Joy in His Heart (11 page)

Joy raised an eyebrow and confirmed his worst fear. “None of that is anything the rest of us didn’t see coming. And everyone who cared about you breathed a sigh of relief when you broke it off.” Which meant everyone had known what an idiot he’d been that time. “But whatever happened to Rebecca Southern? I’ve known her for years from her work in the ER. She’s so sweet.”

“Becca wanted all the things I did. But I realized that while she wanted the same life I did, I was only a means to an end for her. And frankly that’s all she was for me. In the end, I decided I should at least love my wife and that she should at least love me. Becca and I weren’t in love. We were in like.”

What hadn’t worked was that none of them were Joy even though they’d each partially fit his image of the right doctor’s wife. He was tempted to just blurt out—she wasn’t you. He restrained himself. It was too late for thoughts like that.

“Without love, marriage would be a recipe for disaster,” Joy said. Her expression filled with something he couldn’t name. He hoped it wasn’t pity.

“Exactly,” he said quietly. “Marriage and love have to go hand in hand. You and I had love, but different goals. Maybe our youth and inexperience were the problem. We loved each other so much that we never talked about important stuff like the future and our specific plans and needs. We each assumed we knew. And it didn’t help that I was so dead set on what I thought
was the good life—the life I wanted—that I couldn’t see another way to live.”

Joy stared at him for long moment. “Are you saying you don’t want the house in the suburbs, the wife who lives for her kids and to support your career?”

He turned toward her and looked into her lovely face. “I don’t know. I wish I had an answer,” he whispered, drawn to her in a way he’d never felt with another woman. And so he made his biggest mistake since agreeing to sub for Zack Stevens on the Angel Flight. He leaned forward, tipped her chin up and kissed her.

And she kissed him back.

If his brain had made a bad decision, his body made the next. He pulled her closer and deepened the kiss. In the next split second, Brian retreated like a scalded cat. He was not going there. Not with Joy. He’d let those feelings rule his head once before and had barely escaped with his heart still beating. He turned away, raked a hand through his hair and averted his eyes. He didn’t want to see what he felt reflected in her sapphire eyes or he might make a second mistake and it might just destroy both of them.

He stood and started away. “I’d better get the fish cleaned and cooked. It’s well past noon.” Something compelled him to stop—to turn back. “Like I said, I’m always apologizing. I’m sorry. That was completely out of line.” He dared to focus on her face then. On the look in her eyes. If the eyes were truly the windows of the soul, Joy’s were no less tortured than his. What was he doing to both of them?

B
rian stared down at the fish he’d just cleaned. He winced and stilled his hands. Mutilated was more like it. No one would mistake him for a surgeon at that moment. He’d attacked the poor dead thing as if it were the author of all his confusion. The fish, however, was blameless. Brian wasn’t.

He should never have kissed her.

What on earth was the matter with him? He’d had his life completely planned since he was fifteen. And he’d hit every mark. National merit scholar in high school. Valedictorian of his college class. Top one percent of his medical school. An internship and residency at a top Philadelphia hospital. Even the endorsement of
Philadelphia Magazine
for the past two years as the area’s top pediatric trauma surgeon.

The only part of his plans to ever derail had been in his personal life. He was supposed to have been married by now to a sophisticated woman who was nonetheless a lot like his nurturing mother and maybe even
have had a couple of children. Yet that had never materialized. From where he stood at this moment, his feelings for Joy were the cause. He was very much afraid that the insight he’d had back at the camp was all too true.

Joy really had ruined him for anyone else.

She was everything he admired. Intelligent, brave, independent and tenacious. And none of the things his mother had been—meek, gentle and compliant. She was also a few things a mother just couldn’t be. Headstrong, reckless and prone to tempting death on a regular basis.

He’d been terrified for her more times in the past twelve years than he could count. It wasn’t that he didn’t admire her for the people she’d rescued, the homes she’d helped save or the environmental disasters she’d helped avert. Even if she were interested in having children, he didn’t want his children’s mother losing her life and leaving them orphaned. He didn’t want that heartbreak for himself, either.

The trouble was, he’d only just realized that if Joy did die in one of her daredevil escapades, he’d be no less devastated for their lack of a current relationship. He may as well just admit it to himself. He loved her—had probably never stopped loving her.

In the last three days they had talked about a lot of issues, and their opinions on everything from world affairs to movie trends to the kind of food they liked were practically identical. Sharing little chores and big decisions on the welfare of these children, whose lives had suddenly been placed in their care had lightened a bur
den that could have been overwhelming. He’d also come to see how very lonely his life had become.

So now what, Lord? Why did You put us here together? Am I here to reconcile with her or get her out of my system? If it’s that, I can tell You one thing. It isn’t working. I know this wasn’t an accident. You must have a plan. You always have a plan. So how about letting this thickheaded guy in on what it is?

