by Mary Nealy
“Excuse me,” Keren said with a stern frown. “It was knocked out of my hands. I would never drop my gun.”
Paul nodded and tried to look serious. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“Don’t forget it,” she growled.
“I wanted to use it. I was frantic, furious, completely insane worrying about you.”
“Poor baby.”
“And on the way to rescue you, O’Shea gave me a little talking to about how terrific you were and how deeply you embraced your faith.”
“O’Shea said all that?” She thought of her taciturn partner.
“Well, yeah. He said it in about five words, with a lot of grunting, but I got the message.”
“That sounds like him,” Keren said fondly.
“Anyway he said enough. And I knew the truth of those words I’d said so many times, ‘To live is Christ and to die is gain.’ I gave you up to God. I quit worrying. We still drove at top speed, don’t get me wrong. But the point is, I still felt all the strength of my anger, but it wasn’t out of control. I need to respect it, even use it once in a while. I had finally healed enough that I could quit fearing that part of myself.”
“I’m glad.” Keren leaned forward until she rested her forearms on her knees in a replica of Paul’s pose. She turned her head to look at him. They were inches apart.
He erased those inches when he kissed her.
A very sweet minute later, Paul said, “You did lean close like that so I could kiss you, right?”
“Right,” Keren whispered.
“The thing is, I’m always going to run the Lighthouse. It’s a calling, and I can’t turn my back on it.”
Keren nodded. “And I’m always going to be a cop. It’s a calling,
and I can’t turn my back on it.”
“But I wouldn’t necessarily have to live above the shelter. There’s a really beautiful little Christian school about three miles from the mission. I’d like our kids to go there. And if we lived close to the school, that’d be more convenient.”
Keren’s smile widened until she laughed just a little. She never took her eyes off him. She was afraid if she blinked, her dreams might disappear.
He laughed back, just a little, and he kept his eyes on her, too.
“If that is a marriage proposal, it’s the worst one I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh yeah? Well, how many of them have you heard?”
She waited and watched and loved. “A couple. One was really romantic.”
“The guy who dumped you when he found out you had a spiritual gift he didn’t like?”
“Yeah.”
Paul arched one eyebrow. “A lot of good all his romance did you. You want poetry? Marry Robert Frost.”
“I don’t want him, I want you.”
Paul reached across the inches between them and clasped her hand in his. He looked at her until she felt like he had taken her inside of himself. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I love you, Keren. I’ve been waiting until I got myself centered in my faith before I came to talk to you.”
“Your faith was never in danger, Paul.”
Paul gave a quick jerk of his head. “Absolutely not. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get pretty mixed up for a while. Not about believing in Jesus. But about where I was meant to be, what I was being led to do with my life.” He bounced their hands gently between them. “What I was supposed to do with you.”
“Had trouble with me, did you?” she asked.
Paul shrugged and let go of her hand and reached into the pocket of the dark blue sweatpants he was wearing. He pulled a little velvet box out of his pocket. “Not so much trouble that I didn’t go out and get you this.”
He handed her the box and she glanced from the box to him and back to the box about five times before she regained control of her eyeballs. Then, she still wasn’t in control of them because they started leaking.
He brushed his thumb across her cheek and murmured, “I hope those are happy tears.”
“V–e–ry.” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Very happy.”
“Will you marry me, Keren? I love you. I think you’re so wonderful. The perfect woman for me. But more than that, I think God had you in mind for me from the moment of our births. I feel like I’ve found the other half of myself. I can’t imagine my life without you.”
“That’s the most beautiful proposal I’ve ever heard.”
“Really?”
Keren nodded. “You’re really getting better at it.” She took a swipe at her tears. “We’ll probably fight. We have been almost from the moment we met.”
“What we were fighting was this.” Paul leaned over and kissed her again. A real kiss, the kind of kiss a Christian man shouldn’t give a Christian woman if he wasn’t planning to marry her.
