Love Inspired June 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Single Dad CowboyThe Bachelor Meets His MatchUnexpected Reunion

by Brenda Minton

  “Sometimes,” Simone said slowly, “the cure really is worse than the disease.”

  “I know that’s true,” Morgan told her, “but I don’t know how you...don’t fight.”

  “There was a moment,” Simone said, “when I thought about giving up.”

  “You must have weighed the cost and wondered if it was worth it.”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “But you fought.” He turned his hand palm up so he could squeeze her hand. “Brigitte was only twenty-five, so about your age, and it was nearly sixteen years ago. Medicine is light-years ahead of where they were then, but I’m not sure if, even now, she would choose to fight her disease.”

  “It’s not always an easy decision.”

  “I understand that. I’m just saying that, for me, in the end...”

  “You would have to fight, no matter how small the odds.”

  “Yes. Even if it might not be the right thing to do.”

  “So Brooks was the right man for her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad you have that assurance.”

  “So am I. And I’m glad that you chose to fight your disease, no matter the cost.”

  She smiled, nodded and took her hand away, changing the subject. “So why haven’t you married? It’s been sixteen years!”

  He shrugged, chuckling. “I don’t know. I was always open to it, but it just didn’t happen. Now, at forty-five, I’m too old for it, too set in my ways.”

  “Now, that’s just sad,” Simone chided. “You could still be a father, after all.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure I’d want to start all that at this late date.”

  “But you said yourself that the Chatams are a hearty, long-lived bunch.”

  “I like my life just as it is, thank you very much, and this world has plenty of Chatams already.”

  “Please yourself, then, Professor.”

  “I always do,” he admitted, grinning.

  When, he wondered, his grin feeling strained, had that started to seem just a bit lonely?

  * * *

  Hub joked that she didn’t let the air settle before she was off on a new project, but Simone knew too well how desperate a kid on the street could feel. Having someplace to go, even for a little while, when night closed in, would be a real comfort. Hub agreed to the idea of an evening “check-in” for homeless teens in the area, provided two adults were always on hand. Morgan promised to round up graduate students to staff two-hour shifts.

  Half a dozen kids showed up that first evening. One eighteen-year-old, Rina, was overweight and sloppy with short blond hair, a sullen attitude and an eyebrow ring. She walked out in a huff when Simone suggested she find a job, but the girl seemed entirely capable of supporting herself, just unwilling.

  Hub declared himself thrilled with Simone’s efforts, and Morgan seemed pleased with the reports he received. Simone felt that she was doing something worthwhile, something that counted.

  She’d have been happy if not for Chester. She did her best to stay out of her uncle’s way, but whenever she came across him, Chester always looked at her as if he was trying to puzzle out something about her.

  She had quietly resumed riding her moped after it had been returned to the estate, taking care to park where she wasn’t likely to be seen and leaving the helmet with the bike. No one had told her not to ride the thing, after all—no one but Morgan, and he had no true authority over her.

  To raise extra cash, she started selling her ski gear online, which allowed her to throw a little money at the homeless kids who most needed it. When the storm clouds rolled in during that second week in October, she thought about dipping into her savings to take a taxi over to the mission, but in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to spend her funds that way. Instead, she donned a bright orange hooded plastic poncho over her helmet and climbed on her trusty moped that Thursday evening. The poncho was one she’d used on the ski slopes when wet, slushy snow had made navigation miserable. She tucked the ends up under her and used plastic sleeves, called gaiters, to protect her lower legs from splashes. Then she headed across town.

  What had started as a steady drizzle soon became a drenching downpour, however. By the time she puttered into the rutted parking lot, she could barely see the street in front of her headlamp, and her pant legs were soaked from the knee to midcalf. She parked right next to the steps and scrambled up them blindly, lunging for the door beneath a veritable waterfall of runoff. As the heavy metal door closed behind her with a decided ka-shunk, she swept off the poncho, trying to minimize the rain spatter on the slick concrete floor of the corridor, and reached for the chin strap of her helmet, only to freeze at the sound of an all-too-familiar voice.

  “I don’t believe it! What on earth were you thinking, riding that thing over here?”

  Simone mentally sighed. “Hello to you, too, Morgan.”

  “I mean it, Simone. Of all the stupid, illogical things to do!”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You’re soaked. Your jeans are wet.”

  “Four inches of my jeans are wet,” she pointed out, pushing past him to carry the dripping poncho and helmet down the hall.

  “Your shoes are wet,” he said accusingly, and so they were. The rubber soles squeaked on the concrete.

  “I’ll take them off.”

  “And go barefoot on cold concrete?”

  “It won’t kill me.”

  “It might.”

  She wasn’t going to argue that point with him. Instead, she turned, sighed and conceded. “All right. It was foolish of me to ride the moped over here in the rain. I should’ve taken a taxi.”

  “You should have had Chester drive you.”

  “No,” she said before she could think better of it.

  “Why not?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have ridden the moped in the rain.”

  “You’re never going to let Chester drive you, are you?” Morgan demanded, folding his arms. He seemed to take up a lot of room there in the narrow corridor.

