Because of Him: A Christian Romance (New Hope Falls Book 2)

by Kimberly Rae Jordan

  After he got ready for the night, he sat down on the edge of his bed, phone in hand. He really wanted to phone Cara, to hear her voice after going so long without it. But if she was in New York with family, they were three hours ahead, which meant it was too late to call.

  In the end, he decided to send a text. If she was already asleep, hopefully she’d see it in the morning. Deciding to send a text was the easy part. Deciding what to say in the text was probably the hardest thing he’d ever done. He tapped and deleted. Tapped and deleted. Tapped and deleted.

  With a sigh of frustration, he closed his eyes and bent his head forward, pressing the corner of his phone against his forehead. He prayed for wisdom and that Cara might be receptive to his message. He knew he didn’t deserve for her to be, but he had to start somewhere. To at least see if he’d ruined everything or if there was a hope that she’d give him a second chance.

  Finally, he tapped out a short message then pressed send before he could continue to overthink it.

  Cara…can we talk? I miss you.

  He stared at the message, waiting for a couple of minutes to see if she might respond. But when no reply popped up, he put his phone on the nightstand and settled under his comforter. Then, for the first time since the breakup, he didn’t pray for God to heal his heartache, he prayed for Him to change his heart. And the hopelessness he’d gone to sleep with on previous nights was surprisingly absent as he drifted off—despite the lack of a reply from Cara.

  It took another ring from his phone before he realized what had woken him. Groaning, he reached for his phone. It felt like he’d only just fallen asleep. He blinked a couple of times before looking at his screen. Seeing a number for the station, he answered it right away.

  “Sorry to bother you, chief, but we just got a call from an alarm company. They said a silent alarm was tripped at the dance studio. They tried to call Cara, but she’s not answering.”

  Kieran flung back his covers and climbed out of bed, his heart pounding. He assumed she wasn’t back in town because he hadn’t seen any activity around the studio, but he didn’t know for certain that she hadn’t returned and was perhaps just keeping a low profile. “Head over. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  He pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, then grabbed his badge and a jacket. Within minutes, he was climbing into his cold Jeep and heading toward Cara’s. A glance at the clock on the dashboard showed that he’d been asleep for just over an hour. Thankfully, the adrenalin pumping through him had removed any sleepiness. Along with the adrenalin, however, was a healthy dose of worry and fear. Not knowing for certain if Cara was in the apartment made him feel a little sick.

  Even though Cara’s building wasn’t that far away, it felt like it took forever to get there. Lights blazed from the lower level, and he could see a few people standing in the waiting area.

  Kieran hurriedly climbed out of the car and jogged toward the door. The people turned to look at him as he walked in. Two of his men were standing around a slight figure dressed in black. The person had their head bent, hands in the pockets of the hoodie they wore.

  “What’s going on here?”

  The man that had called him gestured to the person. “We caught her in the office, going through the desk.”

  “Her?” Kieran stared at the girl. She glanced up at him, and he found himself looking into a pair of bright blue eyes, framed by black lashes and set in a face with delicate features. She looked so young. “What were you doing here?”

  The girl lifted a brow at him. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

  The sass almost made him smile, but instead, he directed his gaze to the officers. “No sign of Cara?”

  “She’s not here,” Jelina said.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “How do you think?” she said then turned her gaze away from him.

  Of course, she’d probably been staking the place out and upon realizing it was empty, decided that it was the better option for breaking into. Even though it might have less money on hand than an actual store, maybe she’d figured there would be jewelry and electronics she could fence.

  No doubt she’d assumed that since it wasn’t a store, there wouldn’t be a security system. Had she not even bothered to look at the back of the building? And if so, had she assumed the cameras there were fake? She’d been good enough to bypass the security system for most of the main floor. She just hadn’t realized that there was apparently a different system for the office part of the studio. If she’d been more experienced, she would have realized those things, and they probably wouldn’t be standing there like they were

  “Guess you’d better take her to the station so we can question her,” Kieran said. For some reason, he got the feeling this kid knew the drill. She was clearly talented at breaking and entering. Even though she’d tripped an alarm, she’d managed to gain entrance to the building.

  Clearly, she hadn’t expected to run into the level of security that Cara had in place. No surprise, as there wasn’t another building in town—except for maybe the bank—that had that level of security. Kieran had a feeling that the girl might also be responsible for the break-ins at Mary’s and the bookstore.

  He stepped to the side so one of the officers could take the girl to the station. When it was just him and the other officer, Kieran walked into Cara’s office, surveying what had been going on in there, taking care not to touch anything. They’d have to get some techs out to fingerprint the scene, though if this was the same person, they likely wouldn’t find any that didn’t belong there. Though it was clear that the girl had been searching, she hadn’t been ripping through things. Like with the previous break-ins, the crime scene was pretty clean.

  “She seems young to be able to carry off this level of breaking and entering.”

  “Yeah,” the officer said. “I’d venture to guess she’s had some training.”

