Down by the River

by Lin Stepp

  But Jack only stood looking up the river, quiet.

  A little thread of alarm skittered up Grace’s spine. Jack was seldom quiet like this, and she could feel a tension coiled in him. Humming. Troubling him.

  She waited, wondering if she should ask him what was wrong.

  Grace moved one of her hands to cover his on the rail, but he jerked his hand away from hers. Stepped back from her a little, too.

  “I need some space to say what I came to say tonight, Grace.” His voice sounded strained. Tight.

  Grace heard him take a deep breath.

  Had he found someone else? She wondered. Did he want to stop seeing her? A barrage of thoughts and doubts assailed her. She had never been sure about Jack’s feelings for her.

  He looked toward her with a troubled face. “I’m in love with you, Grace Conley.”

  Relief swept her. She tried to reach for him again.

  “No.” He backed way. “Let me say what I need to say. It isn’t easy for me to say words like these. I’ve only said them once in my life to a woman. And I was a fool then for saying them. I didn’t think I would ever say them again to any woman.”

  Grace saw his hands gripping the railing of the bridge.

  “I haven’t been a good man for much of my life. You know that. I’ve enjoyed a lot of women.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “When I met you, I knew I was attracted to you. But I also knew there was more. I kept waiting to grow tired of you, for the fascination with you to wear off. It usually did, Grace. My interest in any woman never lasted for very long before I found myself noticing another one. I’m not proud of that, but it was the way it was.”

  He moved restlessly on the bridge. Grace felt tense, waiting for what else he had to say.

  “You got to me in a way no woman ever has before. I knew that for a surety not long after you moved here. I lost my interest in other women. I thought about you more than normal for me. Wanted you. Fantasized about you. But also began to like you. Respect you. That was new for me. I enjoyed your company. I liked sitting next to you, talking with you, being with you. I liked the different sides of you I learned about. One of my first thoughts when I met you was that you had a lot of layers. That I would enjoy peeling them back. I have, and I’m still enjoying that. I don’t think I’ll ever stop enjoying it.”

  Grace reached to touch him again, but he pulled away once more, held up a hand to her.

  “I need to say this without touching you, Grace.” He took a deep breath again. “I don’t know when I realized I was in love with you. Maybe after that trip to California. I just looked at you one day, and I knew. It scared the crap out of me. I’ve almost been glad you were so busy the last few weeks. It gave me time to think. Gave me time to decide what to do.”

  He turned to her with anguished eyes. “I’m not good enough for you, Grace. You deserve a better man than me. But I can’t bear to think of letting you go to find a better man. I have no right to speak to you of love and commitment when I’ve lived the way I have. But I have to take a chance and offer. It isn’t much of a deal for you. I’d understand if you didn’t even want to consider it.”

  Jack took a deep breath, almost shuddering. His eyes looked dark and troubled. It wasn’t an expression Grace was used to seeing on Jack’s face.

  She started to reach out a hand to touch him again, but then stopped herself.

  Instead Grace looked up into Jack’s eyes in the moonlight and saw the love—swimming with the fear and tension. It wasn’t easy for a man like Jack to admit to love.

  She smiled at him. “I’m waiting for the question that’s supposed to come at the end of all this talk of love and commitment, Jack.”

  He gave her a pained look. “You’re going to make me step all the way out on the plank, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely.” Grace looked at Jack with honest, warm eyes. “And I want the romantic memories to go with the moment.”

  Jack groaned, and then dropped down to one knee and took Grace’s hand. “Grace Conley, I love you with all the heart I have. With all I have to offer, which is much less than you deserve, I offer you myself. My love, my protection, my caring, my passion.” He grinned. “And I have a lot of the latter.”

  Grace tried to stay serious and hold back a grin.

  “I’d like you to consider being my wife. I’d like you to consider taking on the job of being a mother to my girls. I hope you will love them and love me. As you’ve already seen, it won’t always be easy. We’ll have the teen years ahead, God help us. But we’ll have each other, too. Every day. In every way.”

