by Arlene James
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Which was exactly what would come of this little exercise in Christian charity, no matter what Hap might hope.
She knew the foolishness of even entertaining the possibility of getting involved with this man. Hap might think him grand, and perhaps he was, but surely everyone saw how ill-suited the two of them really were. She didn’t want any part of his world, and she didn’t want to be the woman that he saw whenever he decided to amuse himself by going slumming. That being the case, this little adventure could be nothing more than that. Period. In fact, she couldn’t imagine why she wasted her time and energy even thinking about it. So she would stop, with a little help.
“Father,” she prayed silently, “You know I only want to do Your will, and I know that You mean for me to stay in Eden. Granddad and the boys need me, and I need them. You showed me when Jerry had to leave Eden that my place is here with my family. Don’t let me be distracted by worldly things or tempted into building dreams and hopes that just aren’t part of Your plan for me. Amen.”
Feeling a bit better, she settled back to enjoy the ride, and what a ride it was. They flew. At least it felt like they did, the car skimming over the ground with smooth, leashed power. Charlotte found it thrilling, but she didn’t want to think about how fast they were traveling, not that she could help doing so when the computer displayed their speed in numbers two-inches high.
Seeing her unease, Tyler backed off. “Sorry. I let this thing get away from me sometimes.”
She smiled her thanks for his consideration and felt comfortable enough to mention minutes later that they were approaching a known speed trap in the community ahead. He backed off a little more, and the remainder of the journey passed in companionable silence. Almost before she knew it, they hit the 81 bypass that skirted the downtown area of Duncan.
A community of some twenty-five thousand souls, Duncan provided the major shopping for Stephens county and large portions of the counties surrounding it. Still, area residents thought nothing of traveling to Lawton, Oklahoma City, Wichita Falls or even Dallas for major purchases.
Tyler parked the sports car in a remote section of a parking lot crowded with automobiles. “Hope you don’t mind walking a bit,” he said. “After that meal, I could use a little exercise, and I don’t like to park this baby too close to others.”
“No problem.”
She didn’t wait for him to come around the car and open the door for her, meeting him at the rear of the vehicle instead. He set the locks remotely and fell into step beside her, his hand hovering at the small of her back as it had earlier at the restaurant that evening.
That small gesture both tickled and troubled her. It had been a long time since a man had acted with any measure of gallantry toward her. On the other hand, this was not, after all, a date. She’d dated so little in the past several years that she had almost forgotten what it felt like to have a man behave with a touch of chivalry. That’s all this was, though. Nothing more. It certainly was not a romance.
Despite what her grandfather seemed to believe, Charlotte had come to suspect that God did not mean for her life to include romance, even if she sometimes secretly grieved the loss of such dreams as marriage and children of her own. She knew perfectly well that God, being the God of miracles, could yet work out those things for her, but she considered herself a realist. What she’d told Tyler earlier about the pickings being slim around Eden was the perfect truth.
All the men in her age range were either already married or had moved away. Moreover, nice, upstanding single men just did not pull out a map and decide they were going to build their lives in Eden, Oklahoma. No one ever moved into Eden unless they already had a connection there, so she couldn’t expect to meet her true love walking down the street one day.
No, she was not meant for romance and marriage—she loved the life she already led. Even the work satisfied her in a very real way. Like Hap, she considered it a ministry, a way to reach out to those in need of a welcoming smile and a safe, comfortable place to lay their heads.
Yes, her life was good. Hap needed her. Her family needed her, and her work mattered. That was enough, more than most people could say about their own lives. In many ways, she mused, she was richer than even Tyler, given what he’d told her that afternoon.
As they entered the store, Tyler would have walked right past the shopping carts if she hadn’t stopped to pull one out.
“You’d think I’d have gotten that one right, anyway,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth as she pushed the cart down the broad aisle. “We spend a fortune on shopping carts for Aldrich stores.”
He came to a stop just past the checkout lanes and looked around in puzzlement. “This is not like any store layout I’m used to. How do you ever find anything in this place?”
“It’s not too difficult,” she told him. “If you’ve been in one of these stores you’ve pretty much been in them all.” He frowned down at her, making her dip her head. “Oh, right. You haven’t been in one of these stores before.”
“Not even to check the grocery prices,” he said, glaring at the shelves of goods in the food section. “We have a division that keeps up with that sort of thing, though.”
“A whole division? For checking the grocery prices of your competitors?”
“It’s a small division,” he said a tad defensively.
She strangled an unladylike snort of laughter, coughing into her hand to cover it before steering him toward the men’s department. He followed her to a rack of dress slacks, looking around him like he’d never before realized where clothing came from.
Turning a tag over in his hand, he read the price and lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t know whether this stuff is dirt cheap or just very poor quality.”
“Sometimes both,” she said before recommending a certain label. “I find these hold up better after repeated washings.”
“Really? You can wash this stuff?” he asked, taking a hanger from the rack and looking over the pants.
She rolled her eyes at him before returning her attention to the selection of dress slacks. “Not everyone drops their clothes at the cleaners. What size do you wear?”
