Abiding Love (13 page)

Instead of helping her get free, the medication had put her in a fog during the stay in Pennsylvania. What was worse, Dr. Avery told her mother some of what she’d said about Michael, thinking to help. But her mother had heard “anxiety medication” and the abuse charges and believed Xandra was unbalanced. Then her mother had gone to Michael, begging him to get her poor daughter the help she needed.

When they’d arrived home, Michael’s rage had been unequaled. That was the first time she’d feared for her life and the first time clothing hadn’t hidden her bruises. It had also been the last.

“Lionel Avery tried. I tried,” her mother was saying. “It’s you who refused his help and mine.”

“No, Mother. You and Dr. Avery made it all worse. I didn’t need pills. I needed rescuing.”

And rescue had come in the guise of a stranger’s help. Pedro Santiago, the son of Michael’s new housekeeper, had stepped in after his mother reported what she’d heard the night before. The next morning, after Michael had left for a meeting, Pedro had come to the back door and told her about the domestic violence program in San Diego. He had with him a bus ticket and a disguise. Then he’d hidden her under a blanket in his old rattletrap of a car and driven her to the next town and the bus.

Xandra had left the pills behind, but not the fear or the shame. She should have rescued herself.

“What did you want when you asked me to meet you here?” she demanded, tired of dealing with her mother. It was exhausting trying to communicate with people who refused to look at events and truth in a logical way.

“Someone saw you riding at Laurel Glen with that man,” Mitzy Lexington charged in a hissing whisper. “I wanted to know if my daughter had betrayed not only her husband but her family.”

“My husband was a sadistic monster just like my brother. Just recently he sent me a copy of our wedding album on what would have been our anniversary.”

“Really, Alexandra, that was just a sweet gesture. He told me he was going to do it.”

“The first page said ‘till death do us part.”’

“You see. He hasn’t been able to forget you. He hasn’t given up hope even after all you’ve done to him.”

“All I’ve…” Xandra stood. Worry, fear and anger threatened to overwhelm her. Nothing she could say would stop Mitzy Lexington from doing her worst and passing on what she saw as important information. “As I said, Adam is the son of a student. Mark was with us. I was there to help them talk to each other. You have a blind spot where Michael is concerned, Mother. A dangerous one. And if you call Michael and tell him these things, it may well get me killed!”

X
andra barely heard Pastor Dillon’s sermon that next Sunday morning. It had been two days since her run-in with her mother, and she’d yet to find any peace or stop looking over her shoulder. She knew she had to apologize to Adam for the way her mother had treated him, and if she saw him she would, but she had more than that to deal with right now.

Since coming to the Lord, Xandra had struggled with the reality of her parents. How could she honor two people who had done nothing over the years but earn her contempt? And how could she witness to people she had been all but invisible to all her life? She wasn’t feeling sorry for herself or looking for sympathy when she admitted that her place in the family had always been as the one to receive criticism, the one who didn’t measure up.

To her mother, Jason, her firstborn, had been everything. He could do no wrong. Mitzy Lexington had
coddled and spoiled him. Just like food that had spoiled, Jason had been good for no one, especially himself.

And then there was her father. He’d always been so preoccupied with business that over the years he’d become nothing but a rubber stamp of her mother’s decisions in personal matters. She could hear him still.
“Take it to your mother. She’s the wife. I’m just here to support her decisions,”
he would say, rather than listen to whatever problem Xandra had. Geoffrey Lexington was a money machine, not a father.

She thought of Adam and his effort to be the best father he could be for Mark. She wondered if he would treat a woman he loved with that same remarkable dedication. His invitation to dinner returned to haunt her once again, as did her mother’s reaction to seeing their accidental meeting.

Most of all, it was the remark her mother had made about Xandra still being married to Michael in the eyes of God.
Would
the loving, just God she had come to know expect her to risk her life to remain married to an abuser? Or was divorce okay only as long as she remained alone?

Alone.

“Alone” had never seemed like anything other than freedom until very recently. But these days, everywhere she looked the world had paired off. And then there were the children. It seemed as if babies and pregnant women were coming out of the woodwork around the Tabernacle and in the teachers’ lounge at Indian Creek High. Though she was sin
cerely glad she’d bought Dauntless for all the joy he was bringing into her life, she was afraid the void she’d hoped he would fill was still there.

