“And you know how to fish, right?” Melinda asked.
“Piece of cake.” Ross closed his book. His eyes felt crossed, and the pitch-black filling the cafeteria windows didn’t help. “Speaking of food, is the café open?”
As Melinda glanced at the clock, Ross spotted Abby sitting across the room. She rose, tucked her bag over her shoulder, and started toward the door. Her gaze didn’t even skim him.
He remembered the day he returned from Mexico. She actually glowed—her eyes, her smile, her entire being—when she saw him. His throat thickened. She looked stunning today in light-brown dress pants and a sleeveless white top. Tall, elegant. Perfect. She was tan—probably from all those hours sitting on the lawn studying—and the sun had raised the highlights from the depths of her brown hair.
It nearly turned him deaf as Melinda continued her monologue.
“So we get up there on Wednesday and fish until Sunday? Where are we going to sleep? After last summer, I swore off tents, thank you. What about Noah? Does he know we’re . . . ?” Her voice faded.
Ross glanced at Melinda. She’d caught him watching Abby leave through the double doors.
“Still nursing regrets?”
He forced a smile. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s not a sin to like her, you know. Even if she was Scotty’s girlfriend.”
Ross opened his mouth, intending to deny his feelings.
But Melinda smiled and touched his hand. “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean you have to stop living.”
Laurie strode into the library looking like she’d reeled in the winning walleye. “I got everything we ever need to know about fishing.” She plopped her backpack onto the table with a smack and began pulling out books. “Fishing from A to Z. The Quintessential Fisherman. Bait and Lures Encyclopedia.”
Abigail picked up one of the books. “A River Runs Through It?”
“That’s recreational reading to get us in the mood.”
Abigail sighed. Her synapses must have been misfiring when she’d registered the Sojourners for the contest. Just because a few old members surfaced from the dusty rosters didn’t mean their ranks would swell or that they had a prayer of winning. She pushed the books away. “I don’t know, Laurie. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to fish.”
“So?” Laurie pushed the book back. “Miss Straight-A Student can’t learn? Girlfriend, you are the one who told me that anything I needed I could find in a book.” The wind had teased Laurie’s kinky reddish-brown hair but left a nice glow in her green eyes. “C’mon. It’ll be fun. Remember fun?”
Uh, actually, no. Abigail hadn’t had fun since the day she spent with—
“And I hear that they’re having other contests too. Like the largest walleye, northern pike, and the most crappies.” Laurie raised her eyebrows as if Abigail had the slightest idea what she was talking about and should be impressed.
“Crappies?”
Laurie dug out a slightly crumpled green flyer from her backpack. “And they’re having a cook-off. Best shore lunch batter.”
“Gross.”
Laurie’s face fell. “Please? I know it’ll be fun. A final fling.”
“Our only fling.”
“Yes, but final. As in, I’m going home to Sioux Falls and you’re going—”
“No, I’m staying here. They offered me an assistant professor position.”
“What?” Laurie’s voice rose, eliciting a chorus of hushes. She leaned closer.
Abigail smiled. Just when she’d decided life wasn’t fair, that she’d have to move home and listen to her parents wax eloquent about her sister’s handsome, accomplished fiancé, she’d been rescued. Thank You, God. She’d begun to wonder if the Almighty even knew she was down here. She certainly wasn’t making an impression so far. “Assistant professor. Greek and Hebrew department.”
Laurie high-fived her. “Way to go. Guess you’ll be tutoring all the summer school flunkies then, huh?”
Abigail shrugged. As long as she was employed. And busy. Preferably too busy to let the wedding invitation, now shoved deep inside her Greek verbs dictionary, do serious damage to her self-esteem. Too busy to be hurt that her sister had asked her to be a personal attendant rather than a bridesmaid.
Just because God had given her beautiful, talented younger sister an adoring fiancé who relegated Abigail to an afterthought in the wedding party didn’t mean He’d forgotten her, right? Twenty-eight wasn’t too old to find the perfect man—even if it felt like that at Bethel Bridal College. Except she wasn’t looking. She liked her life, her dedication to splicing ancient languages and discovering God’s treasures within His own words.
