A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE BOXED SET

by Lewis, Laurie

  “Emilia, why didn’t Wes and Mark escort you girls to the gala last night?”

  “Guess what? My boss said we might hold a fund-raiser at the Cà d’Zan next year.”

  * * *

  Emilia realized her father was either too confused, too tired, or just too happy about something else to notice their artifice, because he allowed himself to be bamboozled and then went straight to bed.

  As Emilia walked by, she bent over and kissed his handsome face. “I love you, Daddy,” she whispered as she turned off the AC and opened the window over his head to welcome a rare, cool breeze. Through the sheer curtains, she saw Mark’s car pull up, so she stepped onto the porch to quickly dismiss him.

  “I’ve only got a minute, Mark. What do you want?”

  “Wes said something to me last night. I’m just trying to understand it, that’s all.”

  Emilia folded her arms across her chest and tensed, certain she knew where this conversation was headed. “He told you Dad turned Father Alexi away, right? Did he also tell you that was like a hundred years ago?” She turned to leave and then returned. “Whatever your chi or your karma was—just go find it, and let Gina and me move on, all right?” Mark looked stunned, so Emilia stepped down one stair, studied his expression, and inquired meekly, “Wes didn’t tell you . . . did he?”

  Mark stared at her and shook his head. “He didn’t tell me anything specific.”

  “But I did.” Emilia leaned her head against the post and slumped in apparent resignation. “It doesn’t matter now anyway.”

  “Maybe not now, but it mattered then. Who knows how having that anchor in my life would have affected me, and even Gina through me? Why’d you tell Wes?”

  “I was trying to explain that our avoidance of religion was universal. It’s not like Gina and I suffered because of it. His parents exposed him to religion and our dad steered us away from it. End of story, you know? Except I can’t explain you and your fluctuating interest in the topic of faith. You didn’t grow up with a church foundation.” She slunk down and sat on the top step. “Maybe it’s not so cut-and-dry after all.”

  Mark joined her and sighed. “Probably not.”

  “This one issue has complicated everything.” She laid her head on his shoulder, and he patted her cheek. “Please promise me that Gina and I will be happy again.”

  “You will. We’re just in new territory and trying to find our way through. The other day, Gina said Wes was changing me. I denied it, but I think she was right to some extent. He’s made me think about what matters to me. I never thought I’d be happy without Gina, but now, at least I know what I want in life. You two need to figure those things out. Besides, Wes said you were fine about ending things. He said you didn’t seem to care about him as much as he’d hoped.”

  “I lied.”

  “I see.” He slipped his arm around her shoulder.

  “You’re not angry at my dad, are you?”

  Mark paused and then replied, “No. I’m sure he thought he was looking out for me at the time, but I can’t help wondering how things would have turned out for everyone if I knew Father Alexi came for me. I wouldn’t have felt so abandoned. Gina and I might have gone to mass together. You too, perhaps. Who knows?”

  “Are you going to try to see Father Alexi?”

  “I’d like to, if only to thank him for trying to find me all those years ago.”

  As he stepped down and headed for the car, Emilia asked tearfully, “Are you sure about all this, Mark? You and Gina were talking again. I think you could have worked things out.”

  “I’ll always love Gina, Mil, but we both deserve more than we had. I’m not blaming your sister. A lot of it was my fault. I think I was always so intense about life because I had no direction, but I’m finding it now. I hope you and Gina find your way too.”

  Emilia watched until his car backed out, and then she wiped her eyes and ran into the house. She saw Gina rushing into the bathroom and her father standing in the center of the room, looking helpless and angry at the same time.

  “What’s been going on here?” he bellowed like a wounded bear.

  Emilia hurried to the bathroom to comfort Gina, whose sobs mingled with her own quiet tears.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Anna Maria Island, Florida, July 6

  Avery barely slept that night. She rose every hour to check on George, finally deciding to sleep nearby, on the sofa, in case she was needed. She was showered and dressed by 7:30, but Teddie and Jamie were already scrambling eggs and making toast.

