Love Inspired June 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Single Dad Cowboy\The Bachelor Meets His Match\Unexpected Reunion (28 page)

“Of course you can,” Hypatia refuted. “Perhaps you should not—”

“Must not,” Simone interrupted firmly. “I
must not
have feelings for him. You see, it isn't just that I am forbidden to involve myself with him, it's that I could never give him—” she looked down “—any of the things that other women can.”

Bemused, Hypatia asked, “Such as?”

“Children,” Simone answered in a husky whisper. “I can never give him a child, which he surely deserves.”

Surprised but not unduly troubled by this admission, Hypatia nodded. So the cancer had taken that choice from her. How sad for her. Still, not every woman chose to be a parent, herself included, and not every man.

“I've never known Morgan to voice a yearning or even a preference for children.”

Simone looked up in surprise. “Oh, but he's so wonderful with them. You should have seen him with the kids in my group on Saturday! Granted, they aren't little children. Some of them are actually adults. Or should be. But I see him around campus, and Saturday with the children in the park, little strangers running wild, he was so patient, so indulgent. I think he had more fun than they did. I saw all these exasperated fathers, dragging their little kiddies around by the arms and threatening them with shaking fingers, and I thought, ‘Morgan wouldn't be like that. Morgan would know what to say and do to make them
want
to obey.'
I
may want to smack him sometimes, but he'd be a wonderful dad. I know it.” She smiled to herself, and Hypatia felt her heart turn over.

Couldn't
or
shouldn't
didn't matter. Simone had answered Hypatia's questions without even meaning to, and her heart bled for the girl.

“One wonders how he feels about you,” she heard herself say, wishing that she could call back the words, but Simone merely shook her head.

“It doesn't matter,” she said, stepping down onto the foyer floor. “Whatever he might feel for me now, he wouldn't if he knew all there is to know.”

Hypatia tilted her head, studying that piquant face. Something about the eyes—or was it the cheekbones?—struck her as oddly familiar, but she couldn't quite... Perhaps it was the sadness, such a depth of sadness. They'd certainly had a season of sadness in this house not too long ago, but joy had followed it. Hypatia trusted that such would be the case again, for the psalmist said that those who sowed with tears would reap with songs of joy, and so it had proven time and again.

“I think perhaps you underestimate both Morgan and our Lord,” Hypatia said at length, speaking as much to herself as to Simone. She tried on a smile and said, “Why don't we just pray about it and see what God has in store, hmm?”

Simone smiled, nodding, but Hypatia could see that her heart wasn't really in it. She wasn't convinced that anything could change. It must seem to her that God had spoken already, that His will had been done when the cancer had taken certain female organs. Hypatia wondered again how likely it was that Simone's cancer would return.

Mumbling that she had to get to class, Simone dragged the backpack from the step and shouldered it before sweeping around the end of the staircase and hurrying off toward the back of the house.

Perhaps Simone was not the one for whom she should have lain in wait. She turned smartly on her heeled pump and marched into the parlor, where Magnolia and Odelia were enjoying their morning tea.

“Oh, sisters,” she announced, “we have some serious praying to do.”

* * *

After her unexpected conversation with Hypatia, staying away from Chatam House and the Chatams—Morgan, especially—seemed Simone's best course of action. She had plenty to do. Her studies and her work at the mission were enough to keep her away. After check-in at the mission the following night, Simone saw her ministry partner off, locked the doors and settled into the office that Hub had set up for her.

Humming to herself, she mentally blocked out the cavernous building beyond the flimsy walls of her utilitarian workspace and concentrated on the paper that she was writing for one of her classes. So deep in thought was she that the first knock—though no more, really, than a pat on the door—sounded like a cannon shot to her. She jerked and knocked over a cup of paper clips, scattering them across the desktop. A flurry of knocks followed, accompanied by a pair of sobs.

