The Reluctant Bride (16 page)

Micah nodded and tenderly placed an arm around Angela's shoulders, holding her until the tears stopped. And Micah's own heart grew heavy from sad irony. All of the time she'd spent worrying about her effect on Rob's career, she'd barely considered the negative impact he could have on her faith. What a struggle they could face in the years that lie ahead, and how many obstacles could they overcome?

“If you tell my brother I said all of that, I'll deny it,” Angela stated with a quick smile before she wiped her nose on a tissue. The shine returned slowly to her eyes.

“It's our secret,” Micah assured her. “Rob's been so busy at the office, I haven't talked with him much, anyway.”

“That may be just as well. He hasn't been in such
a good mood since Mr. Alsmore gave his commentary on your situation.”

Micah's heart thumped loudly within her breast. She'd heard nothing from Rob about Mr. Alsmore saying anything.

“But don't let it bother you. Rob and Mr. Alsmore haven't seen eye to eye on many issues since Rob joined that firm.”

Micah restrained the questions on the tip of her tongue, waiting for Angela to reveal whatever it was she assumed Micah already knew.

“If you and Rob want to live together, what business is it of Mr. Alsmore's? Imagine the nerve of that man to comment on what Rob does in his private life? I don't even think that's legal.”

Swallowing hard at the growing lump in her throat, Micah placed both hands on the counter beside her. Already the problems were starting, problems Rob had not shared with her—knowing he could not. “I wonder….” Micah's mouth felt dry and she swallowed again. “I wonder how Mr. Alsmore found out?”

“Who knows? Who cares? What gives him the authority to say anything about it? And right on the heels of losing Martin Hanley because of his recent marriage. You'd think he'd learn to keep his opinions to himself rather than risk losing any more good attorneys.”

“I know Martin is one of the lawyers Rob works with because he's mentioned him a few times, but
who did he marry? And why did it cost him his job?”

“He got angry and quit after Mr. Alsmore made an unkind remark about his new wife. Martin recently married a woman that he had represented on several shoplifting charges.”

“I had no idea,” Micah said in astonishment. What else had Rob failed to tell her? How much harm had her presence in his life already done? How much more could it do?

“Angela, I've got to go. Rob will be home soon.” And she wanted to pack and be gone somewhere, anywhere, before he arrived.

“I'm sorry you have to leave so soon, but thanks for coming to see the house. Come back when you can stay longer. And say hello to Rob for me,” Angela called after Micah as she departed.

Micah forced a smile and waved a goodbye before getting into her car. She wouldn't see Rob to say “hello”…or “goodbye.” Anger coursed through her veins on the drive to his apartment. She was angry she had thought that, even for a few days, this could work. Angry she had hurt Rob. Angry she had set herself up for heartache. Again.

After entering his apartment, she haphazardly tossed her clothing and personal items into her suitcase and carried it down to her car. Then she went back upstairs to get her paintings and art supplies. Micah took one last look around, said a sad “goodbye”
to Ashley and left, leaving the extra door key on the table.

She hurried to her car. “This was never Your plan for me from the beginning,” she spoke the words aloud. “I knew it wasn't, but I wanted him anyway. And, now, I have no one to blame but myself. I did this.” She started toward home, knowing she'd left part of herself behind—with Rob—never to be found again.

When Micah finally opened the door to her own apartment, the place looked clean. And lonely. She knew what she faced now. Days and nights, springs and winters, painting, teaching, the sound of rain hitting the leaves on the apple tree. Would she feel any of it, without him?

She unloaded the car and carried in her suitcase, placing it on the bed. After changing into her old jeans and a faded T-shirt and catching her long hair up into a ponytail, she began unpacking. Suddenly, she remembered leaving some of her paintings on the front step when she had tried to carry too much in at one time. And one of them was her painting of Pinewood, the old country church, a piece of work she was very pleased with when she put the finishing touches on it this morning. She rushed to bring it in before a gust of wind could knock it off the step. She pulled open the front door just in time to see Rob walking up the sidewalk. She inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly, preparing for an argument and one broken heart—no—two. But anger
wasn't what she saw when their eyes met. Some undefinable emotion clouded the stormy blue gaze she loved. And it frightened her.

