Sweet Surprise: Romance Collection

by Wanda E. Brunstetter, Kristin Billerbeck, Kristy Dykes, Aisha Ford, Birdie L. Etchison, Pamela Griffin, Joyce Livingston, Tamela Hancock Murray

  “I guess it’s silly of me to ask if you’ve got the list.”

  She mumbled something under her breath as she fastened her seat belt.

  “What’s our first stop?”

  “First the megastore, then the lumber store; then we have to go to the Chungs’ and pick up more apples.”

  Rick squeezed his eyes shut for a second then shifted into gear. “More apples?” he asked as he pulled into traffic. “You’ve got to be kidding. How many does that make now?”

  Lynette sighed. “I don’t have a clue. People have been dropping off bags and boxes of apples at the church all week. I didn’t have the heart to tell anyone we had enough.”

  Rick didn’t comment. Right now the apples were the last thing he wanted to think about. Since they would never accomplish all that shopping in two hours, that meant they would be having lunch together. This time he wouldn’t be seeing her at her home or at the church. He could take her someplace nice, and most important, they would be on neutral ground.

  Finally, they could talk. And it didn’t have to be all business.

  By the time they finished their first stop it was after one o’clock, and Rick’s stomach had begun to make rude noises. Lynette had suggested a fast food restaurant, but he insisted on a little bistro where they could have a more private table in a less hectic atmosphere.

  After the waitress seated them and gave them menus, they were finally alone and forced to stay in one place. Lynette had nothing to look at, nothing to fret over, and no place to go.

  Or so Rick thought. As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, Lynette picked up the menu, holding it so high he couldn’t see her face behind it.

  Rick sighed, reached across the table, and pushed it down flat to the table. “Relax, Lynette. Why are you so jumpy? I don’t bite. I promise. This is just lunch, nothing more.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled then tried to pick up the menu again.

  Rick kept his hand pressed on it, pinning it to the table. “Why don’t you want to look at me? I’d hate myself if I’ve done something to hurt your feelings and didn’t realize it. You must know by now that I like you very much.”

  Her face paled, and this time it wasn’t his imagination. “I know you do. I like you, too.”

  “Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. I don’t see that as a problem, but you’ve been running away from me as if I’ve done something wrong. Have I?”

  She continued to tug at the menu. Rick grabbed it and pulled it away then rested both menus in his lap.

  Her face turned three shades of red. He couldn’t help but smile, now that she had no choice but to make eye contact.

  Lynette cleared her throat. “I know what you are trying to do.”

  Rick crossed his arms over his chest, still guarding both menus. “Okay, tell me. What am I trying to do?”

  “You’re trying to get me to go out with you.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  Of all the timing the waitress appeared to take their orders. Rather than admit they’d been playing childish games with the menus, they both ordered a hamburger and fries, even though that was exactly what Rick had been trying to avoid by coming to the bistro.

  When the waitress left, Lynette folded her hands on the table and looked him straight in the eye. “Did you see that little dog locked in that car in the parking lot at the megastore? That’s so dangerous in this kind of weather. It only takes a short amount of time for an animal to be overcome by the heat in a closed vehicle this time of year. I wish I’d written down the license number so I could report it.”

  “Yes, but you’re trying to change the subject. Why is it a bad thing because I want you to go out with me?”

  She turned her head down and stared intently at her hands, which were still folded on the tabletop. “Because I won’t go out with anyone from my father’s congregation.”

  Suddenly Rick lost his appetite. If it had been something he’d done or something he could change, he could have dealt with it. It was obvious she didn’t expect him to leave the church and his ministry with the youth to go out with her. He had a feeling there was more to it that she wasn’t saying. “I don’t understand.”

  She raised her head and made direct eye contact. Rick froze.

  “You’re taking leadership courses at Bible college. You know what they say about spending too much time with someone of the opposite gender. And I’m the pastor’s daughter.”

  Rick shook his head. “But I’m not counseling you, nor are you counseling me. We don’t have that kind of mentoring relationship. So what if you’re the pastor’s daughter? I just want to go out with you.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You’ll notice I’ve never dated anyone from our own church; it’s not only you.”

  “Why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”

  “Sorry—it isn’t the way I wanted it, but that’s the way it is.”

  Rick leaned forward. He wanted to touch her hands, to hold them while sitting across from her; but she must have guessed what he was thinking, because she stiffened and leaned back in her chair.

  “Lots of pastors’ daughters date men from their father’s congregation. I see it all the time.” He lowered his voice. “Sometimes they get married, too.”

  “That may be true, but sometimes bad things happen. There can be accusations of favoritism and other improprieties.”

  Rick blew out a quick breath of air. “Improprieties? Oh, come on.”

  “It’s true. Do you know anything of my family’s history, before my father came to be pastor at Good Tidings?”

  “No, only that you came from another city in another state. Remember—I was only eighteen then. And you were only sixteen. I’ll never forget the first time I met you.”

  Her face flushed for a second, and she shook her head. “The reason we left the other church was because my mother became involved in a big scandal.”

