by Deb Kastner
“It’s a good thing that you’re close to your family. There’s nothing wrong with that. And despite my loss, I’m still blessed to have my father and brothers, although we don’t get together as often as I’d like now that we’re all grown up and living away from home.”
“Right. There’s a change in family dynamics when we reach adulthood. How does Cole like the Navy?”
“Are you kidding? He was born for service,” she said, cheering up a little at the change of topic. Cole was the middle of the three Bishop children, the one who was always causing mischief of one sort or another—often involving his naive little sister and leading her into trouble. Now those days seemed pleasantly nostalgic.
“Cole was always one of the tough guys, and serving the country in the military suits him. Same with Eli. He was playing cops and robbers from the time he could walk,” she commented of her oldest brother. “I guess it’s lucky for us he ended up on the cop side of the equation.”
Ben chuckled at her weak attempt at humor. “And you, the firefighter.”
“Me, the firefighter,” she agreed. “But I never played with matches. No correlation there.”
“Never?” he asked, a curious gleam in his eye. “Come on. You can admit it. I won’t tell.”
She gnawed thoughtfully on her bottom lip, wondering how much she should divulge. Was he baiting her, or was this a sincere attempt on his part to be civil? She decided to take a chance on him. A very small chance. “I might have lit a twig on fire...once or twice, when I was little.”
One side of his mouth crept upward in an appealing half smile, the one that sent the single female population of Serendipity all aflutter. “Now we’re getting to the good stuff. If the fellows here at the firehouse ever learned that you—”
“But you said—”
Jerk.
“Your secret is safe with me,” he assured her. “I’m just teasing. I won’t say anything. Besides, if that’s the worst of your record, I can assure you that you’re lagging far behind me.”
“Is that right? How so?”
He returned to his folding chair and leaned his elbows against the long table. His gaze met and locked with hers. “We all have some skeletons in our closets, don’t you think? I’m every bit as human as the next guy.”
“Really?” Was he sorry for the mistakes he’d made, the way he’d hurt people like Olivia? As far as she knew, he’d never apologized. And even if he had, he’d done some truly callous things in his past, things Vee was slow to forgive.
“I’m just saying my secrets are probably, shall we say, more interesting than yours?”
If he thought of his secrets as “skeletons in the closet” then they were probably nothing she would want to know. Her own best, most closely held secret was light and bright and made her grin every time she thought of it. In this case, she highly doubted that any one of his secrets could rival hers. She smothered her grin behind her fist.
Lighting a few pine twigs on fire with a magnifying glass in the sunshine didn’t even begin to cover the mysteries she was hiding in her heart. Her mind immediately flashed to the wonderful internet relationship she was building with BJ. She’d met him through a college-level online Spanish class. They’d been paired up together for a project and had been emailing each other daily for the several weeks since. She’d started anticipating his emails, and reading them had become the best part of her day.
That she’d never seen him in person was just a trivial detail. They weren’t officially dating or anything—it wasn’t probable that she could form a truly romantic relationship in cyberspace—but they’d often spoken of working at the same mission, more and more as the days went by—and who knew what would happen then?
BJ definitely qualified as a secret. She hadn’t told a single soul in Serendipity about him, not even her best friend, Olivia. It might be pride, or even embarrassment at the fact that the closest thing she had to a real relationship was a cyber Prince Charming, but right now, this minute, BJ was hers and hers alone. Her heart warmed just thinking about him.
She realized Ben was staring at her speculatively and a blush rose to her face. It was disconcerting to realize his gaze could affect her, even if what she was feeling was discomfiture.
“You look like you’re deep in thought,” he teased. “Anything else you want to ’fess up to?”
Like she’d tell him.
She tossed her chin and scoffed dramatically. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“You’d better believe it,” he agreed, his grin deepening to reveal his dimples. His eyes sparkled.
She took a deep breath, mentally coaching herself to relax her shoulders. The warmth spreading from her chest to her face had nothing to do with Ben, she assured herself, but it still disquieted her.
Ben was a flesh-and-blood man sitting directly opposite her. She could reach out and touch him if she wanted to—and that was the problem. Even if Ben hadn’t been someone she disliked on principle, teasing and flirting just weren’t her style. She knew that had to be the reason why she’d gotten through so many years without a serious relationship.
But online was a completely different story. BJ was safe because he wasn’t entirely real, so she didn’t have to be nervous when they chatted. She could share her enthusiasms and talk freely with him, sometimes even flirt a little. As a result, she felt closer to him than to most of the people in town she’d known all her life. People like Ben Atwood.
She may not have met BJ in person, but she knew he was kind and thoughtful with a heart driven toward helping others. She didn’t have to see him face-to-face to know all of that.
She also could see exactly the kind of man Ben was. He was right before her eyes.
A heartbreaker.
