Retreat (Balm in Gilead Book 3)

by Noelle Adams

  “Read it,” he grunted.

  Very slowly—too slowly—she opened the envelope flap, slid out the piece of paper, and unfolded it.

  In a few seconds, she gasped loudly. “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “No, Zeke! Please. I don’t want you to resign.” Her voice broke slightly, a clear sign that her emotions were rising quickly. “If you don’t want to do this, I can understand. We can work it out. You don’t have to resign.”

  “I’m not quitting because I don’t want to do this,” he murmured thickly, taking a step closer to her. “I’m quitting because I do.”

  She sucked in another sharp breath, her eyes wide and bewildered. “You…”

  “Do.”

  She looked up and down between the resignation letter she held and his face, still trying to process what he told her.

  “I love this job,” he said, his voice still like gravel. “I do. But I… if I have a chance with you, then I’d give it up in a heartbeat.” When her eyes widened even more, he was suddenly afraid he’d said too much. He made a little sound in his throat and added, “I want to try.”

  “You want to…”

  “Try.”

  Something had come alive in her eyes at last. They were blazing, exactly the way his heart was blazing too. But her lips wobbled slightly as she said, “We were supposed to wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “I didn’t want to wait.”

  She laughed softly and surprised him by going back behind her desk and leaning over her computer. “I didn’t want to wait either.”

  “So we…” He frowned when she seemed completely focused on the work on her computer, rather than on this discussion—which surely was more important.

  He thought it was anyway.

  “Uh, Cecily?”

  “Hold on.”

  His frown turned into a scowl. “Cecily?”

  “Hold on,” she said, more firmly, now typing something on her keyboard.

  “Damn it, Cecily! What the hell are you doing? I thought we were having a conversation here.”

  She laughed. She actually laughed, and then she must have hit print because her printer started to hum.

  His scowl faded as he gazed at her fond, laughing expression. She’d gone over to pick up two pages from the printer, and she brought them over where he was standing to show him.

  “We are having a conversation,” she said. “I’d been working on this and wanted to show you.” She handed him the sheets. “I don’t want you to quit, Zeke. Not yet anyway.”

  He felt better knowing that she hadn’t been more interested in work than in him, but he frowned in confusion as he focused his eyes on what was written on the papers.

  “I’ve been thinking about this all morning,” she explained. “I’ve been trying to think of a way for us to try this without you giving up your job. So I thought of this. A one-month sabbatical. You’ve worked for me for eight years without even taking a vacation. If anyone deserves a sabbatical, you do. So you can take a month off from work—and you won’t be under my supervision for that time. So we can try this out to see what happens. I thought a month would be long enough for us to know. We’re both too old to have a long ‘hanging out’ period. We’ll either need to do this thing or not. But given our situation, I think we’ll need at least a month to really try it to see if it’s what we want.”

  She was talking quickly, trying to explain as he read. She cleared her throat and added, “I know it’s just a partial solution since technically I’ll still be your boss. Maybe it’s really just a gesture, but I want to at least have it on paper that I’m not supervising you this month. I don’t know what else to do, and I don’t want you to quit… unless you really have to.”

  He stared up at her, his mind whirling, his heart whirling, everything whirling. “But the work—”

  “I’ll hire folks to do the outside work, and Janet can supervise the housekeeping staff for a month. Obviously, you’d do the work better, but I’m sure we can muddle through for a month. If… if…”

  He’d obviously been silent for too long. She was starting to think he didn’t want what she was offering.

  He opened his mouth to tell her it was perfect, it was the ideal solution for their tricky situation. She was brilliant. She always had been.

  But instead of words, he stared down at the formal agreement she’d printed up, beautifully articulated and professionally formatted, and he started to laugh.

  He laughed.

  For real.

  Long and loud and uninhibited.

  He couldn’t stop. The amusement completely overwhelmed him.

  He’d smiled and chuckled and smirked over the past several years, and more recently he’d done them more often, as he’d gotten closer to Cecily.

  But he hadn’t laughed—really laughed—like this for at least nine years.

  Cecily stared at him like he was crazy.

  He tried to rein it in, control himself, but he couldn’t seem to do it. Something like joy was washing over him, and there was too much of it. The overflow was being released as laughter.

  “What are you laughing at?” she demanded after a minute.

  He tried to answer but couldn’t.

  With a disapproving face, she snatched the papers out of his hands. “I was just trying to think of something to do,” she said primly. “If you don’t want this agreement, then—”

  “Cecily,” he burst out, amusement still rippling through him. He took the papers out of her hands, put them on the desk, and signed the line at the bottom of the last page.

  She stared at his signature and then stared up at his face. “Then why are you laughing?” she demanded.

  He still couldn’t really stop, but he did manage to take her into his arms, propping her against the desk so he could kiss her deep and firm. “Because I’m happy,” he rasped against her mouth. “Maybe you can’t recognize it, but that’s what it is.”

  “Oh.” She couldn’t say any more because he was kissing her again. She was responding to the kiss with as much fervor and enthusiasm as she had before.