Simone shot to her feet and made it out into the corridor before she remembered to go back for her cell phone. Clutching the tiny safeguard, she keyed in the numbers 9-1-1, then, with her thumb poised over the call button, she quickly advanced on the brown metal door, calling out, “Who's there?”

“It's Rina!” came a muffled but unmistakably feminine voice. “Simone, is that you? Let me in. Oh, please let me in.”

Hearing the soft cries on the other side of the door, Simone quickly stowed the phone in a pocket and opened up. Rina stumbled inside, her arms wrapped protectively about her middle.

“Are you in labor?”

Her pale head jerked up at the question, but after only a moment's hesitation, she shook it firmly. “No. No pains. I got away before he really hurt me. But he punched me. He punched me in the stomach!”

He,
whoever he was, had punched her in the face, too. She had a split lip and a lump below her left eye, as well as a bruise on her chin.

Simone slid an arm around the girl and helped her into the small kitchen. “Who did this to you?”

“It doesn't matter. I was stupid to go back.”

“Was it the baby's father?” Simone asked, pushing the girl down onto a stool next to the deep metal sink.

“He wants me to kill it! I keep thinking he'll change his mind, but he just says to get rid of it or he will.”

Simone closed her eyes and counted to ten slowly. “When you refused, he tried to beat you into a miscarriage. Am I right?”

Rina sighed and nodded. “He's got other kids, and the state garnishes his paycheck for child support, so he don't want no more. I worked for a while, but I got laid off, and I'm too far along to get hired now. That's why I went back. I thought maybe, at this stage, he'd give me some time until the baby comes and I could work again, but he's still insisting on an abortion.”

Simone took a deep breath. “I'm glad you chose life for your baby, Rina. I know I'm probably prejudiced because I can't have children, but I think it's very brave of you, and I'll help any way I can.”

“Oh, no,” Rina said, suddenly all compassion. “You can't have kids?”

Simone shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“And you're so nice.”

Simone had to smile. “Thank you. But nice doesn't make you a mother.”

“What happened?”

“It was cancer.”

“Man, that stinks!”

“Yes, it does,” Simone agreed, suddenly desperate to change the subject. “Uh, when is the baby due?”

Rina shrugged. “I'm really not sure. January, I think.”

“You haven't been to a doctor?”

Rina shook her head. “I didn't have no money, and I guess I was just too embarrassed, not being married, and my boyfriend wanting to kill it and all.”

“Well, that's past,” Simone said. “Right now, we have to make sure you're safe. Then we'll get you the prenatal care you need. Where have you been staying?”

“Oh, here and there, one shelter or another, but I can't stay there no more. He'll find me now he knows I didn't go back to my folks in Kansas like I said I was going to.”

“Why didn't you?” Simone asked, thinking that might be a solution.

“I was going to,” Rina told her miserably, “but my mama's sick, and my daddy's got her and my grandma there to take care of already. Her mind's bad, and she don't know who I am anymore. I scare her. It don't seem right to upset everybody because I'm so stupid as to get myself into this mess. Besides, the house is so small, I'd be sleeping on the couch, anyway.”

Simone sighed. “It's all right. I'll take care of you.”
Somehow.
Thinking quickly, she added, “You'll have to stay in the emergency room. Just be sure you're out of there by the time Pastor Chatam opens up tomorrow around lunch.”

“Oh, thank you! I'll do just as you say,” Rina promised, “but do you think I could get something to eat? I'm hungry all the time now.”

“Of course,” Simone said, turning toward the pantry. “We only keep snacks here, though. Tomorrow I'll make sure you get some really nutritious food. And I'm making a doctor's appointment for you.”

“All right.”

“We'll do this together,” Simone promised, smiling at the hope that filled Rina's eyes.

Simone knew that she was breaking all the rules. She should be turning this over to the authorities, not hiding Rina, but the wheels of government often ground slowly. What if Rina's abuser should catch up with her before she could be gotten into a safe situation? The authorities could handle the matter once this baby was safely born. Until then, Simone would do what she had to. If she couldn't be a mother, at least she could make sure that someone else could be.

