Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Her Holiday FamilySugar Plum SeasonHer Cowboy HeroSmall-Town Fireman

by Ruth Logan Herne

  “Yeah,” he managed, fiddling with a snap on his suspenders, “it has been a pretty good time, despite what we first thought.” He didn’t want to hand this off to Karl and Violet either, but he wasn’t sure it was wise to agree with her new plan. It was getting harder to keep working with her the way his feelings were stubbornly growing. And quite frankly, it wasn’t a terribly good idea to be focusing on something other than the charter business right now in the height of the summer. The weather report looked ominous for the next few days, and he hated the thought of charter trips getting postponed or canceled.

  Karla shifted her weight, fidgeting. “Well—” she tucked her hair behind her ears “—I just want you to know that I’m okay with seeing this through to the end, despite what we said earlier. Only I feel like it will put a lot on you this week, and I’m not sure that’s fair.”

  It wasn’t fair, which couldn’t explain why he was so in favor of the idea. “I can handle it. They’ll probably have to fuss with my boat from Thursday on anyway, so maybe I’ll have extra time on my hands. Especially if the weather’s bad.”

  That drew a frown from her. “Bad weather? There’s a forecast for storms this coming weekend?”

  She really was invested in this whole thing. “They’re calling for some good-sized rainstorms Wednesday and Thursday night.”

  Now she looked alarmed. “Won’t rain ruin everything?”

  City girl. “Folks out here are used to the weather, Karla. As long as it stays dry enough Saturday night, we’ll be fine. It might even raise the river a little bit, which will only give us a good current for the parade.”

  “If everyone’s got their float stored inside.”

  He could only laugh. “Boats float on water. They’ll be on water in the parade. No one’s going to make boat parade decorations that can’t withstand a little water.”

  “Well, as long as it’s just a little water. I’m not going to stand on the riverbank in a downpour to watch this parade.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The downpour had started Tuesday night and hadn’t let up yet. The “bit of bad weather” had turned into a full-fledged major storm. The only piece of good news was that it was currently projected to clear out by Friday, but that didn’t help the charter trip Dylan had booked for this morning. With the parade commandeering the High Tide starting on Thursday night, this rain had just washed out his only booking for the week.

  He couldn’t blame the customers for calling and canceling last night when the rain set in. Who wanted to fish in a downpour? Still, the nonrefundable deposit wasn’t anything close to the full price of a charter trip for eight, and the difference made a dent in this month’s income. The Coffee Catches had helped a lot, but that didn’t mean he was yet in a position to comfortably endure a stretch of bad weather.

  Sighing, Dylan closed the lid on his laptop showing the weather report. He’d checked it four times since 5:00 a.m., and things were only growing worse. The rain was near roaring against his kitchen window, slashing down in steep angles that spoke of high winds. It was time to lash down the boat and hope for the best. Happy to own a set of professional-grade rain gear, Dylan took a deep breath as he did up the final snap before pulling the door open and heading out into the storm.

  The lights were on at Karl’s as he drove by. It didn’t surprise him, despite the foul weather. The coffee shop was always the place to ride out a storm. It had become a Gordon Falls tradition—Karl’s stayed open in any storm. They were on somewhat high ground, had a generator if power went out and company was always a good defense against threatening weather.

  Was Karla ready for the challenge of keeping Karl’s open in a storm? Was Karl? Could the old man even make it in? Karla lived right above the shop so she’d be there for sure, but this seemed too much for the old man to take on at this point in his recovery. He tried to peer into the shop windows to see her, but as it was, Dylan was hard-pressed to see even three feet ahead of his own headlights. The pooled water on many of the side streets told him what his laptop weather report had already proclaimed: the river was rising.

  Dylan wasn’t the only person preparing their boats for the storm. “Nasty stuff!” called Yorky, who owned a boat on the dock next to the High Tide. Yorky’s boat was much smaller than his—a pleasure craft rather than Dylan’s charter boat—but size wasn’t an advantage in weather like this. “She gonna be okay?” Yorky, like almost every other boater Dylan had ever known, referred to all watercraft as females. Only tourists called a boat an “it.”

  “Well,” he yelled back, wiping the water from his eyes in what felt like a futile gesture, “this is turning out to be a big one, but I think we’ll ride it out fine.” The truth was, today’s weather was looking as if it might be the largest storm Dylan had seen since purchasing the High Tide. He was starting to feel a nagging doubt in the pit of his stomach that the weekend’s celebrations might very well be in danger.

  Dylan pushed aside that worrisome thought as Yorky came over and held out his hand for the other end of the rope Dylan was holding. “This river gets angry when she overflows. There’s too much coming down off the ridge. Summer’s been too dry to handle it.”

  “I know.” Dylan made an extra knot in the line as he moved the mooring from its normal position on the floating dock to high up on the piling that held the dock in place. His cell phone had begun to spout flash flood warnings on the drive over here.

  “If she breaks free,” Yorky warned, “you’ll find her fifty miles downriver. Maybe in splinters.”

