Love Inspired May 2015 #2 (25 page)

Socialize, Donnelly.
As Connor had said, he needed to socialize, reach out to the locals and remind them he was one of them—for the project and for himself, too.

“You've talked me into it.”

That and the fact that Becca was in the hall. He could talk with her about joining him and Eli and Drew to hear his plans for the school. That would be a better idea than getting together with her alone. Better and safer. Much safer. He wouldn't be putting himself in a situation like tonight where he might allow himself to be lulled into feeling comfortable with her and thinking there could be anything between them. He knew his reality. But Becca had a way of making him lose sight of it.

* * *

Becca poured a cup of coffee and glanced at the doorway of the church hall for the fifth time in two minutes. When she saw Jared walking in with Eli, she gave her full attention to adding cream and sugar to her drink. So, he hadn't left. She stirred her coffee, watching the white swirls of half-and-half disappear into the dark brown of the drink. They'd had such a good time competing together. Then afterward, he'd gone all weird.

“Becca.”

She clanged the spoon against the side of the stoneware cup. “Jared. I thought you'd left.”

“No.” He hesitated and then flashed a tight smile. “I was talking with Eli. We're going to get together with Drew at the Camp Sonrise lodge so I can tell them more about my plans for the racing school.”

She removed the spoon from the cup and placed it on a napkin next to the coffeemaker. The fun they'd had playing Bible trivia had totally pushed the motocross track from her mind. She'd just as soon it had stayed there.

“You can join us,” he said.

“I'm working, but if you let me know which day, I could come over on my lunch break.”

“Sure, Eli thought lunchtime would work best for Drew, too.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I don't have you in my contacts.”

Becca debated whether to give him her cell number or the house number and settled on the cell.

It would be easier to screen his call. At home, Brendon might pick up. And he could get Jared's number from the caller ID. She knew her son. If he had Jared's number, he'd use any excuse to call him, which wouldn't help her efforts to discourage his infatuation with motorcycles and Jared.

Jared finished punching in her number. “I'll give you a call as soon as I know what day is best for Drew.”

“Monday, Wednesday or Friday is best for me. We bring the older kids down for swimming after lunch on those days. I can go out and join them at the beach when they get there.”

“I remember.”

She did, too. Becca's mind flashed back to running into Jared on the dock the other day. A small smile twitched her lips.

“Are you about ready to go?” Emily came up beside her. “Izzy has scout camp tomorrow, so I have to get her up and out early. We've been pretty lazy at our house about getting up mornings since school let out. All of us except Drew, of course.”

Becca glanced from her half-full cup of coffee to Jared.
Not really
. Her kids were staying overnight at her ex-in-laws', so she didn't have to worry about getting them home and in bed. As much as she and Debbie and Ken clashed over many things, they were good about helping her with the kids.

“I guess.” She should have driven herself, but Emily had offered to pick her up, and she'd liked the idea of not having to drive home alone to an empty house. Her house was fairly isolated, which she usually liked. But it wouldn't be for long if Jared built his racetrack. The meeting with him to find out more about his project couldn't come too soon. “Let me grab a brownie. I haven't had one.”

“You'd better get one fast. There are only two left.”

As Emily spoke, Jared reached around and picked up the plate of brownies from the table behind them, along with a couple of napkins. “I haven't had one either. Judging from how fast they went, they must be as good as Eli said.”

“They definitely are,” Emily said.

He gave Becca a napkin and offered her her choice of the two brownies.

She took one. “Since you've never had one before, I'll let you have the bigger one.”

“You don't know what a sacrifice Becca is making,” Emily teased.

Jared lifted the brownie to his lips and sunk his teeth into it. A look of pure delight spread across his face. “Are you sure you don't want to share half of the other one, too?”

“I'm sure,” Becca said, biting into hers. “They're a million calories. But I'll deal with the aftermath.”

He grinned. “And I know how. By running back and forth from the boulder in my meadow to your backyard to work them off. Don't say I didn't offer to help spare you.”

“Shh,” she said. “You're giving away my secrets. Emily thinks I can eat whatever I want and not gain an ounce.”

Emily covered her ears. “No, don't tell me it's not true. Another illusion shattered.”

Becca finished her coffee. “I'm ready to go if you still are.”

“Yeah, we'd better. See you at the next meeting, Jared?” Emily asked.

“Probably. And I'll call you tomorrow, Becca, to let you know which day.”