Several seconds passed before she realized that no answer would be forthcoming. She looked around to find him standing with his head bent as if in contemplation, a hand cupping the back of his neck.
“You don’t know what size pants you wear?” It came out as much a statement of amazement as a question.
“I’m thinking,” he said defensively. “I’m pretty sure the tailor measured me at a thirty-two. Could be thirty-four. Or was it thirty-six?”
“You could always check the label in your slacks,” she suggested helpfully, getting a scowl for her efforts.
“Handmade suits don’t have size labels,” he informed her.
She looked away at that, hiding the lift of her eyebrows. The man was a complete alien. Undoubtedly his whole wardrobe had been handmade to fit, right down to his socks.
“You’ll just have to try on several pairs,” she decided, selecting a pair and holding them at his waist to judge the length. That pair went back to the rack as she reached for another. “Start in the middle with the thirty-four. We can do down or up from there as we need to.”
After several trips to the changing room, he finally settled for chocolate-brown pants that were slightly larger and longer than he’d have liked, but he muttered about not having time to leave them for alteration. Charlotte bit her lip to keep from laughing.
“There is no tailor. They don’t do alterations at discount stores.”
“Well, how do people get the proper fit?” he asked, sounding exasperated.
“Usually they just wear them as they come.”
He frowned at that and put the pants in the shopping cart.
If the slacks were a revelation for him, the shirts were a definite irritant. He turned up his nose at fabrics, styles, patterns, even buttonholes.
“I can’t wear t
hese!” he declared, dropping a sleeve in disgust.
“Oh, really?” she said mildly, parking her hands at her waist. “All the other men at church will be wearing them or something very much like them.”
Color stained the ridges of his cheekbones. She hadn’t meant to embarrass him, but the exchange certainly pointed up the differences between their worlds. Ignoring the white shirts, which he considered too thin, he muttered that he didn’t see anything that would go with his tie.
“You can get by without a tie,” she told him gently. “Some of the men around here don’t even own one.”
He looked at her like she must have lost her mind, but he finally opted for a pale blue shirt very near the color of his eyes. Crisis diverted, they moved on to the next item on his agenda, but Charlotte couldn’t help whispering a short prayer in her mind.
Thanks, Lord, for showing me how right I am to think that this man and I have nothing whatsoever in common. She just wished the thought didn’t sadden her.
Chapter Seven
After some discussion about the necessity of a coat and keeping warm, Tyler chose a nubby brown-and-gray jacket with just a fleck of orange in the tweed. The fit obviously did not please him, but he appeared somewhat mollified when Charlotte complimented him on his sense of color and style.
“Granddad and Holt couldn’t put together complimentary colors if they only had two choices.”
He chuckled at that, eyes dancing. “Is there a wrong color to go with blue jeans?”
“Point taken.”
“Speaking of jeans,” he said, craning his neck. “They’re a lot more comfortable than dress clothes. Wouldn’t hurt if I picked up some.”
“Behind the dressing rooms.”
“Ah.” He headed that way, then stood scratching his ear at the shelves of folded denim. He ran a finger along one shelf. “Boot cut, boot cut, boot cut. Relaxed boot cut. Regular fit. Relaxed regular. Carpenter.” He looked at her with a blatant question in his eyes.
Knowing that he must usually buy according to the designer label and current fashion—as dictated by his fashion consultant, no doubt—she stepped forward to describe the different offerings as well as she could.
“Holt wears these. Snug at the hip and thigh, wider below the knees to accommodate the tops of his boots. It’s what the cowboys prefer.” She moved along. “Now, Ryan wears these.” She held up a pair of the relaxed style. “All the high school girls think he’d look better in the ones that Holt wears, which is why he doesn’t wear them. These are still wide enough at the bottom for boots but not so snug up top.” She unfolded the next pair so he could see the narrow bottoms. “These are for the left-behinds.”
“Left-behinds?”
“You know, those guys left behind in the 1980s when pant legs were just wide enough to get your feet through the openings.”
Tyler laughed. She folded the jeans and put them away, teasing as she did so. “You could always wear overalls like Hap.”
“Uh, no.”
“Then these are probably your best bet,” she told him, pulling the right waist size from a stack of regular relaxed fits. He took them without a word, and while he went to try them on, she scoped out the casual knits, thinking the guy must feel like he’d wandered into an alternate universe. In a way, he had.
She shook her head, thinking about the kind of life that didn’t even allow for basic shopping. As lost as he seemed to be in her world, though, she knew that she would be much more disoriented in his. The very thought gave her the willies, frankly, and she chafed at sudden gooseflesh on her upper arms.
He returned with the jeans and, to her surprise, went for three pairs, along with several polos and a Henley shirt before taking himself off to pick out socks and a package of under-shorts. Evidently she’d miscalculated when she’d assumed that he would be gone by the next evening. She wondered just how long he planned to stay, but she would not ask. She had displayed quite enough unwilling interest already.
