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

by Brenda Minton

  Carissa’s sister. His cousin Phillip’s sister-in-law. Morgan thought he would drop where he stood.

  “I thought she was missing.”

  “She was missing.”

  “Ran away as a girl.”

  “It nearly killed your daddy,” Chester accused. “Why didn’t you come back before he died?”

  “I shouldn’t have come back at all!” Simone bolted up from the sofa and ran for the door. “Don’t tell Carissa. Please don’t!”

  “Don’t tell her?” Chester demanded, coming to his feet. “That’s daft.”

  Openly sobbing, Simone grabbed the box of food and dashed into the foyer.

  “Now where is she off to?” Chester demanded.

  “I’m not sure,” Morgan said, still too stunned to move, “but I do know why she didn’t come home during her father’s illness.” Whatever else might be lies, the cancer was truth.

  “Left it to her sister to care for their dying daddy,” Chester accused, throwing out a hand. “That’s Lyla’s way.”

  Morgan looked to Hypatia in exasperation. This was clearly a Worth family matter, and he didn’t know the intricacies of it, but he did know where Simone, or Lyla, had been and what she had been doing for at least eighteen months of her father’s illness. “Didn’t you tell them what we found out?”

  Hypatia shook her head morosely. “I wasn’t aware of the connection and felt she was entitled to her privacy.”

  Her secrecy, more like. Well, they’d all had enough of that. He faced Chester squarely and put it to him. “She didn’t come home before her father died because she was too busy fighting for her own life. She’s had cancer and just barely beat it, if I’m any judge.”

  The older man turned pale, from the crown of his shiny bald pate to the tips of his puffy fingers. “Oh, no. You’re sure about that?”

  “Very.”

  “It’s why she’s here, Chester,” Hypatia supplied. “Brooks insisted that she have a safe, quiet place in which to recover.”

  Chester heaved out a great breath. “Well, that doesn’t explain the last decade, but it’s something.” He glanced around at them, demanding, “So, what are we standing here for? We have to go after her.”

  “That we do,” Morgan agreed grimly, striding after her. Chester fell in behind him.

  “Wait for me!” Hypatia called, springing after them.

  Morgan paused only long enough to see her through the front door. The coupe had already turned onto the street and was heading west.

  “She’s getting away,” Hypatia complained, trotting across the porch and down the steps.

  “I may know where’s she’s going,” Morgan said, leaving it to Chester to put his aunt into the passenger seat of the BMW. “At least I think we should start looking at the mission. You’ll have to take another vehicle, Chester.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  Hypatia filled him in on the Worth situation as he drove, trying mightily to keep the coupe in sight, without success. It chilled him to the bone to think of Simone running away from home when she was barely even old enough to drive a car. Only God knew how she’d managed to keep body and soul together in the intervening years. He wanted to shake her and hold her at the same time, and his greatest fear was that she would take off again, just disappear from all their lives.

  To think that she was Chester Worth’s niece and his own cousin Phillip’s sister-in-law and living right under their noses for two whole months, thanks to him, amazed him. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to move into Chatam House and wouldn’t let Chester drive her around town. She was afraid of being found out. The mystery was why Chester hadn’t recognized her on sight. Morgan supposed she had changed. What the passing years and maturity hadn’t done, the cancer probably had. But why was she intent on hiding her identity?

  A lump began to grow in the center of Morgan’s chest, a great black mass of fear and doubt. What had she done that she couldn’t bear for her family to know about? He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know himself, yet he couldn’t deny the relief he felt when he saw the coupe in the parking lot at the mission.

  “Dad’s car isn’t here, so she probably locked the door behind her,” he said. “I’ll go see, and if it’s locked, I’ll try around back.”

  “You don’t think she’ll let us in?” Hypatia asked as he exited the vehicle.

  “No, I don’t. Wait here for Chester. If I can’t get in, I’ll call Dad to come down.”