  “Mornin’, sugar! You look like somethin’ the cat dragged in,” Teddie drawled as Avery walked into the room.

  “Teddie told me about George, Mom. How much sleep did you get?”

  “A little. I just checked on him. He’s due for another round of meds soon, and then I’ll have Wes and Luke help me get him up.”

  “Mom, it was kind of you to bring him here, but have you considered what you’ll do with him when it’s time for you to go home?”

  Avery slipped into a chair and let her head drop into her hands. “I’m hoping the editors love my book. If so, I’ll ask for an advance, and I’ll use that to get George set up in an apartment, I guess.”

  “And what if things don’t work out just right?”

  “I don’t know, Jamie.” Avery was acutely aware of how precarious her plans were and how foolishly she had leapt into this venture. Her worry came across as anger.

  Just then George came shuffling down the hall into the kitchen. “Morning!”

  “George?” Avery squawked as she ran over to him and helped him into a chair. “What are you doing getting up by yourself? You should have called for help.”

  “The smell of those eggs enchanted me clean out of my bed.”

  Teddie smiled at him and shook a spatula in his direction. “I don’t believe eggs are on your diet, buster, but Teddie’ll scramble you up some of those high-tech pourin’ eggs, and I promise you’ll think the Little Red Hen laid them herself.”

  George began to rise from the chair as he chuckled. “I’ve got a recipe for . . .”

  “George,” Avery said, placing a calming hand over his. “You need to rest.”

  “Well, I would have gotten more rest if you hadn’t been poking your head in my room every ten minutes last night.”

  “I was worried about you. You were sleeping so deeply and your breathing was labored.”

  George squeezed Avery’s hand. “Is that what had you worried? Well, you’ve just never seen ol’ George catching his forty winks before. That’s how I always sound when I’m asleep. Why, when Sophie was alive she’d run the old Hoover right under the bed, and I’d snore right on through as if it was just a lullaby.”

  Avery looked at him skeptically. “George, is this one of your tales or are you telling me the truth?”

  George cocked his head, closed one eye, and looked at Avery through the other. “Now, you’re not going to challenge the word of an old man, are you?”

  With one eyebrow raised, Avery stared at him for several seconds. “All right, but promise me you’ll tell me the minute you feel something’s wrong, okay?” She curled her pinky finger and extended it to him.

  George clasped hers in likewise fashion and the pair shook. “Pinky swear,” he said.

  The phone rang three times in rapid succession. The first call was from the bishop, calling to check on George. The second was from Ruth, who was also checking on George, but the third was from Gabriel, and his voice sounded strange.

  “So you’re home. Good. I’ll be by.”

  Before Avery had a chance to fully process the odd call, the doorbell rang. She hurried to the door and found an uncharacteristically rumpled Gabriel standing there, dressed in the previous evening’s clothes. Teddie and George smiled and waved while Jamie just stared. Then Rider came through the atrium doors off the deck, fresh from his morning run.

  “Hey, Gabriel! Mornin’!” he called out.

  Gabriel
just glared at the scene and muttered under his breath, “Well, all you’re missing is the Tabernacle Choir.”

  “What’s going on?” Avery asked him as he strode straight through the house and onto the back deck. Panic threatened her as she quickly followed him.

  He walked to the corner near the bell and away from the view of Avery’s guests, who were gathering curiously in the kitchen near the atrium door. He pressed his hands against the railing and glared angrily at the water before pushing away forcefully and turning around to meet Avery’s nervous face. “I just left the girls. They’re both nearly hysterical! What’s been going on down here?”

  She closed her eyes and looked away as a low moan escaped her. “I was waiting until things settled down. I didn’t know what to tell you. Obviously, the girls weren’t ready for you to know or they would have already said something.”

