by Arlene James
Burbling with both tears and laughter, she managed to get out, “Yes, I do.”
Tyler came instantly to his feet and drew her into his arms. “Thank You, God. Thank you. We’ll work it all out, sweetheart, you’ll see. I’ve been thinking that maybe I should move here.”
Stunned, she drew back far enough to gaze up into his face. “But how would that work? What would you do?”
“Do?”
“To earn a living. You have to earn a living.”
He lifted both shoulders, mouth flattening into a straight line. “Actually, sweetheart, I don’t. Not really. I mean, money is something we’ll never have to worry about.”
“But can you be happy doing nothing?”
“I’m sure I’ll find something to get into.”
“What about your family’s company?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. That’s troubling, frankly, but all I can do at this point is pray about it and wait for God to work it all out.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, nodding decisively. “We should pray about it, starting right now.”
Smiling, he squeezed her hands before looking around them. “There’s the bench over there. Let’s sit first.”
They turned in that direction, arm in arm. A peacefulness seemed to settle around them, a rightness. Laying her head against his shoulder, Charlotte felt her fears recede and wonder steal in. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She had just agreed to marry Tyler Aldrich!
“I apologize for not being prepared,” he told her.
She lifted her head to look at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”
He tapped the tip of her nose with his forefinger. “I’ve known since before I left here the first time that I’m in love with you, but I did not expect to ask you to marry me like this.”
She squeezed his arm, admitting, “You broke my heart when you went away and I thought I’d never see you again.” He covered her hand with his. “I thought that was the end of it.”
“I didn’t expect to return,” he admitted, “but I couldn’t stay away, and the more I thought about the two of us being together, the more I dreamed about it, prayed about it, the more right it seemed.” His fingers stroked hers. “If I’d been prepared, though, I’d have a ring for you.”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged because she hadn’t even thought about a ring. They had time for rings later. Right now they had other problems, but God would take care of those. If He meant them to be together, and He must, then everything would work out.
“Yes, that,” Ty said. “As far as I’m concerned it’s the next order of business.”
She beamed at him. “Prayer first, ring second. Seems about right to me.”
They reached the bench. He pressed a brief kiss to her lips before they sat down. Leaning forward, their elbows braced upon their knees, they clasped hands and bowed heads. Tyler spoke without prompting.
“Thank You, Father. Thank You for bringing me here to this woman. Thank You for making her love me. You’ve blessed me in so many ways, but this…”
He seemed unable to go on at that point. Heart swelling, Charlotte picked up where he’d left off, saying, “We’re stepping out on faith here, Lord. Whatever You have in store for us, we’ll face it together, trusting You to show us the way.”
Ty spoke again, going on at length in a soft voice about his concerns for his family and their company. “You know I care about them, Lord, but Charlotte is my destiny. I see that now. I just want for my family what Charlotte’s has. Help them see that.”
Charlotte loved him all the more for his distress on their behalf, and she realized again how much the discord between him and his siblings and mother hurt him. She resolved silently to aid him in rebuilding those relationships. Family, after all, meant so much to her, and, daunting as the idea seemed, they would be her family, too.
They whispered together, “Amen.”
Afterward, they lifted their heads to smile and kiss and finally to rise as one.
“Let’s go tell Granddad,” she said, suddenly giddy with elation.
Tyler laughed and slung an arm about her shoulders. “I confess, I don’t think he’ll be shocked.”
“Or unhappy.”
They went as quickly as they could, all but running. Arm in arm, they bumped and bounced and laughed and talked, brimming with joy and hope and love.
“I wonder if Holt could use a partner?” Tyler mused as they passed the oil pump behind the motel.
She glanced at him in surprise, saw the teasing glint in his eyes and shook her head. They both laughed. The oil field was not for him, at least not the filthy labor part.
“Something will turn up,” she predicted gaily.
They rounded the end of the motel wing and crossed the grass to the pavement. Tyler’s steps stuttered. Following his line of sight to the drive-through, she saw an expensive foreign luxury sedan parked there.
“Looks like something already has,” he announced, suddenly solemn. “That’s my sister’s car.”
Charlotte felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.
Chapter Sixteen
Tyler knew the moment he stepped into the front room that something serious had happened. When he’d seen her car there, he’d expected this to be nothing more than one of Cassandra’s famous scenes, the sort she cooked up when she had nothing better to do than make his life miserable. One look at her told him otherwise.
His normally neat, perfectly coifed sister appeared unkempt, or as unkempt as he had ever seen her. Her shoulder-length hair actually looked rumpled, and the dark band that held it back from her face rested at an odd angle on her head. She needed to reapply her lipstick, and, even more alarming, a couple inches of the hem of her long, tailored, dark brown dress hung down. A matching thread trailed from the buckle of one flat shoe.
She’d come to her feet the moment that he and Charlotte had entered through the apartment door and now stood twisting her hands in an uncharacteristic show of concern. Still struggling to his own feet, Hap sent Tyler an apologetic glance.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
Cassandra came forward, the lack of a pose indicative of her distress as she exclaimed, “Everything’s a mess!”