“Brian,” Joy said from behind him. “Dan was fooling with the radio. There was enough juice left in it to get a weather forecast. A Noreaster is headed this way. They’re warning of flash floods. It looks like really heavy rain by tonight. What do we do?”

He turned and stared at her. She stood framed by the blue sky, the clear sparkling stream and the misty mountain at the end of the wide valley. Her spiky blond hair fluttered in the breeze. Her eyes matched the sky behind her and shimmered more brilliantly than the glistening stream. And his heart just about seized in his chest.

How can I love her so much, Lord, and not be able to find a way to have a future with her?
Now his heart pounded.
Is that my answer? Find a way? You want me to look for a loophole in my life plan? It
is
mine after all.

If the sun could have brightened, it did. Was this why he was there? Brian almost felt dizzy.

It isn’t supposed to be my plan is it, Lord? It’s supposed to be Yours.

Had he learned nothing from his brother Greg’s foray into police work after their brother’s death of a drug overdose? As an undercover narcotics officer, his big
hearted brother had descended into the depths of despair, nearly losing his way before he’d finally realized that in trying to avenge Tommy’s death, he’d ignored God’s call to the ministry.

Had Brian also ignored a plan God had for him? And if Joy was a part of that plan, how much would he have to alter what he’d thought he wanted? He shouldn’t take the time now to think about all this, but it was an insight to seriously consider. Something he was probably supposed to consider. He blinked.

“Bri, did you hear me?” Joy demanded. “What do we do? Even with those stupid disposable ponchos from the emergency kits, the kids’ll get wet, and how will we cook if we can’t light a fire?”

He tried but he couldn’t get his mind off the possibilities his discovery opened up. After the crash he’d begun to want Joy’s trust because he knew it was safer. Then he’d wanted her friendship because he was sick of the arguments and animosity. Now he might want more, but maybe friendship was the place they should have started years ago and maybe it was where they could start now.

Looking back he could see that love between them had appeared in full bloom, but it had not been cultivated on a strong foundation. So for right now her friendship and trust would be a good place to start. More might or might not follow, but it was a journey long overdue. “Will you trust me?” he asked.

When she looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, Brian almost shouted for joy—no pun intended. Then she added, “You’ve done a great job getting us this far and taking care of us all. What’s not to trust?”

He almost sighed. Not what he’d meant but better than a sharp stick in the eye. Maybe personal trust would follow. Like the trek up the mountain, he and Joy had a personal journey to make. He had no idea what trail either would eventually follow or if they’d end up together when the real world intruded, but at least it was a beginning.

Joy wondered what was going on in Brian’s head. She’d dreaded even seeing him after that astonishing kiss. But then Dan had flipped on the radio wondering if it would work since they’d let the batteries rest to recoup some of their power. The forecaster’s voice warning of a Noreaster had floated across the camp like an ill wind. The children’s faces had frozen in varying expressions of trepidation.

And so, for their sake, she’d forced herself to seek out Brian. She’d gained courage from her own need to get to the plane so she could get away from him. It was what she wanted, she told herself, ignoring the pain the thought caused her.

That was how it had to be.

Since finding the boys and Candy, they had traded stories, the occasional joke or memory of their childhoods around the camp fire at night and during the long afternoons. They were the products of the same neighborhood and both Christians so they often agreed on moral and lifestyle issues. But she also knew he still believed, as he had years ago, that women should not mix marriage and a career. And it was that fundamental difference that made them all wrong for each other.

She wanted a husband and children but the man
would need to be someone who could support her love of flying and her vision for Agape Air. Joy had no intention of ever endangering the lives of her unborn children by flying into dangerous situations. She might even give up rescue work once there were children depending on her. But she also saw no reason to give up being a pilot altogether or to give up running the company she’d helped her uncle build.

When she’d joined Agape, Uncle George had owned four small cargo planes and had employed two other pilots. Since she’d taken over as CEO, she’d helped build it into a thriving company with a fleet of commuter and cargo planes powered by both prop and jet power plants. They now employed nearly two dozen people and were responsible for the travel needs of quite a few local corporations.

It didn’t seem to Joy that the Lord would’ve granted such favor to Agape Air in the years since she took over the everyday operations if he didn’t intend her to continue as its head.

It was for that reason she had to assume she and Brian were only meant to nod politely when forced into each other’s company. That kiss had shown her that even a friendship between them wouldn’t work because all of their lives, every time they got too close, one or both of them walked away wounded.

She didn’t know about Brian, but she knew saying goodbye and going back to her life was going to be tremendously painful this time, too. More so now. And she was sick of being hurt by him. She was sick of hurting him, too.