  “Well, they’re saying plenty now. Gina says Wes convinced Mark to move on, and Wes gave Emilia an ultimatum about joining your church or they’re through!”

  Avery was getting a little flustered. “That’s not completely accurate, Gabriel.”

  “What is it with you people?”

  He had Avery’s full attention now. She cocked her head to the side and scowled at him. “You people? What people are you referring to exactly?”

  Gabriel leaned close as if scolding a small child. “Why isn’t it enough for you to do your thing, to worship how you want? Why do you feel the need to meddle in other people’s lives?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Rider told me you got them back to church, then your son planted ideas in Mark’s head, and now you want to convert my girls.”

  Avery was incensed and hurt beyond measure. She stepped back and spread her hands in front of her as if to hold herself back. “You know the Davises pretty well by now, Gabriel. Do either of them strike you as fools or people who are easily manipulated?”

  Gabriel sheepishly dropped his gaze to the floor as he sputtered, “All right. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought them into the discussion, but try to see things from my perspective. Getting Mark and Gina back together was my very reason for leaving this summer. Mark and I talked it over before I left. We had an understanding, and things were beginning to work out for them. Things are worse than ever since he’s been hanging out with your son.”

  “That’s not true.” Avery carefully measured each word. “Gina called things off a few weeks ago. Mark decided to see a counselor well after that to get some perspective.”

  Gabriel shot a disbelieving look at her. “How can that be? They were together nearly every day. You said so yourself.” He sat heavily in the wicker divan and stared at the deck.

  “As friends. That’s all Gina wanted, and friendship wasn’t enough for Mark.”

  “Friendship is an improvement from where they were. It was a start!” Gabriel rose from the divan and began pacing again. “You don’t know my daughter the way I do. She takes two steps forward, and then she panics and takes one step back. She seems to be retreating, but in actuality, she’s still making progress from where she began. All she needed was time. Mark would have given her all the time she needed and more, but she won’t get that now because, thanks to you people, she’s not what he wants anymore.”

  The second reference to “you people” made Avery’s skin prickle.

  “And what about Emilia and Wes?” Gabriel continued to rant. “Do you deny he called things off between them because she wouldn’t join your church?”

  “Do I deny it? I’m not on trial here, Gabriel, and neither is my son or our faith.”

  “It’s true then, isn’t it?”

  “What’s true is that Wes has particular beliefs, and because of them, he wants a partner who believes and wants the same things. He asked Emilia to go to church with him, but she had no real interest in it, and they both realized that they couldn’t be happy divided this way.”

  Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “You think you have all the answers? Churches don’t hold patents on happiness.”

  Avery stared at him, wondering what had generated all this venom. “If you only understood—”

  Gabriel’s hand came up and he pointed at Avery. “I understand plenty!”

  Avery could not believe this was the same man who authored those tender notes to her over the past few weeks or who held her hand last night. She wanted to cry or scream, but her response came out graveled and forced. “If you really did understand, you’d know that those principles are not mine, Gabriel. They’re not Wes’s or Rider’s or Mark’s, either. They’re based in our faith in Jesus Christ. How we worship may differ, but who we worship is the same. And Christ’s love is not some exclusive club. It’s available to all of God’s children, but believing in Him requires a show of faith.”

  “Aha!” He laughed derisively and pointed at her. “You mean your faith.”

  “Ugh!” she groaned. “Why are you so angry? Why is religion so threatening to you? I see how much you love your daughters. You’re a father. Why is it so hard to believe that God is the loving Father of us all?”

  “Who lives in Heaven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you think good people go when they die?”

  “Yes.” She could tell he was listening, but he didn’t respond for several moments. When he did, his voice was emotionless and dull. “And your church shows people how to secure these promises?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say you and your family believe in all these things? That you’ve done what was needed to secure these promises for yourselves?”