“So that means you’ll be tutoring Ross,” Laurie said through Abigail’s thoughts.
Abigail blinked at her. “What?”
“Word has it he failed his Greek final.”
Abigail kept her face stoic. “Interesting.”
Laurie glared at her. “Why don’t you just tell him the truth and end this charade?”
What truth? That he’d skewered her heart the day he walked out on her at Scotty’s funeral? Or that he’d stomped their relationship to a pulp a month later when he accused her of loving Scotty instead of him? Or that he hadn’t once, not in a year and a half, mentioned the fact that he’d declared his love? Had he been lying to her even then?
There was a reason she preferred her books to men. Her Greek book didn’t make her want to hide in a closet and cry.
“What charade?”
“Oh, please.” Laurie shook her head. “The guise of grieving girlfriend. You and I both know that you never loved Scotty the way you love Ross.”
“Shh.” Abigail leaned close, her voice tight. “Oh, thank you for that news. I was just waiting for the right time to announce to the entire campus that I was hanging around Scotty to get to his brother.”
Laurie went white, and Abigail felt sick. Despite her sarcastic, arsenic tone, every word was horribly, bitterly, unforgivably true.
Scotty had been a friend—not a boyfriend, but it looked that way. Only Scotty knew that she accompanied him home on the weekends not to visit her family or even to study with him, but to attend Ross’s baseball games and bankrupt him in Monopoly. Around Ross she didn’t need the academic accolades to feel special, didn’t have to carry a book like a portable friend. Around Ross, she didn’t feel like an afterthought. In fact, she’d believed that perhaps she’d been Ross’s main thought.
At least until he took Scotty’s place on the campus hotshot list.
“I’m sorry,” Abigail said softly and touched Laurie’s arm. “I’m just—”
“Hurting.” Laurie took her hand. “Let’s go to the contest. Maybe in Deep Haven, away from the campus, you’ll find a way to make peace, if not friends.”
Abigail dredged up a smile and the smallest of nods. But she knew the truth now, even if she hadn’t then. Ross wasn’t the thirteen-year-old boy she’d fallen for when she’d socked him in the eye with a baseball. She’d never be able to keep up with this charismatic Ross nor muscle through his harem.
Most of all, she wasn’t about to love a man who considered her only one of his adoring multitudes.
“A FISHING CONTEST in the woods of Minnesota.” Ross stepped out of his SUV. The fresh air of Wilderness Challenge, a camp nestled in the northern Minnesota landscape, loosened his taut nerves. “I can nearly smell the fish just waiting to jump onto my hook.”
“You’re gonna have to unpack first.” Bucko tossed a sleeping bag at Ross, hitting him on the shoulder. “Hello? Stop smelling and join your team please.”
Ross ignored him and headed toward the lodge. “Noah?” Last summer, camp director and youth pastor Noah Standing Bear had answered God’s call to drag inner-city kids to the life-changing terrain of the forest. Ross served as a counselor during its first season. His chest tightened at the memory of trying to teach street-hardened kids the truths of the gospel.
They’d barely es
caped with their lives.
“Noah?” he called again.
The screen door to the lodge squealed open, and the subject of Ross’s thoughts tromped out to the porch. Noah grinned and wrapped his huge grip around Ross’s hand. The Native American, the size of a small grizzly, might look like he could scare a kid into salvation, but God had gentled him into a man with the touch of Christ.
“You made it.” Noah surveyed Ross’s motley group of wannabe fisherpersons, now unloading their sleeping bags, crates of food, and donated fishing tackle. “Are you ready for this?”
“I hope so. You’re going to give me pointers, right?”
Noah made a face. “Pal, if you’re depending on me, you’re going to be eating peanut butter. But don’t worry. I hooked you up with a champion fisherman. He should be here anytime.”
Noah waved to Bucko. “I have to take off tomorrow morning for a meeting in the Cities. You’ll have to hold down the fort.” He gave a one-armed hug to Melinda. “You’re looking mighty fine, Lindy.”
