Amish Country Box Set: Restless Hearts\The Doctor's Blessing\Courting Ruth (7 page)

“Soon.” Ted followed him out to the porch, saying a few more words she couldn’t understand.

Fiona stood where she was, trying to wrap her mind around this. Ted Rittenhouse had been born Amish, obviously. Just as obviously, he was one no longer. How did that fit into the warnings he’d given her about not seeking any relationship with her mother’s family?

The screen door creaked. Ted stopped with the door half open. “May I come back in for a moment?”

She nodded. What would he do if she asked the questions that were battering at her mind? Walk away again? That seemed to be his usual response.

“That’s really your brother?” The words were out before she had time to censor them. But why should she? He was the one who’d opened the subject of his family background, just by being here with Jacob.

“Yes.”

“Just yes? You didn’t come back in to satisfy my curiosity?”

“No.” His brows drew together. “I came back because I wanted to apologize. What I said about your parents, after Rachel left—I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t my place to say anything about them.”

“I agree. It wasn’t.” She stared at him, trying to understand what had driven this apology.

“I’m sorry. Can’t you just accept that and let it go?” Exasperation edged his voice, and she was tempted to tell him that he wasn’t really very good at apologizing.

“No, I can’t.” She took a breath. Maybe it wasn’t wise, but this had to be said. “Because how you react to me has an effect on my acceptance here. And it’s really not fair if you’re prejudiced against me because my mother left the Amish community, when it’s clear that you did exactly the same thing.”

Chapter Five

T
ed stood where he was for a moment, fighting the urge to turn and walk right out the door. And an almost equally strong urge to take Fiona by the shoulders and make her listen to common sense about dealing with people she didn’t understand.

But he couldn’t do either of those things. He couldn’t walk away, because he was honest enough to recognize the truth in what she said. And he couldn’t touch her, because—well, it was better if he didn’t explore the possibility of touching her.

She was right in one sense. His attitude toward her was tainted by his past. Neither of them could help that. Maybe that meant she had the right to know a bit more of the truth, if for no other reason than to keep her from stumbling around and causing more trouble by asking the wrong person.

Fiona still waited, her arms folded, face closed off to
him. She had that rare ability to wait, her silence demanding answers.

He moved closer, resting his hand on the carved newel post. The smooth grain of the oak felt warm under his fingers. “The builders did some fine work in this house. Jacob’s work will be up to theirs.”

“I know.” She gave a short nod. “I’ve seen your brother’s skill.”

“You want to know.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s inevitable. Why does Jacob Rittenhouse, Amish carpenter, have a brother who’s a police officer?”

Her hands, which had been pressing stiffly against the sides of her navy slacks, relaxed a bit. “It does seem an odd combination.”

“I guess it does.” He smoothed his palm over the smooth round ball that topped the newel post. The carpenter was long dead, probably, but his craftsmanship lived on. “Folks here in Crossroads know all about me.”

“But an outsider like me doesn’t.”

He studied her for a moment. That almost-red hair came from her Irish relatives, probably. But her skin was the same creamy ivory as Rachel’s, and those clear gray eyes turned up here and there in the Stolzfus family and their kin.

“You’re not really an outsider, are you? Like it or not, you have ties here.” He shrugged. “It’s not a very exciting story. You might be bored.”

Her mouth softened, and she took a step toward him. “I won’t be bored.”

“Well, then.” How to explain this so that Fiona, who’d probably always had every choice in the world, would understand? “I grew up on a farm not far from here. My brother Daniel and his family run it now.” He smiled. “If you want to know what I was like, just go out and look at Daniel’s kids—barefoot towheads learning how to care for the stock and harrow the fields. That was me.”

“But you weren’t just like them. Or you wouldn’t be wearing this.” She was close enough now to reach out and touch the police patch on his sleeve.

“My mother always said I was born asking why. I suppose that was the first sign. By the time I was a teenager, I was always restless.” Maybe he still was, still trying to be sure of his place in the world. “Didn’t you ever feel that, even with a warm, loving family behind you?”

Some emotion he couldn’t identify crossed her face and was gone. “Not exactly.” She shook her head. “We were talking about you, not me.”