She had wanted babies. Still did. Michael hadn’t wanted to share her at first, and, foolishly, rather than seeing that as odd, she’d been flattered. Then she’d become determined not to bring a child into the nightmare her world had become. The nightmare had lasted a little less than two years, but now Xandra wondered if it hadn’t ruined the rest of her life.

Again she thought of Adam and his dinner invitation. She was so out of touch with her emotions, her desires, she hadn’t understood what she was feeling. She’d finally figured out why that invitation had rattled her so badly—because she’d been tempted to accept.

Beth had told her over and over for the past year that she had to learn to trust her judgment again. Until meeting Adam, Xandra hadn’t thought it would ever matter. And now she had to face the truth. It did. It mattered a lot. Plus her mother had added a new worry. Was she morally tied to Michael for the rest of her life?

“Now
that
is the face of someone I’ve really bummed out,” she heard Jim Dillon say from the pew just in front of her.

Xandra focused her eyes on her smiling pastor as he sank sideways into the pew, hooking an arm over the back. She looked around. Everyone but a few stragglers off to the left were gone. She had really zoned out.

“Life has bummed me out, Pastor Jim. You had nothing to do with it. I confess I heard almost nothing of what you said. I promise to get the tape,” she said, forcing herself to grin. Then she sighed and let the false smile fade. It was bad enough to lie to herself, but to her pastor?

“Got a minute?” she asked.

“All the time you like.” He chuckled. “Holly’s on another campaign to teach me to cook. With a new baby on the way, she’s worried the twins will starve if Ian’s away at camp when the baby arrives.”

“Another baby,” she sighed, unthinking.

The pastor’s eyebrow arched. “That was one wistful sigh. You have anyone in mind for a father?”

Xandra swallowed. She guessed she was pretty transparent. “Am I allowed to?”

“I know you came to the Lord last year, since you answered an altar call here. What were the circumstances of your divorce?”

It’s better for him to know than to wonder,
she told herself. After taking a deep breath, she said, “Michael was unfaithful and physically and mentally abusive. I literally ran for my life. Beth took me in at New Life Inn when I got back here.”

Jim Dillon nodded. “You didn’t go to your parents for help?”

“They’ve sided with Michael. In their defense, he’s very charming while appearing to be unassuming and not a bit threatening. He certainly fooled me. But still…”

“Still, I’d think they would have reached out to help you.”

“We’ve never been close. But I don’t want to scandalize them with my behavior. My parents are the pillars of their church but they don’t know the Lord. They’re relying on donations to buy their way into heaven. Anyway, the other day my mother said I’m still married to Michael in the eyes of God. I told her she was wrong, but now I wonder if I didn’t speak from my own hopes and desires and not from Scripture.”

Pastor Jim sighed. “Divorce is one of the great controversies in the Church. I’ve had people come to me and ask, ‘If God can forgive murder, why can’t He forgive me for marrying the wrong man or woman?’ There is no simple answer. Each circumstance is different.

“In Matthew chapter five, Jesus said that sexual immorality was a reason for divorce. Adultery didn’t play a part in my divorce from Holly, and neither of us felt free to marry afterward.” He smiled. “Except to remarry each other, which the Lord managed to bring about.

“A believer has two choices in the case of adultery by his or her partner: forgive the affair and stay, or leave.”

Jim Dillon pursed his lips, thinking for a moment. “In your case, because of the abuse, I could never advise you to return to your abuser. I’d also say that because there was adultery, you should be free to marry again if you want that. All that said, you
weren’t a believer when any of that happened. What that means, in my interpretation and according to several biblical scholars along with Paul, is that you have a new life in Christ, and sins and mistakes of the past no longer bind you. I have to say I think your mother is wrong.
Is
there some lucky guy who prompted all this?”

Xandra shrugged. “Not exactly. I got a dinner invitation. I like the person but I’m unsure. Michael is a very frightening man. And I’d thought Michael was this mild-mannered person—my brother’s opposite. This man who asked me out seems to be all that is patient and kind. But he’s also a lot of things they were. Wealthy. Charming. Handsome.”

“And you don’t trust your judgment. You’re afraid to step out and make the wrong decision.”

“How do I know if I’m right or not? I know all men aren’t abusers. I know there are good relationships. I’m honestly not afraid of all men. But I
am
leery of this one. Maybe of any one I’d choose. I can’t make the same mistake again. I just can’t.”