  “She’ll be okay.” There was more certainty in Dylan’s voice than in his gut. “Thanks for the concern.” He began taking down the canopy and anything else that would allow the wind to knock the boat around. “At least she’ll fare better than those sailboats over there.” On the other bank of the river sat a half dozen sailboats with no one seeing to their security. That was a problem; if one of those broke free—which was likely if no one was preparing them for the storm—they wouldn’t necessarily head straight downriver as Yorky predicted. They could just as easily drift across the river and do serious damage to the High Tide and her dockside neighbors.

  “Weekenders,” Yorky growled, following Dylan’s line of thinking. “Well, it’s not like we can take ’er out to sea where she’d be safer.”

  It was true; even though it didn’t make much sense at first, a boat out at sea was always safer than one tied to something fixed like a dock. “No ocean handy in Illinois, Yorky. We’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got.” The wind whipped rain in his face as he began to empty the High Tide of its contents, tossing all the cushions and large items into a locker bolted to the dock. The smaller stuff—tackle boxes, rods and reels, coolers, and even all the movable electronic equipment—went into a rolling locker that he would put in his truck.

  Keep her safe, Lord, Dylan prayed as he worked to secure the boat he’d come to love. High Tide meant so much to him; a chance to start life over, the opportunity to be his own man. He wasn’t at all sure he had it in him to start over a third time if the boat was demolished.

  Still, it wasn’t as if he didn’t know this was a possibility. Storms large and small were part of life on the river. God’s creation was beautiful and peaceful and majestic, but it could also choose to flex a muscle or two and show an awesome power. Any fisherman who lost a healthy, fearful respect for the water soon learned what a brutal foe a river could be.

  As the storm picked up strength, Dylan and Yorky stopped trying to talk as they pulled the extra buoys from the dock—useful in normal weather but dangerous in a storm. Dylan found himself in an active state of prayer, asking God for the safety of his boat, his friends, the guys at the firehouse, the owners of the other boats on the dock and Karla.

  Every once in a while he would straighten up and look west, hoping to spy a wedge of brighter sky. Instead, it seemed the sky only g
rew darker. Even if the High Tide rode out the storm intact, Dylan had already lost. Like a farmer, he depended upon forces beyond his control; fish, weather and the fickle nature of the river. When it was good, it was glorious. But when it was bad, it was a disaster. Today, the whole balance played out right before his eyes on a grander scale.

  “Well, at least they’re bow into the wind.” Yorky had spoken what Dylan had just thought; it was by God’s grace that both his and Yorky’s boats were docked facing into the wind—the position where they were safest. For now.

  “We’ve done all we can.” He wanted the statement to give him courage, but instead it seemed to feed the feeling of helplessness.

  “Time to go inside and wait it out. Godspeed, son. I hope we’re laughing about this on Friday.” With a wave, Yorky set off to his own car, and Dylan hoisted the locker into the payload of his truck.

  The miserable feeling only compounded as he drove back to his apartment. Every part of him was wet, cold and muddy. His muscles ached and he’d cut himself in several places. Even swiping at top speed, his windshield wipers could barely carve out a wedge on the glass long enough for him to see. Thunder rumbled regularly across the sky, and the air smelled of storm, the tang of lightning’s ozone setting his nerves on edge.

  Once inside, he shed his sopping clothes and pulled a dry T-shirt over his head. With every motion, he fought the urge to head to Karl’s. There was no true reason to head back out into the storm and over there. After all, he could just as easily check in on Karla and the shop by phone. If he knew Karl, the old man would be worried sick back at his house, unable to stand at his time-honored post, keeping Karl’s a safe open haven in any storm. He could understand the frustration; for him it would be like being lashed to a tree while forced to watch a house burn. To know what you ought to be doing and not be able to do it? That was one of life’s cruelest tortures.

  It was why—or part of why—he couldn’t bring himself to be the thing standing between Karla and Rooster’s.

  His resistance lasted all of ten minutes. By the time he’d put on dry pants, threw down a second mediocre cup of coffee—which only stoked the urge to brave a downpour to get to Karl’s—he was pacing his living room, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets to keep from reaching for his cell phone.

  It’s closer to the firehouse, he told himself as he reached again for rain gear. I’m not on duty, but if they call I can be there in a flash. Of course, that line of thinking also meant that anyone from the firehouse was already close enough to help Karla should she need assistance, but Dylan chose to deny that fact. The fact he couldn’t ignore was the steady inner insistence that if anyone was going to help Karla ride out the storm and keep Karl’s open, it was going to be him.

  * * *

  “I know, Grandpa.” Karla tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. Her grandfather had called four times in the past hour. “I’m downstairs and we’re open. Oscar’s here, and there are a bunch of others here, too. I agree with Dad—you need to stay put.”

  “You know what to do? You know where the generator is?” Grandpa’s voice pitched up with every new question. Part of her wanted to remind him that it was hard to stay open if she was spending all of her time answering the phone, but another part of her was grateful for Grandpa’s voice. The burden of keeping Karl’s open in a storm was starting to press down harder than she liked.

  “I saw it in the back utility closet.” She wasn’t exactly sure how to work it, but appliances came with directions, and Grandpa was sure to call again. “We’re okay. So far so good, as far as the power goes.” Please, Lord, could You keep it that way?