Emily raised an eyebrow as Becca said goodbye. As soon as they were in the hall out of Jared's earshot, she grabbed Becca's arm. “Was that what I think it was?”

Becca shook her head. “I doubt it.”

“That wasn't Jared Donnelly saying he was going to call you to get together?”

“Oh, that.”

Emily's mouth curved up in a knowing smile.

“He and Eli and Drew are meeting so he can tell them more about his racetrack project, and he asked me if I wanted to come. I need to know a lot more before I cast my Zoning Board vote.”

“That's all?”

“That's all. Now, will you stop turning every contact I have with the man into something more?”

Emily released an exaggerated sigh. “If I must.” She pushed open the door, and they stepped outside. “You can't tell me you don't find him attractive.”

“No, I can't. A woman would have to be dead to not find Jared Donnelly at least physically attractive.”

“But Jared has other attractive qualities,” Emily said. She unlocked her car and Becca opened the passenger side door.

“Yes. And unattractive ones, too, like he wants to build a motocross track in my backyard.”

“Maybe it won't be as bad as you think. He keeps calling it a school, not a track.”

“I'll find that out when we meet.” Becca buckled her seat belt. But Emily made no move to start the car. “I thought you were in a hurry to get home.”

“Yeah, I should be. But you two look really good together and made a great team at Bible trivia.”

“You can stop anytime now.”

“All right, but it's the first time since Matt left that you seem interested in another man. As you said, you're not dead.”

Leave it to Emily to use her own words against her. “Can we put an end to this conversation if I admit that, yes, I'm attracted to Jared? But there's no way I can pursue that attraction until the racetrack thing is settled.” Becca gestured. “And probably not then, either. Not if I have to vote him down.”

Chapter Six

A
ri marched ahead of Becca into the Hazardtown Community Church hall, which served as the main room of The Kids' Place. “Mommy got her important call last night, so she's not going to have lunch with us today,” she announced to Leanne, one of the other teachers.

“I have a meeting today at twelve-thirty at the camp lodge,” Becca explained. “Zoning Board business. I don't expect it to take more than an hour. I can meet you at the lake when you bring the kids down for swimming lessons.”

Ari put her backpack with her swimming stuff against the side wall in the space marked with red tape for her class. “Yeah, it's with Jared, the motorcycle-racing guy who's going to build a racetrack behind our house. Brendon says we'll probably get to go to the races for free because we're his friends.”

“I don't know about that,” Becca said.

“But Brendon said.”

Becca thanked God daily that her kids were close, even when that closeness united them against her.

“Where is Brendon?” Leanne asked.

“He went to his friend Ian's. It's just me and Mommy today, except when she has to go to her meeting.”

“Why don't you go down to your classroom,” Leanne said. “And help Mrs. Hill finish setting up for the art project you're going to do today.”

“Can I, Mom?”

“Sure.” It bothered Becca that Ari always asked her permission before she did anything, even with people she knew well and was comfortable with. Her daughter's uncertainty reminded her too much of herself when she'd been Ari's age and her parents had temporarily separated. Becca had wanted to do everything right so both her parents would love her. Not that they hadn't. She hated to think her daughter was feeling the same insecurities she had. Her ex-husband's on-again, off-again use of his visitation rights didn't help. Never knowing whether she'd see her father when he'd promised confused Ari even more.

“Thanks,” Becca said.

“No problem. I had an ulterior motive. Your meeting is about the proposed motocross track out your way?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where it's going to be built in relation to Camp Northern Lights?”

Becca hadn't thought about the Girl Scout camp on the parallel road west of Conifer Road. “No, I don't. When I looked at the preliminary plans Tom Hill showed me before the last Zoning Board meeting, it didn't strike me that Jared's property might border the camp property on that side.”

“Can you find out for me? Both of my girls are scouts, and I'm the assistant leader for their troop. I hate to be against something that would bring jobs and business to the area, but I'm uncomfortable with a racetrack near a camp full of girls. You never know. The people it might draw. What might happen.”

“I think a lot of people feel that way.” Herself included, despite her efforts to be unbiased. “The public hearing next week should give us answers.”

“I guess. I don't know if you remember the Donnelly brothers' father. Not a stellar citizen. Connor and Josh seem okay, but Jared hasn't been around here for years. What do we know about him?”