“But you don’t think you have reason to mistrust this man? You don’t think this is the Holy Spirit whispering a warning?”

She thought of Adam. She’d seen him angry and it had worried her. But later, when she’d thought about it, he’d been completely in control of his anger. Very different from Michael. Unlike the rest of Michael’s behavior, which was almost maniacally controlled, his anger was always completely out of control. Her brother had been the same.

“No. I think it’s me. I think I’m afraid to care about a man again. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

Pastor Dillon shrugged. “I can only tell you that the Lord doesn’t give us a spirit of fear. That comes from Satan. I can tell you what I do when something has me all but paralyzed with fear.”

“You?”

The pastor looked amused by her astonishment. Jim Dillon was the most together person she’d ever met.

“What, you think I’m immune? Fear strikes all of us, as does temptation. I face every day knowing I’m only a drink away from destroying my life. Only prayer gets me past that. When I find myself afraid to move forward on a project or a sermon or life in general, I stop dithering and pray. I ask the Lord to step in. I trust Him to close doors He doesn’t want me to walk through.

“Maybe it’s time to finally put your life in God’s hands, Alexandra. If you can’t make a decision, let Him make it. Trust Him to direct your path with this man who interests you.”

“And what about my parents? What about my witness to them?”

“I understand your worry over your witness to your parents. Have you tried talking to them? Witnessing to them directly about what being a Christian has come to mean to you?”

“They say the Tabernacle is a cult. That I’ve fallen under your evil power.”

Pastor Dillon frowned and huffed out a sigh, then
grinned wryly. “There’s a reference in Matthew—chapter seven, verse six. ‘Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.’ Now, I’m not calling your parents dogs or swine, but they do sound as if they’ve hardened their hearts. Christ himself told His disciples to give up on people who refused to listen. If your parents are meant to hear His call, they will. But if their hearts are hardened to His Gospel, you can’t restrict the life the Lord would have for you because of them. It would be a terrible waste of the life He’s given you if you remained stubbornly alone and He has a man for you out there.”

Xandra left the Tabernacle a few minutes later with her theological doubts put to rest, leaving only one question unanswered. The one only she could answer.

What to do about Adam?

Should she take any action at all? she wondered as she climbed behind the wheel of her car. After all, he’d only asked her to dinner to thank her for helping him and Mark. The rest of her thoughts about him were her problem.

Pastor Jim said her fear didn’t come from the Lord, and she readily accepted that as the truth. Adam had never made a threatening move toward her. Each doubt she’d had about him had come from her, not his actions. She’d thought him controlling because Michael had been. But Adam had dispelled her theory—her fear—with a simple statement explaining that SEALs live a life of teamwork. Then, when she’d
questioned Mark about the possibility that Adam might be a physical threat, Mark, after shooting her a look that questioned her sanity, had unequivocally dispelled her concern.

So where did that leave her?

She sighed. First things first. She started the car and put it in gear. She had to apologize to Adam for her mother’s behavior at the café.

A
dam looked down from the attic, surprised to see Alexandra’s white convertible cruising down the drive toward the house. He watched as she climbed out, pulling a scarf off, her hair loose and tousled. Mark ran out the side door below him and shouted a greeting.

So she was checking up on Mark, her pet project, he thought sourly as the murmur of their voices drifted up to him. Last night Mark had mentioned something that had happened while Alexandra was helping him get his head straight. She’d asked if he were afraid of Adam. Adam had tried not to be insulted, but it wasn’t easy after the way she’d treated him. It was best for him to just stay away from her. She’d made it more than plain in that café that she couldn’t possibly be here to see him, so he had no problem avoiding her, even if he appeared rude.

Alexandra’s laughter drifted up to him, and once
again he made an effort to ignore her. He’d taken Mark to church but hadn’t gone in today. He’d told himself he didn’t want to be inside on such a beautiful day. But Adam didn’t like lying to himself. He’d seen her car and hadn’t wanted to run into her again after twice being rebuffed.

He was, quite frankly, embarrassed that he hadn’t gotten the message the first time. Call him an arrogant fool, but, in his defense, he wasn’t used to having dinner invitations tossed back in his face. Women had always liked him, and he liked them right back. But now he wondered if it had been the uniform all along that had attracted them. He’d certainly been told enough times by Mallory that his being a member of one of the country’s most elite fighting units had blinded her to the reality of military life.

