The Ultimate Amish Romance Boxed Set Collection (1-8)

by Becca Fisher

  "Anyway, I want to see about getting you into the studio and signing you to our label," JC continued. "So what do you say?"

  ***

  Patricia was in a complete daze when David arrived at work. Everything that happened still hadn't sunk in. But Patricia knew her life would never be the same. That God had shown his brilliance once again. That joy had come to Patricia's life in an all new way. It was no longer just a dream. Patricia was going to be a professional singer. People would be able to hear her songs about faith and love. She'd be able to spread the Lord's message. She was finally able to fulfill her purpose in life. But first, there was someone she needed to share the news with.

  David kissed Patricia as he greeted her, but couldn't help but notice how preoccupied she was.

  "Honey, you ok?" David asked.

  Patricia looked into David's eyes and let out a big smile that wouldn't soon go away.

  "I've never been better."

  The End.

  Born Again Amish

  One

  Eve couldn't stop dreaming about Amish country. Growing up, the plain and simple life seemed stifling to her. She wanted nothing more than to see the world and all it had to offer. And when she finally left Lancaster County, she never thought she'd look back.

  Now with twenty-five years in the rear view mirror, Eve had seen too much of the world. Sure there were the rushes of joy. Eve had found the love of her life and brought three kids into the world. But there had also been great pain as well. A life riddled with the very distractions that Amish culture was built to avoid. Sorrow, broken dreams, and absolute heart break had all made unwelcome cameos.

  Suddenly Eve craved the simplicity that came with being Amish. The focus on faith and family. And the shunning of anything that distracted from that. In an increasingly wired world, paring down to the essentials seemed to make more sense than ever. And for the first time in her life, the Amish way seemed the right way to prosperity--at least in her dreams.

  *********

  Adam had different dreams. Visions of a tropical Eden. Crystal clear water lapping against the sandy beach. Cloudless skies, clean air, a visual delight as far as the eye could see. It was Adam's honeymoon, and Eve was radiant as ever. She was bursting with joy. A sinewy, vivacious, bombshell. Adam thought he'd died and gone to Heaven.

  The desert had other plans for Adam's daydreaming though. Yup, the Hawaiian honeymoon was long over. Exit Eden and enter a 5 a.m. slobbering wake up call from Adam's bull dog Petunia. A hundred and twenty degree slap in the face followed as Adam braved the Palm Desert swelter to take his furry buddy out for a morning walk. At least it was a dry heat though, right? The Coachella Valley was a bi polar paradise. Proof that Heaven got a little hot around the collar. It was a hundred degrees in the shade during the summer. Enough to leave you pleading for the dog days to be over.

  But Adam had more to worry about than the sweat on his brow. On that Monday morning, Adam's insides felt more rumpled than his bull dog's mish mashed face. But even though Adam's dreams were an ocean away, there was one refreshing reality--at least Adam didn't have to do his business wearing a satellite dish flea collar. Then again, even full of fleas, Petunia didn't have to worry about IRS audits.

  So with his pooper scooper at the ready, only one thought ran through Adam's head--so much for paradise.

  *********

  While Adam wished he could become best friends with his snooze button, 6 a.m. couldn't come quick enough for Lewis Smith. Nothing was going to keep Lewis from becoming a track and field star. Not his scrawny eleven year old body. Not a lack of talent. Lewis was convinced he could make it on heart alone--even after crashing and burning at last years tryouts. The past be damned, Lewis threw himself into training with reckless abandon. And that morning, the living rooms elliptical machine had truly met its match.

  "Shouldn’t you be getting dressed, Sport?" Adam asked, seeing Lewis straddling the line between glow and sweat.

  "I wanted to get in an extra workout," Hank insisted. "I need to make the team this year."

  Being a parent was liking walking through a minefield of emotions. But as much talk as there was about the thrill of your children's victories, not much was said about the agony of their defeats.

  After Lewis's lackluster showing at the last tryouts, Adam was convinced never to let his son cry over something as trivial as a sporting event. Life had plenty of other ways of bringing tears to your eyes.

