Meeting Mr. Right (5 page)

Vee made a surprised sound from the bottom of her throat. “To be honest, I didn’t even remember that you had a sister until you said something just now.”

“No, you probably wouldn’t. She’s several years older than me, so you wouldn’t have been in any classes with her. She moved away just out of high school—out of state, actually, to California—to get a political science degree from Stanford. After that, she was off at law school and once she passed her bar exam, she was immediately swept up by a hotshot San Francisco law firm. I’m incredibly proud of her, of course, but I do wish I could see her and the kids more often. She rarely gets home, and I don’t get much of a chance to go visit her in California. Of course, my mom and dad are thrilled to be able to see their grandsons again.”

“I’m sure. Are you planning anything special for your nephews while they’re here?”

“I’m looking forward to tossing a football around with the boys. Kayla’s a single mother, so they’re always raring to play sports when they visit home. And the church carnival is coming up. I expect they’ll enjoy popping balloons with a dart and maybe winning a goldfish in a plastic bag for their effort, if memory serves me right.”

“Which I’m sure your sister will appreciate,” she added wryly.

Ben chuckled. “You’re probably right about that one. I can’t imagine that toting goldfish back to California is in Kayla’s short-term plans—or her long-term plans, for that matter. I’ll most likely have to keep them at my apartment, where the boys can visit them when they’re in town.”

“That would be nice of you.” She gave him a speculative look, as if she was trying to figure him out. It made him uncomfortable, and he cleared his throat.

“I don’t mind. I can be a responsible pet owner—now. Not like when I named Tinker or anything. I wouldn’t forget to feed the fish if I put them in a glass bowl on my counter.” His mind drifted to a happy memory from his own childhood. “I remember as a kid how excited I was to attend the church carnival every year. It was such a big moment in my life, throwing a ring around a pop bottle and winning a prize.”

“I remember being at the carnival, too,” admitted Vee. “Although I don’t think I ever ringed any pop bottles. I’m not sure I ever won any prizes to speak of.”

“I’ll have to win one for you this year at the carnival, then. Maybe a big stuffed teddy bear or something.” With his impulsive streak—the one that had gotten him into trouble more times than he could count—he’d spoken before he’d even taken a moment to consider what he was actually saying.

Now, judging from the stunned look on Vee’s face, he had to find some way to backpedal.

“You probably don’t want a stuffed animal,” he continued, but that only seemed to make things worse. Vee turned an alarming shade of red. “I imagine you aren’t the type of woman to have a room full of bears and unicorns.”

She had taken a long pull of her water right as he began speaking, and now she choked on it.

“And...I should shut up now,” he finished.

She sputtered and shook her head. “Your nephews,” she gasped when she was able.

“Right. I was telling you about Felix and Nigel. They both want to hang around with me at work. They’re at an age where they’re in complete awe of what I do.”

“Being a paramedic? I’ll bet. With all the bells and whistles—literally—it’s pretty exciting stuff.”

Ben cracked a grin. “I meant my job as an auto mechanic, actually. They want me to let them get under the hood of a car and get lowdown and greasy. You know how little boys are.”

Her gaze softened. “I remember. My brothers were like that, too. They were always coming to the supper table covered head to toe with dirt, and Mama wouldn’t let them sit down to eat until they were clean right down to under their fingernails.”

Suddenly self-conscious, Ben clasped his hands into his lap underneath the table. The dirge of being a grease monkey was the complete inability to get his hands clean, especially under the nails, no matter what products and brushes he used. Although that might be fun for a nine- and seven-year-old boy, it was not so much for a thirty-year-old man having dinner with a pretty woman.

Even if she was a woman who didn’t like him.

“You have the oddest expression on your face,” she remarked, her dark brows closing in over her nose as she eyed him questioningly. “What are you thinking about?”

“Grease,” he blurted, cringing as he returned his hands to the tabletop. As embarrassing as it might be to have dirty nails, he’d hardly be able to finish his meal without using his hands. He suddenly pictured himself diving headlong into his mashed potatoes like a man in a pie-eating contest, a thought that gave him an inward laugh. Somehow he expected that might be even more conspicuous than a little stubborn grease on his hands.

To his relief, Vee merely chuckled at his blurted exclamation.

“That would be one of the hazards of your job, I suppose. I’ve got a similar problem myself sometimes, so I’m not one to complain. You’d be amazed how filthy I can get when I garden all day, jamming my hands into potting soil and dirt, even with protective gloves on. You shower and scrub, and still all the grime doesn’t quite come off.”

