by Lilah Rivers
A Love to Heal a Broken Heart
AN INSPIRATIONAL ROMANCE NOVEL
LILAH RIVERS
Copyright © 2019 by Lilah Rivers
All Rights Reserved.
This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.
Table of Contents
A Love to Heal a Broken Heart
Table of Contents
A Love to Heal a Broken Heart
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
A Bet on Love and Hope
Introduction
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
A Love to Heal a Broken Heart
Introduction
When Jodi’s fiancé leaves her for her cousin, her heart is broken into a million pieces. Needing a new start, she decides to visit her best friend, Amy, in New Mexico and help her through her pregnancy. Her trip to the west turns out to be a healing journey for her, filled with new opportunities, including the affection of the handsome local sheriff. The time she felt she would never feel happiness again seems so far away now. But will she dare to give him her heart after everything she’s been through?
Sheriff Covey was always focused on his job, and kept to himself until a mesmerizing woman arrived in town. To his surprise, Jodi brings out a warmer side of him that he didn’t even know existed. But what he doesn’t realise is that Jodi still carries the wounds from her past. When the past comes knocking at her door, Covey will be called to decide if her heart was ever his in the first place. When all seems to be against his love for her, will he defy everything and follow his heart?
In this story about childhood friends and second chances in love, can faith help two people come together? Twists and turns keep these complex and determined protagonists racing toward their destinies, leaving the most discerning reader on the edge of their seats! Action and emotion comes alive like never before on the page! An intense drama for fans of spiritual love stories.
Chapter 1
Jodi Hoffman couldn’t help thinking about the old days, when she and her best friend Amy Harper were just twelve years old and became fast friends. A little blonde and a matching redhead, they were the princesses of Providence, Rhode Island. They had grown up sheltered by their parents and by each other, playing among the alders and the aspen trees, bright sunshine pouring down over the East Coast.
“I don't care,” little Amy said to the imaginary husband standing in front of her, pointing and wagging an angry finger. “If you cannot accept my best friend Jodi, here, then you are no kind of man for me!” Amy stood with her head turned, brows high, pretending to listen to her man's pathetic excuse. "That's absurd, her father is a physician! And she’s just about the kindest, most gentle soul you could ever be so lucky to know!”
Jodi had sat watching, impressed and amused with their little game.
Amy had listened to that invisible man’s unheard response and answered, “How can you be so small-minded and ridiculous?”
Jodi remembered staring in awe as Amy set the example of feminine strength and sorority. Amy waited, and Jodi imagined what her pretend fiancé was saying. Jodi had been able to tell by the answers Amy was giving.
“Then you can just shove off, buster,” Amy had said. "Because Jodi and I will be friends forever, friends for life... and you'll just have to go marry somebody else!”
Jodi had laughed and clapped. “We’ll be two old spinsters. Men can have the air!”
“Yeah, we’ll rely on each other! Men don’t bring much more than trouble, anyway.”
“Anyway?” Jodi had repeated. “In every way!” They’d shared a little laughter, and it had lasted longer than either had thought; for years.
But ten years later they were twenty-two, still in Rhode Island, but no longer so ready to refuse the right man. Things had changed over the years, themselves mostly—their bodies, their views of the world, their hopes for the future. Nothing was the same, other than their friendship. That was as strong as ever, even if other attractions and impulses got stronger, too.
But in the front parlor of the Hoffman home, Jodi and Amy sat as young women, sipping real Earl Grey tea from England. Jodi remarked, “We were such silly girls, weren’t we?”
Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. I think we had the right idea. All the boys we’ve known since then, weren't they just one disappointment after the next?”
Jodi smiled and took a polite pause to sip her tea. “I suppose, if you expect too much of them, anybody could disappoint.”
Amy’s green eyes flashed to Jodi’s blue. “Expect too much? I expect to be treated like the free American person that I am, not as a sheep or goat or dog or horse.”