And maybe, just maybe, that was the point of it all.

Chapter Nine

“A
re you all right?”

Simone jumped and whirled, stumbling against the curb, the hand holding the car keys going to the center of her chest. “Morg—
Professor.
You startled me.”

“I can see that, but I don't understand it. I've been following you and calling your name halfway across campus.”

Her gaze slid away from his. “I, uh, didn't hear you.”

“No kidding. You also didn't answer my question.”

She offered him a weak smile. “Sorry. Say again.”

He raked his gaze over her. She had lost weight, only a bit, but enough to alarm him. “Are you ill?”

“No. I'm fine.”

“You've lost a few pounds.”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm one of those disgusting people who can miss a meal and inadvertently drop pounds.”

“And why have you been missing meals?” he asked, frowning.

She put out a stilted laugh. “I've been busy, okay? You know how it is with midterms coming up.”

He should. It was the end of October, and he should be concentrating on midterms himself. Instead, he couldn't think about anything except Simone. “If your course load is too heavy,” he began, but she laughed and shook her head.

“I'm fine, I tell you. There's no reason to report me to the administration.”

He'd forgotten all about reporting her to the administration. “I'm not going to report you.” After arguing with himself for a week and a half, he'd finally decided to at least explore the possibility of following his father's suggestion, provided that she was even interested, of course. “It occurred to me that you might be able to get a faculty job.”

She brightened instantly. “Oh?”

“That is, if you're open to it and if the right position becomes available. And if you think you can handle it.”

Nodding enthusiastically, she said, “Yes, I'm definitely open to it, and I'm sure I can handle it. Unless...would I have to give up the mission?”

His frown deepened. “I'm not sure you're up to maintaining both positions.”

“I'm up to it,” she declared. “In fact, I'm one hundred percent certain I'd be better for it.”

He wasn't so sure about that, but he supposed that was a battle they could fight later. “Well...perhaps if you put back on the weight you've lost,” he suggested.

“I'll try,” she promised, biting her lip.

“All right. I'll see what positions might be available.”

“Thank you,” she gushed, reaching out to clasp his forearm with her long, slender fingers.

Just that little touch made his breath hitch, and he covered her hand with his to maintain the contact, pointing out, “No one's come up with a job offer yet, Simone.”

Her smile melted him. “I meant, thank you for looking out for me.”

“Sure.”

The fact was he couldn't help himself. Looking out for her seemed to have become second nature for him. It was more than that, though. He couldn't get through a day anymore without seeing her. He seemed to find some excuse to catch a glimpse of her and have a word at least in passing, even if he had to drop by the mission to accomplish it. He'd given up going by Chatam House. She was never there, apparently, except to shower and sleep. Lately they never seemed to have a private moment, and he found that he missed her terribly. Why else would he track her down like this on a Tuesday when he could have waited one more day and spoken to her after class?

Had it really been almost two months since she'd dropped into his arms like a cut flower at the graduate student mixer? In that time, she'd somehow firmly fixed herself in his life, and he was all too aware that he couldn't say the same in reverse. In that respect, it was Brigitte all over again. The comparison chilled him, for Brigitte had died all too young.

The fact that Simone had gained weight and then lost at least some of it again suddenly terrified him. He stood there with a lump in his throat, watching her get into the car,
his
car, and drive away, while he prayed that she was truly well.

Oh, Lord, don't let me lose her,
he begged. And she wasn't even his to lose. Not even close to being his. And she really shouldn't be, but here he was trying to get her on staff just in case they might have a chance at...something.

He felt as stupid and dreamy and confused as the most inexperienced freshman boy with a hopeless crush on the senior head cheerleader—and with about as much chance of making it work between them.

Only maturity and sheer grit helped him keep his distance for the remainder of the week. He vowed that he would content himself with mere nods and casual greetings when Simone entered and left the lecture hall. The fact that he had nothing whatsoever to offer on the faculty-job front grated, but he had feelers out in all the right places, and whenever something came up, he would be among the very first to know. The rest was in God's hands.

