Wesley glanced back. “Cool.” He gathered his taco and had a big bite. “So, what are we talking about tonight?”
The training advised the dinner hour to be Alpha-discussion-free. Keanan waggled his eyebrows. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
One of the young women leaned closer. “I read ahead in the book. It’s about having faith.”
“Hmm.” Wesley polished off his first taco.
Keanan looked at his plate. Better get to work on the food he’d helped prepare earlier today at the farm. It would never do to scrape good organic beef and beans into the bucket, even if it came home to the pigs.
* * *
Claire slid another tray into the church kitchen’s commercial dishwasher as Chelsea returned with another load of dirty dishes. Claire jerked her chin toward the auditorium beyond. “Keanan’s really in his element here.”
“Umhmm.” Chelsea picked up a plate and a scraper. “Seems to be.”
“Have you ever taken Alpha?”
“Me?” Chelsea glanced up. “No.” It had always seemed something for nonbelievers. She already knew all that stuff. Not only had she gone to Sunday school, church, and youth group, but attended a private Christian school. What could Alpha possibly teach her?
“I love how the program breaks everything down into logical chunks that lead into each other. When I attended the course in Seattle, it really filled in some of the gaps in my understanding.”
That’s right. Claire hadn’t been raised in a Christian home. She couldn’t be expected to know everything. “That’s cool.”
Claire leaned back against the counter. “I can’t figure out what makes you tick, Chelsea.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me what God’s been teaching you lately in your quiet time.”
Chelsea angled a stack of plates into a clean dishwasher tray. Did she have to answer this? But it seemed rude to say it was none of her friend’s business. To paraphrase the farm mandate, everything was everyone’s business. “Uh, I’ve been reading through the prophets.” At least she had been, last time she cracked her Bible. “There’s a lot of doom and gloom in those books.”
“But so much promise, too.”
Chelsea nodded.
“God always offers redemption to those who repent and call on His name.” Claire pulled a tray out of the steaming dishwasher and slid another in. “Sometimes when I get bogged down, I switch up which version I’m reading.”
Who said she was bogged down? Well, maybe she’d admitted it herself.
“That’s where I like my cell phone, honestly. I’ve downloaded several versions, and it’s easy to flip between them.”
Chelsea should probably do that. She glanced at Claire. “Good idea.”
Claire’s warm brown eyes met hers and held. “It’s okay to struggle, girl, so long as the result is that we dig deeper into God’s word. There are some great study guides available online, too.”
Noel entered the kitchen carrying the coffee urn. “Empty. Want me to start a new batch?”
Good distraction. “They’ve moved on to the video?”
“Yes.”
“Half full with decaf is good then. Some of them will want coffee over their group discussion afterward.”
Noel saluted. “I’m on it.” He headed for the sink to dump the grounds.
Chelsea reached for the dessert containers Claire had packed at the farm. She opened the first one. “Plum upside-down cake?”
“Thanks for the recipe.” Claire chuckled. “We have so many plums in the freezer I figured this was a good chance to get rid of a bunch.”
“Right.” Plum upside down. That’s how Chelsea felt about life. Portland had been so much simpler. She’d known what to expect of her life there. She’d run her event business from her parents’ basement, gone for lunch and church on Sundays with her friends. She’d thought the nature of her business kept her in touch with the outside world but, looking back, the truth was that most of her clients had been people from her parents’ wealthy neighborhood and church. She hadn’t dealt much with folks outside of her social sphere.
Upside down. What would her friends think of Keanan and his grain bin? The same thing she’d thought. Beneath her. Best to ignore and hope it would go away if she paid it no mind. She’d tried that tack on Keanan. It so hadn’t worked.
And now Claire questioned her spiritual life. Politely enough, but that seemed upside down, too, without the structure she’d had back home.
It turned out her skills in event coordination weren’t even needed at Green Acres Farm. She could’ve helped Allison plan her wedding from Portland, as she’d done for Sierra. She was doing the reverse right now, planning her Portland church’s upcoming Christmas event from Idaho.
It didn’t take any great talent to peel, chop, and puree tomatoes. To do all the other mundane chores around the farm, like feeding the chickens and gathering eggs. Soon they’d be butchering pigs and a steer. How much of her talent did trimming and wrapping meat take?
Maybe she shouldn’t have moved to the farm. Maybe she’d deluded herself into thinking she could fit here. To make a difference. She wasn’t flexible enough. Spiritual enough.
Chelsea arranged pieces of the cake and assorted cookies on platters as she blinked back tears. No letting Claire or Noel see those, for sure. When would she find her purpose in life? Some fulfillment?
She’d watched Keanan with his Alpha group for several weeks now. He was making a difference. Thankfully ignoring Tracy’s advances, which might’ve slowed as a result. Okay, honestly, Tracy mostly seemed to focus on the group discussions, too. Maybe Chelsea had been reading too much into Tracy.
Maybe she was reading too much into Keanan’s attention, too. He probably saw her as someone as needy as those in his group. Someone who needed God’s salvation.
She had that, but sometimes it seemed so far away.