Leanne's changing from concerns about the track to concerns about Jared personally rankled Becca and compelled her to defend Jared and his project. “At the Singles Group meeting the other night, Jared stressed that the primary purpose of his project is a racing school for kids, based on tenets similar to those of the Boys & Girls Club organization.”

“That's better and says something about Jared—that he wants to help kids. But I'd heard that there'd be regular professional races. No?”

Becca hesitated, as she remembered Jared doing when she'd asked the same question at Bible trivia. “Yes, there'll be racing. To bring in money for the kids' program and boost the local tourist trade.”

Leanne shook her head. “We put up with that annual motorcycle rally for the sake of tourism. I'm not sure we need more of the same, even if it does bring in money.”

Despite some of the stories her ex-father-in-law told, Becca hadn't seen anything herself or read anything in the
Times of Ti
that indicated the bikers attending the rally caused any more trouble than an equal number of other tourists would. There were just so many of them here at once.

“A motocross track wouldn't bring in anywhere near the number of people as the rally.”

“Then it wouldn't even be worth it for the money.”

She could argue that she'd meant all at one time, that the track could bring in that many people over the season. But why was she arguing at all? Leanne hadn't mentioned anything Becca didn't have concerns about herself. Instead of saying that, she was answering Leanne from Jared's perspective, from what he'd said the other evening at church, which made the issues seem less insurmountable. Her thoughts jumbled in her head. Leanne was an open-minded person, unlike her ex-in-laws. And if reasonable people were siding with the Sheriff and Debbie, it would be hard for her to oppose them. Her ex-in-laws would use that against her and, by association, against the kids. Besides she
was
concerned about having the track, school, whatever so close to her house. She'd go at lunchtime and hear Jared out about his project and be fair when it came up for vote by the Zoning Board. But she couldn't let her attraction to the man influence her thinking. Her kids came first and always would.

* * *

Jared glanced at his bike parked in the driveway of the parsonage. It had been too dark to ride his property last night when he'd left the church. He tapped the cardboard tube with the racetrack plans and survey map against his leg. And he'd spent the morning working on his presentation, so he hadn't gotten out today, either. The walk to the camp lodge would work the edge off his nervous energy, for now, and let him go over what he wanted to say to Eli and Drew one more time. He'd decided he might as well give them and Becca the presentation he'd give at the public hearing next week, with some additional information about the school that might interest the guys as youth workers and soften Becca's resistance.

At the sound of gravel crunching under tires, he lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the midday sun and looked up the road toward the highway. A compact SUV slowed and stopped at the end of the parsonage driveway. Emily rolled down the window. “Hey, want a lift to the lodge?”

“No, thanks. Not to be rude, but I want the walk time to think.”

Emily waved him off. “Don't sweat it. Drew and Eli aren't going to be a hard sell. Drew barely knows about it and he's already mapping out how your program can help his program. He's looking for ways to get some of our scholarship campers who come up from the city to keep coming when they're older.”

“Good to know.” But it wasn't Eli or Drew he expected to be his hard sell.

“See you up there.” Emily started to close the window and stopped. “I just thought of something. If you want to do any kind of PR media blitz, I have time in my schedule.” She paused. “You look confused. I'm a graphic artist. I worked for an advertising agency in Manhattan before I was married.”

“I hadn't thought of that.” A media campaign made sense. Get his information out like Connor had said.

“Well, think about it. I can give you a good deal.”

“Money's not a problem.”

“Good to know,” she said echoing his earlier words. She finished rolling up the window and sped off.

“Hi.”

Becca startled him.

“Hey, I didn't hear you walk up.”

“I came across the yard from the church, but with all that gravel Emily was throwing, you might not have heard the whole day care walking up the road.”

“I did notice the lead foot.” He motioned her to the road and stepped around to the traffic side.

“That was nothing. We took the kids to ride the go-karts at Lake George. You would have thought she was racing a grand prix.”

“All right. I need to put that girl on a bike.”

Instead of the comeback he expected, he got silence.
Smart move, Donnelly.
There'd be plenty of opportunity to start a standoff about motorcycles when they got to the lodge. He didn't have to jump the gun and get into the conversation now.

“The trouble is, I can see Emily on a motorcycle.”

“That's trouble?”

Becca frowned.

Why couldn't he keep his mouth shut? He usually picked his fights carefully, and the last thing he wanted to do was go into the meeting at the lodge at further odds with Becca.