Rob approached the front door, but made no attempt to enter. He stood silently on the step looking at the paintings leaning against the black handrailing. Then he looked up, meeting her sorrowful gaze.

“You could have said ‘goodbye,’” he offered in an unsteady voice.

“No, I couldn't. Not in person,” Micah replied, her eyes already burning with hot tears. “That's the problem.”

One corner of Rob's mouth turned up in a sad smile. He blinked, then looked away. “You know that I love you, I need you.” His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, and he spoke without looking back into her eyes.

She nodded, and clearing her throat, managed a quiet response. “I know.”

Rob slid one hand into a pocket and with the other he traced the frame of the painting beside him. “I can't think of a better argument than love, Micah. Can you?” He returned his gaze to look fully into her face, studying every feature as though he wanted to memorize it, memorize her.

Micah shrugged and shook her head slowly, loving him so much she could barely speak. “But loving isn't enough,” she answered, her words on the edge of a cry. She covered her mouth with her hand.

“I know your concerns about my career. I'm willing to take those risks.”

“And I know about Martin and his shoplifting wife. And Alsmore's reaction. And Martin's lost job.”

Rob stared down at the step, and scuffed his foot against the concrete. “Liz?”

“She told me, but don't be angry with her. She had no reason to suspect you would keep that from me. She thought I knew all about it.”

“Martin's situation is different from ours. Stephanie is a shoplifter. She's already been in court three times on charges—”

“I don't care what she did, Rob. The point is Martin's career with Alsmore is over. Finished. And it's because he married someone he shouldn't have.”

“Martin's an adult—he makes his own decisions and this felt right to him,” Rob quietly commented.

“And do you think his decision was a good one?” Micah inquired quickly.

“His decision to leave the firm was a good one, the only one he could make under these conditions.”

“And his decision to marry Stephanie?”

Rob raked a hand through his dark hair. “I don't know. Maybe in their case, they should have reconsidered. Stephanie's shoplifting is a sickness. I don't know if she'll ever be free of it. It's gonna be a tough road for Martin.”

“I'm not going to do that to you,” she whispered and turned to shut the door.

“Your paintings,” Rob said quietly. “You shouldn't leave them out here like this.” He picked up two frames and started to hand them to her through the doorway when he looked closely at the canvas Micah reached for.

“Dear God, Micah. That's Pinewood,” he said suddenly.

Micah glanced at her newly finished painting and agreed. “Yes. It's finally done. You recognize that church?”

“Yes. I've been there.”

“What were you doing there? It's just a tiny little church stuck out in the woods miles from here. It probably only has about fifty members—”

“And an active missionary council and a crack in the stained glass window at the rear of the sanctuary,” Rob finished the description.

Micah's mouth opened in surprise. “How do you know that? I mean, I've been there dozens of times, but you—”

“I made one of the biggest decisions of my life standing in that church,” he said in a voice that was deadly calm.

“Did you accept Christ there at Pinewood?”

“No, Micah. That's where I walked away from Him.” Rob stared at the piece of art in silence for a moment. “I…I have to go,” he stated, his comment spoken so quietly, she barely heard his words.
Then he turned and was gone. And, much to Micah's surprise, her heart kept beating even after he had walked away and left her. Alone. Forever. Without even looking back.

T
he hot, sticky weather weighed heavily on everyone that Memorial Day weekend. Micah pushed her damp hair away from her face, and then put the finishing touches on the caricature of a young boy on a bicycle. The flapping canvas of the tent sheltered Micah and her squirming model from the full effect of the sun's heat, and the occasional breeze saved them from the sweltering humidity.