* * *
Keanan dropped his elbows to the table and cradled his head in his hands. Oh, God, sometimes this process seems so slow. Let me trust Your Spirit, Lord. I know You’re working, even when I can’t see it.
One of Tracy’s friends had spent the whole evening flirting with Wesley. Maybe that’s even why the woman kept showing up, week after week. Usually Keanan was able to bring the conversation back around to the discussion topics, but this entire evening had seemed a bust.
“How was tonight, son?” Pastor Ron straddled the chair beside him.
Keanan scrubbed his hair with both hands then tried to smooth down the mess he’d likely made. “I just don’t know.” He met Tracy’s gaze across the table. “What do you think?”
“I’m sorry about Diana. She’s always pretty focused on the guys.”
So he could be thankful he wasn’t the one in her line of fire. He’d take the small mercies. Keanan turned to Ron and spread his hands out.
“And yet God keeps bringing them both back every week.” The pastor quirked a grin at Keanan. “Our job is to keep praying for each of them and to provide the venue for discussion. Only God can do the work behind the scenes in each life.”
Keanan nodded. “Sometimes I forget it isn’t up to me to save the souls. I get so invested and take it personally.”
“I agree.” Tracy leaned forward, meeting his gaze again. “I work with Diana and Rylee every day. I have to bite back my words constantly, that I don’t keep asking them what they thought of the videos and discussions all week long.”
“Right. We have to let God do the work only He can do.” Keanan took a deep breath and released it slowly.
Ed and Mona joined the group around the table as the distant doors clanged shut behind the last guests. “Good questions tonight.” Ed’s arm rested across the back of his wife’s chair. “I’d say most of our group is considering this step of faith.”
Mona nodded.
Across the room, Chelsea flipped the kitchen light switch off and shut the door. She slung her gigantic purse over her shoulder
and stood, holding her jacket, waiting for him.
Exhaustion overwhelmed Keanan. “I need to go, if that’s all right.”
Ron rested a hand on Keanan’s shoulder and prayed for the group.
Keanan thanked him, rose, and crossed the room. Chelsea looked as tired as he felt. “Ready? Can I carry anything?”
She shook her head. “Claire and Noel took care of everything before they left. Let’s go.”
He followed her through the dim building and out to the parking lot then folded himself into the passenger seat of her car. “That was intense tonight.”
Chelsea started the engine. “Looked like it.”
Why the cutting edge to the words? Keanan turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”
She laughed, but not with humor. “Tracy watching you.”
So not what he’d expected Chelsea to say. It took his brain a few seconds to catch up. “Tracy? I’m sorry. You lost me.”
“It doesn’t take much imagination to see what she thinks of you.”
The cold slosh her words first evoked warmed considerably at the tone of her voice. “Jealous?” he asked softly.
The word hung in the air between them, all but visible.
Chelsea shifted into gear and drove down the street.
Keanan watched as she bit her lip and avoided eye contact. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not attracted to Tracy Grindle.”
“Consolation?” She darted a glance his direction. “Why would it be?”
He forced the grin away from his cheeks. “I’ve made a habit over the years of not noticing women that way. If I assume they’re not interested in me, that becomes true sooner or later.”
“Uh huh.” She flipped the signal light on and turned onto the highway.
“So far, anyway. Things could change.”
“With Tracy.”
“No, Chelsea. Not with Tracy.” Would she look his way? Did he want her to?
“She’s pretty. Petite. Bubbly.”
Probably all those things, but what did they matter?
When he didn’t respond, Chelsea glanced at him. “What’s not to like about her?”
Keanan scratched the back of his neck. Women. Why was Chelsea pushing him this way? “I don’t know of any reason not to like her.”
Chelsea thumped the steering wheel as though for punctuation.
“But that doesn’t mean she attracts me. I don’t find myself wondering what she’s thinking, or what she’s doing, or what her favorite music is. I haven’t thought about her favorite color, or her perfume, or what her hair might feel like.”
In the dim glow of the car’s interior, he could see Chelsea swallow hard. “You’ve given a lot of thought to what you don’t wonder.”
“Not really.”
She shot him a furtive glance, but he wasn’t backing down at this stage. Tired before, now he had a second wind. Lord help him.
“Those are the kinds of things I wonder about you.”
Her fingers clenched on the steering wheel. “About me?”
“Every day. Many times a day.”
“Oh.” Her voice all but squeaked.
“There’s something else, too.” Keanan took a deep breath. “Sometimes I wonder if you feel the same way.”
She narrowed her eyes in his direction. “Sometimes. But I fight it.”
Chapter 10
“Thanks for trusting me with your car.” Keanan glanced her way from behind the wheel.
“No problem.” Chelsea had seen him drive so few times that she’d purposefully thought back to remember if he had a license. But it was his shopping trip, and he should be in control. Besides, in her world, guys drove and girls sat in the passenger seat, not the other way around. The car might be small, but there’d be enough room for his purchases in the trunk.
“Any suggestions where we should go in Wynnton? I’m afraid I haven’t been often enough to form an opinion.”