The fact that Noah could make Melinda, a woman who’d spent her youth shrugging at colorful remarks from the hoodlums in her school, blush told Ross that Noah could still turn a girl to mush. Why couldn’t Ross do that? Sure, he had no shortage of friends, but the girl he really wanted was about as susceptible to his compliments as a sunbaked Egyptian brick.
Noah turned to Ross. “Okay, I housed the fellas in the A-frame and the ladies in the cookshack. Even with the other group, there should be plenty of room.”
“Other group?” Ross felt slightly ill.
Melinda frowned. “Uh-oh. I forgot. I gave the Sojourners Noah’s number. It only seemed right. They’re such a small group.”
“They’re the competition.” Ouch. He didn’t mean to sound petty, but still, weren’t they trying to win?
“They’re fellow fishermen. We’re here to have fun, right?” Melinda gave him a one-eyed frown that could make a weak man tremble.
Ross nodded.
She smiled slowly. “Oh, I know what this is about. Listen, she probably won’t even show up. I can’t imagine that fishing is her sport.”
Ross closed his eyes and shook his head. “Oh no, Lindy. Anything she can beat me in . . . that’s Abby’s sport.” Behind his eyes, he saw Abby laughing, the sunset to her back, tease in her eyes as she choked up on the bat and prepared for a grand slam. “No, making me feel like loser scum is her absolute favorite thing to do. She’ll be here. Or I’ll clean the outhouses for the entire week.”
“Are you sure you’re not lost?” Laurie leaned over the Rand McNally atlas on her lap, her nose nearly touching the page. “I think we were supposed to turn back at the little bear holding the Gunflint Trail sign.”
“Until he’s six-foot-something and waving semaphores, I’m sticking by the directions Mr. Standing Bear gave me.”
Laurie shook her head. “You gotta learn to let go, live the wild life.”
“Oh yeah, right. With a quarter tank of gas and the sun nearly gone? No thanks.”
Abigail hung an elbow out the window of her rusty Honda and let the snappy Lake Superior air tangle her hair. The scenery had the magical ability to snare her tension and leave her feeling strangely emptied. New. Similar to the smell that emanated from her gear—a sleeping bag, tackle box, and hiking boots. She’d even found a fishing vest and filled it with a tidy list of supplies—clippers, Polaroid glasses, insect repellent, a fishing knife, and a compact Windbreaker—everything Wally at the SuperSports shop had suggested after their “fishing basics” class.
She glanced in her rearview mirror. The other carload of Sojourners—three ladies and a guy named Simon—was glued to her tail. In her backseat, the stacks of bookmarked how-to fishing books had scattered onto the boxes of MRE lunches and Tuna Helper. She’d also surfed the Internet and found a shore lunch batter recipe that just might make the judges’ mouths water.
If she decided to enter the contest, of course.
Excitement felt like a fresh breeze through her soul. Her professors, the dean of students, and even the campus newspaper had adopted Ross’s fishing idea as if he were the maestro of marketing. Still, after delivering her Greek thesis, she’d hunkered down and absorbed the advice of fishing masters and for the first time thought, yes, perhaps she could win this contest. Maybe not haul in a muskie but land a keeper that would prove she could keep up with the New Lifers and stop her paltry group from disintegrating.
She’d started Sojourners with a desire to see students learn the Bible, believing that a solid knowledge of the Scriptures gave power to evangelism. However, the New Lifers seemed to attract students like walleyes around a school of juicy cisco, despite her exegetical efforts.
She couldn’t deny the lurking fear that two days into this excursion she’d find Laurie and the other members of her group singing “Kumbaya” around the New Lifers’ campfire. Leaving her alone at her own dying blaze, with her in-depth Bible study of 1 John, trying to have a scintillating theological discussion with the raccoons.
And Ross would be right. She had about as much charisma as a hermit crab. The girl who surrounded herself with books. Her shell of an organization would crumble the minute she vacated.
She stomped down the accelerator and saw the County Road 14 sign fly by.
Laurie pointed at the dirt road snaking up into the pine-shrouded hills. “Our turn?”
