“I’m excited,” Aimee told him, feeling goose bumps rise. “I know this is what my mother would have wanted. My chance to make a real difference in people’s lives.”
“You’re already doing that. With my grandmother. She said she’d take her paintbrushes to OT this week. And—” he shook his head—“you’ve made a difference with Wanda Clay. I wouldn’t have taken bets on that. But she was grinning like a kid at Disneyland today.”
“I know.” Aimee smiled, remembering it. “She can hardly wait until Potter is officially a certified therapy dog. She’s already talking about visits to the other Hope hospitals. I think Potter’s going to remind Wanda why she was called to nursing in the first place—to help people.”
“Another thing God had a hand in?” Lucas asked, reminding Aimee of her words back when they were first getting to know each other.
“I’d say so.” She nodded. “Absolutely.”
Lucas reached across the table, traced his finger across the back of Aimee’s hand. “And then there’s Margie. Now that woman has a plan.”
Aimee’s face warmed. “Yes, she does.”
“She’d be happy to know I’m having dessert with her favorite princess.”
Aimee wrinkled her nose. “Probably best not to tell her. Besides, you promised: no valentines, no birthday fuss. I won’t lay that double whammy on anyone.”
Lucas was quiet for a moment, holding Aimee’s gaze. The brief silence was filled with the distant sound of ocean waves and the tinkling wind chimes. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons floated from the windows of Rosalynn’s studio.
“I do have something for your birthday,” Lucas said finally. A smile quirked his lips. “I promise it has nothing to do with hearts and cupids. It’s something small, but a big part of the reason I brought you here.”
“Now I’m intrigued.” Aimee was glad he’d kept hold of her hand. Just that small touch was a valentine all in itself. “What is this gift?”
“You’ll have to walk with me.” Lucas stood and reached out to take her hand again. “Over there. We’ll be able to see the sunset better too.”
He was right. They stopped near a little bench just beyond the studio, in a section of the garden that was a Monet canvas of spring flowers: irises, tulips, daffodils, and snow-white dogwood. They looked out over the sea, gone rosy-gold and purple as it yielded to the sunset. Aimee’s heart sank as Lucas let go of her hand. Right now, his touch, his kind heart, were the only gifts she needed.
“What are you doing?” she asked, squinting as he plucked at a chest-high shrub a few feet away.
“Getting your gift,” he told her. “Which apparently requires a pocketknife. Unlike rhubarb. Hang on.”
“Okay.” Aimee smiled, perplexed, until the sweet and so-familiar scent wafted on the ocean breeze. It took her back to every birthday she could remember. “Lucas, is that—?”
“Daphne. Your birthday flower.” He stood in front of her, holding the sprig like the fragile, heaven-sent beauty it was. “I had no clue it was growing here. But you told my grandmother. And she told me.”
“Oh, Lucas. This is . . .” Aimee’s voice cracked. “Nothing could be better.”
“Good. Hold still.” He reached out, tucked the daphne behind Aimee’s ear. Then traced his fingers very gently along her jaw. “It’s a pretty flower. But you are far more beautiful. And you’ve made a difference in my life too. I hope that continues—I want it to. Happy birthday, Aimee.”
Lucas took her face in his hands—carefully, as if she were the flower now—bent down, and touched his lips to her cheek. Then leaned back a little to study her face. Waiting, Aimee suspected, for her permission. She smiled, thinking it might scare him to death if she cheered him on Margie-style. She leaned a little closer, lifted her face, half closed her eyes.
Lucas’s hands slid toward the back of Aimee’s head, his fingers buried in her hair. He drew her into the kiss. Lips warm, gentle, a little tentative at first . . . then, when she responded, far more thorough, claiming her mouth fully. Aimee slipped her arms around Lucas, kissing him back. She wasn’t sure if the humming in her ears was her heart or the Pacific Ocean.
“Well . . .” Aimee took a breath and tried to calm her racing heart—to no avail. She tilted her head, drinking in Lucas’s beautiful blue eyes. And thought of another couple long ago. “So,” she teased, kissing the corner of his mouth, “do I taste like fraises des bois?”