  Both of them were flushed and panting when he finally made himself pull away.

  “So you’re good with the agreement, I guess,” she said.

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “It’s perfect. I’ve never known anyone else to need a contract in order to date, but hey, you’ve always been special.”

  “It’s not a contract. It’s an agreement.” Her voice was edged with amusement now too, but she managed to sound almost cool as she admitted, “I guess it’s kind of crazy, but I’m serious about the work we do here, and I wanted to protect your—”

  “I know you did. Thank you.” He kissed her again.

  “So I guess this means we can… we can date.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Are you free tomorrow evening?”

  “I am,” she said, stroking his beard as if she liked the feel of it. “As it happens.”

  “Good. It’s a date then.”

  Seven

  The next evening, Cecily felt as jittery and excited as a teenage girl on her first date.

  As she dressed to go out with Zeke, she tried to remind herself that she was a mature, responsible woman and there was no reason to expect this thing with Zeke—which seemed to have sprung out of nowhere—to lead to anything permanent.

  But she couldn’t help but be excited.

  Really excited.

  She had no idea what to wear—since she didn’t know what Zeke had planned. She was sure it wasn’t going to be fancy though, so she finally decided on a casual skirt—a long flowing one rather than the pencil skirts she normally wore—and green top that brought out the color of her eyes with a matching cardigan. She looked at herself for a long time in the mirror and decided she looked as good as she was going to look. Surely this was appropriate for most of the possibilities Zeke would have planned for the evening.

  She grabbed her little bag and walked outside. She wa
s a bit early, and there was no reason for Zeke to come and knock on her door. That would feel strange, unnatural. Better just to meet him outside.

  She wandered out onto the path that led to his cottage and paused when she saw one of the beds along the fence had been weeded today.

  She knew it had because she’d noticed a couple of stray weeds in Zeke’s usually immaculate beds this morning and reminded herself he was on sabbatical, so it would be Monday before the weeds got pulled when the local guys she’d hired came to work on the grounds.

  The weeds were gone.

  She knew exactly what happened to them.

  When she heard a voice say from behind her, “Hey, I was just coming to get you,” she turned around to see Zeke.

  He looked as dressed up as she’d seen him in over eight years—which wasn’t particularly dressed up. He wore a pair of khaki trousers and a shirt with a collar. The shirt was a very loud orange-red color, but still…

  He’d definitely made an effort.

  She frowned at him, despite the flutter in her chest. “Have you been weeding?”

  His eyes shot down to the bed, and his lips twisted slightly.

  “You’re supposed to be on sabbatical,” she continued at the confirmation in his expression.

  “I like to work.”

  “But you’re on sabbatical.”

  He scowled. “You’re saying I can’t do anything?”

  “Don’t you want to take some time off?”

  “No. I hate lazing about. I like to keep things nice. Can’t we call it a hobby?”

  She couldn’t help but chuckle. “I guess you can do a little. But make sure it’s just a little. I’ve hired a crew to come a couple of times a week, and there’s got to be the big jobs left for them to do. You can pull a few weeds, if you really can’t help yourself.”

  “Good.” They smiled at each other for a minute. “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on then.”

  She was smiling again at his terse and very unromantic invitation, but she walked beside him as they headed for his pickup truck. He’d bought the truck sometime during his marriage, and he’d had it ever since. He did all the work on it himself, and it still ran well, despite its age.

  Cecily felt a little strange as she climbed into the passenger seat—since it wasn’t the kind of vehicle she normally rode in—but she didn’t mind.

  It felt like Zeke.

  And she liked Zeke.

  A lot.

  He slanted her a suspicious look. “What?” he demanded gruffly.

  “What, what?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  He was worried, she realized. He wasn’t acting worried, but he was. He wanted her to be having a good time. She gave him a little smile. “I was thinking this is kind of strange. But nice.”

  He nodded, letting out a visible breath. She’d spoken the truth, and evidently it was the right thing to say.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Not far.”

  He drove them about fifteen minutes until they reached a public access to the beach and nature preserve. There was only one other car there. October on the Outer Banks was still usually pleasant and fairly warm, but most of the tourists had gone back to their lives. The air was comfortable, with just a note of fall crispness, and Cecily felt another little thrill of excitement when Zeke reached behind his seat and pulled out a paper grocery bag.

  They walked to a table that looked out onto the ocean, and he pulled out the picnic he’d brought. Bread, cheese, deli meats, olives, almonds, grapes, strawberries, chocolate cookies, and wine.

  “Wow,” Cecily said as the containers kept coming. “Did you pick all this stuff out yourself?”

  “Are you kidding? I don’t even know what this bread is.” He picked up a square of focaccia and stared at it like it was an alien.

  She laughed. “What did you do? Go up to someone in the market and ask them to help you pick out a picnic?”

  He grunted his affirmation.

  She laughed even more as he opened the bottle of wine.

  He obviously didn’t mind her laughing. His eyes were deliciously warm as they rested on her face.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening.