He congratulated himself on his self-control too soon, however, for he had barely walked into his office suite midafternoon on Thursday when his administrative assistant, Vicki, informed him that he was wanted at Chatam House immediately. He dug out his cell phone, which he had forgotten to take off silent, and saw that he had a message from Chatam House. For the aunties, at his “earliest convenience” was urgent; “immediately” could only be dire, and dire, to his mind, could only pertain to Simone.

Tearing out of the building at a run, he broke all traffic laws on the short trip across town, praying as he went. Vicki, bless her, had apparently called ahead to let them know that he was on his way, for Hypatia met him in the foyer, uncharacteristically wringing her hands.

“What's happened? What's wrong? Is Brooks here?”

“Brooks? Why on earth would we call a doctor? Asher, perhaps, if Chester had his way,” she grumbled.

Asher? But his cousin Asher was a lawyer. This made no sense at all.

Before he could ask another question, Hypatia led him straight into the large formal parlor, where Simone sat alone upon the antique brocade settee and everyone else—Magnolia, Odelia, Kent, Chester, Hilda and now Morgan and Hypatia—stood, arranged around the low piecrust tea table like an inquisition panel. Simone glanced up at him, and he could not mistake the stubborn tilt of her sweetly pointed little chin. He almost smiled in relief. Whatever was going on, she wasn't ill, but then that begged the question...

“What is this about?”

Chester pointed an accusatory finger. “She's stealing food.”

Now that was the last problem with which Morgan had expected to be presented, but he did note that Simone ducked her head. “What?”

“Stealing!” Chester all but shouted, and Simone sighed. “And no small amount. Enough to feed two people at least.”

“That's preposterous,” Morgan said, almost chuckling. “She couldn't possibly be stealing food. Whatever for, when she's welcome to anything she could want? Besides, she's obviously not eating it.” She rolled a murderous glare up at him, arms folded. “Well, look at her,” he insisted. “She's losing weight, not gaining.”

Odelia cleared her throat, reminding him that it was impolite to discuss a lady's weight. Morgan mentally sighed. It wasn't his plump auntie's weight in question. She wasn't being accused of stealing food. Suddenly it hit him, and he did chuckle.

“I know what this is about. I told Simone that she needed to regain the weight that she'd recently lost as a sort of condition for my helping her get a faculty job at BCBC.”

“So she started stealing whole casseroles and pork tenderloins?” Chester countered. “I caught her red-handed.” He pointed to a cardboard box on a rectangular chinoiserie table beside the open pocket doorway. “She boxed it up while Hilda was in the laundry. Took it right out of the refrigerator and boxed it up to cart it out, and it wasn't the first time, either. We've been missing foodstuffs out of the pantry and refrigerator for more than a week.”

Morgan hadn't recovered from the shock of that before Chester hurried on, exclaiming, “And that isn't the whole of it. There's been something fishy from the beginning. She all but hides herself. You sisters, you think she doesn't want to impose, but the girl won't even look a body in the eye, and there's the coming and going at all hours, when it's not like she's got a fella or friends to go around with. It's not that at all. I don't know what it is, but something isn't right, and it's been eating at me since she come here.”

It was eating at Morgan, too, now, gnawing a hole right through his middle. He'd noticed that she didn't like to
be
at Chatam House, when everyone else who'd ever stayed there had fallen in love with the place and its occupants, and that business about not letting Chester drive her around bothered him. Morgan was still at a loss to explain her complete animosity to the idea when she'd accepted the much larger favor of the loan of a car from him. He wanted to think that it was simply because the car belonged to him, but she'd gone so far as to resort to an inconvenient, and dangerous, moped rather than accept the transportation generously offered to her by the aunties and Chester. Something just didn't add up.