Lucas laughed, shifting his strong arms to hike her closer against him. “Maybe. But I’m the analytical type. I think I’ll need another sample.”
“That depends.”
“On what?” There was the smallest pinch of doubt between Lucas’s brows.
“On whether or not we are officially valentines.”
Lucas grinned. “The double whammy? You’re pulling that card?”
“Of course. She who wears the daphne sets the course.”
“In that case, bring on the chubby cupids.” Lucas chuckled, his lips already nuzzling her throat. “I’m not worried about arrows. I’ve survived rhubarb geese. And . . .” His tone grew serious. “I think this is only the beginning for us, Aimee.”
“I’m good with that,” she whispered, despite the fact that her heart had just bested Vivaldi, string by glorious string.
Everything feels right finally. Thank you, Lord. Thank you.
Aimee wove her arms around Lucas Marchal’s neck and returned his kiss, very certain that this happy beginning had all the right ingredients.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix together the following ingredients and put into an 8 x 8–inch ungreased pan:
3 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
3 cups chopped rhubarb
1 tsp grated orange zest
¼–½ cup sugar, depending on sweetness of berries
Then mix together until crumbly:
½ cup flour
½ cup rolled oats
½ cup brown sugar
¼ tsp ground cloves
¾ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/3 cup melted butter (may substitute vegan margarine)
Sprinkle crumble mixture over fruit. Bake at 350 degrees for forty to fifty minutes, until golden. Enjoy!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CANDACE CALVERT is a former ER nurse and author of the Mercy Hospital series, the Grace Medical series, and the new Crisis Team series. Her medical dramas offer readers a chance to “scrub in” on the exciting world of emergency medicine. Wife, mother, and very proud grandmother, Candace makes her home in northern California. Visit her website at www.candacecalvert.com.
ALSO BY CANDACE CALVERT
Crisis Team series
By Your Side
Step by Step (coming January 2016)
Grace Medical series
Trauma Plan
Rescue Team
Life Support
Mercy Hospital series
Critical Care
Disaster Status
Code Triage
ROSS SPRINGER KNEW he was going into the drink the second Abby Cushman stepped up to the mark, fixed those intelligent blue eyes on the bull’s-eye, and let the beanbag zip. Thwack! Home run as usual, and Ross landed with a splash in the icy water.
He launched out of the bath with a gasp.
“Did you make her mad?” His bull-sized friend Bucko wore a smirk when he handed Ross a towel.
Ross swiped his face, watching the only girl he’d ever loved strut away. “That’s her default expression around me, Buck.”
Bucko’s eyes danced with tease against his dark face. “You mean I’ve discovered a female that doesn’t swoon and drop into a heap when you walk into the room?” He feigned a horrified look.
Ross threw the towel at him. “How are we doing on funds?”
Bucko shook his head as Ross climbed back onto the platform and scanned the gym. The crowd for the ministry fund-raiser swelled, a loud hum bouncing off the bleachers, the upra
ised basketball net, and the announcer’s booth. Still, he’d have to take a dousing if his group hoped to fill the coffers for next year’s events. Ross’s evangelistic ski trip to Spirit Mountain in Duluth had netted more fun than funds, and he hoped to leave a legacy as the leader of New Life other than the guy who drained the pot.
Who was he kidding? Even if they lured the entire Bethel College campus, they wouldn’t earn enough to pull them out of bankruptcy. Ross sat on the platform, chilled to the bone, feeling like an idiot in his cutoffs and doggy-dried hair. He’d led the New Lifers right into the red. Even if he’d organized the largest youth evangelistic events in college history, handing out blankets and lunches to more street kids than they could count, his leadership would be forgotten faster than the five o’clock news.
So much for his final hurrah. Super senior Ross taking the reins of the New Lifers to resurrect the family name . . . only to grind it to dust. This time next year, he’d be driving one of his father’s meat delivery trucks while a new star yanked New Life out of the undertow of debt.