  "Look Lewis, have you thought about that summer camp we talked about?" Adam asked, turning off the elliptical machine.

  But Lewis wasn't interested in art camp. He wanted his masterpiece to be on the track. "I’m going to make the team this year dad," Lewis replied, turning the machine back on. "I know I am."

  "I hope so. I’m just saying, don’t get your hopes too far up."

  Lewis saw his fathers furrowed brow. "You don’t think I’m going to make it, do you?"

  "No, that’s not it. I just remember how depressed you were when you didn’t make it last year, and I never want to see you like that again."

  "Dad, you don’t get it," Lewis pleaded, looking five years old again. "Out here I'm just a kid. But jumping those hurdles, I'm special. I like feeling special. This year I’m going to make it. It will be different this time."

  Adam never wanted anything to be true more in his entire life.

  *********

  If Lewis knew exactly what he wanted out of life, Julie Smith couldn't find a clue with GPS navigation. A shining star out in the desert through high school, Julie was just another bright light drowned out by the big city in college. She was at the top of her class at Desert High, but not even the brightest student in her dorm room at State College.

  And suddenly her life long dream of becoming a veterinarian evaporated amidst middling test scores. She came home with a liberal arts degree, but no job to go with it. So Julie ended up back where she started--living at home--with nothing to show for it but battered self esteem and a mountain of debt.

  "Get dressed," Adam proclaimed, hardly believing he had to resort to a kick in the butt to motivate his former spark plug daughter. "The free ride is over."

  The spark had frittered out in Julie though. She approached post collegiate life with shrugged shoulders and a blank stare, the perfect compliment to her lackluster lot in life.

  Julie's bedroom was another matter of disarray. The place was like a neat niks nightmare. Julie couldn't even find the motivation to unpack her own moving boxes. They remained stacked on the treadmill and weight lifting bench that made up what used to be Adam's workout room. Only Julie had done some remodeling, courtesy of the empty diet soda cans and dirty laundry that hung like a flag of underachievement.

  "Leave me alone," Julie grumbled, her face planted on her mattress. "I’m calling in sick."

  "Sick of working, maybe," Adam argued. "Look Julie, it may be a crap job, but it’s still a job."

  "What’s the point of going? I think I want to go back to school. Maybe get my masters, or whatever."

  "You’re already wasting your four year degree, why would I foot the bill for two more?"

  "It’s better than having me live at home, isn’t it?"

  As much as it killed Adam to see his daughter so aimless, he was determined to get her back on target. Whether she liked it, or not.

  "Julie, you’re twenty-three," Adam explained. "It’s time to grow up. So you’re going to get up right now. Then you’re going to get your act together in the next month. Because if you’re still living here on the first, you’ll owe me rent."

  But just as Adam put his foot down, he was about to have the rug pulled out from under him.

  "You're out of toilet paper," Bridget Norton said, coming down the stairs in her perpetual rotation of pajamas. "Oh hi, Mr. Smith," she continued, oblivious to how overstayed her welcome truly was.

  "Don’t you ever go home Bridget?" Adam asked, too exasperated to play politics.

  Bridget moved over to a cou
ch with a sleeping bag on it and made herself at home. "Are you kidding? Have you seen that dump?"

  "That goes double for you," Adam replied, extending his ultimatum to include moochers.

  But as Adam made an exit, a different sentiment spread through the basement.

  "What's his problem?" Bridget asked.

  *********

  "I need a drink," Adam insisted, more frazzled than 7 a.m would lead on.

  Eve was not nearly as game to spike Adam's coffee though. Still sinewy, but less vivacious, Eve was balancing the delicate tightrope of hard-nosed business woman, harried mother, and loving wife. The tropical Eden seemed like a different life, one fraught with less bagged sandwiches.

  Through the decades, one thing had not changed. Their love for each other was eternal, like their faith in God. It never waned. And it carried them through the lean times. The term soul mate hardly did justice to the bond they felt together. A bond that would not be broken. Desire had not deserted them either, although there was less time to indulge in those fantasies than ever.

