Keep Holding On: A Contemporary Christian Romance (Walker Family Book 3)

by Melissa Tagg

  If only she’d listened as keenly to her gut or her conscience or whatever nagging internal voice it was that’d hissed its disapproval the second she’d stepped into the church a couple hours ago.

  Beckett.

  She’d known he might be here. Had known he wouldn’t want to see her.

  So why now, even as she practically fled the building and its trove of memories, was she tempted to go after him?

  Because at least with Beckett I know what to expect. As for what might be waiting for her at home . . .

  “We’re leaving so soon?” Nigel—patient, long-suffering Nigel—hastened to match her steps. His polished shoes clipped against the cement as he caught up with her and reached for her hand. “Not that I’m complaining. After touring your entire town today, I’m ready to find a bed and crash.”

  “You say ‘entire town’ as if Maple Valley is the size of London and not, like, a speck in comparison.” She pushed out a laugh and gave his hand an appreciative squeeze. He had come all this way with her, after all. Flown across the Atlantic and then, after only a few hours of sleep in a noisy hotel in Minneapolis, traveled down to Iowa and didn’t once grumble as she played tour guide.

  If he’d picked up on the fact that the extended tour was really just her way of stalling, he hadn’t let on. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go home—to the house and the apple orchard where she’d spent the bulk of her childhood.

  It was just that her older brother might not be any happier to see her than Beckett.

  “Well, I had no idea there was so much to see in such a small town.” Amusement flashed in his hazel eyes, his English accent so very out of place. “The riverfront, the library, all the antique stores. Seriously, I don’t understand how a town this small has so many antique stores.”

  “And we didn’t even see half of them.” She tried for a breezy grin but must have failed. Because when she attempted a step toward their rental car, Nigel’s grip held her in place. How did he manage to look so put-together after two such long days? From his bald head to his clean-shaven jaw to the astonishing lack of wrinkles in his suit, he didn’t appear even the tiniest bit jet-lagged.

  “What is it, Kit?”

  “Noth—”

  “Don’t say nothing. I’ve known you too long to buy that. Might as well tell me what has your brow crinkling.” His scrutiny turned pointed. “Or rather who.”

  He meant Beckett, of course. Brooding clouds bowed into the trees bordering the church lot.

  All through Seth and Ava’s wedding, sitting in a pew, Nigel’s arm around her, the truth of it had knocked around inside her. He’s here. Beckett. Beckett’s here.

  And yet . . . not. Not since shuffling through the church foyer, head down, shoulders hunched. Arrested in front of his family, all the wedding guests.

  She’d watched along with everyone else as the Walkers huddled—Beckett’s siblings, his father, his cousin. Some she didn’t recognize, probably significant others who’d come along in the years since she’d moved to London. They’d decided to go on with the wedding.

  “Kit.” Nigel’s leaden tone finally betrayed his exasperation at her silence. “You fidgeted all the way through the wedding and now we’re leaving before the reception. Who’s the bloke who was arrested?”

  “I . . . He’s . . .” The words glommed together, awkward and truculent, under his prodding gaze. “He’s just someone I used to know.”

  “Is he the one who . . . the man you almost married?” Nigel glanced behind her, to the church.

  She couldn’t hold back her wince. “No.” And then, before he could ask any one of the questions trekking over his face, she clasped his hand once more. “Come on. Let’s go home.” And stop avoiding the inevitable.

  After a pause, he gave her a resigned half-smile and started toward the parking lot. “Sometimes I think you like keeping me in the dark about what goes on in your head, Kit Danby.”

  “Or I just like being mysterious.” She grasped for a playfulness she didn’t feel.

  “I can be patient. It took me two years to get you to go on a date with me. Another eight months to convince you this thing with us is going somewhere. Another four to wheedle my way into meeting your family.”

  A distant rumble of thunder echoed overhead. “Just my brother, really. Lucas.” Far as she knew, Dad was still in D.C., stationed at Fort McNair. Not that he likely would’ve bothered to let her know if he’d relocated. One of these days she should probably accept the fact that her father had about as much interest in her now as he had when she was a kid—very little.