What was there in his comment to raise her hackles? He didn’t know, but he wanted to.

“I was the kid who was always looking over the pasture fence, wondering what was on the outside.”

She nodded, gray eyes thoughtful. “I can see that. But why a cop, of all things?”

“That was Bill’s fault.” He smiled. “Bill Brinks. State Trooper assigned to this area. He had a soft spot for the Amish kids. He’d follow the buggies home on dark nights, when maybe someone had been having a wild rumspringa.”

“Someone like you, for instance?” Her lips curved.

“Guilty,” he said, trying not to imagine how those lips would feel against his. “My mother says I gave her more gray hairs than all my brothers put together.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “I can imagine that.”

“Anyway, Bill went from being an interfering nuisance to being a mentor. My family liked him, but they didn’t like where my friendship with him was leading me. Away from them. I suppose your family would have felt the same in that situation.” He said it deliberately, watching for her reaction this time.

The reaction was there, quick but unmistakable. Odd. He could guess what kind of family life the Flanagans he’d met would have—warm, loving, nosy, interfering. Like Amish Irish. But apparently that wasn’t what Fiona’s family life had been like.

“So you left home to become a cop.”

He nodded. “I left the community before I was baptized into the church, so I wasn’t breaking any vows by the actions I took.”

Should he remind her that her mother had done the same? Maybe not. She didn’t need the reminder.

“You didn’t go into the state police, like your friend,” she said.

“I was too young, then, and I wanted to see a little of the world. I went to Chicago, worked, finished my education, eventually went to the police academy there.”

She looked at him with a bit of skepticism in her face, as if trying to picture him as a big-city cop and having
trouble doing so. “Obviously you didn’t stay. What made you decide to leave?”

Everything in him hardened against her at that. No one here would tell her, and he wouldn’t, either. “Just got to longing for the rural life again. So here I am.”

“And they welcomed you back.”

No wonder she sounded skeptical. The Stolzfus family hadn’t exactly welcomed her.

“They did. They don’t understand my choice, and they have a lot of trouble seeing me wear a gun, but they accept me.” He took a step closer to her, close enough to see the tiny blue highlights in the gray of her eyes. “You see, I know how much pain it causes an Amish family when a child leaves. I know, because I did it.”

Her gaze evaded his. “But—children do leave home. It’s natural, isn’t it?”

“It’s natural for the world. Not for the Amish.”

Her head came up. “It’s not my fault that my mother made the choice she did.”

“I know that. They do, too. All I’m saying is—”

What was he saying? What did he hope to gain by telling his story to this outsider?

But she wasn’t an outsider, not really. And she was hurting. He could see beyond her brave facade. He knew she was hurting, probably more than she wanted to admit.

“Just be patient.” He forced a smile. “Maybe, in time, your mother’s family will come to terms with Hannah’s choice, like mine did.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Didn’t you leave a little something out of your story?”

“I left a lot out.” His mind flickered to the pain of those last months in Chicago, and he pushed the thought away. “Most of it pretty boring.”

“What about your relationship with my aunt Emma? That’s kind of pertinent, isn’t it?”

“Rachel told you.” He traded annoyance for resignation. Young Rachel bubbled on like a brook, and there was no changing that.

She nodded. “I thought maybe—” She stopped, as if reluctant to voice what she thought.

“You thought my attitude toward you was affected by my courting Emma.” He shrugged. “Well, maybe it was, but not in the way you think.”

“You don’t know what I think.” She rushed the words.

He couldn’t suppress a smile, thinking of Fiona’s younger self. “I was sixteen, maybe seventeen. Emma was the same. She was my first love.”

“They say you never forget your first love,” she said.

“They say?” He raised an eyebrow. “What about you? Have you forgotten your first love?”

A faint flush bloomed like a rose. “We weren’t talking about me.” Her eyes slid away from his.

Well. That was an interesting response from a woman her age, he’d think.

“I guess we weren’t. Well, I was already planning on leaving, and like any young fool in love, I wanted Emma to say she’d go with me.”

“She refused to leave her family?”

“She refused. Smartest thing she could have done. We weren’t anywhere near ready for marriage.” He’d still rushed away in anger and hurt. “But we didn’t see that then, and she stayed because of her mother.”