  But just because Eve loved Adam didn't mean she'd forgotten his checkered past with the bottle. She shot her husband a stare for even suggesting falling off the wagon.

  "Just because I can’t have one doesn’t mean the urges go away," Adam said, explaining away his jonesing to booze.

  Eve loved her husband too much to play enabler however. Besides, hope had paid Eve an unexpected visit.

  "I found a way to save the house," she explained.

  But Adam was convinced the conversation was nothing more than dejavu. "Look babe, I’m working as hard as I can to get that promotion. We just can’t hinge our future on it."

  "We should move your mother into the spare bedroom," Eve remarked, without a hint of irony.

  Adam could not have been less thrilled with the prospect. "And I thought being audited was bad enough."

  "Hey, it’s better her social security go into our pockets than a retirement home," Eve explained, resigned. But suddenly, the family finances provided another twist. "Did you say audit?"

  "Everyone wants a piece of us," Adam grumbled, considering trading his cup of coffee for a bottle of scotch. "The bank wants our house. The IRS wants our money."

  "Look, I know it’s not the most ideal situation," Eve said, uttering the understatement of a lifetime.

  "You kidding? Who doesn’t want their mother moving in?" Adam joked. "Eve, we’ve spent the last two years trying to get Julie to move out, the last thing we need is to move my mother in."

  "I’m just saying with my job...with our situation, I don’t see another way to save the house."

  "Eve, you’ll bounce back. You always do."

  But Eve wasn't so sure. "You barely look like you’ve convinced yourself anymore," she said, staring deep into Adam's eyes.

  Adam held his wife tight, not wanting to let go. "We’re going to be fine. We have to. We just can’t afford to be moving more people in. As it is, I already feel like we’ve adopted another daughter."

  "I’m not sure Bridget has the best home life," Eve explained.

  "She’s not making our home life much better. Besides, Julie's already enough of a loaf, she doesn’t need another bad influence."

  "Julie’s not a loser. She’s just having trouble finding herself."

  "Eve, she's a DMV clerk. Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t work myself to the bone the last twenty years so she can use her college degree for toilet paper."

  "One grease fire at a time, honey. If you haven’t noticed, Paul has been taking a series of marathon showers lately."

  Another kid, another groan. Adam knew what was on tap--and it wasn't pretty.

  "Time for a little father son chat," Eve nudged.

  But Adam wasn't ready to dive head first into more drama quite yet. "First, you and I have to talk though. I’ve been thinking a lot about Costa Rica."

  "Really? You want to have this conversation now?" Eve replied, shaking her head. "Because audits and foreclosures and mothers moving in aren’t enough to swallow for breakfast, right?"

  "Eve--Cupcake. I’m just saying, Costa Rica could save us from all that. It could seriously work. This could be our escape."

  Eve knew an escape of her own. Going back to her roots. Not just running away to distant beaches, but to the comforting arms of the community she grew up in. Eve also knew there was a time and a place for such discussions. And that time was not upon them.

  Eve kept herself from crying and looked deep into Adam’s eyes. "Your son needs you."

  *********

  "Is there something you want to tell me?" Adam asked, entering the den of disdain. Paul Smith's bedroom had a certain nocturnal quality to it; a perfect match to the sixteen year olds stormy disposition.

  While God was one of the few things keeping Adam's spirit buoyant, his son had turned his back on the Lord and all his teachings.

  Drama seemed to run in the Smith family though. If Julie Smith had taken a misstep, Paul had burned the map. Paul hated everything but his own misery. Everything except drawing. But he only sketched one thing. The same girl every time--like an obsessive compulsive Alzheimer patient holding on to his last vivid memory. Paul's notebook was lined with drawings of the girl. Every inch of space was taken up by her.

  Adam meanwhile seemed to be public enemy number one. He felt like he was looking at a stranger every time he looked at his own son. It was a far cry from the kid that used to hug his father's leg to keep from boarding the bus to kindergarten. There were no shades of the former altar boy. No residue of the sweet kid that went to Bible camp every summer.