  Her lips set in a grim line, Hypatia nodded. Morgan jogged up the concrete steps to the front door and tried the knob. Locked tight, just as expected. Shaking his head at Hypatia, he went down the steps and loped around the building to the back, where a deck had been built behind a chain-link fence next to the rail yard. He took the back steps in one long stride and crept across the deck to the door there. It thankfully yielded to the touch.

  Letting out a breath of relief, he walked inside, finding only gloom at first. The long interior hallway that neatly bisected the building into two unequal sides definitely could use more lighting. He walked along the polished concrete floor, feeling the heavy silence, toward the main rooms. Then he heard it, a soft female voice coming from behind a simple door.

  “It’s all right. Don’t cry.”

  A sniff, then, “No. No, it’s not. I promised to take care of you, and I’ve messed up everything.”

  Morgan tilted his head, recognizing Simone’s voice. He didn’t know who was with her, but whoever she was, he suspected that she was the reason for the food theft and perhaps for much else. Reaching out, he quietly turned the knob and let the door swing open on a small, stringently clean, plainly furnished room.

  Inside was a twin bed with a small shelf and lamp fixed to the wall next to it. He could see a tiny bathroom, a cubbyhole for hanging clothes with a single drawer beneath it and a braided rug on the floor. Posters of outdoor scenes with Bible verses printed on them had been mounted on the walls, but that was it for decoration. Simone and Rina sat side by side on the rumpled bed.

  Simone immediately came to her feet, taking up a spot between him and the girl, trying to block his view—but not, however, before he had seen what she would have hidden. The oversize sweater that Rina normally wore hung from the rod in the cubbyhole, leaving her clad in a form-fitting tank top that exposed all too clearly the swollen belly of a very pregnant teenager.

  Everything clicked into place: Rina’s stubborn refusals to ride anything requiring restraints at the amusement park, the oversize clothes, her apparent girth despite her tiny hands and feet, the many trips to the bathroom. This, undoubtedly, was one of the two emergency rooms reserved for Child Protective Services to use when they couldn’t immediately place a foster child who had come unexpectedly into their care through the mission. He saw as well the faded bruises on Rina’s throat, arms and face. What he didn’t already know, he simply asked of Simone, his heart already swelling with pride and understanding.

  “How long have you been hiding her and from whom?”

  * * *

  “He beat her,” Simone said, looking at Rina, now clad once more in the gargantuan sweater that she hid beneath. “He tried to make her get an abortion, and when that didn’t work, he beat her to try to make her lose the baby.”

  “What a horrible thing,” Hypatia remarked.

  Simone nodded and went on. “Her family can’t take her in, and she doesn’t dare go to a local shelter for fear he’ll find her. She doesn’t have money to go anywhere else. All I could think to do was hide her here.”

  “And try to feed her,” Morgan surmised, glancing at Chester, who had the grace to blush.

  “You might have come to me,” Hypatia said kindly, but Simone shook her head, willing back the tears.

  “I couldn’t do that,” she whispered, “not after all you’ve already done,
not after my own—” she swallowed hard and forced out the word “—deception. But I suppose what I’ve done was worse.”

  Hypatia clucked her tongue and patted Simone’s shoulder. “Perhaps you didn’t use the best judgment, but you did what you thought was best. As for the other, well, you left out a few things, but we’ll get to them.”

  That was very much what Simone feared. Glumly, she nodded.

  “Now,” Hypatia said briskly, addressing herself to Rina, “as for you, young lady, we can certainly accommodate you at Chatam House for as long as you need.”

  “Huh?” Rina looked up, as wide-eyed as a deer caught in headlights.

  “You’ll be safe and comfortable there, I promise you,” Hypatia went on, “and you won’t have to hide. My nephew Asher is an attorney, and he will see that you and your child are legally protected.”

  Rina looked appalled. “Ma’am, I can’t afford no attorney.”

  Hypatia waved that away as inconsequential. “You leave that to the Chatams.”