Chelsea swiped on her phone and tapped in a search. “We can start with the building center on this end of town. There are several additional options.”
In her periphery, she saw his nod. Noticed his glance in her direction. No way, buster. Eyes on the road. Why else had she given him control of her vehicle but to keep him too busy to watch her the way he had on the way home the other evening?
She’d hardly slept, and the two nights since hadn’t been much better. Trying to figure him out would be easier if she were rested.
Keanan had flat-out admitted he was interested in her. Before that, she’d been able to block her own growing feelings, but now his words lay out in the open, too blatant to ignore. Wouldn’t stop her from trying.
“You’ve been rather quiet the past few days.” His words, so conversational, as though he hadn’t rocked her world on Wednesday evening.
“Lots to think about.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you off.” His big hands clenched the steering wheel.
Not that she was looking at his long fingers, brown from the sun, with their calluses and trimmed nails. Chelsea turned and stared out the window, where golden autumn leaves fluttered in the breeze, before joining their friends to carpet the ground.
Keanan sighed.
So she was causing him stress? Well, it was mutual. She felt as tight as… as one of his guitar strings. Ready to twang.
“I’m sorry, Chelsea. I spoke too soon. I… I thought you might feel the same, but I was wrong. I’ve avoided romantic entanglement in the past and never learned how to read women. I blundered. Dreadfully. I’ve ruined the friendship we might have had. The working relationship on the farm. Even the remaining weeks of Alpha.”
When would he ever stop apologizing?
“Dreams I never knew I had have been awakened. Never before have I desired to know someone. Wondered their thoughts. Their hopes. Their—”
“Keanan.”
The car filled with an electric silence. A blessed silence.
“Yes?”
Chelsea shot him a quick glance, just enough to notice his twitching jaw as he stared ahead, to see those hands flex and tighten on the steering wheel. Several thoughts assaulted her at once.
The guy blathered when he was nervous.
He really cared about her, man to woman.
Forget Tracy.
But Chelsea wasn’t worthy.
Where to start? Anywhere? Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone instead of pushing her more today? What would she have thought if he’d been quiet? That he hadn’t meant it. That he regretted his words.
Obviously not the case.
“Chelsea? Speak to me.”
Why wasn’t silence an option? She could crank some tunes. They could sing along. But no. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Is it me? Have I offended you in some way?”
“It’s not you.”
“There’s someone else, then. I should have thought to ask. Some man in Portland?” His voice, so vulnerable.
“No, there isn’t anyone else.” Not since Robert. That’d been a while.
“But… what? I am too big. Too unfashionable. Too unrefined.”
Once she might have thought that. Possibly last week. “Keanan. No.”
“Then what? Tell me.”
“You talk too much.”
Nervous laughter boomed through the car like a jet breaking the sound barrier. “Perhaps this is true.”
Definitely true. “I need time. I don’t know what I think of you. Of us.”
He stared at her so long she wanted to point him back at the highway. “There is an us?”
Trust him to latch onto that one word. “We hardly know each other. Where did you grow up? Do you have siblings? What experiences shaped you?” She stopped before adding into a hippie. Still, her questions were reasonable. She didn’t even know how old he was.
He nodded at the road ahead. “You wish to know me. This is good. Valid. I turned thirty this summer. You?”
Like he’d read her mind. “Twen
ty-six. In August.”
“I’m an only child. My parents are divorced. My father is in film. My mother a jewelry designer.” Keanan glanced at her.
“Were you young when your family split up?”
“Twelve. My mother needed to find herself.”
Chelsea would be better off finding herself before marriage. Better for everyone.
“Which parent did you live with?”
He sighed. “Back and forth, a month at a time. My father hired a tutor to oversee my education. Ivan accompanied me.”
A life of privilege, then. Perhaps not completely unlike her own. “What do they think of you moving here to Idaho?”
A grin poked at his cheek. “My father has long since washed his hands of me. He is busy with a new young wife — his fourth — and two small children.” He tipped his head and glanced at Chelsea. “I suppose I do have siblings. Half-brothers. I don’t think of them that way.”
“Your mother?”
“Many relationships. Free love, you know?” His voice softened. “But she came to know Jesus several years ago.”
“Th-that’s great.”
“Praying with her has been the greatest privilege of my life.”
Something stirred inside Chelsea. She’d never had that experience. Never stepped outside her comfort zone enough to get close to someone who didn’t share her beliefs. “When did you become a Christian?”
“I was seventeen. My tutor’s sister led him to Jesus, and Ivan told me all about it. Hungry for reality, for something to put my faith in. My father’s second marriage was on the rocks. My mother—” He shrugged. “She didn’t believe in absolutes. There was no truth. No right or wrong. To her, everything was relative and experiential. My soul craved a foundation. Not authoritarian, like my father, where there was no love. Not free-spirited like my mother, where nothing mattered but the feelings of the moment.”
Chelsea hungered, too. “I’ve sometimes wondered what it must be like to hear about Jesus for the first time. I’ve known Him since I was a little kid. Maybe you could say I’ve been brainwashed.”
Plum Upside Down (A Farm Fresh Romance Book 5) Page 7