  “It’s a day-to-day process, but we each do our best to make Jesus Christ the center of our lives. That doesn’t mean we don’t mess up. We do. But that’s when we feel His love the most, because He forgives us. He died to cover the cost for all our mistakes and to make us clean. And that forgiveness, that oneness with Christ, is what gives us the hope you were speaking about.”

  Gabriel took a step toward her and gazed at her as if he was looking into her soul. “This is the foundation your life is based on?”

  “Yes.”

  “And these are the things Wes was trying to share with Emilia?”

  “Yes, Gabriel, yes.” Her hope was momentary as Gabriel’s eyes and voice hardened again.

  “You do realize it’s me you’re talking to—the man with whom you’ve corresponded for over two months.”

  Avery’s brow furrowed.

  He took one step closer to her and his voice became husky. “I’ve told you more about myself than I’ve shared with anyone other than my wife. I feel you’ve done the same with me.”

  She didn’t know where he was going or how to respond.

  “Remember the first day we met? That conversation by the dumpster? You were crying about missing your husband.”

  She nodded numbly.

  “You told me you were coming here to heal. You said your family needed to heal.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you admit it.”

  “Admit what?”

  “That even you, who are supposedly armed with all that knowledge and hope and faith, you still suffer, still hurt, still grieve. You fall apart, your kids can’t find their way, and you get angry just like the rest of us.”

  Avery felt her chest tighten.

  “Tell me,” he asked, pointing a finger her way. “What has your faith gotten you?”

  His delivery was like the closing argument in a murder trial, where Avery’s faith was the accused, and then his face froze in stony stiffness as if awaiting the verdict. Avery felt betrayed, and she pulled herself up as straight as a rod, ready to fight back.

  “Grieving doesn’t mean I’m faithless, Gabriel. It means I’m human like everyone else. But this human”—her eyes began to burn and her voice wavered with emotion—“knows that even in my darkest hour, when I hurt, and when I’m sad, and yes, even when I cry out to God and question things, I remember that His son, my Savior, suffered
more than I will ever imagine, and I know He understands what I’m feeling.”

  Gabriel’s own eyes began to shine, but he offered no response, and Avery continued.

  “So after I have my cry, like that day you found me by the dumpster, I scrape myself off the ground, and I take one step, and then another, but I don’t cave and I don’t quit believing in God. I hold on to Him and His Son tighter than ever and hold on to the promise that I have a wonderful reunion waiting for me someday. Does that answer your question?”

  Seeing how her rebuttal had wounded the man, she softened. “Now let me ask you one. What has made you so bitter? Why does the thought of a God who loves His children make you so angry?”

  Gabriel’s jaw dropped. He looked past Avery and turned to stare blankly at the water for several moments before finally speaking. “You dangle these beautiful ideas of some glorious afterlife and a love that endures beyond death in front of people who are simply hoping for a sliver of happiness in this miserable world. You ought to wear a warning label or hand out a card with a disclaimer that says ‘Approach with caution’ when you offer your friendship.”

  Avery felt her heart break. “Why are you saying this?”

  Gabriel avoided looking at her as he replied. “Because you say and you do all the things that make people want to believe you—that make them want to love you—and then you show them the hurdles they have to cross over to be with you. It’s just too much for people to grasp.”

  She heard want, not fight, in his voice. With tentative steps, she walked to him and placed a hand on his arm. There was no response, verbal or otherwise, and Avery felt as if she were speaking to the wind. “Please look at me, Gabriel.”

  She reached a hand up to his cheek, gesturing for him to face her. In a moment, the stiffness eased, and he turned to meet her shining eyes. She smiled, acknowledging his effort, before she went on.

  “I didn’t always have this hope. I spent the first twenty years of my life wandering from group to group, searching for something to fill my famished heart. But when Paul shared his faith with me, it felt familiar, as if I’d always known those truths. Sometimes I feel as if I can peer through the mesh of life and catch a glimpse of Heaven and hear God speaking to me. Can you imagine what that feels like, Gabriel?”