  All that was left was a gangly bundle of hormones more disgruntled than a postal carrier. Carrying on a conversation with Paul was like time traveling back to prehistoric times. All grunts and mumbled words, like putting together a coherent sentence was harder than inventing the wheel.

  But Paul didn't want to waste an entire sentence on his father. Instead he just grunted. "No."

  No father wanted to talk to their child about sex.

  "Your mother tells me you've been taking abnormally long showers."

  "So," Paul mumbled, not conceding a thing.

  Paul managed to be jaded beyond his years. An old soul of snarl. Adam wanted to tell him life got better. But Adam was working through his own quarrels with the universe. Those quarrels had to take a backseat to Paul's raging libido.

  Adam was trying his best to tiptoe around the issue, but the fact remained, there was no easy way to talk to your son about sex. It was like a bandage--you just needed to it quickly to keep the pain to a minimum.

  "Do you have any questions about sex?" Adam asked, hoping Paul didn't.

  Paul cringed and ducked his head into his sketchpad. "Not for you," he insisted.

  "Well if you do, the answer is--not until you're married. And as far as the shower goes, remember--the Lord is always watching."

  *********

  Eden was designed as the pinnacle of cookie cutter luxury. A housing community lined with picket fences and lush gardens. A veritable Heaven on Earth. Someone forgot to tell the recession that. Foreclosures had left the community in tatters. The lush gardens withered in the desert heat. Orphaned cats scavenged for food while neighboring coyotes tried to make a meal out of them. Security patrolled for squatters while the remaining homeowners worried they'd always owe more than their homes were worth.

  Adam drove away from his home sweet heartache with the air conditioning cranked and his head aching. Life wasn't supposed to be such a punch to the gut. It was the desert. A resort town. Where you went to get away from the economic and emotional chaos of the city, not see it up close and too personal.

  But passing a couple of geezers putting along Fred Waring Drive in a golf cart, Adam couldn't help but yearn to be old, empty nested, and cashing social security checks. The golf course awaited those old timers. The same could not be said for Adam.

  Construction had taken over Highway 111. All the b
etter to beautify for the snowbirds during tourist season. The Canadians were coming, ready to bask in the cool breezes of a Palm Desert retirement. But before they arrived, a traffic snarl awaited Adam.

  The universe worked in mysterious ways. On a normal day, Adam was too rushed to see the cross resting high on the hillside. But with the construction crew jack hammering and slowing up the traffic, he caught his first glimpse of the cross in months. And suddenly, Adam began to think God had special plans for him.

  *********

  Adam usually showed up at the corporate plaza before the night janitor finished scrubbing the restrooms. The cubicles were a ghost town. And Adam needed that alone time. The height of a recession was a horrible time to be asking for charitable donations. But Adam's job was to raise funds for the needy. Unfortunately, his roster of donors were becoming needy themselves.

  Adam still got his team to put up the best numbers in the office. He figured the big promotion was his.

  "Fossil, you are so going to be fired."

  JR had other ideas. A classic button down brown noser with a mean streak, JR was the kind of cocky jerk that gave twenty-four year olds a bad name. Adam was content to ignore him, but JR had other barbs up his sleeve.

  "I have this promotion wrapped up old timer," JR continued.

  "Listen up Junior--" Adam cracked back.

  "For the last time, it’s JR," the Piss Ant insisted.

  "Whatever, Junior. There’s more to a promotion than working longer hours than the other guy."

  "Is that why you try to show up earlier and leave later than me every day?"

  "Do you ever get tired of being a douche?" Adam asked.

  "Do you ever get tired of getting schooled by someone half your age?"

  Adam smiled wide. "I’ll let you know if it ever happens."

  JR sneered. "I’m warning you. When I’m the Big Kahuna, I’m kicking you to the curb."

  Adam fired one last shot across the bow before walking away. "You should see a doctor. I think you’re suffering from delusion disorder."

  Adam started to walk away, satisfied with his verbal victory. But it was short lived.