“Commander! Lady here to see you!” Sully bellowed up at him out of a first-floor window.

Adam couldn’t believe his ears. Him? She was here to see
him?
Curious and intrigued, he hotfooted it down to meet her in the foyer. She stood with her back to the stairs, looking at what was supposed to be the dining room. He managed to slow his footsteps before she realized he was there.

Even in a pair of jeans and a well-worn blazer, Alexandra easily outshone the setting. The dining room framing her was devoid of furnishings and in sad shape. Its golden silk walls were slightly soot stained, its once gleaming floors dulled from years of minimal maintenance, and the wainscoting was chipped and scarred. Sully had cleaned the crystal
chandelier that Adam knew was antique Waterford. Unfortunately, rather than resembling something out of a chamber of horrors the way it had when draped in cobwebs and coated with dust, it looked like exactly what it was—a lonely remnant of remembered elegance. Even if it was one of the more expensive appointments in the house, it wasn’t his taste. The whole house wasn’t his taste.

Unfortunately, Alexandra Lexington, he realized at that moment, was exactly his taste.

She turned to him and grimaced. “You could always put the chandelier on eBay, I suppose,” she said. Then her eyes widened in shock.

Adam burst out laughing. She’d insulted his home. His mother’s taste. By all rights he should be insulted too. But he couldn’t stop laughing.

“I’m so sorry,” she said loudly over his laughter, trying not to smile and blushing becomingly. “I hope it isn’t your favorite part of the house.”

His laughter had been all but spent, but that set him off again. Finally he controlled himself by remembering what had started his mother on her overblown decorating campaign. “My father had it shipped here from some castle in England. It was like a trigger for my mother. She redecorated the room to go with it. Then the hall wasn’t formal enough, then the parlor. I was pretty small, but I remember the rules of the house changed almost overnight. This place went from being a home to being a museum and my dog got banished to the barn. They took most of those things with them,” he explained, and gestured to the
empty rooms, deciding as he paused that it was time to cut short the small talk. Once again she had pulled information from him with no effort at all. Why did she have to be so easy to talk to?

“So what brings you here?”

She straightened her shoulders. “I came to apologize.”

Adam hooked his thumbs in his front belt loops. What was he supposed to say to that?
Oh, don’t worry, I’m used to being humiliated by women I find interesting.
“What exactly are you apologizing for?” he asked, deciding the fewer words he spoke, the less likely his ego was to get stomped on again.

“My mother,” she replied.

Okay, now he was getting annoyed. “I thought we’d established that if I’m not responsible for my parents, you aren’t responsible for yours.”

She stared at him, looking a bit uncertain in the face of his building annoyance. “Then why are you mad?” she asked. “And don’t tell me you’re not. Your eyes are practically shooting sparks.”

So much for hiding his feelings. “Fine. I don’t like it when someone is embarrassed to be seen with me. I’ve been treated like a pariah over the years when I was in uniform, but I knew that wasn’t really personal. It was what I represented to some people. The other day was personal. Real personal. I’m sorry if my second invitation put you off. If you’d told me I was the last guy in the world you’d share a meal with the first time I asked, you would have spared us both the second embarrassing invitation.”

Her jaw dropped. She stared at him, clearly horrified. Then those hypnotic and changeable eyes teared up. She blinked and took a breath. “You thought…I’m so sorry. Oh, Adam. It was my
mother.”

She thought that would make him feel better? “I see. You were just ashamed to have your
mother
see you with me. Thank you, you have no idea how much better that makes me feel!”

“No! You really don’t understand. I’m so sorry.” She squeezed the bridge of her nose as if fighting a headache and muttered what sounded like “idiots.”

Adam took a step back. Away from caring. Away from even wanting to care. What was it about her that disarmed him in all ways? “I can’t tell you how little your apology means at this point,” he said, hoping to cover his true feelings.

“I’m sure. Please. I wasn’t trying to be insulting,” she explained, her tone edged with exasperation.

“Well, you succeeded, anyway,” he told her. He could see her distress building, and his heart softened toward her again. Something didn’t add up. “I think you’re going to have to tell me what you’re sorry for. I’m obviously clueless.”

Now
she
looked annoyed. “Well, of course you are. If you weren’t so unnerving, we’d never have had any disagreements.”

“So now it’s my fault?”

“No! Just shut up, okay? Do you have somewhere we could sit down? This isn’t going the way I rehearsed.”