  Kieran had been thinking the same thing. “Maybe we should go see if we can figure out who might have been teaching her.”

  They discussed how to secure the building since Cara wasn’t there. In the end, the officer decided to stay at the building until they could get hold of a locksmith to fix the lock. It was a holiday, so it was probably going to cost a pretty penny to get someone out there, but with Cara absent and not answering the calls from the alarm company, he had to make a decision.

  He did a quick walkthrough to see that both the door to the garage and the one to the upstairs were closed and locked, which meant the thief hadn’t gotten that far yet, thankfully. Once he was satisfied Cara’s home was still secure, he headed to the station.

  A few hours later, he was back at his house. At shift change, one of the officers offered to take care of finding a locksmith to get the lock changed. As it turned out, for all her sass at the crime scene, the girl had started talking not long after Kieran had taken up a seat across from her.

  They’d offered her a lawyer, but she’d declined and also told them she had no parent available to speak to them. The reason why she was so eager to talk had soon become apparent when she’d revealed that she had a younger sister hiding behind a nearby building. She gave the officers a code word to say to the sister, so she’d come out of hiding with them since it was so cold out.

  It hadn’t taken too long to get the whole story. A father who’d been a professional cat burglar until he’d gotten caught. The girls going into hiding in hopes of avoiding the foster system. Kieran felt for the girl, and he hoped that things somehow worked out for her.

  She wasn’t an adult yet, so it might be possible that the judge would be lenient with her sentence. Unfortunately, her younger sister was going to end up in care. At least until things were settled with her older sister.

  Kieran felt bad for both of them. What the older one had done was wrong, but she hadn’t broken in to be destructive or to get rich. She’d just been trying to get money or things she could sell in order to buy food for her siste
r.

  He was exhausted when he got home, but he took the time to call Cara since it was already morning. He wasn’t too surprised when the call went to voicemail. Wearily, he told her what had happened, along with the info that they had called a locksmith and that the key for her front door would be at the station. After a brief hesitation, he asked her to call him.

  Now all he could do was wait for her to make contact.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cara came to a stop behind her garage then pulled her old phone from the glove compartment. She’d known there was a possibility she’d be back, but she had hoped that she’d be returning to pack up and move to her new life. Instead, she was back because nothing had felt like home in Denver.

  With a sigh, she turned on her phone so she could access her security program. Alerts began pinging as soon as it powered on, and Cara frowned when she realized they were from her alarm system. She also had several missed calls from her alarm company and one from Kieran.

  She glanced at her building before pulling up her security program. She logged into her cameras and scanned through them. The apartment and garage looked fine. It wasn’t until she got to the office that she could see that things had been disturbed.

  Had someone broken into the studio?

  Satisfied that it was safe to enter the building, she opened the garage and pulled inside. Then, before she got out of her car, she listened to her voicemails. There were several from the alarm company, letting her know that one of her alarms had been tripped. After she listened to those calls, the one from Kieran began to play.

  Her heart clenched at the sound of his voice, and she had to blink rapidly to clear the moisture from her eyes. He sounded tired as he relayed to her what had happened and the steps they’d taken to secure the studio after the break-in. She listened as he paused, then added, “Please call me, Cara.”

  That was the last voicemail, but she had several text messages. There were a few each from Giovanni and Doug, and then there was one from Kieran.

  Cara…can we talk? I miss you.

  She inhaled sharply at the three little words he’d tacked onto the end. Her breaths became shaky as she tried to figure out what he was saying. Did she want to talk to him? Nothing had changed in the two weeks she’d been gone. She was still Marco Moretti’s daughter. She still had blood ties to the family that had killed the people he loved.

  And she was definitely still struggling to get over the heartache from their breakup. What good would talking do except to prolong the inevitable? She didn’t think she’d be doing either of them any favors by agreeing to contact him. For now, she needed to regroup and figure out what she was going to do.

  If Denver wasn’t going to work out for her, then she needed to figure out where to try next. If she tried somewhere else, that is. Part of her felt that she would struggle to feel at home wherever she went, even though she desperately wished that weren’t the case. So should she even bother to consider relocating?

  Maybe if she just kept to herself, she wouldn’t have to watch Kieran move on with his life. She could attend a different church, maybe go to one of the larger ones in the city. It would be a bit of a drive each Sunday, but she could do it. That would mean she could keep her studio, and hopefully, when Kieran started to date again, she would be in a better place emotionally. One where she didn’t feel like throwing up at the very idea of him with someone else.

  Feeling that her building was as safe as it ever was, Cara got out of her car and went to the trunk to get her bags. She let herself in then climbed the stairs to her apartment, glad to see that despite what had happened in the office, the rest of the building was untouched.

  As soon as she walked into the apartment, a weight lifted from her shoulders, but it didn’t make her happy. She didn’t want to be so attached to her home in New Hope that she couldn’t leave it behind.