“Here you go.” She smiled at the child who jumped gratefully from the lawn chair in which he had been sitting.

“Thanks, lady. Hey, Grandpa! Check this out!”

Micah reached for the lemonade on the table beside her chair. Summer had not officially arrived yet, but no one seemed to remember in light of the soaring temperatures.

The string of booths and tents, one in which
Micah worked, lined a section of several streets in Chillicothe during this annual festival. Micah had been pleased to find a lemonade stand right next door to her tent. This was the final day of the festival. Although glad for the work and the money, she also needed this distraction to take her mind off Rob, even if it was only a temporary solution. Substitute teaching was coming to an end for the year with only a few days of school remaining, and a season of traveling to various carnivals and art shows awaited her.

After a long, cool drink of lemonade, she returned the paper cup to the wobbly table close to her. Ordinarily, Micah enjoyed the fairs, the traveling, the people. But this year, her heart was not in it. It couldn't be. She had lost it to Rob Granston in the spring. And she wondered if it would ever really belong to her again.

“Daddy? Can the lady draw my picture?”

When the man nodded his permission, Micah smiled and asked the small child her name.

“Mollie,” came the reply in a squeaky, little voice. “I'm four years old.”

“You're getting to be a big girl, aren't you? Mollie is a pretty name,” Micah said as she picked up her supplies. “Tell me what you like to do for fun.”

“I'm learning to swim, and I'm doing real good at it,” the child responded, wiggling in the chair she had sat down in.

“Okay,” Micah replied. “We'll put some water
in this picture. How about a float belt, too? Do you wear one of those?”

“Yep. It's a blue one with three squares. Not two, not one. Three.”

Micah laughed softly at the young girl's preciseness and began to sketch her, carefully including all three foam squares in the drawing. “I have a good friend named Carole who loves to swim.”

“Me, too!” Mollie responded, pointing to a skinny girl with blond pigtails and glasses who stood a few feet away with Mollie's father. “That's my Carole. Is yours here today?”

“No,” Micah answered, glancing at the people passing by. “She said she might come for a while this afternoon, but so far I haven't seen her.”

The girl chatted incessantly from that point on, chewing bubble gum loudly as she spoke. This became one of those times when Micah felt relieved to hand the finished product to the customer, receive her five dollars and say goodbye.

The heat had kept many people away from the festivities and Micah noticed the crowd appeared considerably smaller than either of the two previous days. Tugging at her white cotton dress, she freed it from clinging to her legs. If only the rain that had been promised would come. She scooped her hair up in one hand, lifting it away from the back of her neck and enjoyed the lifesaving breeze that skimmed over her.

“Micah.”

Auburn curls tumbled around her shoulders as her head jerked toward the sound of the voice. That's when she saw him, standing at the edge of her tent, looking at her for a long, silent moment with a sadness in his expression she'd not seen before.

“How did you find me?” she asked quietly.

“Carole,” he replied.

A woman with a small child entered the tent behind Rob. “Could we have a picture drawn together?”

“She's busy right now, you'll have to come back later,” Rob explained as he ushered the woman from the tent.

“You know, don't you?” Micah asked. The fact she had wanted most to keep from him, somehow he knew. She could sense it.

Rob rubbed the back of his neck in a weary movement when he turned to face her. He watched her fumble with a few brushes and pens on the easel ledge, realizing she preferred concentrating on the colorful tools rather than look him in the eyes.

“I came home from California this morning,” he acknowledged.

Micah nodded and swallowed hard at the persistent lump in her throat. “And now you know.” She raised her eyes to meet his.

This time it was Rob who averted his gaze. But not in the disappointment Micah assumed. He simply could not bear to see the unspoken pain he'd inflict when he confirmed her suspicions. He cleared
his throat. “I spoke with your father.” Then he met her watery gaze again.

“You had no right,” she said hotly.

“Maybe not,” he conceded, keeping his emotions in check. “But I had to find someone who would tell me what you wouldn't.”