Her answer, and the affable laughter that followed, put Ben immediately at ease—at least until another unpleasant thought popped into his head.

What would Veronica Jayne think about having dinner with a man who couldn’t even get his hands clean?

When Ben pictured some well-into-the-future dinner date with Veronica Jayne, it was in some classy, expensive restaurant where a coat and tie were mandatory and the prices weren’t even listed on the menu.

It would be nothing as simple as enjoying a good old-fashioned home-style meal at Cup o’ Jo, like he was now with Vee, that was for sure. The very thought of taking Veronica Jayne to an upscale restaurant such as he suspected she was accustomed to made the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge.

He’d have to wear a suit. With a
tie.

His throat constricted involuntarily, nearly cutting off his air, and he heaved in a deep, ragged breath to compensate. Christmas and Easter church services were the
only
times he subjected himself to the misery of a sports jacket and necktie. Ugh and double ugh with a cherry on top.

Keep breathing,
he coached himself. He was getting way ahead of himself here. It wasn’t like he and Veronica Jayne were going to be going on a date
anywhere
anytime soon, if at all. At this point their relationship hardly qualified as a romance. It was a warm friendship...with potential. The prospect of romance was there, even if the reality wasn’t.

“I’m glad you don’t mind the grease,” he said, forcing his mind back to the woman seated across from him. Vee deserved his full attention, especially now that they were official dinner partners. How he had gone from trying to hide the grease under his nails from Vee Bishop to practically walking down the aisle with Veronica Jayne was beyond him. He mentally shook himself to put himself back in the game.

“Not a problem.” When Vee smiled at him—truly, fully smiled at him for the first time he could remember—Ben felt it all the way to his toes, and for a moment all of his thoughts about Veronica Jayne and dinners in expensive restaurants faded completely.

Which came as a surprise even to him. What could that possibly be about?

He was grateful, he supposed, that she hadn’t up and left him at the dinner table with his wandering mind and greasy fingernails.

Yeah. That was it.

Grateful.

It couldn’t possibly be more. Could it?

Chapter Five

Dear BJ,

Thanks for the note and the encouragement. Take whatever time you need to modify the content I sent you for our project. You’re the presentation-software whiz, after all. At the end of the day, you’ve got the harder part of the undertaking—putting it all together cohesively. Once again I’m thankful I got paired with you.

I’ve been praying about what you said, and I have decided that I’m actually going to do it! I’m really going to put myself out there for a change and see what happens, though let me tell you, it was no easy decision for me to decide to expose my true self for others to see. I can’t even put into words how nervous I am, but I know you’re right. I can’t keep living this way. I can’t serve God to the best of my ability if I’m too busy worrying about what other people think about me. I’ve got to get over it once and for all. The truth is, I’ve had walls up nearly all my life.

You’re the one who has finally helped me break them down. Thank you for that.

Truly yours,

Veronica Jayne

W
hen Vee decided to do something, she never did it halfway. Go big or go home, as the saying went. If she was going to change her appearance and let people see the
real Vee,
she was going to do it right.

Hair. Eyebrows. Nails. The works. Frankly, it sounded horribly uncomfortable at best, and blatantly painful at worst. But she was committed now, and that was that.

It was Tuesday, and she had the day off both from Emerson’s Hardware and the fire station, so she decided to head for Amarillo, hoping to be able to pick up the most important facet on which her entire plan hinged—and the one thing she absolutely did not have.

A dress.

When Vee was little, her mother had put her in frilly dresses for special occasions, but once she got old enough to pick clothes for herself, dresses and skirts simply weren’t going to happen. Not in her wardrobe. She’d always worn slacks, even to church services, including weddings, funerals, Christmas and Easter. She wasn’t a girly-girl, and she’d never seen the point of owning a dress if she was never going to wear one. Dresses weren’t her style.

At least not yet. Maybe it was like her habit of pulling back her hair—a relic of a choice she’d made years ago, a choice she might be ready to outgrow. She’d never know unless she tried. And tried
quickly
because she only had a week to pull the whole thing—or rather, pull
herself
—together.

Every year on the Saturday before Easter the police and fire departments, in conjunction with the ladies’ charity group from church, hosted a special dinner for the less fortunate in Serendipity and the surrounding areas. It was one of the highlights of the year for Serendipity. The town folk were always generous in their donations, and the meal was generally an enormous success. This would be Vee’s first year in the middle of the action.