  With a sigh, Cara took her things into the bedroom then returned to the kitchen to make some tea. Though she told herself not to, once she had her mug of tea, she turned off the lights that had automatically come on in her absence, then pushed the button to open the motorized blind covering the window by her favorite chair.

  At her first sight of the town, still brightly lit with Christmas lights, even though it was now a few days past the new year, something within her had settled. She sank down into her chair and stared out the window. Her gaze landed on Norma’s for a moment before it slid in the direction of the police station. Not that she could see the station since it was on the same side of the street as her building.

  Forcing her gaze back to Norma’s, she could see people seated inside. It was just past six, but the sun had set a while ago, covering the town in a blanket of darkness, broken only by the lights shining warmly from the houses and buildings.

  As she sat there, she realized she needed to make a big decision. It had been her plan to close the studio, but that had been when she’d thought she’d find a place in Denver. Having not succeeded at that, she now needed to figure out her next step.

  People were expecting the studio to open again soon. It was also her busiest time as women came to the studio as part of personal fitness resolutions for the new year. If she was going to close the studio permanently, she needed to let them know soon and issue refunds for unused credits.

  As Cara sipped her tea, she mulled over her options, knowing that the main reason she’d wanted to leave hadn’t changed: she didn’t want to be around when Kieran decided to move on with his life. That felt like a bit more than she was able to handle right then, especially because she felt like her heart was never going to heal.

  She had been able to make it through some days without crying, but that was only because she had managed to keep busy and to occupy her thoughts with things other than Kieran. That hadn’t happened too often, however, so she still, more often than not, had at least one tearful episode a day. Usually that was at night, when there was nothing to keep her mind from remembering all she had lost. Sometimes her tears were for her papa, brought on by the intense need to be able to talk to him. To ask him what she should do.

  She’d journaled extensively during her recent time away, pouring out her heart onto paper since she had nowhere else to turn. Unfortunately, she didn’t see that changing anytime soon, since she was now more reticent than ever to let people close.

  Her phone beeped a text alert, drawing her attention away from the window. It was her old phone since no one had her new number except for the woman who had been helping her look at apartments in Denver.

  She only debated a moment before setting her mug on the small table next to her and getting to her feet and going in search of her phone. It didn’t take her long to find it on the counter next to her purse.

  Given that she was kind of expecting it to be Kieran again, she was a little disappointed to see it was from Giovanni.

  Giovanni: I know I said I wouldn’t bother you, but I’m a bit worried that you’ve been out of contact with both Doug and me. Can you let me know that you’re doing okay? That at least you’re safe?

  Cara carried the phone back to her seat and sank down into it. Though she hadn’t wanted anything to do with Gio or Doug, it warmed her heart a bit to know that he was concerned about her. Maybe it was just because their father had tasked him with making sure she was okay. Or maybe he really did feel a personal need to care for her.

  After sitting there for a few minutes, she decided that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have at least one person in her life who worried about her.

  I’m fine. Safe. I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks and turned my phone off. I just got back this evening.

  Giovanni: I’m glad to hear that! I can understand needing a break. It’s definitely been a rough time for you. I’m sorry for that, and for any part I played in it.

  Cara wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Yes, his and Doug’s visit had set off a string of events that had left her broken-hearted, but there was a part of her that knew t
hose events would have played out at some point down the road. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to hold off on telling Kieran the truth indefinitely.

  It is what it is. There’s not much that can be done about it now.

  Giovanni: That may be true, but I pray for you each day, that God will guide and direct you and comfort you in your grief.

  Thank you.

  Giovanni: Remember that doors we might assume are closed to us may be opened by God’s hand.

  Cara stared at the words, wondering what he meant by them. She could only assume he was speaking with regards to Kieran because that was really the only part of her life that he was aware of, and only because she’d told him and Doug that they’d broken up.

  She’d assumed there was no path forward for her and Kieran, but then she remembered that people were praying for them. Gio had stated he was, and Sarah had said that she’d be praying for them as well. Could God work this out for them when they couldn’t work things out for themselves? But to her mind, that would mean that Kieran would need to have some sort of amnesia so he could forget about her past and her family.

  That just didn’t seem possible.

  On Sunday, Cara waffled back and forth on whether she wanted to attend church. Well, it wasn’t so much about whether she wanted to because she did want to, but it was more if she should. It might be best if she went to a different church.

  In the end, she decided to go to the church in New Hope. As she’d done since the break-up, she’d arrive late and leave early to prevent any potentially awkward moments. She dressed in a pair of black pants and a deep turquoise sweater with a cowl neck then pulled her hair up into a loose bun.

  Nerves fluttered in her stomach as she left her apartment. They got even worse as she approached the door of the church a short time later. She almost turned around and left, but instead, she took a deep breath and pulled open the door and stepped into the foyer.

  She preferred to wait until she heard singing because it meant people would be standing, and her arrival would be less likely to be noticed. There was no singing as she walked toward the doors leading into the sanctuary, and when she looked through the narrow window on the door, she saw that someone was talking, and the announcements were up on the screen at the front.