  As for Lucas, his terse email last month was the reason she was here. Just a few hasty lines about how he’d decided to close the family apple orchard, the one Grandpa and Grandma had spent a lifetime cultivating.

  No explanation. No answers to her calls and emails in reply.

  Days had unfolded into weeks as she’d tried to decide what to do—go home and intervene or stay out of it? After all, Grandpa had left the orchard to Dad, who’d entrusted it to Lucas . . . not her. But she loved the place. Oh, she loved it.

  And when she’d received the invitation to the Walker wedding, it’d felt like a sign. The longing to return had simply taken over. She’d go to the wedding. She’d confront Lucas and convince him not to give up on their grandparents’ legacy. Two birds, one stone.

  The sky’s gloamy deepening cast shadows around the churchyard, the first raindrops breaking free as they jogged the rest of the way to the car. Nigel held the driver’s-side door open for her and she slid in. He’d driven all of two miles from the car rental lot yesterday before declaring Americans “nutters” for driving on the right side of the road. She’d kissed his cheek and traded seats and wondered for the hundredth time what her friends and family would say about the Brit she’d brought home.

  Except there hadn’t been any real family at the wedding, and as for friends . . .

  The storm in Beckett’s charcoal eyes flashed in her mind until a hard blink and the sound of Nigel’s passenger-side door closing pushed it away.

  “There’s just one thing, Kit.” Concern hovered in Nigel’s voice as he reached across the console to touch her arm. The car’s pine-scented air freshener owned the space between them. “You bought a one-way ticket.”

  She’d known he’d eventually bring that up. “Only because I’m not sure what’s up with the orchard. I might need to stick around for a week or two to help out.”

  “But you packed enough for a month, at least. You closed up your flat.” He pulled on his seatbelt. “You haven’t signed the contract for the upcoming school term.”

  Because even before Lucas’s email, she hadn’t known if she wanted to sign on for another year of field botany for the university where she’d received her master’s. It was fine work, she supposed, even if many days it did feel like she was little more than a glorified plant waterer.

  She started the engine. “Nige—”

  “It’s not that I’m trying to pressure you where we’re concerned, but if you’d just think logically for a minute . . .” His words drifted into a long sigh.

  And then, just like that, just like the patient, undemanding man she’d known him to be since the day they’d met, Nigel simply let it drop. Didn’t push, didn’t prod. Merely leaned against the headrest and closed his eyes.

  She pulled away from the church and turned on her windshield wipers as the rain settled into a steady fall. The quaint town center blurred by outside—brick and pastel buildings, bright awnings, and baskets filled with asters and black-eyed Susans dangling from old-fashioned lampposts. They crossed the midnight blue ripples of the river that cut the town in half, and soon a residential neighborhood gave way to miles of gravel and a stretch of fields, their rise and fall reaching into a veiled horizon.

  Until there, up ahead, the familiar sign hanging between two wooden poles. Valley Orchard. The mass of trees—almost five thousand of them—spread over a fifty-acre stretch of land. The temp
tation to park and escape the car, roam the orchard before going to the house, nearly engulfed her.

  But no, she needed to see Lucas first. Couldn’t put this off any longer.

  So she passed the turn that would lead into the main orchard grounds and continued another half mile, eventually curving around to the homestead—the farmhouse and garage situated on a cut-out clearing. The land behind her grandparents’ house gave way to the ravine that separated Danby land from Walker land.

  How many times had she shuffled down the ravine’s sloping decline as a kid to get to Beckett?

  “This is it?” Nigel sat up.

  “This is it.” Except, oh, how the farmhouse had changed since she’d seen it last—its once-white now a dull gray, one shutter hanging crookedly next to a second-floor window. No ivy-entwined lattice climbing the side of the porch like she remembered, no flowers lining the walkway that led from the drive to the front door. Lucas had told her the tornado of 2014 destroyed the deck Dad had built the one too-brief autumn he’d actually spent with them here, but seeing it for herself, seeing all of it . . .