“Describe ‘everything.’ No, wait. Describe the mess.”
“For starters, we’re facing a hostile takeover!”
“You’re telling me that the company is being threatened by a hostile takeover?”
“Yes! And you have to stop it!”
Mind whirling, Tyler tried to make sense of this. As a privately owned company, Aldrich & Associates Grocery could only be taken over by an outside entity if one or more of the owners had yielded sufficient shares. He latched onto the first idea that made any sense.
“Spencer-Hatten.”
“What? No!”
“You made some sort of deal with Spencer-Hatten, and it’s backfiring on you,” he accused.
“I didn’t!” she insisted, her voice rising to a shriek. “I wouldn’t!” For the first time in Tyler’s memory, his cool, cryptic sister dissolved into tears. “I wouldn’t,” she insisted in a small voice.
Stunned, Tyler moved forward to place a hand on her shoulder. “Easy now,” he urged gently. He waited until she sniffed and knuckled the tears from her eyes. “So tell me what this is about.”
“Shasta,” she answered succinctly.
Trust Shasta to make a nuisance of herself at holiday time. Ty sighed, thoroughly ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry I accused you.”
Cassandra rolled a gaze up at him. “You had good reason.”
He squeezed her shoulder, touched that she would admit such a thing. “What has our stepmother done now?”
“She’s married Wilkerson Bishop.”
Tyler needed a moment to get his mouth closed. “Wilkerson’s eighty-four years old!”
“And our largest shareholder outside the family,” Cassandra pointed out needlessly.
The implications were
not lost on Tyler. “They still don’t comprise a majority.”
“They will if they get their hands on Ivory’s share.”
Frank Ivory had retired as the company’s chief financial officer some two years earlier. Then, right before their father had revealed his cancer, he’d stripped Ivory of his seat on the board and awarded it to Shasta.
“Why would Ivory sell his shares to Shasta?”
“Apparently he’s still upset about losing his seat, and Wilkerson is offering twice what the shares are worth.”
Tyler put his hands to his head, stunned.
“That’s not all,” Cassandra went on, ducking her head.
Tyler steeled himself. “What else?”
“Mother’s in the hospital.”
Charlotte gasped, and Tyler’s eyebrows shot almost to his hairline. “Why didn’t you say so to begin with!”
Charlotte, God love her, stepped up and slid an arm about his waist, placing the other hand in the hollow of his shoulder in a show of support. Without even thinking about it, he reached up and hooked an arm around her shoulders.
Cassandra’s chin began to wobble again. “It’s all my fault.”
“Your fault, how? Shasta’s the one who—”
“Mother doesn’t even know about that.”
“Then what…” He shook his head, at a loss.
“It was something I said,” Cassandra admitted. “She was going on and on about how we were losing you, and…It’s just such a mess! She started crying yesterday and wouldn’t stop. Preston finally called her psychiatrist, and he admitted her.”
Tyler pinched his nose. “Great.” This was all he needed, one of his mother’s well-rehearsed nervous breakdowns.
“Then today when I heard about Shasta,” Cassandra went on in a thin voice, “all I could think was that you have to come home!”
Tyler shook his head, feeling torn. He wouldn’t have hesitated under other circumstances. He was still the CEO of Aldrich & Associates Grocery, after all, and it had been a long while since his mother had pulled one of these stunts, but now he had Charlotte to consider. Glancing at her, he saw the worried expression on her face and made his decision.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t go back now. Charlotte and I have just decided to get married.”
“Glory be!” Hap erupted, throwing up his hands.
“My place is here now,” Tyler finished firmly.
Cassandra astonished him by again bursting into tears. Shaking her head miserably, she wilted back onto the sofa and covered her face with her hands.
Tyler tensed, momentarily at a loss. Half of him wanted to comfort his sister; half of him expected her to come up snarling. After a moment Charlotte gave him an insistent little nudge. Bowing to her superior knowledge in such matters, he eased himself down and perched on the edge of the sofa next to Cassandra.
“It’s all right, Cass,” he said, looping an arm around her. “You know how Mother is.”
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Cassandra said, dropping her hands and sniffing. “We had words, it’s true. Nothing unusual about that, I know. But I said something I shouldn’t have and she hasn’t been the same since.” Cassandra looked up tearfully, whispering, “I’d never have said it if I’d known how much it would hurt her.”
Tyler tightened his embrace a bit, saying gently, “She’ll get over it.”
Cassandra shook her head, mopping at her face with her hands. “I don’t think so, not if you abandon us.” Suddenly she grasped his hand. “We need you! Mother needs you. The company needs you. We’ll never be able to convince Ivory not to sell.”
“Just offer him another seat on the board,” Tyler suggested. “My sense is that’s all he really wants. He can have my seat, actually. You won’t even have to create a new one.”
“And then what?” Cassandra demanded. “You’re the voice of reason on that board. We’re all lost without you! You have to come home. Now!”
He’d never thought to hear this. It warmed something inside him to know that his sister actually thought the family and company needed him, but he could not allow himself to be drawn back to Dallas now. Tyler knew what he had to do, and he had every faith God would work it all out for the best. Somehow.