  Grace gave Jack a serious look then. “I want to be the only one, Jack. I want you to be sure of that—that you’re ready for that.”

  He took her other hand in his. “I stopped thinking of anyone after meeting you, Grace. I stopped wanting anyone after you. And then, the Lord up there has been doing His work on me and changing me more. I bonfired all my Playboy magazines last month. They held no interest for me anymore. He’s changing me from the inside out; you’ve been changing me. I’m different in my skin. But like you told me on the plane, I like who I am now. I like who I am today a lot better than who I was. You should understand that. People change. People can change.”

  “Yes, they can.” Grace smiled down at Jack, still on one knee.

  He waited, looking at her.

  “Oh, Jack Teague, get up from there and kiss me. Surely you know I can’t say anything but yes. I’ve fallen in love with you, too. You’ve gotten into my heart and under my skin. I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life… .”

  He kissed her before she could get another word out. Kissed her deeply and passionately and with all of his being. Jack was never a halfway kind of guy—and Grace could feel the force of his love and joy all the way down to her toes.

  Pulling Grace into his arms, Jack ran his hands down her back to rest on her hips. He pulled her against him as he traced his lips over her mouth and down her neck. Grace had known love before, but this love she’d found with Jack was new and different. And she felt new and different with him—stirred, overwhelmed, and touched with the wonder of having discovered love a second time. Of having found someone like Jack who gave her life such joy.

  “Do we have to wait until we’re married since we’ve both been married before?” Jack purred out these words against her ear.

  Grace pulled back and put a hand to Jack’s face lovingly. “We’ve waited this long, Jack. We can wait a little longer for everything to be right. You know we should.”

  He gave her a wolfish grin. “I did before I started kissing you and holding you. And before getting your scent into my senses and into my head. And thinking all sorts of delectable things.”

  Grace leaned in to kiss him again.

  “Remember what Vincent said?” he whispered against her neck. “That he thought he and Margaret should get married soon because they were eager.”

  Grace giggled. “I remember.”

  “I’m eager, too, Grace. Do you think we could get married soon?”

  “It might seem kind of sudden to everyone with Margaret’s having just gotten married.” She slipped her fingers into Jack’s hair while his hands explored intimately up under the back of her blouse.

  Grace sighed against him. “Perhaps it should be soon. Like Margaret said, there’s no point in waiting once you know you’ve found the right one.”

  Jack held Grace back from him and looked down into her eyes tenderly. “I’m the right one for you, Grace. We’ll have a good life, and grow old together. And every time we walk across this swinging bridge over the river, we’ll remember how we declared our love out here to each other.”

  “And how you got down on one knee and proposed?”

  He gave her a wide grin that lit up his dimples. “You said you wanted a memory.”

  “So where’s my ring, Jack Teague?” she said, meaning to tease him.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box.

>   Grace was speechless. This hadn’t been a spontaneous moment for Jack. He had planned this in advance.

  He opened the box to show her. Nestled inside was a dazzling ring with a round, white diamond set in a circle of smaller diamonds.

  She caught her breath.

  “Here’s the symbolism.” He gave her a suggestive smile. “I intend to circle you with love and to always keep you in the circle of my love.”

  “Very romantic.” She was touched.

  “Wait’ll you see me act it out.” He gave her a devilish grin and began to illustrate his ideas until Grace decided the upcoming wedding date they’d been talking about might have to be very soon indeed.

  EPILOGUE

  Five years later, the phone rang in the Mimosa Inn. A tall, lanky teenager, with reddish hair caught up in a careless ponytail, swung around from the stairs she’d just tripped down to pick up the phone in the entry hall.

  “Mimosa Inn, this is Morgan Teague. May I help you?”

  “Very professional,” a voice responded.