Less than one week wasn’t a good deal of time to make any kind of personal transformation, much less the kind of makeover Vee had in mind, and she was all on her own in this. No fairy godmother to wave her wand like in the story of Cinderella. Not her friends. She knew better than to let them in on it. If anyone so much as cracked a joke about what she was doing—and they would—she knew herself well enough to know she’d bail on her plan.

So that left no one, not even her mother to help her. And oh, how that fact burned through her chest. How much easier this would be if Mama was still around to put the finishing touches on Vee herself.

Still, she reminded herself, she wasn’t completely alone. She had the Lord, and in the long run, He was really the reason she was doing this at all. Hopefully through Christ she would discover the courage to find herself amid all the fluctuation in her life right now and be able to anchor herself in God for the long haul, including stateside mission work.

Lately, she’d been clinging to the verses in Matthew 5, especially verse 16.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Wasn’t that exactly what she was trying to do? Let her light shine? Step out from behind the shields she’d used to protect herself from ridicule or rejection and let the world see who she truly was?

Those verses filled her with renewed hope and peace—and most of all, courage. She knew she couldn’t do this herself—but then, she didn’t have to, did she? She had God in her corner, and what more could a woman ask for?

She started humming an old Sunday school ditty that had abruptly come to mind. Before she knew it, she was singing the silly children’s song out loud, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music.

“This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

Or she was going to try, in any case. She might end up glowing no brighter than the muted headlights on her old, reliable truck, but by golly, she was going to give it her best shot or die of embarrassment trying.

Her happy, sunshine-filled day lasted until she got about ten minutes out of town, when the engine on her customarily peppy little black truck suddenly sputtered and wheezed like an old man with a cold.

“Oh, no,” Vee groaned aloud, glancing down to check the dashboard panel. She’d filled the gas tank just before she’d left town, and she had recently checked the fluid levels for the oil and antifreeze.

What could be wrong?

Please, God, let it be nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing. It was
everything,
apparently. Which just figured. Every light on the panel suddenly blinked red, and then she no longer felt the power of the transmission beneath her feet. Holding the steering wheel tightly, she carefully guided the truck to the side of the road with what insignificant momentum was left in it.

Great. Just what she needed—to have her truck break down in the middle of nowhere, on a highway that was rarely used even by commercial vehicles. Add to that the fact that this was really her only day to spend an entire afternoon in Amarillo searching for the perfect dress.

Not her best day.

With a loud, exasperated sigh, she slid out from behind the wheel and marched forward to open the hood, leaning forward and peering inside to see if she could discern any problems offhand.

Which, of course, she couldn’t, and she didn’t have any notion of why she’d looked at all.

Like she knew the first thing about engines. Who was she kidding? All she knew how to do was change the oil and check the fluid levels, and she wasn’t particularly skillful at those two things. She absently rubbed at her forehead, where a throbbing headache was rapidly developing.

At least she wasn’t being stubborn about it. Calm, cool and sensible. That was Vee. It took her less than thirty seconds to acknowledge the truth. She was officially stranded and it was time to call in for reinforcements.

She mumbled under her breath as she fished her cell phone out of her back pocket and checked for reception, only to find that there were no bars.

Not one, single, solitary bar. She growled in frustration. Of course there was no reception on such a tiny stretch of uninhabited road. Why would there be?

Why was this happening to her, especially now? Couldn’t she catch a break just this once? But then, why should this time be any different than the others for her? Nothing was ever easy for her. It never had been. Scaling brick walls had become her specialty, both literally and figuratively.

She sighed again, even louder this time. At this rate she would have to flag down a trucker—assuming, of course, that one would drive by. More than likely she’d be sitting on the road for quite some time.

Not exactly how she’d planned to spend her day.

Holding her cell phone as high as she could reach in the air, which wasn’t saying much at her five feet two inches, she walked around in ever-increasing circles, watching for bars to appear in the corner of her phone, turning this way and that in an unscripted cellular-tower dance that left her feeling silly and embarrassed.

If someone saw her now, how they would laugh, watching her waving her phone in the air as if that would somehow make any difference in the signal strength. It was a hopeless cause, as well she knew.

She’d just decided to return to her truck and wait for a Good Samaritan to pass by when a single bar flickered in the upper-left corner of her phone.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, freezing in place so she would not lose the signal. “Hold it...” she squeaked, “please, God, let the signal hold until I can dial someone to come pick me up.”

She paused, her arm still extended high in the air. Now that she finally had a connection, she wasn’t sure who to dial. She didn’t have a phone book handy to call the auto shop back in town, and her brother Eli was working his shift at the police station. He’d probably come get her if she asked, but she didn’t want him to neglect his duties, and it wasn’t like it was an emergency for 911.