“
Couldn't,”
Micah corrected. “I've never told anyone my father is a murderer. How could I tell you?”

“Micah, you had nothing to do with it. It wasn't your crime.”

“But the sins of the father—”

“Belong
to the father. That's not just my opinion, it's scriptural. You've done nothing wrong. Let it go.”

“I don't know why he did it, and I've never had any of the money he embezzled.”

“Did you think I wouldn't believe you? You could have trusted me with this. You know I love you. Nothing will change that. Why can't you believe in my love for you?”

She shook her head sadly. “Because it will hurt so badly when it's gone.”

“It will never be gone. Nothing that I've found out changes anything. You could have told me about your dad. You could have told me that your boyfriend back then was a law student. That alone would have explained a lot.”

“And I could have told you how Kevin wanted nothing more to do with me once the story was out.
Or maybe I could have told you the cruel comments that he made during his ‘exit’ speech. Kevin and his parents hated me for connecting him to the scandal. And the thing I keep remembering is how my mother's law practice dwindled to nothing right after Dad's arrest, and she hated him for it. I couldn't bear to think of damaging your career and watching you grow to hate me.”

“Micah, please—”

“What kind of future can an attorney have with the daughter of a convicted criminal? Kevin's parents were right in ending the relationship.”

“His parents aren't to blame. Everyone makes their own decision, and Kevin made his. He was a coward.”

“No, he did the smart thing. His mother warned me that Kevin knew I would only ‘tarnish his bright and shining future.”

“Then, apparently, he was a fool as well as a coward,” Rob muttered, looking away from the anguish reflected in Micah's eyes. Then he looked back again. “What could be ‘bright and shining’ about a future without you?”

And Micah smiled. The first real smile she'd given him in such a long time. But it didn't last.

“Rob, please don't make me want you more. This is difficult enough, as it is. Losing Kevin was nothing compared to losing you!” She spun away from him, moving toward the tent opening to put distance between them.

“Micah, look at me.” Rob gripped her shoulders, pulling her back and turning her firmly around to face him. “You're not losing me.”

“But, Rob, think about it! My father is guilty of embezzling over half a million dollars, then murdering his business associate to cover up the evidence. Do you want to go through life having a father-in-law who is in
prison?”

“I talked with your dad for a long time. And I met with his attorneys and read over all the transcripts. He did take the money, but I honestly don't think he's guilty of murdering anyone.”

“But there's no way to prove that.”

“Probably not. But I'm going to discuss the case with Alsmore.”

“No! That will be the end of your job. The moment he finds out who I am—”

“Being a lawyer was Nick's dream, not mine.”

“But I thought—”

Rob cut her words short. “I told your dad I want to marry you.” Rob studied Micah's wary gaze, disliking the familiar hesitancy he saw there. “He said he could use a good attorney in the family again.”

Micah shook her head no. She knew Rob's decisiveness too well. He'd determine to stand by her, to be a better man than Kevin had been, no matter what the cost. “Rob—”

He interrupted her once again. “But I told him you had the feeling that someday you might be a
pastor's wife. And I said I thought that would make you happier.”

Micah froze, and swallowed the despair that clawed at her throat. Rob was letting her go. After all the months of telling him he should and hoping that, somehow, he wouldn't, he'd let go. Just like that. Micah wondered if she would die of a shattered heart, right there in that tent on a hot afternoon while life buzzed all around them.

A pastor's wife. She
had
thought that at one time. Hadn't she? Sometime back before she met Rob, back before she fell in love with him…because since that moment, she had wanted no one else. And now it was ending.

Micah nodded and turned from him, choking back a sob. She would let him go, she would get through this. She must. Didn't the Bible promise that “All things work together for good to them that love God?”

“Micah, what I'm trying to say is that I resigned from Alsmore's firm today.”

“No,” she moaned and shot a look of disbelief at him. “You can't! That's your career. That's your life.”