  “Daddy!” Morgan’s face lit up in a smile. “How is Margaret? How is Vincent? And how is the baby?”

  Morgan got the report she wanted from her father and then hung up to race down the hall to share it. Her Aunt Bebe and her sister Meredith were in the kitchen fixing sweet breads and putting together a Saturday morning breakfast casserole for the houseguests expected at the Mimosa that night.

  Bebe looked up. “Who was that on the phone, Morgan?”

  “It was Daddy.” She grinned at them and pulled a kitchen chair around to straddle it.

  “Is the baby all right?” Meredith asked. Her hair, longer than Morgan’s, was braided down her back to get it out of the way while she worked in the kitchen.

  “Daddy says he’s great. And Margaret and Vincent are fine, too. Daddy and Grace are going to stay at Montreat until next Thursday, and they wanted to know if we’d be all right handling things for them until then.”

  “I hope you told them yes,” Bebe replied.

  “Of course.” Morgan grinned. “And I made Daddy promise to send us pictures on the Internet today. We want to see Joshua Jack Westbrooke, too.”

  “It’s an absolute marvel that you can send photos like that over the Internet today,” Aunt Bebe said with a shake of her head. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

  Meredith rinsed her hands and dried them on a dishcloth. “I still can’t believe Margaret and Vincent only barely made it back into the Asheville airport before the baby came. Daddy said Margaret was in labor on the plane—with Vincent and her doing breathing exercises the last twenty minutes of the flight.”

  Morgan laughed. “Golly, I’ll bet everyone on that plane was freaking out, thinking that baby would come right there on the plane in front of them all.”

  “Morgan!” Bebe gave her an admonishing look.

  Morgan shrugged.

  Meredith caught her lip in her teeth thoughtfully. “You know, they wouldn’t have been coming home from that convention—where Vince preached and Margaret played that new piano piece she’d written—if that woman hadn’t called Grace. What was her name?”

  Bebe looked up from pouring pumpkin-bread batter into two tins. “That was Zola Devon. She has that little shop in Gatlinburg, Nature’s Corner.”

  Morgan pulled at her ponytail. “How did she know Margaret’s baby would come early and that she needed to come home?”

  Bebe smiled. “Zola has a gift for knowing things. Some people do.”

  “Like a witch?” Morgan’s eyes lit up.

  “Good heavens, no!” Bebe turned to put her hands on her hips. “You get that kind of disrespectful thinking right out of your mind, Morgan Teague. Zola Devon isn’t some kind of fortune-teller. She gets things as she’s given it—and for good purposes.”

  Meredith sat down on a kitchen stool, considering this. “Grace told me the name of our inn came from Zola. She saw that Grace should come and live here.”

  “Well, pooh!” said Morgan. “So did we.”

  Meredith smiled. “Yeah, we did. We knew she was nice even from the first day.”

  Bebe interrupted. “Well, she’s not going to be so nice if she gets back and finds out we didn’t take care of her guests. You girls get to work. I can’t stand on these old legs for as long as I used to.”

  Morgan went over to give Bebe a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Aunt Bebe. Meredith and I will take care of everything. We’re going to live here and run the inn one day.”

  The trio settled in then to get ready for the Mimosa’s guests. It looked like it was going to be another busy weekend down by the river.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  Down by the River

  Lin Stepp

  About This Guide

  The suggested questions are included

  to enhance your group’s reading of

  Lin Stepp’s Down by the River.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Middle-aged and widowed for several years, Grace Conley is at a turning point in her life, trying to decide on the next direction to take. What decision does she make for her future while visiting in Townsend? Have you ever found yourself at a turning point in your own life? What new direction did you take?

  Life changes are exciting, but also hard. What did Grace Conley’s family, especially her children Mike, Ken, Elaine, and Margaret, think about her decision to buy the bed-and-breakfast in Townsend? What were their reasons for not wanting Grace to move and make this change? What did you think about their attitudes?