Jodi waved Amy off, but she well understood the reason for her old friend’s dismay. And Jodi felt badly, she felt responsible—because partly, at least, she was.
“I’m not saying you or any woman should be treated that way—”
“Yet it keeps happening. Oh, I know what you intended to say: if I act with such stubbornness, a man may well mistake me for a mule.”
“I’d never say such a thing, Amy, and you know it. Especially… not today.”
An awkward silence filled the parlor, and Amy set a hand on Jodi’s knee. “I really am happy for you, Jodi.”
Jodi looked around, biting her lower lip. “You’re not… disappointed... that we won't be spinsters?”
Amy chuckled. “A little.” They both laughed lightly, but it didn’t last.
“I just mean… you know we’ll still be friends, right?” When Amy didn’t answer, Jodi went on, “Because we’ll always be friends, no ma
tter what!”
Amy rolled her eyes and put her own hand on Jodi’s. “That's sweet, Jodi, but… you know it's not true.”
“Of course, it is!”
“No, Jodi, we’ll… you're getting married, and Giles will be your new best friend. And that’s the way it should be.” After a brief reflective pause, Amy continued, “Giles will be a good husband to you. Your announcement is so exciting. But were it a bell, it would toll in a new day… for both of us.”
Jodi nodded, but she couldn't fight that melancholy feeling. And, as always, Amy seemed able to read her heart and her mind.
“Don’t be that way, Jodi. I… I think it’s a… a good thing. Kind of scary, a little bit, but you don't have to worry about leaving me behind or… or leaving me alone.” She paused dubiously. “You know about that rancher I’ve been in contact with, in New Mexico?”
“Burnett… Carlton Burnett?”
“Clinton,” Amy corrected her, “Clinton Burnett. Anyway, I… I think maybe this is a sign from God that, I dunno, maybe it’s time I thought about a move of my own.”
Jodi took a moment to think about it. “You don’t mean—?”
“Oh, why not? A lot of women do it these days! And it’s perfectly legal.”
Jodi felt overwhelmed, not sure what to think. “Well, I mean… a mail-order bride?”
Amy shrugged, then waved her old friend off. “What’s in a name. If he proposes, what does it matter where I live? Who knows? Perhaps, for all your lovely and sweet and unnecessary guilt and sorrow, you’re actually doing the will of God and putting me on a new and different and even better path.”
Jodi wanted to agree, even if she found it a little difficult. “I… I suppose,” Jodi conceded, “I mean… I want to feel better about it —”
“Then do, silly!” But reason for melancholy was ample, despite the good turns of fortune facing both young women. They’d been the best of friends for ten years, since they were twelve years old. At twenty-two, their fates would take them in different directions and put almost the entire continent between them. They’d relied on each other, supported each other, and finally, they would have to part ways.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Jodi! With the mail service the way it is, wires by cable, we can speak to one another almost as if we were in the same room.”
Jodi hung her head. “It won’t be the same.”
Amy took Jodi’s hands in hers. “No, it… it won’t be exactly the same, Jodi, it won’t. But nothing truly stays the same forever, does it? And even if it could, would we really want it to?”
Jodi had to agree, there was no good sense in not doing it. “Behold,” she said, quoting the bible, “I am creating something new.”
Amy nodded, her smile telling Jodi that not only did she know the verse, but that she agreed. “Do you not perceive it?”
Chapter 2
Jodi could hardly believe her ears. She sat there, stunned, in the parlor of her family home, her own fiancé pacing nervously in front of the sofa.
“Please understand,” Giles Devlin said. “Jodi, I… I feel strongly for you. I always have and I always will.”
Somehow, Jodi knew there was nothing she could say or do to prevent the inevitable.
“And, of course, you’re the last person I would ever want to hurt.” He cleared his throat, twitching his shoulder to pull his neck from his collar, which suddenly seemed too tight. “When I proposed… it was almost a year ago.” He didn’t seem to be able to go on.