Abigail sighed, found the nearest driveway, and turned the car around, hoping that she hadn’t also overshot her abilities.
She pulled into the courtyard of the Wilderness Challenge camp. The magenta sky outlined the dark lodge, save for one yellow light pooling gold on the steps. Abigail turned off the car and climbed out, amazed at the sudden calm. The crickets buzzed, and a breeze rustled the birch and pines. “Hello?”
Abigail rubbed her arms. The impulse to dive into the car and abandon this very bad idea, this leap into Ross’s world, nearly possessed her legs. She had to muscle them up the steps. She paused, then opened the door.
Her heart stopped in her throat.
Ross sat at a long wooden table, a kerosene lamp illuminating his unruly blond hair. He studied a map, his long fingers tracing a line and his lips moving as he talked to himself. It took her back to a memory of his freshman year, the time she’d caught him memorizing the lineage of Christ before his New Testament survey class.
He looked up.
Her breath caught. In his eyes was a look that made her forget he’d stomped her heart to a pulp. A look that always had the power to render her weak and make her believe she alone knew the one truth that lined the secret pool of his heart.
Fear.
ROSS HADN’T INTENDED for the fishing contest to hook Abby. Still, his breath skipped at her outline in the doorframe of the lodge. The woman had the ability, even as a teen, to knock his heart to his knees, and that power had only intensified with age. His lamplight illuminated her shock, then the sudden armament of her emotional defenses. She looked ready for battle in a pair of hiking boots, a down vest, and her long, beautiful, dark-coffee-brown hair in braids.
He cleared his throat, hoping to swallow back any trace of her effect. “Hey.”
She opened her mouth, and he braced himself. He certainly didn’t deserve anything civil after the jerk he’d been following Scotty’s accident. It took him nearly six months to figure out that she’d needed him and that he’d treated her with the gentleness of a boar. Even if he’d been mistaken about her feelings for him, she didn’t deserve the way he drove a stake through their lifelong friendship. He’d hoped for this moment when he might—
“Is anyone here?” Laurie burst in behind Abby. “Oh . . . hi, Ross.”
“Hi, Laurie. Everyone is down by the campfire. I’m just . . .” He looked at the map he’d been studying and quickly donned the good-ole-boy smile that had brought him campus notoriety. “Goofin’ around. C’mon in.” He stood, and his heart fell when Abby turned and walked out the door. Laurie shrugged and too
k off behind her.
The door slammed, and Ross stood in the quiet lodge, regret knotting his chest.
Well, he hadn’t spent every waking moment of the last three weeks putting together this fund-raising fling to try to earn Abby’s forgiveness.
Who was he kidding? He’d been working for an entire year to figure out how to erase his caustic words. They’d been spoken in grief. In misunderstanding. In stupidity. Tell me the truth. You were in love with Scotty, not me. Even now, listening to his voice and seeing her crumpled face in memory made his stomach churn. I should have known better.
He took a deep breath and gathered the map. He heard Abby’s voice outside, giving directions to her friends, shortly drowned out by others. It seemed the entire New Life crew abandoned the campfire to help the Sojourners unpack. Ross snuck out the back door and down to the empty campfire pit. A loon’s call echoed, and the smell of burning wood drew him close. He stared at the flames, mesmerized.
“You okay, Ross?” Noah sat on the third tier of the ring of benches, with his feet propped up. He wore a flannel shirt, his huge arms hanging over his knees.
Ross shrugged. “Just regret.”
Noah hummed. It invited exposition. Ross sat, his back to Noah, staring at the blanket of stars. “Do you ever feel trapped? Like you’re watching your life from the outside, wishing you’d made different choices?”
Behind him, Noah murmured understanding.
Ross took a deep breath. “Don’t you wish you could just start over? Be someone different?”
“I did.” Noah moved to sit beside him. “Remember who you’re talking to.” He gave a wry grin. “I’m still trying to outrun my past.” He glanced at Ross. “Is this about your brother?”
Ross sighed. “Let’s just say that my life derailed the day he died. And now I don’t know where to get back on.”
Chance of Loving You Page 20