  Realtor Jack Teague doesn’t have much confidence in Grace Conley’s ability to run a successful bed-and-breakfast either. Why? Do you think people often underestimate the abilities of women who have not been consistently in the paid workforce? What plans did Grace’s family have for her that were different from her own desires?

  What were your first impressions of Jack Teague? What were Grace’s first impressions? How did your original impressions about Jack—and Grace’s original impressions about Jack—change as the book progressed?

  Besides Grace’s own heart attraction to the bed-and-breakfast for sale in Townsend, several other factors influenced her to decide to buy the business. What were these? Do you believe God sends helps, or what pastor Vincent Westbrooke termed confirmations, when we are struggling with decisions about new directions in our lives? What did you think about Zola Devon as a helper to Grace? How did her words influence Grace’s naming the bed-and-breakfast the Mimosa Inn?

  Grace Conley and Jack Teague are attracted to each other from the start. Why do they both not want to encourage the attraction between them? What changes through the book bring them closer together? How is Grace’s relationship with Jack different from the relationship she had with her husband, Charles?

  Secondary characters in a book are often fun—and can often greatly enhance book and life stories. What did you think of Ashleigh Anne Layton? Did she make you think of anyone you know? Did later events in the story change your opinion of Ashleigh in any way?

  What changes did Grace make to the Mimosa Inn? How did she change and begin to develop as a person as she began to run the inn? How did opening the crafts shop at the Mimosa begin to change Grace’s perception of her talents? How had Grace’s gifts as a crafter been discouraged by her family?

  Grace’s return to the Mimosa brings her back near her own family in South Knoxville, her father and mother Mel and Dottie Richey, her brother Leonard, and her sister Myra. Why has Grace been estranged somewhat from her family—and especially from her sister Myra? What part did Charles’s family, and especially his mother, Jane Conley, play in this? How did you feel about the impact Jane had on the Conleys’ life and especially on Grace’s and Margaret’s lives? Have you ever experienced difficulties like these with your family?

  Jack’s girls, Meredith and Morgan, played strong character roles in this book. How did the twins first meet Grace and how did they influence her to come to Townsend? How did t
he developing relationship between Grace and Meredith and Morgan impact Grace’s relationship with Jack? As the book progressed, what did you learn about the twins’ mother? What caused the girls to later fly out to California to meet her, and what happened in that visit?

  There are frequent contrasts between the lifestyles of women in this book. What are some of these? How do differences in finances, personality, and inherent beauty impact the women’s lifestyles—as with Grace and her sister Myra? How do life choices, such as whether to pursue a career or to stay home in a homemaking role, create differences? In what ways do Jack’s aunt Bebe Butler and Jack’s mother, Althea Teague, portray warmly how both of these different lifestyle choices can be healthy and good ones?

  Just as Grace is settling into her new life in Townsend, her daughter Margaret shows up. Why has Margaret come? When Vincent Westbrooke meets Margaret, he believes he’s been given a sign from God that he should marry Margaret. Why does this seem unlikely to Grace? What changes occur in Margaret’s life during her visit in Townsend, through her interactions with the church pianist Jo Carson, Vincent, and her mother?

  When Althea has her heart attack, how does Jack handle the news? How does this time of stress cause him to fall back into old familiar behaviors he is trying to leave behind? How does Grace become involved in finding Jack when he leaves the hospital but doesn’t return? How does this event affect Grace’s feelings for Jack?

  Faith can impact and change lives. How is this shown in many ways throughout this book? In particular, how are Margaret and Jack impacted by a faith decision in their lives? Why had Margaret and Jack not been in a strong place of faith even though they had both attended church and been raised in Christian families?

  What did you think about young pastor, Vincent Westbrooke? How had he become a minister? What was different about his beliefs from what you see in many church pastors? Margaret becomes angry in the book when she learns about a new facet of Vincent’s life. What is this? What factors eventually bring Vincent and Margaret together?