  She couldn’t believe a man was looking at her like that.

  She couldn’t believe Zeke was looking at her like that.

  Once again, she tried to suppress the thrills of pleasure that kept rushing through her. She wasn’t a teenager. She wasn’t foolish or naïve. She knew this evening was just that… an evening.

  It wasn’t a promise of a future.

  The sun was getting lower in the sky as they ate, and the temperature was perfect—cool enough to be pleasant but not cold enough to need more than a sweater. The food was good, and the sky was beautiful, and Cecily was very happy.

  She hadn’t been this excited about a man in… years.

  Maybe ever.

  “When was the last date you went on?” she asked after a minute, voicing the path of her thoughts.

  Zeke shot her a quick look. “Not since Lara. She’s the only woman I’ve ever… really dated.”

  She’d wondered if that was true since he’d met Lara in college. She’d assumed he’d gone out a few times with girls in high school and his first year in college, but it evidently hadn’t been much or serious.

  “Why haven’t you dated at all since she died?” she asked. She knew the question was a risk, but if he couldn’t talk about it, then there wasn’t much hope for a relationship between them.

  He met her eyes silently for a moment. Then he finally said, “I haven’t wanted to.”

  “Why not? Surely it’s natural to want to… to be with someone.”

  “Yeah,” he said with more than the usual gravel in his tone. “Sure. I liked being married. I like… sex. I’ve got all the normal drives. But…”

  She was almost holding her breath as he trailed off, a piece of aged cheddar in her hand.

  To her relief, she didn’t have to prompt him to continue. “But at first it hurt too much, the thought of being with anyone but her. And then… and then it was… It felt like I’d just be living a lie, leading women on since I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere.”

  “Why wouldn’t it go anywhere?”

  “Because I just couldn’t see myself being happy… with anyone. It was better to be alone.”

  She thought about this for a long time. It seemed to fit what she knew about him, and she knew he was telling her the truth.

  “To date,” he went on when she didn’t say anything, “you have to hope that it might… lead somewhere. And I never had that hope.”

  She started to ask if he had that hope now—if that was why he was with her at the moment—but she stopped herself before she did. It was too soon for that kind of question. She couldn’t put him on the spot. It wouldn’t be fair.

  And she was a little scared to hear the answer anyway.

  “What about you?” he muttered after a moment.

  She blinked. “What about me?”

  “You haven’t dated anyone recently. At least not that I’ve seen. When was your last date?” His blue eyes were studying her closely, seeing more on her face than she was comfortable with.

  “Uh, let me think. I guess it’s been about two years.” She’d dated a businessman who lived in Raleigh for a couple of months, after they’d met at a conference.

  “That obnoxious guy with the expensive suits?”

  “He wasn’t obnoxious!” she exclaimed.

  Zeke sneered. “He was what my mom used to call a snake-oil salesman.”

  Cecily giggled, realizing with another little thrill that Zeke sounded a little jealous. Jealous. “He wasn’t really. He was a smooth talker, but he wasn’t all fake. He was pretty nice.”

  “So why did you dump him?”

  “What makes you think he didn’t dump me?”

  Zeke rolled his eyes.

  She sighed
and admitted, “I guess I realized it wasn’t worth the trouble. We had a decent time together, but it didn’t feel… I don’t know… it felt like we were just going through the motions.”

  He nodded and looked like he understood what she was saying.

  “I really think I went out with him because he was a decent guy and he’d asked me. I’m not sure I was ever really interested in him.”

  “So why haven’t you dated anyone since?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not surrounded by eligible guys out here, you know. I don’t get asked out very often.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  She opened her mouth to reply but then darted him a quick look when she realized how intimate a question it was.

  “What?” he said with a little frown. “You can pry into people’s souls but don’t want them to do the same with you?”

  “I don’t pry into people’s souls.”

  “But you expect them to open up to you.”

  “I try to be honest and open with other people too.”

  “I know you do,” he said with a softer expression. “So why won’t you answer the question?”

  She swallowed hard. “Um, I don’t know. I don’t think I really have been in love. I thought I was, but…” She shook her head. “No. I’m not sure I have. Is that a little pathetic? Thirty-seven years old and never been in love?”

  “No. It’s not pathetic.” He was scowling again, and this time it was clearly about the way she was talking about herself. “Who did you think you were in love with?”

  “I thought I was in love with my high school boyfriend, but, well, you know how that goes. Then I thought I was in love with a guy in college, but it fizzled out after a couple of months. Then I thought I was in love with…”

  “With who?”

  She put an olive in her mouth and chewed it up to give herself a minute before she answered. “There was a man from seminary. He was older than me, and we never actually dated. But we… we did some work together, and I was completely infatuated with him. I really thought that eventually we would get together. I spent more than a year waiting for him to make a move.”

  His forehead wrinkled, and his frown was deeper than normal. “Who was he?”

  If she said his name, Zeke would know who it was. Zeke had been at the same seminary.