  She tried to think of a safe, plausible answer, and when she couldn’t come up with one, she simply turned on her heel and walked away, flipping on light switches as she went. Pausing at the double swinging door to the large, gymnasium-style meeting room, she fixed him with a curious gaze, and asked, “What are you doing here, Morgan?”

  “I couldn’t get anyone else to come out on a night like this, and I knew you were going to need help.”

  As if to prove that statement, the door opened and two boys stumbled in. Both were drenched and looked to be in their late teens.

  “Nasty night,” one of them said.

  “I’ll get some towels,” Morgan muttered. “Wait there.”

  Before he got back, there were two more. Simone would get one placed and another would show up, and so it went until they locked the door. Rina, the chunky blonde with the eyebrow ring and oversize clothes, arrived just as Morgan returned with a small pickup truck and a trailer. She had obviously been crying, but her clothes and hair were dry, so she’d been in out of the rain. Simone was too busy trying to figure out how she could help the girl to bother about Morgan rolling the moped up onto the trailer.

  “Do you need a place to stay?”

  “Naw,” Rina said, “I was just bored. Thought I’d see if there was anybody around.”

  “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

  The girl shook her head, her gaze darting away. She waved a hand at the moped, asking, “What’re you doing with that?”

  “Taking it to storage in my garage,” Morgan answered, prompting Simone to scowl.

  “I didn’t agree to that.”

  “It’s late,” he said. “We can argue later.”

&n
bsp; Rina snickered. “Y’all sound like my folks.”

  Simone rolled her eyes, hoping no one noticed the flush of color across her cheeks. How could anyone mistake her and Morgan Chatam for a couple? Oddly enough, though, it sometimes felt that way.

  * * *

  “This pickup is yours?” she asked as they bounced across the rutted parking lot.

  “Yep.” Morgan grinned. He’d had this conversation repeatedly over the years.

  “Just how many vehicles do you have?”

  “Several.”

  “How many do you need?”

  “Several.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Various reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  “Sometimes you need to haul something, and sometimes you need to race something, and sometimes you just need to drive something slick and fast. Other times you need to haul around a whole carload of people in comfort.”

  “You need to race and drive something slick and fast?” she asked drily.

  “I do,” he told her unrepentantly.

  She rolled her eyes, which made him grin.

  “You know, of course, how absurd that sounds,” she said.

  “I know that what I drive is my business,” he told her, “and has been for a good many years.”

  She drew two fingers across her lips, turned them as if turning a key in a lock and flipped them as if throwing away the key. Morgan laughed.

  “Good girl. You’ll give me no argument then when I add the moped to my collection.”

  She opened her mouth to do just that, but he wagged a finger at her. “Uh-uh-uh. Your health comes first. Okay?”

  She took a deep breath, frowned and said nothing. Morgan smiled grimly. He should have done this right at the beginning, but he kept trying to keep his distance. He couldn’t have her riding mopeds in rainstorms, though. Both of them needed their heads examined.

  He drove to his home. The sturdy, graceful redbrick house with its stone chimneys and arched doorways had been built in 1928. He loved the clay tile roof and multipaned windows, as well as the terra-cotta floors and paneled walls inside. It had no garage, just a two-bay carport on one end. He drove straight through the second bay, past the Beemer and on down the lane to the building at the back of the property, which was less garage than warehouse. He punched the automatic door opener attached to the visor and waited for the second of three doors to rise.

  Her jaw dropped as he pulled into the clean, tidy, well-lit space.

  “Oh. My. Word.”

  “We all have our vices,” he told her. “I don’t just like to own vehicles, I like to tinker with them.”

  “My dad would have loved this,” she said, looking around. “He was a tinkerer. He’d work on any old motor, even a lawn mower.”

  “Was?” Morgan echoed.

  Her smile faded. “Yes. Deceased.”

  “Was it sudden?” Morgan asked kindly.

  “No,” she answered. “He was ill a long time.” She opened the truck door and got out then.

  Well, if she was going to keep secrets, she couldn’t blame him for trying to uncover them. He got out and walked over to the little silver coupe parked in the far left bay.

  “Come over here,” he said, “and let me see your driver’s license.”

  She reached into the truck for her backpack and dug out her wallet. After she carried it over to him, he photographed her driver’s license and opened an app on his smartphone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Adding you to my insurance.”

  “What?”

  He looked at her over the edge of the phone. “Do you have any tickets on your record, any accidents you want to tell me about?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then.” He finished the transaction and slid the phone into his pocket before going to the lockbox on the wall. Opening it, he took out a set of keys and tossed them to her. She stared at them as if she’d never seen such things. “For the time being, you’ll drive the coupe. When Brooks says you’re well enough and strong enough to go on your way, we’ll figure out some other transportation for you. Something safer and drier than a moped. Agreed?”

  She gulped and blinked. “I, um, I’ve already put on some weight.”

  “Yeah?” He had noticed. He wished he hadn’t, but he had.