So, Jodi decided to help him along—and herself, as well. “And I happily accepted.”
“And I happily asked, Jodi.”
She took a glance at herself in the mirror. Her straight figure was slumped forward with new misery, further disguising her small bust. She’d never been the picture of female pulchritude, she knew that. But a lot of boys had found her wavy blonde hair attractive, heart-shaped face, perky nose, and blue-gray eyes were never repulsive to anyone; except herself, perhaps.
At some times more than others.
She said, “You said it was a matter of your finances, Giles. All this time… you were lying to me?”
“No,” Giles was quick to retort, “I most certainly was never… less than honest about my feelings for you, Jodi. That’s… that's why we’re talking about now. My finances were… restrictive, you know that. And it’s taken time to get to where I… to where I needed to be in order to be the kind of husband I wanted… that I needed to be for you.”
Jodi turned away, saying as much with a turn as she could say with any words. But she still decided to add, “Or for my cousin, Alice.”
Giles nodded with a self-deprecating smile, running his hands though his black hair and over the matching sideburns reaching down his cheeks. “It… it just happened, Jodi. I hope you’ll understand… and forgive us.”
Jodi snubbed him with a turn of her chin. “Of course I’ll forgive you, Giles… I’m honor-bound and duty-bound to do so, as a good, God-fearing Christian. Our Lord Jesus died for your sins as much as those of any other, or those of my cousin.”
“Jodi, please don’t be that way.”
“How else shall I be? I’ve waited a year since your proposal and now you tell me, at the end of that year, not only am I not to be married—not only that you choose not to marry me—but that you choose instead to marry my cousin?”
“It… it isn’t really as bad as all that,” Giles struggled to say. “Not as bad as it sounds, in any case.”
“No? And how bad is it, truly?”
He stammered, trying to piece together his position in a way that wouldn’t be absolutely repulsive to either one of them, or to God. “First of all, you must admit that Alice has suffered greatly, that she deserves happiness as much as anyone.”
“It’s true,” Jodi admitted, “Alice has suffered. But I was not the cause of her suffering.”
“No, and it's not fair that you should pay the price for her happiness, either.”
Jodie gave it some thought. “This isn't... pity, is it? Sympathy mistaken for love?”
“No, Jodi, it's love. I’m sorry, but it’s… it’s just a fact of life. It happened. I think, in a lot of ways,” and he really seemed to struggle to come up with what he’d say next, “it’s what God intends.”
This made Jodi stand up, though she knew that since it was her family home, there was only so far she could go. But turning away from him made her point.
“Think about it, Jodi: God is in control of all things, isn’t He?” Without waiting for an answer, he persisted. “And therefore, if this happens, it must be what God intended. I know He works in mysterious ways, but… could this not be one of His mysteries?”
Jodi shrugged her shoulders to further separate them and to feebly protect herself.
“Does that mean that every evil act in the world, every crime and every killing, must be God’s will, simply because it happened?” In the lingering silence, Jodi pushed, “What about our own personal responsibility… or yours?”
Giles seemed flummoxed, shaking his head as if he hadn’t been expected to account for himself ever, much less in front of a woman whom he no longer wished to marry. “I… I grant you, I’m not… pleased to be telling you these things.”
“I can imagine,” Jodi agreed. “But how pleased will you be to tell Alice that you've already told me?” She waited, knowing somehow that no direct answer was coming.
Giles rubbed his mouth and jaw as if to rid his tongue of a bad taste. “Alice feels terribly about it too, Jodi. She… she was afraid to tell you, and you can hardly blame her.”
“I suppose one could pick and choose what they wanted to blame her for.”
Giles nodded. “In any case, she… I’m here to apologize to you on her behalf as well as my own. And I … I know you won’t forgive me, I don’t expect that. I’d never ask for it. But I… I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive your cousin, to accept her back into your life. I know that won't be easy, that things wil
l be difficult among us all for a while. But she's also your family, your blood—”