“Cass, I’m sorry, but—”
“No,” Charlotte interrupted, stepping forward. Hap made a sound like air leaking from a tire.
Tyler looked up. “Don’t worry, honey,” he told her, feeling a serenity, a sureness that would undoubtedly center his life from now on. “It’s all right.” And it was.
Even now, when God seemed to be answering his prayers concerning his family, Tyler understood that he and Charlotte could no longer be separated. They were one heart, joined by the generous will of a loving God, and whatever must be done, they would do together.
From now on Tyler would always try to deal with others, including his own family—especially his own family—with the same gentle, loving acceptance that the Jeffords had demonstrated to him, but without Charlotte by his side, he could only make half an effort at best. Together they would help his family to see that they needed God more than him or anyone, or anything, else.
He reached out a hand to this woman who made him more than he could be alone, this one woman in the whole world who not only completed him but who was undoubtedly God’s will for his life.
“I know what I have to do,” he said.
“Do you?” Charlotte asked, kneeling at Ty’s feet. She exchanged a glance with Hap then looked into Tyler’s eyes and saw love unlike anything she had ever dreamed of there. What a good man, not perfect by any means, but wholly surrendered to God, willing to do all that might be asked of him, no matter the personal cost.
How long had he worked and waited, yearning for the kind of acceptance his sister now offered him? How much responsibility had he shouldered, how many solutions had he found, how much regret and grief had he endured for this moment? She could not allow him to abandon that battle.
“We prayed about this not twenty minutes ago,” she reminded him gently.
“I know, sweetheart, but I don’t want you to think that my word means nothing. I said I’d stay, and I will.”
“But is that what God wants, Ty? Don’t you see? You told God how much you love your family and how you want them to have what you’ve found in Him, and this is His answer.”
Tyler cupped her face in his hands and said exactly what she expected him to say. “Darling, you’re my family now, even if we’re not married yet. And you will always comes first with me.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, smiling through the tears that gathered in her eyes. She didn’t know if she could do this. She only knew that she had to try, for Tyler’s sake. She wouldn’t think of how much she would miss Eden and her family, only of how much she loved him. Oh, Father, help me, she prayed silently. Help me do this for Ty. “And from this day forward you will always come first with me,” she vowed, “but your place is in Dallas.”
“I won’t go,” he insisted, shaking his head. “Not without you.”
Charlotte took a deep breath, her heart beating a wild tattoo. “Then I’ll just have to go with you.”
Tyler seized her by the upper arms. “Charlotte, you don’t mean that.”
“I think I must mean it,” she said, smiling and weeping at the same time.
“You see it’s like this, son,” Hap rasped. “God’s got purpose for you in Dallas. Your family and your company need you, and if Charlotte belongs with you, then that’s where both of you got to go.”
Holt and Ryan walked into the room just then. Holt held a fork poised over a plate of pecan pie. “Both of who?”
Hap hitched around. “Ty and Charlotte’s getting married.”
Ryan pumped an arm in a whoop of approval. “Yes-s-s!”
“Who’s this, then?” Holt asked, stepping forward to beetle his brow at Cassandra.
“Oh, this here is Ty’s sister, Cassie,” Hap said. Cassandra said nothing about th
e nickname. “She’s a mite upset,” Hap went on. “Their mom’s in the hospital and some other stuff.” Hap swirled a hand as if to say it was all too confusing for him.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ryan immediately remarked.
Holt stared at his sister, and she knew his thoughts immediately. She pushed up to her feet and went to her brother.
“It isn’t just that I love him,” she said softly. “I love him enough to go where he has to go.”
Holt’s lips flattened, but then he cut off a big bite of the pie and gulped it down. “Ryan and me—” he grumbled, wiping a corner of his mouth with the pad of his thumb “—we figured this was coming.”
“We have a plan,” Ryan announced, grinning ear-to-ear.
“A plan?” Charlotte repeated.
“To take care of stuff around here,” Ryan said, as Holt studiously forked in another huge bite of pie. “We’ve got it all figured out. We’ll both pitch in. With some part-time help, we’ll be fine.”
“We can afford full-time if we need to,” Hap mused, “especially if we throw in room and board.”
Holt looked at what was left of his pie, a rueful twist to his lips. “Well, room, anyway,” he amended with a sigh.
Charlotte wondered with dismay who would cook for them, but she knew they wouldn’t starve. They could manage until they could hire someone. Nodding grimly, she swiped at the tears trickling down her face and whispered, “I love you all so much.”
“But you belong with Ty,” Hap rasped.
Tyler appeared at her side, sliding an arm around her waist. He looked down at her, and she read the troubled expression in his eyes. “Sweetheart, are you sure about this?”
“Yes,” she answered. Then, because she could never lie to him, said, “No. What I mean to say is, I’m not sure how it’s all going to turn out, but I think we have to do this. I think I have to do this.” Fear of failing Ty coiled in her belly, but she ignored it, lifting her chin. It was time she stepped out on faith instead of just talking about it.
