as a reed beneath that voluminous broomstick skirt with a matching plum-colored jacket worn over a simple white blouse. Her pale, glimmering hair had been partially tamed, the tiny corkscrews brushed ruthlessly into twin rolls clipped together at the back of her head, the ends spilling into a platinum and silver froth that covered her shoulder blades. Behind the lenses of her glasses, thick platinum lashes rimmed wide, almond-shaped eyes of a soft, greenish-gray.
After one swift glance in his direction, she lifted a hand to the clasp at the nape of her neck.
Something about that delighted him—did it demonstrate a desire, perhaps, to impress? Davis thought of the striking contrast she presented to his own appearance, her light against his dark… .
With a start, he realized that he now stood within a foot of her. Close enough to note the fine pores of her creamy pink skin, the indentations that her heavy glasses pressed into the almost-nonexistent bridge of her button nose, and the plump, rose perfection of her lips. He was shocked to find that his heartbeat had accelerated.
Prudently, he stepped back. To cover his own agitation, he opened the passenger door of his coupe and swept her a bow. “Allow me.”
She blinked. “What? Uh, a-aren’t we going into your office?”
“Unfortunately my office is in the parsonage,” he told her, nodding toward the small white house tucked into the corner of the lot. “I thought we’d find someplace warm and public to talk.”
After several seconds of wide-eyed contemplation, she gave her pointy little chin a nod. In one long, fluid motion, she slipped around the opened car door and down into the bucket seat, tucking her skirt beneath her. He hurried around to drop behind the steering wheel. Only as they drove toward downtown did he release the breath that he had been holding.
* * *
“Where are we going?” Becca asked.
He drove a bit fast, manipulating the gears of the sleek car with practiced ease, but that was not why she stared straight ahead. She dared not look at him. He was that handsome—mesmerizing almost—with refined features in a rectangular face of strong, square planes and the lightest, bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Oddly, those ice-blue eyes were anything but cold. They seemed backlit with an inner fire that drew her like a moth to a flame.
“We’re already here,” he announced, slowing to turn left across the oncoming traffic lane and into a parking space in front of the Garden of Eden Café.
Threat of Darkness Page 19