  Now he really wasn’t hungry anymore. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. She’d been doing some bookkeeping for one of the members of the congregation, helping in the interim while his regular bookkeeper was away for some surgery. I’m not sure of the details; it was so long ago. Suddenly rumors started floating around that more was going on than accounting.”

  He almost hated himself for asking, but he had to. “Were any of the rumors true?”

  “No! My mother was devastated by the accusations, but my father stood by her because he knew the truth. But the other man’s wife didn’t believe him, about why they spent so much time alone together. Most people in the church took sides, and it ended up dividing the church. It was awful.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want me going to your house? You wanted to do everything at the church.”

  “Yes.”

  The waitress chose that moment to deliver their lunches. After a short prayer of thanks for their meal, they began to eat, but Rick only ate it because he had to. Everything tasted like cardboard. Judging from the way Lynette toyed with her meal, she felt the same way he did.

  “So what happened? Did it get worked out in the end?”

  “No. My mother didn’t know until it blew up in her face that they were already having marital problems. His wife ended up leaving him, which made the situation even worse. Rather than live in the midst of the speculation and accusations, which only caused more arguing among the church members, my parents decided to leave that particular church. When my father was offered the position at Good Tidings, he jumped at it with no hesitation. You’ll also notice that my mother only participates in ladies-only functions or in a large committee.”

  “But this is different. Neither of us is married.” Although he did want both of them to be married—to each other.

  Lynette toyed with her fries then laid the fork down and folded her hands on the table. “Is it different? Improprieties still happen between people who aren’t married. And people still talk.”

  “But we’re not kids running on overactive hormones. Y
ou’re twenty-six, and I’m twenty-eight.”

  “The rumor mill knows no age limit. Not only was my mother an adult, she was married, too. Scandal spreads quickly, and it doesn’t have to be based on fact.”

  “I don’t understand how something like that could perpetuate to that degree. I can’t help but think that he did something to make it worse. Maybe he had a hidden agenda. What if he was even the one who started the rumor? He could have been using your mother to get his wife to take more notice of him. It wasn’t your mother’s fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Rick. The end result is what counted. The fallout split the church, and my mother was devastated by all that happened. My family ended up having to leave a fellowship they loved, with a lot of hurt feelings. I don’t ever want to have to go through that.”

  His mind raced, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say. He wanted to say that their own congregation was above such a thing, but he couldn’t. All it took was one person to start a scandal, real or imagined, when someone’s feelings were hurt. Rick suspected that the man involved most likely tried to use the situation to his own benefit to salvage or quicken the breakdown of his marriage, but no one would ever know the truth.

  He pushed his half-eaten meal to the side. “So where does that leave us?”

  “There is no ‘us,’ Rick. There never has been. But we’ve always been friends. We can certainly stay friends.”

  Friends. Rick felt the kiss of death on any relationship he could ever hope to have with Lynette.

  “But what about you? Your future?” Rick swallowed hard. The words were almost too hard to say. “If you won’t go out with anyone from your own congregation, where are you going to meet people? Do you plan to stay single for your whole entire life?”

  “I firmly believe that when the time is right, God will place the right man in my path.”

  According to Rick, the right man was already in her path. She was looking right at him but couldn’t see him.

  Lynette pushed her plate to the side. “We should get going. We’ve got a few more stops to make, and I have plans to go out with some friends for dinner.”

  Rick didn’t ask if she was referring to male or female friends. He didn’t want to know if they were from another church.

  “Okay,” he mumbled as he scooped up the bill, and they headed for the cashier to pay. “Let’s get the rest of our shopping over with.”

  Chapter 6

  R ick walked past the church office, waved at Lynette’s father, and continued into the kitchen. “I’m here. Are we ready?”

  “Yes. I’m so glad you could get the day off too. I can’t believe how this project has snowballed. I’ll never do this by myself,” Lynette said.

  Rick glanced toward the back wall. He’d never seen so many apples at one time in his life, not even at the grocery store.

  Every day they’d met with the youth group at the church to build and plan the booths and displays. Today was Friday, the day before the fair, and everything was ready. Everything except the pies.

  “Yeah. I can see why you took the day off.” He glanced again at the wall of apples. “How many pies do you think this is going to make? I hope you know I barely cook, and I’ve never made a pie in my life.”

  “That’s okay. It’s my granny’s recipe, and it’s the easiest apple pie recipe in the world. Besides, I’m not a good cook either. If I can do it, you can do it.”

  “How many contest entries did we get? We had seventy a few days ago.”

  “Ninety-something. But we have to remember there are bound to be some entries from the people who don’t come to our church and will come tomorrow. We have to count on that.”

  Rick rolled up his sleeves. “Tell me what to do.”

  He watched and listened carefully as Lynette mixed up some vinegar, water, and an egg, combined some flour and stuff with some lard and then dumped the liquid in.

  “Watch carefully,” she said then reached into the bowl with her hands.

  Rick shuddered. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not touching raw eggs.”