“Have you always been into motorcycles, even when you were a kid?”

“You mean like Brendon's age?”

“Mmm-hmm. I don't remember you having a bike in high school.”

“No, I didn't, not until the summer before my senior year. I signed up to take auto mechanics at Vo-Tech my senior year. I thought that was a way out of here. I used to work for Bert Miller.” Bert Miller and anyone else he could to have extra money to give his mom. But he didn't need to tell Becca that. Considering her family, she'd have no way to relate to his dysfunctional one. “He had an old beat-up dirt bike in his garden shed. I asked if I could have it to fix up as part of my pay. He said I could have it and offered to help me work on it.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Yeah.” It had been and Bert had never said why he'd done it. Nor did Jared know why Bert had given him the property on Conifer Road or helped out Josh and Connor, other than what his grandmother had said about him and his dad being friends at one time. Since it seemed to involve his father, he'd be better off not knowing.

“That was the bike Tessa was talking about.”

“Right.”

“When you got it running, you decided to race rather than become a mechanic?”

The inflection in her tone said her choice wouldn't have been racing. “No, it didn't even occur to me. But it turned out to have been a lot more lucrative choice.”

“Then how?”

“Bert saw me tooling around the fields before I got the bike on the road, and said I was a natural. Apparently, he'd done some racing when he was in his twenties. He still had racing contacts and got me into some local amateur races. After I left Paradox Lake, I supported myself and my bike working as a mechanic until I could race full-time.”

“Bert Miller was a motorcycle racer?”

The kaleidoscope of expressions crossing Becca's face said she was trying to reconcile Bert Miller the local bank manager with Bert Miller the bike racer.

“Yep, it happens even in the best families.”

Becca stopped and put her hands on her hips. “That wasn't necessary. I didn't mean it to sound that way. I know nothing about motocross or any other kind of racing, except what I've read in Brendon's magazines.”

“That's why I asked you to come to this meeting. I want to show you and Eli and Drew the reasons Paradox Lake is the right place for my motocross school. I need people like you three with me.”

“I'll keep an open mind.”

“That's all I can ask.”

But, Jared thought as they walked up the pine steps to the Camp Sonrise lodge, would that be enough to get her behind his plans? His thoughts ran to the other night, how much fun he'd had with her, how well they'd worked together as a team. Against his better judgment, he wondered if her open mind applied to him, too.

* * *

“Any more questions?”

Watching Jared across the table, Becca couldn't help comparing him with Brendon when he was finishing up an explanation of some accomplishment at school or at soccer practice and waiting for her approval. His energy. The way he perched on the edge of his chair. His excited gestures. No one could question that Jared was one hundred and ten percent behind launching his motocross school.

“I'm good,” Eli said. “I can see your program being really valuable for some of the students I advise at the high school. It could have been for me after we lost my Dad when I was fourteen. Something like this might have pulled me out of the spiral of trouble that nearly sucked me to the bottom before I joined the Air Force out of high school.”

“Got my answers,” Drew said. “I'll work up some ideas for integrating your program with my senior camper program and our youth group activities and get back to you.”

Jared's gaze went to Becca, and she wanted to meet it with the same enthusiasm as Eli and Drew. “I agree with Eli and Drew about the premise of the school.”

“But there's something you're not satisfied with,” he said giving her an opening to voice her unresolved issues.

Several somethings.
“I don't have any more questions.” She'd answer him professionally without letting her personal concerns color her words. “I have some advice for the public hearing.”

He crossed his arms. “I'm listening.”

She would not let him intimidate her. “Get the updated traffic studies before the meeting. I know people are concerned about traffic and the possibility of a roundabout. You need to come up with a way to reassure some people that the professional races won't bring in what they may see as an undesirable element. Among other things, I know people are concerned about the proximity to the Girl Scout camp.”

Jared uncrossed his arms and she filled her empty lungs.

He leaned forward on his elbows. “I'm glad you brought up the camp. I hadn't thought of it. I'll talk to the scouting council. The racing program is for girls, too. As for the undesirable element, Emily suggested a media campaign.”

“Good idea. She does excellent work.”

Drew acknowledged Becca's recognition of his wife's ability with a nod. “She's done a lot of national ad campaigns.”

Uncertainty waved over Becca. Jared using Emily could work against Becca if she decided she couldn't support the project.

“These are good.” He tapped a note into his cell phone. “Anything else?”