Her arms went around his neck. He lifted her off her chair and settled her on his lap. He pulled away first, to give her a chance to open the velvet box.
She smiled and opened it.
“It’s not very big, Keren. I’m not a rich man and I never will be. But we’ll have enough. The Lord will provide.” He lifted the solitaire diamond out of its velvet bed. “And it’s offered with love.”
She extended her hand so he could slip it on.
He said, “Not yet. You haven’t said the words yet.”
Keren looked away from the beautiful ring and smiled at him. She said with a sassy arch of her eyebrows, “And exactly what words are those, Rev.?”
“How many times have I told you not to call me Rev.?”
“Try ‘I love you,’“ a groggy voice broke in.
Paul and Keren jerked their heads up and looked at the source of that advice. LaToya, her eyelids heavy, gave them a weak smile.
“LaToya.” Keren jumped off Paul’s lap, not all that sure how she’d gotten there.
Paul rounded the bed so they were on opposite sides of her.
LaToya said, “Don’t let me interrupt. I was enjoying being a Peeping Tom. Then you started getting sidetracked, and I thought you needed help.”
“You’re awake.” Paul reached for her hand. He held it gently. “We’ve been so worried about you.”
LaToya’s eyes fell shut. “You didn’t look all that worried to me.”
“Where’s the CALL button? We need to get a doctor in here.” Paul looked along the side of the bed.
“I’ll go find someone.” Keren disappeared out of the room.
“She seems nice.” LaToya squeezed his hand.
“Yeah, and I was about to have her all sewn up, when you started talking.”
From behind him, Keren said, “Don’t give up. You can sew me up, yet.”
Paul turned just as two nurses came rushing into the room. He let himself be shoved out of the way.
“You’d better hand over the ring,” Keren said. “Before we forget what we were talking about.”
“We won’t forget.” Paul turned to her and pulled her into his arms. “I think I’m going to enjoy shutting that smart mouth.”
As his head dipped to kiss her, she gave him the words he’d been fishing for. “I love you, Paul. I want to marry you and send our children to that little Christian school. I want that ring.”
“It’s not big,” he warned.
“It’s a beautiful ring.” Keren poked him in the shoulder. “I don’t ever want to hear a word against it.”
“Yes ma’am,” Paul said.
“I want to spend my spare time helping at the mission.” She thought they might as well talk a few things through.
“I’d really appreciate that.”
“But the thing I really want is … you.”
Paul hesitated long enough to get the ring on her finger, then he kissed her.
Rosita chose that moment to appear for her daily visit. When she saw Paul and Keren in each other’s arms and LaToya awake, she looked like she didn’t know who to talk to first.
Keren stepped away from Paul.
“Don�
��t quit on my account,” Rosita said, with the first genuine smile Keren had seen on her face since she’d been kidnapped.
“Do you have any interest in a long engagement, Kerenhappuch?” Paul asked.
“Not on your life.” Keren shook her head. “I’d like my folks to come and I’d like my pastor to marry us.”
“How about this Saturday?”
“That’s four days!” Keren shouted.
Rosita said, “LaToya ‘n’ me wanna be bridesmaids.”
One of the nurses said, “You can get a blood test right down the hall.”
The other nurse said, “Kerenhappuch?”
Keren slugged Paul for that. He gently rubbed Keren’s sore arm as if worried that punching him might hurt her.
“When will Rosita get out?” Paul asked the nurse.
The nurse gave him a stern look, but a smile lurked behind her glaring eyes. “If she’s not out by Saturday, it wouldn’t be the first wedding we held at someone’s bedside.”
Paul looked at Keren. She said, “Oh why not? I guess I can be ready by Saturday. Can O’Shea come?”
Paul said, “I already asked him to be my best man.”
“You talked to O’Shea about this before you talked to me?” Keren snapped.
Paul kissed her quiet, and, when she had forgiven him—or maybe forgotten what was the problem—the two of them turned to smile at their friends.