  “But, ma’am—”

  “It’s miss,” Chester interrupted, not unkindly. “Miss Chatam will take care of everything, don’t you fear.” He reached down to help the girl to her feet. “You come along now. We can fix you up a nice place in the carriage house.”

  Simone instantly saw red. Outraged on Rina’s behalf, she spoke without thinking. “Are you saying she’s not good enough to stay in the mansion, Uncle Chester?”

  He recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “Not at all. I only thought she might be uncomfortable in the—”

  “Mansion!” Rina squawked, drawing back. “I ain’t going to no mansion. What would I do in a fancy place? I’d rather stay here.”

  “No, no, it’s not like that,” Simone assured her. “It’s...” Gilded, filled with priceless antiques, enormous. Even she felt overawed and out of place there, despite the kindness of the Chatams. She slipped an arm around the girl’s quaking shoulders. “It’s all right, truly, but if you’ll be more comfortable in the carriage house, that’s fine.”

  Morgan stepped in then and set things to right. “Rina, you go with Chester. He will get you settled in wherever you’re most comfortable. Simone will check on you soon.”

  Simone nodded encouragingly, and Rina let Chester lead her from the room, but then, just before they slipped through the door, Simone had to speak up. “Uncle Chester, please, about Carissa. Don’t call her. Not yet.”

  He made an exasperated sound, nodded and led Rina from the room. Simone tried to feel relief. At least Rina and her baby would be safe and well cared for by the Chatams. She had no doubt that they would help the girl establish herself somehow. Rina had spoken lately of giving the baby up for adoption, and perhaps that was for the best. So many deserving couples who could not conceive yearned for children to love. She turned off that thought, telling herself that she had bigger problems to face just now, imminent ones.

  Hypatia turned to Simone and asked what she had been dreading, what she knew was coming.

  “Why don’t you want your sister to know you’re here?”

  Simone gulped down the big doughy knot in her throat and tried to get in a breath so she could explain. “I thought I would come home to my father.” Tears welled, tears to which she was not entitled, and she bowed her head to hide them. “He was a good man, my dad. For a while, I was too ashamed to come back and face him, but during my illness I was led to true salvation by a hospital chaplain, and I thought... I hoped that if I confessed everything to my dad, he would forgive me and gradually the rest of the family would forgive me, too.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Hypatia told her. “What I know of your father leads me to believe that he would have forgiven wholeheartedly.”

  Simone smiled in bittersweet confirmation. “But it’s too late for that. Too late for everything. And I just have to go on from here somehow, have to do the best I can with what I have left. Isn’t that what God expects of me, Miss Hypatia?” she asked. “He spared my life. The rest I deserve. Shouldn’t I do the best I can with what He’s left me?”

  “Child, I do not know what you’re saying,” Hypatia admitted.

  “The contempt of my family,” Simone gritted out, “childlessness, being alone, I deserve that. But shouldn’t I do the best I can with what’s left to me? Isn’t that what God expects of me? That’s all I’m trying to do. That’s all I want to do.”

  “Why on earth would you think yourself deserving of contempt?” Morgan asked. “You’re not making sense.”

  Simone carefully wrapped her arms around herself, feeling as brittle and insubstantial as spun glass now that the time for full disclosure had come. “Don’t you see?” she asked mechanically. “I am Rina. I was her. Not even seventeen and pregnant. Only I wasn’t smart enough to run from my boyfriend. He beat me until my baby died.”

  Chapter Ten

  Her legs collapsed unexpectedly. Fortunately, Simone stood close enough to the bed to land on its edge. Hypatia yelped, but Morgan reached her first. She held him off with stiff arms, knowing that if he touched her, she’d give way to the grief that she had buried for so long. It hovered around her now, ready to pounce like a ravenous animal. She had miscarried a tiny baby and had it swept away like so much garbage with no doctor or medical personnel of any kind ever attending her.

  “That was just the beginning,” she forged on, her vision narrowing to a foggy pinprick. “He kept me in that same room for weeks, and he told me that he owed money to some men and I had to work it off for him.” She closed her eyes, feeling dizzy. “I was such an idiot. I thought he was helping the other girls there. I didn’t know they were prostitutes until he told me.”