If only he hadn’t kissed her. If only she hadn’t kissed him back. The kiss had thrown her so far off balance that she hadn’t thought about her answer to his question about trust. She’d answered without thinking, and only after assuring him that she trusted him had she suddenly been positive he’d meant something completely unrelated to wilderness survival. She was afraid to imagine what and so she relegated it, and the kiss, to the back burner of her mind and forced herself to listen to his plans for the trip to the plane.

“We’ll cook up all the fish and the rabbits and start off as soon as possible. I don’t want to be down here if that stream starts rising. There’s a lot of recent damage to the grass through this whole area that tells me all this was under water this time last week and those were just freak thunderstorms. We’ll camp at dark. Hopefully we’ll get to the crash site and have a camp set up before the rain hits. It’s the best we can do. I’ll finish cleaning these. Suppose you help the kids stow what you can in their backpacks. Try to divide it all according to their weight. I’ll carry what you don’t think they should.” She nodded and went to turn away. “And, Joy,” he said evenly, “don’t even think of putting a pack together for yourself. You’ll have enough with just your injuries as a handicap without a pack hanging on that shoulder.”

“But won’t you and Adam have to carry Dan, too?”

He nodded. “I still don’t want him trying to use cobbled-together crutches. It’s bad enough you have to.”

“I’m fine,” she automatically said. He had enough to worry about with Dan and the other children.

He winced, then smiled sort of sadly. “No, you aren’t. You’re just better than you were and I appreciate your not wanting me to worry, but I will anyway. Adam and I will be fine so don’t you worry about us. He and I have talked it over.”

Uncomfortable with his apt reading of her, Joy retreated to the camp without another word and got the kids working. Two hours later they left the valley behind, Brian and Adam in the lead, with Dan on the litter. Yesterday, after having Joy point out the area where she thought the plane had gone down, Brian had scouted ahead and marked the beginnings of the easiest trail upward he’d been able to find.

They traversed the valley and Joy’s stomach knotted as it hadn’t in days when they approached the dark forbidding tree line. The canopy had thickened in the days since the crash and it seemed to swallow up all the sparkling sunshine of the valley. It looked like another world and only prayer gave her the courage to step into the shadow of the tall, tall trees.

The trail, another deer track, rose steadily and, though clear of the tangled undergrowth that bordered the path, it was not easy going with her injuries. Joy was exhausted by the time they’d gone a mile onto the mountain. And they had at least three thousand vertical feet and many, many miles of trail to cover. This was their only hope for a quick rescue though, so Joy trudged on, praying for strength with every step. The strength to go on. The strength to say goodbye to Brian when they reached their goal. The strength to survive the inevitable loneliness.

Soon the sky beyond the vivid green canopy darkened and turned the color of lead. Five hours after they’d set out, the rain started. It was way ahead of the estimate. They became aware of it as a noise high up in the trees—a gentle and quiet rustling accompanied by the tangy scent of spring rain. The aroma engulfed them just before the moisture reached the ground.

Joy and Brian quickly helped everyone into the flimsy emergency ponchos and tossed two of the solar blankets over Dan, hoping to keep him and the litter dry. But the ponchos tore easily on the prickly underbrush at the sides of the trail so they were all soon uncomfortably damp. They trudged ever upward, through the steady, wearing rain. It chilled to the bone. The temperature fell, too, and though the rain had begun slowly, it increased in volume and was soon much heavier.

Then the trail turned slippery under foot. The hard packed ground beneath a heavy layer of loam turned to mud. The top layer often broke loose and slid from under their feet, pitching them to the ground. The loam, while cushioning their falls, had a thick musty odor of decaying plant material and was anything but pleasant.

Brian looked back at a moment when both Joy and Candy went down. He traded places with Chad and Kevin at the front of the litter and hiked back down the trail to scoop Candy up into his arms. His affection for the little girl was plain. He asked if Joy thought she could make it. She didn’t at that moment, but she got to her feet and forced herself to grin and nod. She made a production of wiping her filthy hands on her sodden slacks and declining any assistance. She didn’t want
him helping her—touching her. After that kiss—that haunting kiss—it would be too much.

Knowing Brian was watching her closely, Joy tried not to let on that she was near the end of her endurance. Her hand was blistered, her underarm was raw and her crutch tip kept sinking into the ground, jolting her. It threw her off balance and slowed her progress markedly. She’d fallen quite a bit behind when Brian stopped and turned to check on her. He called to Mike, who had been chattering to Dan to keep his mind off the pain the jolting trip caused in his leg. Mike returned down the trail as Brian set Candy down and took her hand, helping the little girl keep up with the litter.

“I’m fine,” Joy called to Brian and waved him on. But he started back down the trail to get her.

“Come on, honey, I can see you aren’t okay,” he said reasonably and blocked the trail with his body. She tried to go around him but he reached out to still her, his hands spanning her waist. “You need help.”