  Wonderful memories. Heart-breaking memories. They swirled together at the sight of the age-worn home that seemed so bereft, so . . .

  Empty.

  Long grass bent against the wind and the rain. She lurched from the car.

  Nigel called her name from behind.

  But she didn’t slow, didn’t stop until she reached the shelter of the front door’s overhang. She found the spare key in the empty flower box and let herself in. Hot, humid air billowed into her. No air-conditioning?

  “Lucas!” She pried off her sandals and padded into the living room. The furniture was arranged just as she remembered—couch, loveseat, rocking chair. Framed family photos crammed the fireplace mantel. Earthy tones in the carpet and curtains, sprinkles of color—bold oranges and yellows—in throw pillows and a blanket folded neatly atop the couch.

  Too neatly.

  Something wasn’t right.

  “Lucas?”

  No signs of life in the dining room, the kitchen. No abandoned dishes or articles of clothing. She heard Nigel come in the house behind her as she hurried up the open staircase to the second floor. Lucas’s childhood bedroom was empty. Maybe he’d claimed the master.

  But no. It sat vacant, untouched.

  He wasn’t here. Maybe hadn’t been for several days, considering how sweltering the house was, how closed-up—every set of window blinds, every drape.

  “Kit?”

  Nigel’s footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Gone. Lucas was just gone. Without a word or a warning.

  Even Dad had at least given them some warning.

  Nigel approached, something in his hand. A photo from the mantel?

  “He’s not here. How could he just leave? Abandon the house and the orchard and—”

  Nigel interrupted. “It’s him. The guy from the church.”

  “Who . . . what?”

  He held out the frame, and the faces staring back at her registered. A close-up of her and Beckett, arms around each other’s shoulders—all smiles and windswept hair. “He’s really not the man you almost married?”

  Dread-infused confusion over Lucas’s absence tangled with the exhaustion pulling on her every nerve. The lingering anxiety over Beckett’s arrest. The prickly demand in Nigel’s words.

  “No.” She met his eyes. “He’s the one who stopped the wedding.”

  “This is ridiculous, and you know it.”

  Dad’s voice carried from the front desk of the Maple Valley Police Department building to the stark white, cement-walled cell of the small-town jail. Relief and shame wrestled for prominence as Beckett straightened from his slumped position on the metal bench, a ragged sigh heaving through him as he stood. And something else—the question that’d begun badgering him in the backseat of Hastings’s squad car: How in the world had word of his return gotten to the police so quickly?

  “I promise you, Mr. Walker, I’m not trying to be difficult.” Was that a shake in Hastings’s voice? “I’m not authorized to release him. Not yet.”

  Without even seeing him, Beckett could picture Dad—his height and commanding presence, once-dark hair now silver and his well-creased face that didn’t hint at his age so much as his easy laughter.

  But he wasn’t laughing now. “It isn’t enough that you disrupted my nephew’s wedding? Now you’re holding my son needlessly—knowing he’s not a danger, he’s not going to run.”

  “I wouldn’t say we know that. Not considering he’s conveniently avoided Maple Valley for how many years?”

  Wait, that wasn’t Hastings speaking anymore. Beckett stiffened. And Dad said the name even as it knuckled into Beckett’s brain. “Sam Ross.”

  “Sorry you had to leave the reception early, Mr. Walker. But as you can see, you’re not the only one.”

  Suddenly it all made sense. Sam Ross had been at the wedding. Sam Ross had seen him.

  Sam Ross—Kit’s ex-fiancé.

  The one who’d stood in front of the church six years ago looking shell-shocked after Beckett had rocketed to his feet and called out an objection as if it were court instead of a wedding ceremony.

  “You didn’t have to do it, Ross.” Dad’s tone held rebuke. “Not like this.”

  “I’m the police chief.”

  “You were off duty.”

  “And I’m on now.”

  Sam knew Beckett was hearing all of this, didn’t he? Probably expected him to be back here quaking, mentally backing down from whatever fight was surely coming.