His parents’ unspoken prophecies would finally see fulfillment. He’d never be the man Scotty would have been. Even if Scotty didn’t become a famous preacher, he’d had the smarts to take over his father’s business as suburban butcher turned businessman. Someone respectable. Someone who didn’t fail his second senior year and run the New Lifers into the grave.
Someone Abby could love.
Perhaps even someone God could use for His eternal plans.
Ross smiled, trying not to let despair seep through his expression, and scanned the room, hoping to attract some business. His gaze stopped on Abby—big surprise. He hadn’t been able to delete her from his line of vision all year, and even now, with their once-beautiful relationship frayed beyond repair, he felt the familiar rush of grief.
If it hadn’t been for his foolish heart buying into campus gossip, she might just be smiling in his general direction, turning his insides to jelly instead of knots. She laughed with her friends, and he imagined the sound of it—hot and sweet, like burning syrup on his heart.
“Ross, get ready!” Melinda stood at the line, a grin on her face, her cornrowed hair piled atop her head. “I have great aim.”
“Prove it!” Ross waved his hands, and she botched her first throw. “Double or nothing, Lindy!”
Melinda surrendered another ticket. “Sweet thing, I’ve been waiting to dunk you since last summer.” She wound up like a big-league hurler and pitched the beanbag. Ross heard it thump a second before his bench released.
The water gulped him, and this time he settled on the bottom. The carnival organizers had thrown in a batch of plastic goldfish, and they whirled around him in spastic circles.
He sprang out of the water with a gasp.
Melinda splashed at him, laughing. “Got ya!”
Ross splashed her back, feeling buoyant for the first time in weeks. No, maybe years. Melinda screamed and jumped away. Bucko tossed Ross a towel as he climbed out of the pool.
“I got an idea.” Ross could hear excitement in his voice. And why not? Maybe, just maybe, he might be able to resurrect this pitiful ending to what might have been a stellar senior year and a bright future.
“Yeah?” Bucko pushed Ross toward the platform. “If it includes me getting wet, the answer is no.”
“Fishing, Bucko.” Ross climbed to his perch. “We’re gonna go fishing.”
Abigail would dunk him again if payback didn’t feel so good. She veered a wide path around the tank on her second time around the gym.
“You about ready to head home?” she asked Laurie, her roommate and fellow grad student. If it weren’t for Laurie’s dousing of guilt, Abigail would be poring over her doctorate thesis right now—a Greek translation of the book of 1 John.
“You need some cotton candy. Some meat on those bones.” Laurie hooked Abigail’s elbow and wove them through the crowd.
Laurie’s words stung. Exactly what Abigail needed—another reminder about her all-bones-no-curves body. Just because she happened to like vegetables and exercise didn’t make her a candidate for fattening up from her friends.
Besides, she’d long ago given up trying to add curves and liked herself this way.
Well, sorta.
As Abigail stood listening to her friend order for her, she noticed a sizable group flocked around Ross, hypnotized as he hard-sold some idea—probably a crazy, albeit fun, one. The lingering satisfaction of dunking him evaporated when she saw that his burnished blond hair had dried to an enticing, curly mop. A few renegade chunks flopped into those mischievous brown eyes that still had the power to wrap her heart into knots and make her forget her real name.
Abigail Cushman. Not Abby. Not his home-run gal. Especially not Babe, his lucky charm. She turned away before tears burned her eyes. Why had she let Laurie talk her into attending this event?
Well, it wasn’t as if she could skip the ministry fund-raiser. The Sojourners, the Bible club Abigail founded two years ago, had their own contest—guessing the number of jelly beans in a vase. But by the looks of the line in front of New Life, the Sojourners might as well divide up the spoils and head home. More bodies, mostly girls not yet vaccinated against Ross’s charm, pushed to hear his voice.
“C’mon,” Laurie said as her gaze landed on the object of Abigail’s torments. “Let’s see what’s up.”
Oh, sure, draw closer to the flame. Abigail shook her head when Laurie wheedled into the crowd and deliberately turned her back, hoping to escape Ross’s catchy enthusiasm. “A fishing contest. Up north in Deep Haven. A purse of nearly five thousand dollars.”