She’d rehearsed this? Touched and amused, he smiled. “We have a couple of rooms set up down here where we live like real people. Family room or my office?”

She closed her eyes as if trying to clear her thoughts, then opened them and said, “This is…um…personal. I don’t want Mark overhearing.”

“Office,” he said, gesturing through the parlor. Time had been no more kind to this room. It, too, was devoid of much furniture save a console table and lamp he’d rescued from the attic and stuck between two ten-foot-tall windows so there’d be a light source in there at night.

He guided her to a small secondary hall that led to the rear of the house and several smaller rooms. One of them Adam had set up as his office. It had once been his grandfather’s study and the floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases that lined the walls were still nearly full of his books. Only the more expensive first editions had gone with his parents.

Twin burgundy leather sofas bracketed a fireplace with an intricately carved sandstone surround and mantel. He nodded toward the sofas and followed her across the room. Once she’d settled, he moved to the other one, choosing to sit at the opposite end. It was less intimate that way, and he didn’t want her too close. Something happened to his brain whenever she came near, and he had a feeling he’d better keep a clear head.

“So what’s this all about?” he asked as he crossed
his ankle over his knee. He hoped he looked more relaxed than he felt.

“My mother. But not the way you seem to think. I’m divorced, but my mother feels I’m still married to Michael. Among other things, I worried that she’d make another scene in front of you. Her opinion started to worry me, so today I talked to Pastor Jim about my mother, about my divorce.”

“Your divorce was a spiritual problem for you?” He’d been divorced. All it had meant to him was that he’d failed, that he was free and didn’t want to be. He had thought Alexandra had wanted the divorce.

She looked down at her hands. “What it meant spiritually wasn’t something I’d even thought about before this. Pastor Jim says that because Michael was unfaithful, he broke our vows and so my divorcing him was justified. And that since all that happened before I came to Christ, it matters even less.”

“So you feel better about what your mother said.”

Her gaze rose and collided with his. She nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

He studied her. She’d never asked these questions before he’d invited her to dinner? Had his invitation merely gotten her thinking in general, or had she only turned him down for her principles? Her expression gave him no clue what her answer would be if he asked. When she said nothing more, he realized he had no choice but to stick his neck out again.

He broke eye contact, drumming his fingers on the arm of the sofa. “Are you saying you only turned me down because of your mother’s opinion on your di
vorce, or was it because of other reasons you haven’t gone into yet?”

“Both,” she admitted, then bit her bottom lip before going on. “But I don’t think the other things matter anymore. At least I hope not. I’m putting those in the Lord’s hands.”

He sat forward, and their eyes locked. “Dinner tonight? Say, around seven?” he asked. Then, since she’d come clean, he added, “And, Alexandra, just so you know, the invitation has nothing to do with Mark.”

She smiled and the day got a lot brighter. “Call me Xandra. And seven’s fine. Where shall we meet?”

Xandra stared into the rest-room mirror at seven o’clock that night, wondering what she had done. “You’ve lost your mind, Xandra,” she told her reflection as she tried to freshen her lipstick with a shaking hand. What had she been thinking? How had an apology wound up as a dinner date? And why had she decided Adam Boyer wasn’t a threat?

He was a SEAL.

He’d been trained to kill.

In probably a hundred different ways!

The Lord doesn’t give us a spirit of fear. That comes from Satan.
Pastor Dillon’s words of wisdom and counsel burst through the clamor of her panic.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
All right, Lord, I’ll give him a chance. It’s in Your hands.

Just, please, close all doors I shouldn’t walk through.

Tossing her lipstick into her purse, she fussed with
the cowl neck of her pink angora sweater, pushed the sleeves up, then pulled them down a little. Checking the seams of her straight skirt, she turned and caught sight of the door behind her in the mirror. She turned and faced the door, put her hand on the knob, and then, on a deep inhale, twisted it. The door opened smoothly, so, trusting the Lord to guide her, she walked through it.

Standing only a few feet away was Adam. He must have arrived since she’d gone in to freshen up and gain her composure. His golden, honey-colored hair shone under the track lighting overhead as he scanned the lobby and bar for her. He was dressed casually in a navy-blue sweater and tan cotton pants. As if he sensed her presence, Adam turned and smiled.

And she knew. She just knew. It felt almost as if the Lord spoke the words directly into her heart.

She was safe with this man.