  She rubbed her nose and blinked some more. “You know, I sometimes think you are the most insufferably high-handed, arrogant, bossiest... Then you go and do something so kind and generous.” She looked up, her gray eyes large and luminous and brimming. “Thank you.” Before he knew what was happening, she’d thrown her arms around his neck.

  She went up on tiptoe and pulled his head down to kiss his cheek, right at the corner of his mouth. Then he did something incredibly stupid. He turned his head just a tad, and she pressed her lips to his.

  He felt poleaxed, stunned. It was a wonder they didn’t both just topple over backward. As it was, he stumbled slightly.

  No longer the cool, urbane college professor, he hadn’t felt so stupid since...ever. As if he’d just had his first kiss at the ripe old age of forty-five. Horrified, he leaped away.

  “You can...give it back...later,” he managed, trying for an authoritative tone.

  She showed him her apple cheeks. “I’ll be very careful, I promise.”

  “Yes.” He fought the urge to clear his throat. “See that you are.”

  He loped down the length of the building and punched the garage door opener on the other end. She got into the car, tossing her backpack in ahead of her, started the engine and pulled up level with him. The window rolled down, and she regarded him solemnly.

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “It’s late,” he grumbled. “Get on.”

  She gave him a slow smile, as if she knew that his heart still pounded like a jackhammer, before carefully easing the car out into the night. He hit the button and watched the door slide down behind her, then he bent at the waist, grabbed his knees and gasped for air.

  What was wrong with him? He had to get a hold of himself. Simone had been through so much, and he felt sorry for her, but that was all it was, all it could be. She was a student and too young for him. Much too young. It was absurd for him to get so worked up over a little kiss of gratitude like this.

  Which didn’t make him feel any less like a heel.

  Chapter Seven

  Simone still couldn’t quite believe that Morgan had just handed over the keys to a sweet little coupe to her. And to think that he’d put her on his insurance! It couldn’t have cost much—could it?—and it was better to be safe than sorry, but she hadn’t been able to sleep that night for thinking about what an incredibly generous thing he’d done. At least that was what she tried to tell herself.

  What she kept picturing, what she kept reliving, as she lay there in that comfortable bed in that lovely, quiet room in Chatam House, was the kiss.

  She’d only meant to hug him, and then on impulse she’d kissed his cheek, and somehow their lips had met. The feeling had somehow caught her off guard. He was so solid. So...manly. Aaron, her ex, seemed like a rather pathetic child by comparison, and that saddened her, made him, her and their marriage seem like such a farce.

  All during class on Friday morning, she found it difficult to concentrate. Her gaze kept straying where it should not go, and she found herself fascinated with the cleft in Morgan, rather, Professor Chatam’s chin. It was embarrassing, really, and she couldn’t help wondering how many other female students were as captivated by that little indentation as she was. She practically ran from the lecture hall at the end of class, aware of his silent gaze tracking her.

  She felt more than a bit odd driving over to the mission in Morgan’s car, but thou
gh Hub surely recognized the vehicle, he said nothing. His comments all concerned the news that an Arlington theme park had donated a dozen tickets and meals for a special promotion a week from the following Saturday. The church would provide a fifteen-passenger van, but at least two people, a driver and a monitor, would have to go along with the teens.

  “Oh, Hub. These kids never get to do things like this,” Simone said excitedly. “What fun they would have!”

  “I know, but I almost didn’t mention it,” he told her. “I’m too old for this sort of thing, you know, and I’m not sure you have the stamina for it.”

  She wasn’t sure, either. A venture like this would require a whole day, twelve hours from open to close of the park. Still, she could imagine the joy on the faces of those teenagers. She could also imagine what Morgan would say if he found out. Unless...

  “You don’t suppose that Morgan would agree to help out, do you?”

  Hub folded his hands and smiled. “Well, now, you never know until you ask. And I might have a way to twist his arm a bit.”

  * * *

  “Roller coasters,” Morgan repeated, standing on the terra-cotta floor of his small foyer in his bare feet the next morning, his hair still damp from a shower and his cheeks still smarting from the aftershave he’d splashed on. His Saturday jeans felt as comfortable and familiar as his collared knit shirt, the tail of which he hadn’t yet stuffed into his waistband. He’d been quite surprised to find Simone knocking at his door, but the proposition that she had poured out had him reeling.

  “The longest, highest and fastest in the world,” she confirmed eagerly.

  “And you want to ride them?”

  “No, not me,” she said, shaking her head. “You. And the kids. You know, teenagers. Young people. From the mission.”

  It started coalescing. He’d heard something in there about donated tickets and special promotions and fun.

  “Aha. You want to palm off your homeless kids on me.”

  “No! Not at all. I’ll go along. It’s just that I can’t do this for them by myself.” She gave him the most woebegone, puppy-dog face. “And your dad isn’t up to it, not at his age, and, well, everyone else I know is busy with work or other assignments, and I certainly can’t ask your aunts.” He chuckled at the thought of Odelia, Hypatia and Magnolia shepherding a flock of world-wise teenagers around an amusement park, and that seemed to embolden Simone. “The kids would so love it. You can’t know what this would mean to them.”