Like everyone else in the room, he looked to Simone for some sort of answer, an easy, simple explanation. Dozens could be found, surely. She had but to supply one or two, and this would all be over, but she sat like a guilty lump, her eyes downcast, until suddenly she shot to her feet.

“I'm moving out,” she proclaimed shakily. “Now.”

Just like that, she dashed his every hope for a reasonable explanation, and just like that something popped into his mind, something he had dismissed and shouldn't have, something he knew and no one else here did, a question that had to be asked. Instinctively, he knew that she wouldn't be the one to give him the answer, however, so he asked the one person who might.

“Who is Laverne Davenport Worth?”

Simone gasped and dropped back onto the settee as if she'd been felled with a blow. Chester first looked confused then stunned. A moment passed before he formulated the answer.

“She is my mother.”

Simone made a small, strangling sound.

“And she lives in Fort Worth,” Morgan surmised, shaking his head, for it still made no sense to him.

“In a nursing home there,” Chester supplied. “She is in a vegetative coma and has been for a dozen years or more. She was in an accident.”

Morgan shifted to face Simone. His feet felt like lead weights, and his heart literally trembled in his chest, for if nothing else, he knew he was about to brand her a liar. “Why did you list her as your next of kin on your admissions application?”

For a long, tense moment, he thought Simone wouldn't answer, but then she shook her head, her lips twisting, and in a voice barely above a whisper said, “It was the only address I could verify without...”

“Without?” he prodded.

She looked up, her enormous, storm-gray eyes brimming with tears and apology. “Without giving myself away prematurely.” Looking to Chester then, she whispered, “Uncle Chester, I'm so sorry.”

The portly man stumbled back and came down hard on the striped occasional chair in front of the fireplace. “Lyla!” he gasped.

Just that one word brought a shriek from Hilda, who clapped chubby hands to flaccid cheeks, bawling, “Lyla Simone! I don't believe it. It is you! But why not just say so? What were you thinking?”

Lyla
Simone? Morgan felt as if he was reeling, though his feet were firmly planted.

“Carissa's Lyla?” he heard someone ask.

“Phillip's Carissa?”

“
Our
Carissa?”

Carissa's sister. His cousin Phillip's sister-in-law. Morgan thought he would drop where he stood.

“I thought she was missing.”

“She
was
missing.”

“Ran away as a girl.”

“It nearly killed your daddy,” Chester accused. “Why didn't you come back before he died?”

“I shouldn't have come back at all!” Simone bolted up from the sofa and ran for the door. “Don't tell Carissa. Please don't!”

“Don't tell her?” Chester demanded, coming to his feet. “That's daft.”

Openly sobbing, Simone grabbed the box of food and dashed into the foyer.

“Now where is she off to?” Chester demanded.

“I'm not sure,” Morgan said, still too stunned to move, “but I do know why she didn't come home during her father's illness.” Whatever else might be lies, the cancer was truth.

“Left it to her sister to care for their dying daddy,” Chester accused, throwing out a hand. “That's Lyla's way.”

Morgan looked to Hypatia in exasperation. This was clearly a Worth family matter, and he didn't know the intricacies of it, but he did know where Simone, or Lyla, had been and what she had been doing for at least eighteen months of her father's illness. “Didn't you tell them what we found out?”

Hypatia shook her head morosely. “I wasn't aware of the connection and felt she was entitled to her privacy.”

Her
secrecy,
more like. Well, they'd all had enough of that. He faced Chester squarely and put it to him. “She didn't come home before her father died because she was too busy fighting for her own life. She's had cancer and just barely beat it, if I'm any judge.”

The older man turned pale, from the crown of his shiny bald pate to the tips of his puffy fingers. “Oh, no. You're sure about that?”

“Very.”

“It's why she's here, Chester,” Hypatia supplied. “Brooks insisted that she have a safe, quiet place in which to recover.”

Chester heaved out a great breath. “Well, that doesn't explain the last decade, but it's something.” He glanced around at them, demanding, “So, what are we standing here for? We have to go after her.”