Chapter Two
Dear BJ,
I’m still working on the script for our project. I haven’t had time this week to do much more than try to keep up on the reading assignments, much less work on the draft. It’s that time of year again. My schedule is filled to the brim with flowers, flowers, flowers.
I love planting seeds in the springtime. Winter has borne down upon the land, harsh and unforgiving, but seeds hold the fresh promise of spring inside them. It’s humbling to hold such future magnificence in the palm of my hand. And then to clip the blooms and arrange them into beautiful bouquets—could there be anything lovelier?
On another topic, what are your thoughts about the Sacred Heart Mission to America? I’ve been researching them and I’ve learned that they’re usually right in the middle of the action, building shelters and offering both physical and spiritual aid for folks affected by hurricanes, tornadoes or floods.
I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’m looking for—to be where people need me. I can’t imagine anything better than to minister to others during their hardest struggles, and I know you share the dream. I’m sure your skills in the medical field will be highly valued.
I’m anxious to hear your thoughts—school wise, mission wise, and anything else you care to add.
Faithfully waiting,
Veronica Jayne
Ben snapped his laptop closed and grinned. He could always count on an email from Veronica Jayne to have him smiling from ear to ear. Beautiful Veronica Jayne, his refined, gracious flower girl, his very own My Fair Lady. Even her name was feminine and graceful. He didn’t have to see a picture of her to know she was exquisite. Her elegance shined through every word she wrote. In a word, she simply charmed him.
He’d finished his morning workout early in his rush to get home and see if Veronica Jayne had replied to his email, so he decided to use his extra time to walk over to his folks’ house to see how they were faring. He’d missed the previous weekend’s Sunday dinner because of an emergency call. Though his parents were in perfect health, they were getting up in years
and Ben still worried, despite their protests. He wanted to make sure everything was going well—and maybe catch a bite to eat, if he timed it just right.
As he strode the short distance to his parents’ residence, he mused about last night, when he’d been kicking back with Vee Bishop at the firehouse. He was surprised at how much she’d had to say to him—usually she went out of her way to keep her distance. But last night, she’d opened up—just a little. Her cryptic response to his question about what secrets she wasn’t revealing intrigued him, even knowing it was none of his business whatsoever.
Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t told him so herself.
When he’d started mindlessly carrying on about the theme of secrets, he’d half expected her to blow him off completely. That or blow up at him. He was fairly certain she didn’t particularly like him, although exactly why that was he couldn’t say. She’d been short with him on more than one occasion in the past.
But in this instance, she hadn’t blown him off, nor had she become angry. Instead, she’d gracefully sidestepped the whole subject, which intrigued him far more than if she’d become annoyed. What she did or did not care to share with him was none of his business. They might have lived in the same town all their lives, but in truth they didn’t even know each other particularly well.
While he was fairly certain he’d rattled her with his tactless digging, for once he seemed to have avoided making her angry. He wished he knew how he’d dodged the bullet this time—usually it seemed like everything he did upset or offended her, even if she rarely vented her feelings out loud.
He increased his pace as a shiver ran through him. He’d be the first to admit he had trouble speaking to women. They were a complete enigma to him in every way, and he put his boot in his mouth more often than not. His appalling trail of failures with the list of women he’d dated proved that point in a major way.
The only consolation was that his very cluelessness usually convinced his ex-girlfriends that he hadn’t meant any harm. In most cases, he’d been able to charm his way back into being friends. But any attempt to charm Vee only seemed to make her angrier.
Vee was a tough nut to crack. She intimidated him with the way she pulled her hair back into a stark bun that defined her cheekbones into sharp lines, not to mention the incessant way she was always scowling at him with a permanent frown etched into her features whenever he was around. That he’d gotten her to laugh once or twice during their exchange the night before was definitely the exception to the rule. Maybe he was making some progress.
“Progress” just made him think of the other projects in his life—like his plans for mission work, for example, and the online Spanish class he was taking to prepare.
But most of all, he thought about the plans to meet and hopefully date his beautiful Veronica Jayne.
No one in Serendipity knew of the developing relationship with his internet classmate. Not his paramedic partner Zach Bowden. Not his friends. Not even his parents. He supposed that deep down he just wasn’t ready to share her yet.
What a sweet secret to have.
Ben grinned to himself as he reached the one and only intersection off of Main Street, glanced both ways and crossed over to the other side. Serendipity, with its population of less than a thousand, didn’t even merit a stoplight and just barely bothered with three-way stop signs. There was seldom traffic to watch out for, and today was no exception.
In fact, it was an unremarkably quiet day in Serendipity, with most folks going about their business as usual. Even the three retired men in their matching bib overalls who usually congregated in front of Emerson’s Hardware in their wooden rocking chairs were nowhere to be seen.
With nothing interesting to view on the horizon, Ben’s mind shifted to Veronica Jayne and the unlikely development of their cyber relationship. It had started innocently enough, emailing each other back and forth about their combined class project. After a while the conversation had drifted to chattering about weekly assignments, and before he knew it, they were talking personal issues—sometimes very personal issues, especially when they’d discovered they had the same plans for stateside mission work.
