After a moment, common sense tried to intervene and she whispered, “Justin, what’s going on here?”
He looked into her eyes and then smiled. “I don’t know, but it could be fun finding out. Don’t you think?”
Jessica returned his smile, the day too beautiful to allow memories of past disappointments to overshadow the promise of the future. “I want to believe that, I really do…”
“That’s all it takes. Just a little belief. A little faith. Give whatever this is between us a chance. I’ve felt it since the moment I woke you up on the mountain.”
“I’ve felt it as well, but my last relationship almost destroyed me.”
Justin lifted a hand and brushed a stray piece of hair back behind her ear. “Why don’t we finish the short loop and then head back to your place. I think maybe it’s time we talked more about our past histories.” When she tried to shake her head, he tapped her on the nose. “No pressure, only what you want to share. I want to know more about you. You said you came to Colorado to make a fresh start. I want to be part of that.”
Jessica looked at him and then slowly nodded her head. “I think maybe I’d like that as well.”
Justin winked at her and then used her grip on his ski pole to push her behind him. “Let’s finish this track, and then go shopping. I’m cooking tonight.”
Jessica giggled. “That’s a really good thing since I am an absolutely horrible cook.” She followed behind him, and by the time they returned to his truck her muscles were shrieking at her in protest. Something told her she was going to be more than sore come morning.
Chapter 15
Justin put the finishing touches on the steaks and then stuck them back under the broiler. “Won’t be long now, do you want butter and sour cream on your potato?”
Jessica wandered into the kitchen. “Sure. Do you want to eat at the table or by the fireplace?”
“Fireplace gets my vote.”
“Great. I’ll go put the silverware and our drinks on the coffee table.”
Justin watched her gather up forks and knives and then two glasses of ice water. She’d been acting more nervous as the day wore on. He figured it had to do with whatever had driven her from Arizona in the first place.
He didn’t want her nervous, but if she couldn’t learn to trust him, to listen and not pass judgment, they really didn’t have much of a future together. That was not something he even wanted to consider at the present time.
They carried their plates to the living room and ate in silence for several minutes before Jessica moaned. “Justin, this is amazing! If I ate like this all the time I’d be as big as a house!”
Justin shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t. And you could put on a few pounds. It wouldn’t hurt at all.”
Before she could respond, the lights flickered and then suddenly the house was plunged into darkness except for the light coming from the flames in the hearth.
“Whoa! Does this happen a lot?”
Justin put his fork down and told her, “Hang on for a minute.” Justin went to the kitchen and returned with a flashlight. Let me go check the breaker box, and then…”
Justin paused and listened, walking to the front door and opening it before immediately shutting it. “The storm that was supposed to arrive tomorrow is here.”
“What?!” Jessica went to the window and attempted to see outside. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the pine trees moving with the force of the wind. She could see snow blowing across the yard, and even more falling from the sky. “We haven’t been home that long.”
“Sometimes these storms come up suddenly. The combined weight of the snow and the wind becomes too much for the power lines to handle.”
Jessica nodded. “How long will it be out for?”
Justin gave her a reassuring smile. “Probably until the storm abates. I can go start the generator if the dark bothers you.”
Jessica shook her head. “No. I’m okay for right now.”
“Good. Let’s finish eating and then we can talk.”
“I’m pretty much finished,” Jessica told him, resuming her seat and pulling one of the afghans off the back of the couch to wrap around her shoulders.
“Are you cold?” he asked curiously.
“Not really. I just like having a blanket wrapped around me sometimes. So what did you want to talk about?”
“What brought you from Arizona?”
Jessica looked at him as he got up from the opposing couch and sat down next to her. “So? Why leave Arizona?”
“That’s a really long story.”
Justin looked at his wristwatch and told her, “We have plenty of time. I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you something about myself, and then you can tell me something about you.”
“Like twenty questions?” Jessica asked, intrigued by the man sitting in the glow of the fire. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way with wavy, dark brown hair and deep blue eyes that seemed to watch her carefully and see way too much.
“Sort of. I’ll even start. I have two brothers, Mason and Kaillar.”
Jessica giggled. “I already know that.”
“Yes, but it’s part of the complete package, so bear with me.”
“Fine. Continue with your story.” She waved at him.
“Well, I have no idea who my father is or was. I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t know the answer to that either. My mother, in name only, was raised right here in Silver Springs, but had stars in her eyes. It seemed that her Christian upbringing was stifling her creative nature. As soon as she turned eighteen, she ran off to LA and then to Las Vegas. She wanted to see her name in bright lights and her face plastered across magazines and movie screens.”
“That didn’t happen?”
“Not quite. While waiting for her big break, she hooked up with the wrong people. They introduced her to drugs and alcohol. Mainly heroin. She managed to make it home each time one of us was born, but she never could make the rehab stick. The last time she left, after Kaillar was born, my Uncle Jed had to go to Las Vegas to pick up her corpse. They found her body beaten up and lying in an alley somewhere.”