With him in control of the shopping cart now, she followed along as he browsed up and down the aisles, taking in everything from kitchenware to television sets. He spent half an hour looking at movies on DVD, and several wound up in his cart. The next thing she knew, he was looking at DVD players. She couldn’t keep the questions behind her teeth this time.
“Just happen to need a new DVD player, do you?’
“Actually I thought I’d hook it up in my room back at the motel, if you don’t mind.”
The motel furnished only TVs with a basic satellite package of some eleven channels.
“I don’t mind. You’re planning to stay on for a while, are you?” She bit her lip, too late to prevent the one question she’d just decided not to ask.
“A while.” He stopped reading the box long enough to look her squarely in the eye. “Is that okay with you?”
“Just fine.” She tried to make it sound light and unconcerned, but her voice croaked, trapping her breath in her throat.
He went back to reading the package, a smile playing about his mouth. She worried suddenly that she might be leading him on but the next instant rebuffed that idea.
Who was she kidding? Tyler Aldrich had no more interest in her personally than he did in that DVD player. He was biding his time here, nothing more. He’d admitted it to Holt. Hiding, he’d said, from people who irritated him. Her grandfather’s misguided notions had her thinking that Tyler might be staying for another reason, which was clearly beyond ludicrous.
She felt relieved by that realization. Sort of. Except for a kind of amorphous sense of disappointment. Troubled, she knew she would be asking God about that in private later.
Tyler stared at the few remaining bills in his wallet, looked to the readout on the cash register display again, and reached into the pocket of his pants for his money clip. Just the weight of the folded bills within the gold clip told him that he wouldn’t have enough to pay for his purchases. The thought of visiting an ATM hadn’t even occurred to him. His secretary usually had a certain amount of cash delivered to him every Friday afternoon, but he hadn’t been around for that delivery this particular Friday past.
Perhaps he had gone a little overboard with his purchases tonight, but he’d found the experience of shopping so novel that he’d gotten a bit carried away. Just as he’d told Charlotte, he rarely found it necessary to shop and never like this. He usually just had whatever he needed ordered and delivered.
Reluctantly, Tyler opened his wallet to retrieve a credit card. He grimaced, remembering that he carried only his company card. His personal cards remained in the wall safe back at the penthouse. He hadn’t given them a thought until this very moment, his routine being to retrieve them, like an expensive personal accessory, only as he dressed to go out for a rare, purely social occasion. That bit of prudence could well prove folly, but nothing could be done about it now. He’d just have to reimburse the company.
After swiping the card, he scrawled an electronic signature on the digital pad. The teenaged clerk thanked him in a desultory fashion and handed over the receipt, which Tyler stowed within his wallet, intending to send it to his personal accountant later, the same one who paid all his bills.
Tyler followed Charlotte as she pushed the cart toward the exit. Obviously intending to leave the cart with the elderly attendant, she began gathering up the plastic bags containing his purchases. He had forgotten that even in Aldrich stores most customers carried out their own bags.
“Here,” he said, shouldering his way to the side of the cart. “Let me have the bags. You get the box.”
“They’re not heavy,” she argued as he gathered the bags.
“They’re heavier than the DVD player,” he replied, the weight of them dangling at the ends of his arms. She bent and picked up the box from the bottom of the cart.
They walked through a double set of automatic doors and out onto the parking lot. Halfway to the car she suddenly asked, “Have you thought about how you’re going to get all this home
?”
He stopped dead in his tracks and looked over his shoulder with a sigh. “Guess I’d better go back in there and find a suitcase of some sort. Let’s get this stuff to the car first.”
They hurried to the far corner of the lot. He opened the trunk and got the goods stowed, then thoughtfully palmed the keys. “Can you drive a stick shift?”
She looked warily to the car. “Yes, but—”
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” he interrupted, striding around to open the passenger door for her. “I’m going to drive up to the fire lane, then let you slide over to the wheel while I run back inside the store.”
She lowered herself into the leather bucket, her expression troubled. Before she could voice her concerns, he closed the door and jogged around to the driver’s side. She spoke as he dropped down behind the steering wheel.
“What if I have to move the car?”
“Then move it. Just come around again and pick me up.” He started the engine and backed the car out of the space. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “It’s a very forgiving transmission, built to take abuse. The worst that can happen is that you’ll stall out.” He saw the flash in her eye and chuckled. “I never thought you would stall. Just said it was the worst that could happen.”
She smiled and pulled her braid over one shoulder. He wondered what her hair looked like down and if he would find out before he left here.
That thought nagged him as he left the idling car at the curb and literally raced back inside the store. He could almost see her with her bright, silky hair spread across her shoulders. She couldn’t wear it in a braid all the time. Maybe he’d stick around until she let her hair down. At some point he’d accepted, without even considering, that he would stay on beyond the weekend, and he found a certain exhilarating freedom in that, but he couldn’t really say why he’d decided to delay his departure.
Curiosity had a lot to do with it. This small-town life seemed both more complicated and at the same time infinitely more simple than his own existence. He’d thought a lot, strictly from a business perspective, about how the other half lived, so to speak, but he saw now that he hadn’t gotten a very clear picture from all those studies and reports he’d read.