Abigail cocked an eyebrow. Five thousand dollars? That kind of cash would pay for a new shipment of Bibles for their sister group in Ukraine. She turned, caught Laurie’s eye.
“We can even divide into teams, get sponsors, and run our own mini contest,” Ross exclaimed over the mounting fervor.
Well, New Life could divide into teams. But the Sojourners had a grand total of six members. Over the past year, thanks to Ross’s ski trip, the Sojourners had lost most of their roster to New Life.
But fishing? As in scaly bodies, hooks, and worms? Abigail shuddered. No thank you.
Except . . . She glanced at Ross. He mounted his dunking platform, standing on it like a politician, whipping his crowd into a frenzy. Fishing! Fun! Fund-raising! He bounced on his feet while he spoke, squishing water from his flip-flops, his trademark footgear that had started a yearlong trend on campus. She had the urge to grab another beanie and sink him.
Just like he’d done to her heart.
“Let’s do it,” Laurie said. “It would be fun. Maybe we can even recruit new blood.”
New blood. From New Life. Abigail instantly felt sick for allowing the thought to tug at her. They were all in this together, weren’t they? Neither the Sojourners nor the New Lifers had the corner on evangelism. Still, watching the tide grow as if Ross were some sort of movie star—and it didn’t hurt his reputation as campus catch when he turned on that million-watt smile—sharpened Abigail’s competitive edge. One last fight to prove to herself, her college, her family . . . to Ross . . . that she wasn’t the dowdy, all-brains-no-fun girl glued to her Greek book. That God could use her too.
A fishing contest.
Brains versus beauty.
And to think she’d once briefly dreamed she belonged in beauty’s arms. She glanced at Laurie. “Yeah, maybe. Find out what you can.”
Laurie melted into the crowd, smitten by Ross’s magical power.
Abigail shook her head, dumped her cotton candy into the trash bin, and headed back to her apartment.
“YOU WANT TO TAKE a bunch of unseasoned college students on a fishing trip to raise money?”
Ross looked up from his studies into Melinda’s soul-spearing brown eyes. “Yep.”
“Then I’m going to state it loud and clear so we’re moving to the same music.” Melinda leaned over the lunch table, her red fingernails cl
icking. She looked like a Hawaiian princess in a turban and orange floral-print muumuu. “I don’t touch fish. I don’t cook it, clean it, or pull any ugly hook out of its mouth—noway, nohow.”
“Noted.”
“And the no-touching rule includes worms, leeches, and any other kind of gross and slimy fishy-type bait.”
“Got it.” Ross glanced at his Greek book, painfully sure that even if he hot-glued his head to the pages, he hadn’t a hope of imprinting the words onto his brain for his final exam.
“You feeling okay?” Melinda sat beside him and pressed her hand on his forehead. “You’re not sassin’ me.”
Ross hung his head in his hands. “I’ve wised up. You know everything, Melinda.”
His words only half kidded. Nearly finished with her master’s in child psychology, Melinda had a job lined up at Elisha’s Room in New York as a youth counselor for the homeless, a job Ross would give all the teeth in his mouth for. He’d nearly landed the position, highlighting his two-year stint after his junior year serving with Youths in Crisis in Mexico in lieu of a diploma. In the end, however, they wanted brains as well as savvy. Something he obviously didn’t have. He already felt like the class dunce, being three years older than every other senior.
It seemed downright unfair that his desire to reach the lost youth of the new millennium would require a bachelor’s degree.
Melinda laughed, her eyes sparkling. “Such a smart boy. Well, I don’t know how you got the dean of students to jump aboard your idea nor how you talked the Wellbridge Group into offering a matching grant to the winner’s purse. That’s a fine bit of fund-raising, Springer.”
“Finesse, my dear Lindy,” Ross said in his most-likely-to-succeed tone. She didn’t have to know that he’d called his father with a proposal to fund the contest and received a direct line to the Wellbridge president, a personal friend of Ronald Springer. For now, his father was in the dark, and Ross was still in his good graces. But then again, what choice did his father have, really? He had one son left on whom to pin his hopes.
Chance of Loving You Page 19