“How horrible!” Jessica said, covering her mouth as she tried to take in everything he was telling her. “Did they ever catch the people who did it?”
“As far as I know, they never even tried to find them. From what I’ve managed to piece together, the Las Vegas police considered her a junky and a lost cause.”
“Wow! Just…wow!” Jessica sat there stunned. Their stories were so similar, and yet different. Telling him about her parents now seemed not so bad.
Justin looked at her and then nodded his head. “Your turn.”
“How old were you when you came back to Silver Springs for good?”
“Eight. Uncle Jed had her buried next to her parents on the southern side of the mountain.”
“I’m sorry, that must have been so hard on you and your brothers.”
“It was.” He looked up at her and then gave her a smile, wanting her to know that he’d shared something highly personal with her and lived to tell about it. “Your turn.”
“How personal are we going to get here? I mean, this is your game.”
Justin gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Normally my answer would be to steer clear of anything personal. But for some reason, I feel like I can talk to you. As if you might understand where others wouldn’t.”
“You’ve lost me there. I still don’t understand.”
“Let me ask you a question. You said you were raised by your grandmother and that your parents allowed themselves to get killed the first night we met.”
“Did I?” she fired back, not sure she wanted to go down this memory lane filled with land mines.
“You did. Your exact words in fact. What did you mean by that? How did your parents allow themselves to get killed?”
Jessica sat there and shook her head. “I think it’s still your turn. Tell me m
ore about your mother.”
“Fortunately, I was so young I don’t remember much about her, and what I do remember isn’t all that pleasant. There were times when I was growing up I wished I hadn’t had any memories of her. That I could have looked at the pictures of when she was a child and listened to the stories Uncle Jed told and that would have been all I ever knew about her.”
“But you have memories of her…”
“Memories of a drugged up, too skinny woman who was always promising to get herself together, and never could manage to leave the drugs and alcohol alone. I only spent a few weeks here and there with her, usually after she’d come home and dried out for a few weeks. She would then return to Las Vegas, the stars back in her eyes, and things would be good until she got tired of being turned down for some acting or modeling job.”
Justin looked at her, shaking his head. “I’d rather not have had any memories of her than those. I know my uncle felt the same way. He used to say he had a hard time remembering her as a carefree young girl that would follow him and his friends around the mountains. I never saw that woman. Ever.”
Chapter 16
She looked at him for a moment and tried to put herself in his position. Would she have given up memories of her parents, even if they’d been bad? All she’d ever wanted was a chance to know her parents, but hearing Justin’s story made her somewhat glad that she didn’t have any bad memories of them. No, she just didn’t have any memories of them.
She looked down at her hands and then began, “My parents were missionaries to Africa. When my mother found out she was pregnant with me, they asked for furlough and came back to the states. Things would have been much different if they had stayed here.”
“But they went back?” Justin filled in the rest of her story. When she nodded, he asked, “What happened?”
“Civil unrest led to the rise of a Salafist jihadist militant group with ties to the Middle East. They attacked the school where my parents conducted their work, killing all nine Americans.”
“Including your parents,” he added.
“Yeah.”
“Were the men who murdered them ever brought to justice?”
Jessica nodded. “About three years ago. At least that’s what the State Department reported. They should never have been there.” She heard the anger in her voice and tried to push it down once again.
“I thought you said they were missionaries. Weren’t they just going where God led them?”
Jessica huffed out a breath, her anger bright and fierce. “Yeah! Where God sent them! To die! I never have understood why he would send people who’d sacrificed everything to follow His teachings to their deaths.”
She was shaking with emotion and when she dared look up, she couldn’t stand the look in Justin’s eyes. Great! “I suppose you believe in a loving God and want to offer me some empty platitudes about how my parents will have a greater reward in Heaven because they were martyrs. Well, I’ve heard it all my life and I don’t buy it! He sent them over there to die, instead of letting them stay here and raise me. That doesn’t sound like a loving God to me!”
When Justin started to speak, she shook her head and continued. “Shelley showed me some article the other day that talked about how much progress the church has made in South Africa. The writer commented that without the sacrifice of Christian missionaries like my parents, the current revival wouldn’t have been possible.”
“Was that a recent article?” Justin asked, turning to sit facing her on the couch.
“No. It was written several years after their deaths. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does. Your parents were martyred for Christ and the article was giving credit to their sacrifice.”
Jessica looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “But why would God send them back over there just to die. He could have protected them. I know He could have. Growing up, I heard the stories of the miracles God performed for the children of Israel, and how blessed the disciples of the early Church were. If He could do all of those things, I know He could have spared my parents’ lives!”