“It's just a profession, Micah, not my life. And it's not the work I've always wanted to do. I didn't even consider going to law school until Nick died. He was the one who wanted to become an attorney, work with his dad. Then he died and, I guess, my faith in God died with him that night.” Rob raked
a hand through his dark hair. “But I'm almost as tired of running from God as I am of you running from me.”

“Then stop running. Go back to Him, Rob.” Whether or not Micah ever knew a life with Rob didn't change her longing for his return to their faith. She loved him too much to dare think of him never finding his way home.

“I promised Him I would come back when I had reason to trust Him again.” Rob's eyes misted with tears, and Micah reached out to him, touching his forearm. “And I've kept my promise.” He paused. “Your painting of the church, Micah. I could have been the pastor there at Pinewood when you visited that first Sunday. Remember how you felt drawn to that place and didn't understand why? I could have…should have met you then.”

“How? Why?”

“When you saw my diploma in the office, you didn't look at it closely. I told you I went to a Christian college, but what I didn't tell you is that I was a religion major. I planned to go into the ministry, and I interviewed for Pinewood right after graduation…right after Nick died.”

“So that's the important decision you made in that church. Not to go into the ministry? I had no idea.”

“I didn't want you to know. I didn't want to risk your hoping someday I'd go back to the ministry, because I didn't think I ever would. I thought my
life without God was going great. And you…I thought I'd found you all by myself. No help from the Lord. You were a witness to an accident and walked right into my office and into my life. But when I saw your finished painting and realized it was Pinewood, I knew then that God had intended to bring you across my path, one way or another.”

Rob touched her hair, tracing the edge of her ear as he did so. “Having you…it wasn't my doing. In fact, I'd have met you much sooner, when you first discovered Pinewood, if only I'd been there like I should have been. I'll never understand why God let Nick and Rachel die that night. It still doesn't seem fair to me, it doesn't seem right. But now, for the first time in a long, long time, I do believe He's still working in my life. And I'm going to have enough faith to trust Him to lead me the rest of the way. I have an appointment with the district superintendent next Tuesday to discuss what I need to do to get my credentials reinstated.”

Micah's hand moved to cover Rob's where it lingered close to her ear, and she pressed it against her cheek. His palm felt warm on her face. “But this means I can't hurt your future.” Her eyes flooded with tears.

“Now we can both stop running.” He opened his arms and she came to him, letting him draw her near.

“I love you, Rob.” She breathed the words against his chest where she'd buried her face near
his heart. She held him close. Without regret. With no thought of parting.

Rob kissed the crown of her head tenderly. “And I've loved you since…” He paused, remembering.

“Since I told you Mrs. Winslow drives like a maniac?”

He laughed quietly and shook his head. “Not exactly. I think it happened over pancakes and orange juice.” Then his easy smile slowly faded.

Micah raised on tiptoe to brush her lips against his in a feather-soft touch she knew Rob would not settle for. And she was right. He pulled her closer, kissing her the way she wanted to be kissed, holding her the way she needed to be held.

When she could breathe again, words rushed from Micah's heart. “Marry me, Rob, or I'll die right here and now from a broken heart.”

“I think,” Rob said, then hesitated long enough to brush a kiss against her ear, “that's supposed to be my line.” Then he smiled…almost. “So, will you? Marry me?”

“Yes.” Micah's arms slid around his neck as she gazed into the gentle blue eyes that touched her soul. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

“You owe me that many after all the no's I've listened to,” Rob replied tenderly, quietly. A soft summer shower began to fall, pelting the top of Micah's tent. “I love you, Micah Shepherd, but you'll need to change your name again, you know.”

“Paperwork will be easy this time,” she responded.

“True. All you'll need is our marriage license,” Rob said. “And no multiple-choice selection. ‘Granston’ is your only option.”

“I don't think I ever told you how I chose ‘Shepherd,’ did I?”

Rob shook his head, his easy smile returning. “So, tell me.”