He’d been praying for his future wife for some time now, and if he was being honest with himself, the thought that Veronica Jayne might be that woman had crossed his mind more than once, even if they’d agreed they wouldn’t pursue anything romantic until—and if—they met in person.
Frankly, it was easier keeping Veronica Jayne at a distance, on the other end of cyberspace, where he wasn’t as apt to screw things up. He didn’t exactly have a stellar track record where women were concerned.
He’d been a skinny, awkward teenager who was often embarrassed and humiliated by school bullies, a boy who hid in his uncle’s auto garage to avoid having to deal with his callous peers, never mind girls his age, who would either ridicule or ignore him. Girls simply weren’t interested in boys like him. His mother had told him not to worry, that his day would come, but he hadn’t believed her.
Then, in a desperate attempt to get away from everything and everyone he knew, he’d enlisted in the Army National Guard Reserves. He’d bulked up and put on a uniform, and that had changed everything. He’d returned to Serendipity to find the women—those same girls who’d thumbed their noses at him in his youth—all grown up and fawning over him.
He was the first to admit he hadn’t handled it very well. What could he say? He was a guy, and the attention of pretty ladies went straight to his head. Being as inexperienced as he was in the world of women, he knew he’d made quite a few mistakes along the way.
How was he supposed to know that after two or three dates, a girl would assume that they were dating exclusively and that he wasn’t seeing anyone else? He hadn’t even been looking for a serious relationship—not then, anyway—despite the impression he’d apparently given. He’d quickly learned that women had certain ideas in their heads, and they weren’t very forgiving when he didn’t catch their unspoken implications.
Which he rarely did. He didn’t know how to guess how a woman thought. He hadn’t known then, and he certainly didn’t know now.
No, he’d had enough of all that, thank you very much. Perhaps that was why the idea of finding someone outside Serendipity sounded so appealing to him. Someone who didn’t know what he’d been like as a kid. Someone unaware of his recent screw-ups in the love department.
If he left Serendipity, he could reinvent himself into anything he wanted to be. A tough guy or a dashing charmer. Sensitive or daring. It was a heady notion. But there was more to it than that. He truly felt called to make a difference on a scale he could never achieve in his small hometown. He wanted to get involved in difficult and often perilous stateside mission work, perfect for an adrenaline junkie like him who wanted to be part of an organization that ministered to people, body and soul.
At times he even dared to imagine the possibility of having a classy, incredible woman working at his side—a strong, independent, caring, Christian woman ready and able to both handle the worst and pray for the best.
It wasn’t completely beyond the realm of possibility that this woman was Veronica Jayne. In their emails, her dreams and future plans and goals matched his, and their personalities melded perfectly, each playing off the other’s strengths.
But that was online.
Reality? Well, that was probably nothing more than empty space. Would he even know her if he passed by her on the street? Would they connect on that kind of level?
He was almost certainly grasping at straws. If anything ever did happen between them, and that was a big if, Veronica Jayne eventually would learn everything about him—including his past, which he was still ashamed to think about. Then there was the fact that he had perpetual grease under his nails from working as a mechanic. And the fact that he lived in a miniscule Texas town—he had the impression, thou
gh she’d never stated outright, that she lived in a big city.
If he took her home, his mother would no doubt bring out his baby pictures and his yearbook, which would only serve to further humiliate him. One look and Veronica Jayne would discover what a gawky, pimple-covered youth he’d been. Too tall for his skinny physique and all elbows and knees.
He wasn’t sure he was ready for that. Anyway, he was getting way ahead of himself. They’d never met in person. Who knew if they’d even like each other when that time came, much less in any kind of romantic capacity? He must be getting soft in the head.
The moment he rounded the corner onto his parents’ cul-de-sac, he noticed the black truck parked in his parents’ driveway. The back end was loaded with red bricks and multi-colored rocks of various shapes and sizes and bags upon bags of soil and fertilizer. It wasn’t an old truck, but it wasn’t a new one either. It had some wear—definitely a sensible working vehicle. And though it looked vaguely familiar, he couldn’t immediately put a name to the owner. He was fairly certain he hadn’t serviced it at the auto shop recently, yet he could picture the vehicle in his mind, sans contents. So where did he know it from?
One way to find out.
He heard someone singing before he even reached the front porch. More telling, it was a female singing, or humming rather, and it definitely wasn’t his good, old-fashioned country mother, unless she’d developed a sudden propensity for something that sounded suspiciously like classical music to Ben’s untrained ears.
Instead of approaching the front door, his curiosity led him around the side of the house to see whose pretty, richly husky alto laced the air with Beethoven, or Bach or whatever it was.
When he got his first glance of her, he nearly stumbled with surprise.