  She grinned, and his stomach did a strange somersault. “Don’t be such a wimp.”

  “Sticks and stones,” he grumbled as he drew in a deep breath and slowly stuck his fingers in to start the mixing process.

  After considerable poking and prodding, Lynette held up a big ball of pastry dough. “See? When yours looks like this, then you roll it out. Just be careful not to overwork it.”

  Rick poked the mushy lump in his bowl with one finger. “Overwork it?”

  Lynette looked into his bowl. “You mix it until it’s like mine; then stop. There, like that. Now it’s ready to roll.”

  He couldn’t help but smile as she picked up a rolling pin. “I always thought rolling pins were for chasing errant husbands. Would you like to chase me with that thing someday?”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she fumbled with the rolling pin for a few seconds. “Quit it. We have too much to do to be fooling around. This is how it’s done.”

  Rick watched her start from the middle and roll it outward, pressing evenly as she worked. She made him help slice up enough apples to fill the crust, and then they sprinkled flour and sugar and cinnamon on top. To finish it off, he watched as Lynette laid the pastry top on and pressed it down around the edges with a fork.

  He grinned. “I can do that.”

  Without a word, Lynette pointed to a box on the counter, where he found another rolling pin. As he began to roll his lump of dough flat, he snickered to himself. “This is so domestic. Wait until the guys hear about this.”

  Lynette sighed. “Just keep rolling while you’re talking. We’re going to keep making pies until we run out of apples. You shouldn’t be eating the dough—it isn’t good for you when it’s raw like that. Don’t think I didn’t see you eating the apples either.”

  Rick grinned around the chunk of apple in his mouth then picked up the rolling pin and continued to flatten more pastry dough.

  At first he thought rolling out pastry and slicing up the apples was fun, but the more he did, the less interesting it became. Since they could only fit three pies in the oven at one time, it didn’t take long for the pies to start lining up on the counter. By the time they filled up one side of the counter with pies, Rick no longer thought making pies was a fun way to spend the day.

  By noon his back was feeling the effects of lugging around the heavy bags of flour and leaning over the counter while he worked. Lynette didn’t complain, but he thought she was definitely slowing down, too.

  He pressed his floury fists into the small of his back. “I think it’s time to quit for a while.”

  “We can’t. We’ve got nearly a hundred done, but we’ve used only half the apples, and we’ve baked only eighteen. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We can’t put uncooked pies out for the contest, despite the fact that you seem to prefer them raw.”

  Rick covered his stomach with one hand. At first he thought he was being funny; but he’d eaten a little too much dough, and now his stomach didn’t feel so good. Since it was lunchtime, he hoped some real food would cure what ailed him.

  Lynette walked to the fridge. “I didn’t want to leave because I knew we’d have pies in the oven, so I made sandwiches for lunch.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He noticed she had made only two sandwiches. With her father in the same building, in the room next to the kitchen, Rick wondered if she’d left her father out of their lunch plans on purpose.

  As they always did, they paused for a prayer of thanks and began to eat.

  In an odd sort of way he was having a good day. After Lynette had explained what happened with her family, he could understand why she worked so hard to avoid him, even if he didn’t agree. Also, now that he knew, a burden seemed to have lifted, and she acted relaxed with him. In his heart he knew it was because she trusted him not to step beyond the guidelines she’d drawn for their relationship, now that everything was out in t
he open.

  If he had to see a bright side, it would be that she trusted him enough to be honest with him, and she trusted him to respect the lines she had drawn.

  He knew he would always want more, but if friendship was all he could have, then Rick intended to be the very best friend he could be. Of course, what he really wanted was the best friendship of all, the special friendship of the bond of a man and wife.

  For the balance of the afternoon they continued making more and more pies. He did his best to keep the conversation cheerful, even though both of them were becoming increasingly tired. By the time they were finished, it was suppertime. But more than supper, Rick wanted a nap. He wondered if it was a sign of old age creeping up on him and then shook the thought from his head.

  Since they still had pies in the oven, the second the new batch went in, they took off for the drive-thru so they could be back quickly. They talked nonstop the entire drive, neither of them breathing a word about apple pies or anything to do with church business. They simply had fun.

  With the arrival of the youth group members, between baking pies, they set everything in order in the lobby, ready to be brought outside first thing Saturday morning.

  When all was complete, Rick stood on a chair amidst the mayhem and clutter, stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a sharp, piercing whistle. The room quieted instantly.

  “Attention, everyone! Now for the last job of the day!”

  Everyone in the room groaned.

  “If anyone here hasn’t seen them, Lynette and I made two hundred and seven pies today, and we could bake only fifty-one.” He paused while he counted everyone in the room. “There are thirty-two of you here, and I know it’s late, but I’m going to give each one of you three pies to take home with a note of how long to cook them. Bring them back, cooked, tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp, or earlier if you’ve been assigned to help with the goats. Class dismissed, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  As everyone left, Lynette counted the remaining pies. “We still have sixty pies to bake. I’m going to be up all night, and I still won’t get them all done.”

  “I’ll take half.”