Keren said as she looked at LaToya’s smiling face, “The plague has really finally ended.”
“Not the way we’d have hoped. It sounds like you led Francis as close to the Lord as anyone can,” Paul said with a solemn shake of his head.
“He had to make the last step himself.” Keren frowned. “And even now, even seeing what I saw, I can dance around in my head and hope God gave him one more last chance before his soul departed his body.”
Paul looked at Keren.
She read such love in his eyes that her heart pounded and her knees went weak and she had to hold on to him tight.
“ ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.’“ Paul planted a kiss on her temple, then her nose, then her lips. He quit just when it was getting good. “That has never been so true as it is for me right now.”
Keren smiled at the ancient words that were God’s blessing on the first marriage. The room and all its distractions melted away. “ ‘I will make a helper suitable for him,’“ she added with a sassy smile. “That’s me. I’ll help you, Rev.”
“I’m counting on it,” Paul said. “Let’s go call our parents. And we’re getting married whether they can come or not.”
“Getting us married’ll be the first thing I help you with.”
With a quick nod at a glowing Rosita, who waved them away and went to watch over LaToya, they left the room. They left behind the sadness of the plague that had brought them together.
In the hall, they had a moment alone. Paul turned her to face him and pulled her into his arms. “Your courage is something that will humble me for the rest of my life. The way you faced a demon … the way you tried to help a man so many people would have killed …”
He slung his arm around her shoulders and they headed for the exit and their future. “So, you think you’ll spend much time fighting for your life when you should be picking the kids up from school?”
“I’m planning to request a transfer to properties crimes. I’ll chase demon-possessed embezzlers for a change.”
“Bet you’ll be surprised how many of them there are.” Paul tried to take her keys when she pulled them out of her pocket.
She held them out of his reach. “I’m driving until you can produce a valid driver’s license.”
“I’m in a hurry. I want to run the siren on our way to city hall to get the license.” He kissed her until she was completely cooperative. But by then he seemed to be feeling pretty agreeable himself, and she got away and slid behind the wheel.
Paul climbed in the passenger side. “We’re gonna have fun.”
The car roared to life and Keren flicked on the siren and tore out of the hospital parking lot.
Mary Nealy is the suspense genre pen name for bestselling and award-winning author Mary Connealy, who is best known for her humorous Old West romances. She makes her home with her husband on a farm in Nebraska near her four grown daughters.
TEN PLAGUES Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the gifts of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:8–10 lists the gifts as wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.
2. Do you have any of these gifts? Have you ever given it much thought?
3. Some are more miraculous gifts like healing and speaking in tongues. But discerning of spirits may be the least well known. Do you know anyone with this gift? Do you have it yourself? Why is this gift so under discussed?
4. Do you believe in demon possession?
5. The fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22–23 is love, joy, peace, forbearance, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Compare the two lists.
6. Paul, the mission pastor, struggled with sin, especially anger. Have you ever struggled with sin in your life and then realized you were supposed to feel some things that seemed wrong to you?
7. Have you ever known a very young person with a spiritual gift that they, in their innocence, maybe didn’t use wisely—like Keren telling a classmate she was possessed by a demon?
8. Keren discerns spirits, and she is clear that she not only discerns evil but also good spirits. Discuss the good spirits in people.
9. Keren has made the decision to never marry because she feels called by God to police work and can’t see that calling working well with being a wife and mother. Discuss the tension between a woman needing or wanting to work and needing or wanting to be a stay-at-home mom.
10. Have you ever known anyone who was possessed by a demon?
11. In literature and movies, demon possession is often used in madly graphic ways. Is Satan ever this blatant in real life, or is he far more subtle?
12. Discuss the subtle evil that can creep into your life.
13. Discuss Paul’s out-front faith compared to O’Shea’s more privately held faith.
14. So often policemen are seen as terribly cynical because they see so much of the worst side of life. Do you know any policemen? Is this true or is it a cliché?