  She heard Hypatia’s gasp then, and her vision snapped back into focus. There it was, the revulsion and horror, everything she’d expected to see, everything she’d always felt.

  “I was fortunate,” she went on woodenly. “The police came before the men did. They arrested me with the others, but I didn’t care. He’d gotten me a fake ID.” She laughed harshly. “I thought that was so cool. At least my record is under the wrong name, and the cops didn’t know how young I was, so my family didn’t have to know how low I’d sunk. I lived on the street and ate out of garbage cans until after my seventeenth birthday so they wouldn’t know.”

  “Oh, Simone,” Hypatia said, “your father would have been happy to have you home under any circumstances.”

  “I realize that now,” she admitted, “now that it’s too late. But what of my mother?”

  Hypatia blanched and looked away.

  “I see you’ve met my mother,” Simone said wryly, “and you must know my sister quite well, too.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “Responsible, upright, persistent and hardworking, honest to a fault, makes do without complaining, never puts a foot wrong?”

  Hypatia smiled. “She is.”

  “If you were her, wouldn’t you resent me?” Simone asked.

  Hypatia opened her mouth, blinked and sighed.

  “She has children now and a happy marriage,” Simone went on. “What could I possibly add to her life but regret and shame? She can’t want that.”

  “You’re her sister,” Hypatia said simply.

  “Not for a long time,” Simone murmured, sinking down onto the bed. “Just let me rest a little while please.”

  A hand skated beneath her bangs to cover her forehead, and she heard Morgan say, “She’s as cold and clammy as a fish.”

  That was exactly how she felt, Simone thought, curling into a ball, like a fish out of water. She wanted to sleep and never wake up again. Tears leaked from her shuttered eyes.

  “I’m taking her to Brooks,” Morgan stated.

  It sounded to Simone as if she was at the bottom of a deep well.

  “Lyla Simo
ne,” Hypatia called down to her, “Morgan will look after you, dear.”

  Morgan, she thought. What would she do, where would she go, how would she survive without Morgan, she wondered, and how soon would she have to find out?

  * * *

  “Obviously she’s been skipping meals,” Morgan pointed out.

  Brooks shot him a speaking glance. A blind man could tell that she’d lost weight recently, but Morgan had felt that someone should clearly state the cause. Thursday was a half day at the clinic, but Brooks had met them there, and Morgan was extremely grateful. Not grateful enough, however, to take the hint and leave the examining room when Brooks glanced pointedly at the door and nodded in that direction.

  “Don’t even try it,” Morgan told him, folding his arms.

  Brooks looked to Simone, but she just shrugged, so Morgan stayed put.

  “As I told you over the phone, she’s cold to the touch but seems to be perspiring, and her pulse is rapid.”

  “I’m just tired,” Simone murmured.

  “Are you getting plenty of rest?” Brooks asked, checking her pulse himself.

  “Yes.”

  “Then are you taking your supplements?”

  She looked away.

  “What supplements?” Morgan asked.

  “I wrote a prescription for her,” Brooks said pointedly, reaching for the blood pressure cuff.

  Seated on the end of the examination table, Simone leaned forward and looked down at her toes, her hands in her lap. Taking up a position directly in front of her, Morgan willed her to look at him while Brooks wrapped the cuff around her upper arm and pumped it tight with the squeeze ball in his hand.

  “Pressure’s a little low,” he announced after a minute or so, then he turned to the computer terminal to record his findings.

  Morgan bent forward at the waist, trying to capture Simone’s gaze, and pointedly asked, “Did you even fill the prescription?”

  She made a face, and that was all the answer he needed.

  “Honestly, Simone!” he scolded.

  “Do you know how much those pills cost?” she shot back. “Nearly two weeks’ pay!” She tossed a hand at Brooks, adding, “He said I’d get over the anemia eventually, anyway.”