At least, not yet, it wasn’t. The future remained to be seen.

At length, she settled on calling her father. She knew he hadn’t left the house much since her mother had died, but she was certain he’d make an exception for her.

However, after speaking to him and tossing around a few other options, they decided that it would be better for him to call Derek’s Auto Garage where Ben worked and have them meet her here with a tow truck. They’d be able to bring her truck back into town with them and not leave it temporarily abandoned on the side of the highway.

The sooner they started fixing it, the sooner they would be finished. Vee groaned at the thought of an expensive car repair bill. Yet another stress point she didn’t need right now, but since she used her truck for work, it was a necessity to get it fixed as soon as possible.

The sun was shining and it was a nice, temperate spring day in Texas, so Vee yanked down the tailgate of her truck and perched herself, legs swinging off the edge, to wait for the tow. She wished she had a book to read. Who knew how long it would be before the tow truck showed up? Her best guess was that she was a good twenty miles from town, and tow truck drivers were notorious for taking their own sweet time. She figured she might as well enjoy the fresh air while she waited.

In truth, it was little time at all. She was surprised when a scant fifteen minutes later she heard the rumbling of a tow truck thundering down the highway.

She was even more surprised to find that it was Ben Atwood behind the wheel, accompanied by two black-haired, green-eyed boys. Of course, she’d known that he worked at his uncle Derek’s garage, but she had no idea that he was the tow truck operator, too.

She smiled at the wiggling youngsters as Ben pulled his truck next to hers. Even a casual observer could see the kids were clearly related to Ben. They must be his nephews, Vee thought.

Ben pulled in front of her and then backed the tow truck close enough to hook Vee’s truck up to it.

“Hey, Vee,” he greeted as he stepped out of the cab. “Having a little engine trouble, are we?”

“Apparently,” she answered mildly, tongue in cheek. “Thanks for coming so quickly, although I’ve got to say that I’m surprised to see you here. I didn’t know you drove the tow truck,” Vee commented as she watched him fasten the chains from one vehicle to the other.

“I don’t,” he replied, flashing his generous smile. “Not usually, anyway. My uncle has a kid who generally handles tow jobs. But as it happened, I was the one who picked up the phone when your father called, and once I found out it was you...” His sentence drifted to an awkward halt.

Once he’d found out it was her...

What?

He’d made a special trip just to come to her rescue?

“You—uh—have a smudge of grease on your...” He cleared his throat. “Here. Just let me get it.” Before she could react, he’d reached forward, gently brushing at her forehead with the pad of his thumb. She held her breath.

“There, then. That’s better.” Ben swiftly returned his attention to attaching her truck to the towline. His face was flushed a deep copper color, and Vee wondered if the shade was a mark of exertion or uneasiness. His curly brown hair brushed haphazardly across his forehead, as if he’d been running in the wind, giving him an appealing boyish charm. She couldn’t help but notice that those enormous biceps of his were straining against his black T-shirt as he worked, only this time he wasn’t showing off for her.

At least, she didn’t think he was.

Either way, she had to appreciate him as a man. There was no doubt he was strong and attractive, whether he was wearing his paramedic uniform or, as he was now, in blue jeans and a T-shirt. With those amazing green-bronze eyes of his, he was beyond a doubt the best-looking man she’d ever known. She suspected he’d stand out anywhere, but especially in a small town like Serendipity. Certainly he had no shortage of women to date in town.

Which was exactly why she didn’t like him. He went through women like bunny rabbits went through carrots, using his razor-sharp teeth to chomp them up and then spit them out. For the first time, she wondered if maybe it wasn’t entirely his fault. She was willing to give him at least the hint of the benefit of the doubt, since the women in question practically fell all over themselves to be with him. Of course, that was no excuse for treating them badly, but it had to be a little overwhelming to have so many people want to be with you.

Not that she would know what that felt like.

She apparently scared men silly. Either they didn’t like her looks or her attitude. Or both. And she wasn’t about to apologize for either, even if she
was
considering making a few changes. In any case, she certainly hadn’t been overwhelmed with potential suitors.

Not now. Not ever. So why was Ben paying special attention to her?

That
was the question of the hour.

He abruptly raised his head and cocked a brow. He’d obviously realized that she’d been staring at him, a fact that she hadn’t been aware of until the moment their eyes met. He didn’t comment on it, though that adorable half-grin of his snuck up one side of his lips, accentuating the dimple in his right cheek and the cleft in his chin. He managed to look both boyishly charming and utterly masculine at the same time.