  Which was exactly what he should be doing. Because he wasn’t the old Beckett anymore—the one who threw caution to the wind and chased mere impulse. The one who interrupted weddings and ran off with the bride.

  Who stole a car and ran it into a dumb tree, made a mess of the town square, and then left without a backward glance.

  No, he’d come home with the sole purpose of manning up, facing his past, and taking care of this whole thing like the staid, mature person he’d worked to become. Like Logan or Dad would’ve done if they were in his shoes. Not that they’d ever end up in a situation like this in the first place.

  If things had gone the way he’d planned, he would’ve watched Seth’s wedding from a back pew and then come down to the station of his own accord. He’d have used his lawyering skills to talk his way out of the arrest warrant that’d been gathering dust for six years. Then he’d have gone back to Boston free and clear. No police record. Nothing to throw up any red flags when he appeared for his Army JAG Corps interview.

  Now the only appearance he’d likely be making any time soon was in court. At least it was a weekend—he wouldn’t have to spend all night in jail waiting to appear before the local judge in the morning.

  Except maybe that would’ve been better. He wouldn’t be able to make his initial court appearance until next week. Which meant he was stuck in town indefinitely. He needed to call Elliott at the firm, find someone to cover Monday’s deposition.

  “Ross, let’s get this over with,” he called from his cell, the riled words out before he could stop them. “Charge me, interrogate me, whatever. Just get on with it.”

  He heard the ire in his own voice, the frustration-fueled hostility. Silence shifted down the jail corridor in reply. And then footsteps.

  “Impatient, are we?”

  Sam stopped in front of his cell. An imposing six-foot-six, early gray nipping at his temples. Surprising, really, it’d taken him this long to get to the station. He had to have been positively gleeful sitting through Seth and Ava’s wedding, thinking about facing off with Beckett across metal cell bars.

  Wait, Kit and Sam hadn’t been together at the wedding, had they? Surely someone in the family would’ve told him if Kit had moved home, gotten back together with Sam.

  Maybe if you’d let her say a word instead of charging away, she could’ve explained.

  “I was going to turn myself in, you know.
”

  “No, I don’t know—”

  “But you just had to have me arrested in front of my family. Classy.” It was a wonder Sam hadn’t made the arrest himself.

  “No more classy than wrapping my father’s Lincoln around a tree.”

  Beckett sucked in a sharp breath, guilt slackening his posture as he pushed away from the cell bars. Bad enough he’d whisked Kit away from her wedding, leaving Sam publicly humiliated, but they’d gone and taken the white car just outside the church doors. The one with “Just Married” soaped onto the window.

  Then later, after they’d argued, he’d sped down Main on his own, still in Sam’s father’s car. Anger had fueled his pressure on the accelerator until he lost control, found himself in the middle of the town square, somehow uninjured despite the wreckage around him.

  And yet, so very hurt.

  He’d only meant to help Kit, stand up for her, but he’d messed it all up. And when she’d pushed him away . . .

  Sam’s sneer cut into the sting of his memories. “What I can’t get over is how you ran away like a scared little—”

  “That’s enough.”

  Dad.

  He came up beside Sam, his air of authority—that of a man who’d never entirely shed his soldier-turned-diplomat bearing even this many years later—piercing into Sam’s smug control. The police chief’s attention shifted from Beckett to Dad, indecision idling for a tension-stretched moment.

  “Fine.” The word was a snarl. He backed away from the cell. “Five minutes.”

  As Sam’s footsteps smacked down the hallway, Beckett forced himself to meet Dad’s probing gaze. An impossible mix of kindness and compassion rested in the brown eyes Mom used to call the color of caramel.

  The familiar pang sliced through him. Mom. As much as he missed her, at least she wasn’t seeing him like this.

  “I really was going to turn myself in. After the wedding, I was going to talk to you and Logan and Kate and Rae and then drive over here and—”

  “Beck.” Dad reached his hand through the cell bars, palm open. He waited until Beckett lifted his arm to speak again. “Welcome home.”