Romancing Nadine

by Amy Lillard

  He was a good man. It was a wonder no one had snapped him up long ago.

  “Cute.” Charlotte sidled up next to her and nearly scared Nadine to death. She had been so deep in her thoughts about Amos and how nice he was, considerate and kind, that she hadn’t heard Charlotte approach.

  “My goodness.” She pressed a hand to her heart.

  “Guess I should have whistled or something to let you know I was coming.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Or maybe you should quit daydreaming about a certain someone.”

  “I was not daydreaming.” Nadine crawled into the buggy and waited for Charlotte to join her. Once her daughter-in-law was seated, Nadine clicked the reins, and they were off.

  “Why do I feel like you’re in a hurry?”

  “Probably because I am. We’re going fishing, remember?”

  Charlotte nodded. “I remember. But the horse shouldn’t have to pay the price.”

  Nadine slowed the buggy, though she wasn’t pushing too hard. She was just anxious to get home so she could scour her closet for her nicest everyday dress.

  So you can traipse out into the middle of nowhere and get covered with who knows what.

  Maybe her best dress wasn’t necessary. But something clean and without stains was definitely on the list.

  “When we get home,” Nadine started as Charlotte said, “I’ve been thinking more and more about this dog situation.”

  “What?” they said together, followed by “sorry.”

  “You first,” Nadine said. “What dog situation do we have?”

  “Maybe situation isn’t the right word. But ever since I mentioned it, I’ve been thinking more and more about getting a dog.”

  “Dogs are a lot of work,” Nadine said.

  “It shouldn’t be that much more than taking care of Petty there.” She gestured toward their horse.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “And a dog could warn us at night if an intruder was coming.”

  “That would be good.”

  “Especially when you leave me there by myself.”

  “Where am I going?”

  Charlotte shook her head slowly, her shoulders slumped in resignation. “We both know you’re going to marry Amos Fisher.”

  “First of all, we’re just friends, and even if there was more to our relationship, he hasn’t asked me to marry him. Any wedding in my future is”—she had been about to say a long time away—“not happening.”

  “You say that now.” Charlotte sniffed.

  “I’ll be saying it ten years from now too.” But a little part of her had started to doubt her resolve. What if she let someone else in? What if Amos was right, and she was wrong? What if she was destined to find true love again?

  She wouldn’t be asking, but Amos seemed so sure. And positive that he had gotten the news from the Lord Himself. She didn’t doubt that he believed that. She believed it herself, truth be known. God was always out there trying to direct their lives; it was when they let the world lead them that the trouble set in.

  “We’ll see,” Charlotte said.

  “But I think you should hold off getting a dog.”

  “I guess.”

  But Nadine knew that Charlotte was sinking down in that quicksand of depression. She might pull herself out a little bit at a time, but then she’d sink back even deeper than before.

  “What were you going to say?” Charlotte asked.

  Nadine had been about to ask Charlotte if, once they were home, she would help Nadine pick out something pretty to wear fishing. But that sounded as if she wanted to impress Amos. Okay, so she did. But now she was worried about Charlotte reading too much into it.

  “Nothing.” She resisted the urge to flick the reins and urge the horse on a bit faster.

  “It wasn’t nothing a bit ago.”

  “When we get home,” Nadine said, searching for something else she could ask, “will you cut a piece of cake for me and Amos to take with us to the pond?”

  “Of course.” Charlotte smoothed one hand down her knee. “One to share or one for each of you?”

  “One each please.”

  She could almost feel the look Charlotte bestowed on her. And Nadine didn’t have to face her to know what sort of look it was—half reproachful, half self-satisfied. “So much for watching your waistline this summer.”

  * * *

  “He’s here,” Charlotte called up the stairs a mere twenty minutes after they had pulled their buggy into their driveway.

  How had he gotten home and back to her house so quickly?

  Nadine looked at herself in the mirror and checked one last time to make sure that everything was in the right place.

  Maybe she should have worn her blue dress....

  But when she looked into the mirror, it was like looking back in time. She was no longer gray and wrinkled. She was twenty again. Her hair pale brown and her eyes sparkling. There wasn’t anything that could keep her down. Not even—

  “Nadine!” Charlotte called up the stairs.

  Her heart pounded, her palms grew sweaty, her mouth went a little dry. She remembered this feeling, remembered it well. It might have been nearly fifty years, but it was all still there. She was excited that a handsome boy was coming to call.

  Or, in this case, a nice man. She supposed Amos could be called handsome. He seemed to have all his teeth, and he kept himself well. His beard was long, but she could tell he trimmed it. It was just that she hadn’t thought of a man as handsome in quite some time.

  “Nadine!”

  She had dallied long enough. She was going to give Charlotte a fit if she didn’t get down there.

  “I’m coming.”

  One last check. And she looked the way she always did, at least these days. But she shouldn’t have worn her green dress. She should have worn the blue one. It was too late for that now.

  She whirled away from her reflection and headed down the stairs.

  “Here,” Charlotte said as she hit the last step. She handed Nadine an insulated travel bag. “The cake’s in here, along with a couple of bottles of water.”