Fiona instinctively moved her hands, as if to push him away. He met her gaze and held it.

“She’d been a small child at the time, but she remembered what happened when Hannah left. She remembered that their mother seemed to turn into an old woman overnight. She remembered the pain that she felt nearly killed her mother. And she wouldn’t go with me, because she couldn’t subject her parents to that pain again.”

Fiona’s face whitened, her gray eyes looking very dark. “It wasn’t my fault.” It was a whisper.

“No, it wasn’t.” Sympathy for her flooded him. “I’m not saying it to hurt you, Fiona. I’m not blaming you for anything that happened to Emma and me. It was for the best. She has a happy marriage, and I have the career I want. We’re friends. But the family—well, now you know how they were hurt when your mother left.”

“Now I know,” she repeated, looking as if the words were acid in her mouth.

“Just tread carefully where the family is concerned. For your sake, as well as theirs.”

He touched her then, gripping her shoulder in what he meant to be an encouraging gesture. He wasn’t ready for the warmth that surged through him from that touch.
It was as if they were connected by a current that flowed back and forth between them, binding them together.

He let go, his mind scrambling for something coherent to say. There wasn’t anything. But it was very clear that Fiona wasn’t the only one who’d better be careful.

* * *

“Aunt Siobhan, that sandwich tray is beautiful.” Fiona shook her head at the array of food that her Flanagan relatives were piling on her kitchen table and counters. “This is too much. I didn’t expect you to do all this.”

Her aunt paused in the act of sorting cookies onto a serving tray, glancing at her with something like surprise in the deep-blue eyes that were so like Gabe’s. “Well, of course we want to help, Fiona. That’s what family is for.”

Something grabbed Fiona’s heart, making her momentarily speechless. Maybe Aunt Siobhan realized it, because she left the cookies and came to give Fiona a quick hug, her movements as light and supple as a girl’s.

“We love being part of your open house, dear.” She pressed her cheek against Fiona’s. “You wouldn’t take that away from us, would you?”

“Just be happy the men aren’t here.” Mary Kate, Aunt Siobhan’s older daughter, pushed her way through the screen door, balancing a large white box filled with cupcakes. “You don’t know how they can eat. There’d be nothing left for your prospective mothers.”

“It won’t just be moms,” Fiona said. She took the box, sliding it onto the counter. “Although I’m hoping for a
good turnout of possible clients.” And praying. “I’ve invited the whole township, it seems. You never know who might be in a position to refer a pregnant woman.”

“Good business,” Mary Kate said approvingly, running a hand through curls so deep a red they were almost mahogany. Those came from the Flanagan side of the family, and Mary Kate’s two kids had inherited the red curls, too.

“It was nice of you to come. I hope you didn’t have to hire a sitter.” She said the words tentatively, knowing Mary Kate’s husband had died about a year earlier, not sure how she managed with two young children, and a burgeoning career as a physical therapist.

“The kids are busy pestering Grandpa this afternoon.” Mary Kate smiled. “And I’m happy to have some girl-time, even if I’m not a prospective client.”

Something seemed to shadow Mary Kate’s face at that. Regret, perhaps? She was still young, still capable of falling in love again, having more children.

The door swung again, and Nolie came in with Terry, the younger Flanagan daughter who’d followed her father and brothers into firefighting but had gone on to become a paramedic. The kitchen was suddenly filled with laughter and female voices, and a warmth she hadn’t known she was missing flooded Fiona.

This was how a kitchen should be. Filled with the pleasure that came of working together with family—of having people who accepted her and shared her aims just because they were hers.

Even if they didn’t approve, as in Ted’s case. His family accepted him back, even though they could never accept the gun and badge he wore.

“Have you seen Ted Rittenhouse lately?” Nolie asked, as if she’d been reading her thoughts.

“Not in a few days, at least not to talk to.” Ten days, but who was counting? She’d thought he might turn up again to help Jacob with the carpentry, but he hadn’t, and that job was finished now.

“He seems like a nice guy, from what Gabe said.” Nolie filled a tray with cupcakes. She paused, pulling one from the tray and handing it to Mary Kate. “This one looks as if someone’s little finger got into the icing.”