“So that you could have them back?” Justin asked softly.
“They were my parents!”
Justin reached for her hands, untangling her fingers and then clasping them lightly with her own. “Jessica, have you ever done wondered what drove your parents to leave their eighteen-month old baby behind? Did you ever think about how much they must have loved you to do that?”
“If they loved me they would have taken me with them.” Jessica heard the words and then cringed. “But they were afraid for my safety, so they left me with my grandmother.”
Justin was quiet as he let her mind sort things out. He thought maybe she was going in the right direction, and then she told him, “If God had truly cared about any of us, He would have kept them safe and prevented them from going back there!”
“But your parents had committed their lives to spreading the Good News to others. Have you ever been driven to do something? Something that others thought was stupid or crazy, but something inside of you told you to do anyway?”
Jessica shook her head “I don’t think so. And I like to think that common sense would win any such conflict.”
“What made you leave Arizona? You said you’d never left the state before. Why now?”
This was the part of the conversation she didn’t want to have. Telling anyone about Jason’s betrayal was akin to admitting how stupid she’d been. “I needed a change of scenery.”
“Really? You decided to quit and move for no reason?”
Jessica looked up and realized this moment was a turning point for her. She’d not spoken about Jason to anyone. “I left Arizona because I was stupid. And tired of the past always being thrown in my face.”
“I highly doubt that,” he told her, holding onto her hands when she would have pulled them away.
Jessica gave a derisive laugh. “You won’t say that in a few minutes.”
“Try me,” Justin challenged her.
“I went to college with a huge chip on my shoulder. I was finally out from under my grandmother’s influence, and I was so tired of trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of what I should be doing. I did all of the things I knew I shouldn’t. And still, I never was truly happy. And then I met Thomas.”
Justin watched the soft, sad smile form on her face and felt a stab of jealousy. Thomas had really meant something to her. He didn’t want to ask, but a friend would do exactly that. So he did so, quietly. “Thomas broke your heart?”
Jessica cried and tears spilled over. “Yeah. He was such a cute kid. I met him during my first classroom clinical. He wasn’t sick then, and he and I became cohorts in the classroom and on the playground. Then he got sick and missed a few weeks of school.”
“What was wrong with him?” Justin asked, feeling guilty for having been jealous of a young boy.
“Cancer. A rare and aggressive form of cancer. He died a little while later. He had so much to live for, and yet God didn’t protect him. He let that little boy die, destroying his parents and everyone who knew him.”
“God didn’t give him cancer. You know that right?” Justin asked her, the sight of her tears making his heart hurt.
“But He had it within His power to make it leave. Thomas hadn’t done anything to deserve…”
“Whoa! Tell me you don’t think bad things happen to people because they deserve it?”
Jessica didn’t believe that and she hadn’t meant to imply that she did. “No. I know that bad things happen to people sometimes, and I realize that people die, but why did God have to take Thomas?”
“I don’t know,” Justin told her, pulling her into his arms and rubbing his hand up and down her back. “I don’t know, but we have to trust that God does know.”
“I’m a little low in the trust department.”
“Have you told Him how you feel?”
“Lik
e He cares! I mean, my life couldn’t have been worse, and then I met Jason. He swept down and made me smile again.”
“Jason is?” Justin asked, not wanting to jump to conclusions again.
“My ex-boyfriend. I’m sure he doesn’t even count me as that, but we were together for almost four years. The entire time he was playing me. He lived four hours away, and had gotten engaged to a very nice country club princess the week before he started college.
“At least he didn’t officially ask me to marry him, just move in with him.” That would have been the ultimate humiliation! “Luckily, I didn’t do that. Something inside of me urged me to keep my own place.”
“Where was your grandmother during all of this?” Justin asked, regretting the question as tears spilled out of her eyes.
Jessica took a shuddering breath and shook her head. “She died in March.”
“Of this year?” Justin asked, feeling horrible if that were the case.
She nodded her head. “Yeah. I went back home and took care of her affairs, sold the house, paid off my student loans, and returned to school. I finished my Master of Education at the end of May and started working as a teacher’s aide. I went by Jason’s condo one day when we didn’t have any students in the classroom. His fiancée had come for a visit.”
Jessica stopped and pushed herself away from Justin, leaning back against the couch as she relived the humiliation she’d felt that day. “I feel so stupid,” she murmured softly.
Justin was furious on her behalf. “What did you do?”
Jessica shook her head. “Nothing. I walked out, holed up in my apartment for the rest of the week and applied for about a dozen jobs out of state. When Paul Sherman called me three days later and interviewed me over the phone, I made up my mind that if he offered me the job I was going to take it. He called back an hour later, offered me the job, and I began making plans to leave Arizona.”
“Didn’t your ex try to explain himself?”
Three Brothers Lodge - The Complete Series Box Set Page 8