  Water. She hadn’t thought about that even once. And the cake had been a ploy to change the subject.

  “Danki,” she said, a bit breathless from her quick trip down the stairs. At least, that was what she was standing by.

  “What time do you think you’ll be home?” Charlotte asked.

  Nadine opened the door, too excited to wait a minute longer. “Sometime.”

  “But—” Charlotte started to protest, then seemed to change her mind. Not that Nadine was in any state to listen. She was ready to go fishing. Fishing with Amos Fisher. The thought made her grin a little wider.

  “Never mind,” Charlotte said with a wave of her hand. “Have fun.”

  Nadine rushed out to Amos’s buggy, the insulated bag bumping against her hip as she practically skipped across the yard. It was true that she wasn’t as young as she used to be and might even regret her romp in the morning.

  But it felt more than a little nostalgic, pulling herself into the buggy beside Amos.

  It was like stepping back in time once again as he set the horse in motion. The sway of the buggy, sitting by a boy—er, man, all the excitement, Charlotte asking her when she would be home like she was her mother or something. The idea was laughable, but she wasn’t laughing. She was too busy trying to adjust the skirt of her dress so it lay prettily against the seat.

  She had barely been aware that she was doing it. The motion had become such a habit. Well, it had been a habit, when she was courting Sam Yoder. She had always wanted to appear at her best for him. And here she was doing it again for Amos Fisher.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Huh?” she asked. “Oh, cake and water.”

  “I didn’t ask, but do you have any fishing equipment?”

  She hadn’t even thought of that. Which went to show how utterly outside of herself she had been lately. “No. I
mean, I guess I can watch you fish today. Or we can take turns.”

  He grinned at her. “I brought you a pole.”

  “You did?” She tried not to let them, but the words sounded like a gush, syrupy sweet to the point of being insincere. But that was not how she meant them. She needed to get a hold of herself. “I mean, thanks. That was real nice of you.”

  “You brought cake.”

  She nodded. “Cake and fishing tackle.”

  “Sounds like a perfect pair to me.”

  * * *

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Amos regretted them. He wasn’t trying to make her feel uncomfortable, and it seemed as if that was exactly what he had done.

  She shifted in her seat, looked out the window, stopped messing with her dress, and instead started fiddling with the bow under her chin.

  And he had wanted today to be perfect.

  Fun. He had wanted today to be fun, and somehow along the way fun had become perfect. All he had to do was show her a better time than Aubie Hershberger could—might—and his goal was met.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I thought we would go out to a friend of mine’s. He has a large property with a stocked pond.”

  “Not Millers’ Pond?”

  “There’s not any fish in there.”

  “I think Jenna would beg to differ.”

  “Let me rephrase that. There aren’t any fish in there that I would want to catch and eat.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “My buddy’s pond is stocked with largemouth and all sorts of things. He feeds them when he knows no one is coming, but since he knew that you and I were going to be out there, he didn’t give them anything this morning.”

  “So they’ll be good and hungry.”

  He smiled at her obvious enthusiasm. She hadn’t been this excited about something . . . well, he had never seen her this excited. It was charming, for sure.

  They chatted lightly all the way to his friend’s place, about the sermon, the bakery, and whether or not Cora Ann Kauffman would be the next winner of the county pie-baking competition. It was entirely possible seeing as how this year she was actually old enough to enter.

  All too soon, he was slowing the buggy to turn down the driveway leading to his friend’s house.

  Nadine’s eyes widened. “Wow,” she said. “That’s not an Amish house.”

  “No. It’s not,” Amos said, but he had been pulling down this driveway so many times, he had almost gotten used to the sprawling house with its covered breezeway, circular drive, and four-car garage.

  “Who lives here?”

  “Austin Tiger.”

  “The shed company owner?”

  “Among other things.”

  “I knew you worked for him, but I didn’t know you two were friends.”

  “He’s a great man,” Amos said. “He likes to host his employees out here every year on the Fourth of July.”

  “And you come out to celebrate.”

  “Of course.” He leaned a little closer, as if they were sharing a secret. “And to fish.”

  “That’s the pond?” She gasped. When he had asked her to come fishing, she had pictured standing on the bank of some oversized puddle. This was not. Though obviously man-made, the body of water had a dock constructed of weather-grayed wood that jutted out into the water. “That’s a lake.”

  “Technically, it’s not. There isn’t an aphotic zone. That’s where the water is deep enough that the sunlight can’t reach the bottom.”

  She shook her head. “How do you know these things?”

  He shrugged. “It’s pretty, jah?”

  “Jah.” What else could she say? Any other answer would have been a lie.

  “We’ll fish from the dock, if that’s okay. He brings his Christmas trees down here every year and throws them into the water.”

  “To create fish cover,” she said, happy to know at least a little of water jargon.

  “Jah. But in the last few years, his grandkids have insisted on helping and they barely get the tree off the dock.”

  “So there’s a lot of shelter close in.”

  “Yep.” But he kept going past the lake and drove straight up to the house.

  Nadine didn’t have time to ask what they were doing there before a man came out, a great smile on his face.