  “Keep the coffee going and feed anyone who comes in the door. Karl’s stays open in a storm.” It must have been the tenth time Grandpa had given her that order.

  “I know. And I should go do that, okay? My cell phone’s cutting in and out, but the landline to the shop still works fine so call there next time.” There would be a next time, and she was rather glad of that. For the first time since she’d arrived in Gordon Falls, Karla felt too young to be holding up a business all on her own. Which was funny, considering she’d spent the past three years planning to do just that.

  “Take care of the shop for me.” Karla hated the desperation in her grandfather’s voice. “Is Vi there yet? She should be there by now.”

  “I’m sure she’s on her way, Grandpa.” The thought of those two together, looking out for each other, struck a warm glow in her heart. They were so good for each other; anyone could see that. Grandpa deserved to be happy. And he also deserved to know his shop was in good hands. “I’ve got to go take care of business now. Kennedys can do, right? And Karl’s stays open in a storm.”

  “That it does, girlie, that it does.”

  Karla liked the brightness that returned to her grandfather’s voice, and she let it bolster her spirits until she checked the weather notifications on her smartphone. The radar screen showed a menacing train of powerful storms lined up one after the other. A red bar ran across the top with the ominous words, Flood Warning for the entire Gordon River floodplain.

  Flood? A power outage was one thing, but keeping Karl’s open during a flood? That felt like a whole different level of disaster. Mom was at home twenty miles away where she was safe, Dad was with Grandpa—which is where he belonged—and the floodgates were there to keep floods from getting downtown, right?

  Karla tightened the knot around her apron, grabbed another bag of coffee grounds from the stock shelf and headed out to where the customers were. Kennedys can do. Just keep saying that to yourself. Kennedys can do.

  And what Kennedys can’t do, God can.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the time he made the ten-minute trek to Karl’s, Dylan might have walked into the GFVFD shower stall. He was soaked again, chilly from the whipping wind and already feeling tired. All he wanted was to know Karla was getting along fine, and to spend ten minutes sipping one of her steaming hot cups of coffee. The wind was driving the rain so hard it took a large amount of effort to pull the shop’s front door open.

  Still, he was instantly glad he came. As if to endorse his choice, the lights gave an ominous flicker as he shut the door and stood dripping onto Karl’s welcome mat.

  Karla looked brave but bedraggled, standing over a bucket in the middle of the room and staring up at a leak in the expanse of the ceiling that stretched beyond the shelter of the upstairs apartment. Surrounding her was the handful of customers he knew would be in the shop riding out the nasty weather. She looked desperately glad to see him, the relieved look in her eyes settling way down in his chest. He knew, in that moment, that he would have swum here if it came to that.

  “Hi.” Her voice had an “I’m putting on my brave face” tightness to it that made his heart pinch.

  “How’s everything holding up?” He was almost afraid to ask her in front of everyone, but the people in the shop now were more like family than customers.

  “You know Karl’s,” she said, shrugging as she looked up at the dripping ceiling. “We’re always open in a storm.”

  “It’s a Karl’s tradition,” he said. He noticed the empty bucket beside the counter and picked it up, swapping it out from under the drip for her and walking with the full one toward the sink.

  “I remember riding out a few storms with Grandpa at the shop when I was younger. Somehow it seemed a lot more fun back then.”

  “I suspect it’s a lot more fun to ride out a storm in Karl’s than to be the one making sure Karl’s rides out the storm.” He tipped the bucket into the sink. “Your grandfather okay?”

  “He calls about every fifteen minutes.” She eyed him. “You’re soaked.”

  “Not too bad.” He didn’t want her worrying about him right now. “Just in need of hot coffee.”

  “That, I can offer.” She reached for the carafe he
knew held her special, stronger brew. He liked that he had access to Karla’s personal blend. “One sugar, no cream.” He liked even more that she knew just how he took his coffee.

  One sip of the stuff sent warmth out to his fingertips. “Best cup in the county. Did you stay dry?”

  “Mostly.” He watched her shoulders ease up a bit, and enjoyed the possibility that his mere presence helped ease her tension. “My commute is just down a flight of stairs.”

  “I know Karl is glad of that. You can’t stay open in a storm if you can’t get here.” He tried to make the tradition sound like an adventure rather than a burden.

  “Oh, he tried to make Dad bring him in, but no one is letting him out in this. I told Emily to stay home, too.” A blast of thunder rattled the front windows, and they both turned around. “Wow,” she said quietly, “look at it out there.”

  “This is going to be a big one,” Oscar warned from his seat at the counter. “I’d better head to the store. We’re liable to lose power soon.” As if they’d heard him, the lights flickered again. The old man drained his coffee and set his face in grim determination. “I’ll get soaked.”

  “Oscar, are you sure? You really will get soaked, and I don’t think you’ll have any customers today.” Dylan felt his wet shirt sticking to his back. At least it was warmer in here and he knew Karla was holding up okay so far.

  The lights flickered two more times, causing everyone in the room to look up and groan in distress. Dylan heard a sound from the back of the shop, and turned at the same moment Karla did to see a dark puddle creeping from under the store shelves. “There’s water coming in the back door.”