  Austin Tiger was a big man. If his last name wasn’t a dead giveaway his dark eyes and skin were enough to show his Native heritage. His hair was stark white and close cropped around his large, grinning face.

  “Amos Fisher,” he greeted as he came toward them.

  Amos hopped down from the buggy and motioned her to follow.

  “Hey, Austin.” The two men shook hands. Austin Tiger wore several turquoise rings as well as a hammered bracelet worn smooth with age.

  “I was surprised to get your call. Well, not really. My best shed salesman retires so of course he wants to go fishing. I’m just surprised it took you so long.”

  “I’ve been traveling,” he said.

  “That’s what I heard.” His gaze moved past Amos and landed on her.

  “This is Nadine,” Amos said by way of introduction. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  “Nice to meet you, Nadine.” Austin gave her a quick nod but didn’t stop his interested perusal. It was obvious that he was trying to figure out who she was and what exactly Amos had meant by friend. “Y’all go on ahead. I unlocked the gate. Just be sure to latch it back. Kaylie’s got some animal she’s rehabbing locked in there somewhere. She doesn’t want him getting out until she’s ready to return him to the wild.”

  “Will do,” Amos said. “Thanks, Austin.”

  “Anytime. And you know I mean that.”

  “I do.” Amos turned to head back to the buggy. Nadine followed behind him.

  “You two should come out for supper one night.”

  Amos turned and smiled. “We’d love to.” Then he swung himself up into the buggy.

  Nadine settled in beside him just as Austin Tiger called, “Half of whatever you catch?”

  “A third,” Amos countered.

  “Deal.”

  The two men sealed their agreement with a quick nod, then Amos turned the buggy around and headed back to the pond.

  Nadine had been so enamored of the water, she hadn’t seen the gate in the fence until they came upon it a second time.

  Amos handed her the reins and hopped out of the buggy. He opened the gate and she drove the horse through. She stopped the gelding just inside and waited for Amos to close the gate behind them and return to the driver’s seat.

  He drove the rest of the short distance to the banks of the beautiful pond.

  “Not deep enough, eh?” she asked as they gathered up their tackle.

  “Jah, some folks say it’s size, but it’s really more a matter of depth.”

  “Like Millers’ Pond.”

  “Exactly.”

  They made their way around to the dock. Amos set his load on the wood, then bent to help her up. She was fairly certain she could have made it on her own, but she was grateful for the hand.

  It had been so long since she had been fishing that she just wanted to pause and take it all in. The air, the water, the blue sky above. But she knew Amos would think she had lost her mind, so she followed him to the end of the dock.

  “You want me to bait your hook for you?”

  She shot him a look. “Are we using bait or lures?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He was testing her. She knew it. “It does. If we’re using lures then we won’t use bait. But if we’re using bait, my answer is no.”

  He chuckled. “Just checking.”

  She shook her head at him. “Checking what? To see if I knew a little something about fishing?”

  “Jah. Kind of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe I wanted to make sure that you weren’t using fishing as a way to get Aubie Hershberger to notice y
ou and I got in the way.”

  “I wish you would listen to yourself.”

  “That smart?”

  “That has to be the dumbest thing anyone as ever said to me.”

  He frowned, obviously not expecting her to be so blunt.

  Okay, rude. She had actually been very rude. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. It’s just ... why would I tell you that I didn’t want to get married again and then make a move on Aubie Hershberger?” Of all people. Not that there was anything wrong with Aubie. As far as she could tell, he was a kind and godly man. But she wasn’t interested in him, not like that anyway.

  “To throw me off?”

  Nadine stopped rummaging through Amos’s stash of lures and propped her hands on her hips. “Are you going to be like this all day?”

  “Charming?”

  “Suspicious.”

  “No . . . ?” But the word was more of a question than a true response.

  “I thought we had come out here to have a good time.”

  “We have.”

  She raised one brow at him in what she hoped was a dubious manner. “Then wouldn’t it be more fun if you stopped thinking about Aubie Hershberger and dating and did some fishing?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe about it,” she said. “This one.” She pulled a lure from the box. “This one is my lucky lure of the day.”

  * * *

  Lucky lure was right, Amos thought an hour and a half later. Nadine had thrown back more fish than he had caught. And she still had a mess enough to feed the three of them—him, Nadine, and Charlotte—plus give a third to the Tigers and still have plenty enough to put some in the freezer.

  Someone had once told him that if a person was anxious or angry or had some other sort of negative emotions running through them, that it was bad for fishing, that somehow the fish knew and would avoid the hook. As far as he was concerned, that was just a bunch of hogwash. That was before today.

  Nadine seemed relaxed, happy, joyous even. She looked ten years younger standing there on the dock with the wind turning her cheeks a rosy pink. Not that she needed to look ten years younger. He loved her just the way she was. He might as well start admitting that fact.

  He loved Nadine Burkhart. And there was nothing he could do about it. Nor had he been able to make her fall in love with him. This whole “friends” thing wasn’t really working out since it just put them closer together while she kept him an arm’s length away. It wasn’t like he could just call the whole thing off. He was committed to that as well.