Her Heart's Promise

by Carolyne Aarsen

  “So, Tess, is that coffee coming anytime soon?”

  Tess fought for self-control and turned to Nate Krickson, who was watching her with curiosity in his expression. The thirty-something man wore a cowboy hat and plaid shirt rolled up at the sleeves. “Sorry. Still learning,” she said.

  Nate shrugged. “Well, I’m sure it’s quite a switch from working at the Inn. I would have gone there for my coffee, but Mark said I had to try this place. Not sure I want to pay this much for coffee, but hey. Happy to support your sister; though it seems to be a thing, these single moms and their restaurants.”

  Tess nodded, forcing herself to not look past him to Jace. She didn’t correct Nate. Coffee Creek wasn’t technically a restaurant. When Claire started the coffee shop, she hoped to be around for her daughter when school was out. She also didn’t want to create too much competition with Kelsey Swain, who ran the Riverside Inn. So, Coffee Creek was open early in the morning and closed by four. Claire’s menu was quick and easy: coffee, sandwiches, and pastries.

  Tess attended the espresso, pouring milk into the stainless steel container and turning on the steamer. She mentally counted as the coffee dripped into the mug, and she hoped it was done right. Though she had made hundreds of lattes, just knowing Jace was watching made her self-conscious.

  Though she told herself she didn’t care what Jace thought, she still wanted to show she was good at what she did. That she had chosen this job—on purpose.

  She took extra care pouring the milk in, creating a pretty flower in the foam, then handed it to Nate.

  He chuckled. “Well, that flower makes it a whole lot easier to part with four dollars and fifty cents,” he said, handing her some cash. She gave him his change and he dropped it into the tip jar. “There. Go crazy,” he said.

  She tried to think of something witty to say, something that would forestall having to say something to Jace.

  The bells jangled again and her mother bustled into the shop, moving directly to the counter. She always said that as mother of the owner and chief barista, she should have priority over the other customers

  Claire had tried to explain nepotism to their mother, but Deborah was oblivious. This was one time, however, that Tess was thankful for her mother’s brash boldness.

  “My dear Theresa, I’ll have the usual.” Her mother was the only person who called Tess by her full name and always insisted other family members do the same.

  Then her mother saw who she had butted in front of and ‘dear Theresa’ was roundly ignored.

  “Well, hello Jace,” she said, her smile growing extra bright. “We finally meet face to face.” She turned to Tess. “We’ve been chatting on the phone up to now.”

  This didn’t sound good. Her mom had always liked Jace. In fact, while her mother had been upset that Tess had quit university, she was even more upset that ‘dear Theresa’ had broken up with the very eligible and attractive Jace Scholte. Her mother had been “chatting on the phone” with Jace? That frightened her almost as much as seeing Jace did.

  “Hey, Mrs. Kruger,” Jace said. He gave her one of his signature smiles, and Tess felt a tremor of attraction.

  “Jace, you are as good-looking as ever, though I’m thinking you’ve lost weight,” her mother said, lightly touching Jace’s arm.

  “Maybe. I’ve been busy the past year,” Jace said with a shrug.

  “And now you’re here in Sweet Creek. That’s just lovely, isn’t it Theresa?”

  This had to stop.

  “Mom. What can I get for you?” Tess pasted on her brightest smile and zeroed in on her mother, who was easier to face than Jace.

  “I’ll have my usual, Theresa,” her mother said, glancing from Jace to Tess. “You must excuse me butting in line,” Deborah said, “but I get specialty treatment. Claire and Theresa being my daughters and all.”

  “Of course. I understand,” Jace said sounding way more reasonable than some of the customers could be.

  “Cappuccino it is,” Tess said cheerfully, steeling herself as she faced Jace to take his order.

  He was a potent reminder of what could have been. A reminder of happier times when they had dated through high school and college, and that first year of working together at MacGregor Holdings for Carson MacGregor.

  Tess clenched her fists and willed the memories away. She could deal with this. It had been six years and a lot of sadness. Their life together was over.

  She took another breath, relieved that the shaking in her hands subsided, that the thudding in her chest had settled to a steady beat.

  “What would you like, Jace?” she asked, keeping her tone light. “Your usual as well?” She flashed him what she hoped was a casual smile to offset her lame attempt at a joke.

  “Just a coffee to stay.” He held her gaze as if trying to figure her out. Tess was the first to break the connection. “I’ll get Jace’s first,” she told her mother.

  She filled a paper cup, snapped a lid on it, and handed it to Jace.

  “Is this a hint?” Jace asked wryly, as he took the cup.

  “I believe he wanted his coffee to stay,” Deborah reminded her daughter.

  A flush crept up Tess’s neck as she reminded herself to get a grip.

  “Sorry. I’ll give you a mug.”

  “No. This is fine.” Jace took the cup as he glanced around the coffee shop. “So this is where you’re working today?” Did she imagine his sarcastic emphasis on his last word?

  “Yeah. Saturday is the farmer’s market. Monday afternoon I’m back to the thrift store. I keep busy.” His question made her defensive. She knew her work schedule differed vastly from the one she would have led with Jace. They had once mapped out their lives when they were college sweethearts.

  The plan had been to finish business school, work for Carson MacGregor, and, after a suitable length of time, start their own business and get married.

  Tess pushed down a wave of old, too-familiar grief. Jace’s unwelcome presence resurrected the agonizing memories. She should have followed her first instinct and stayed away from town until he returned to Vancouver. Except that would have meant running away again—and she was tired of doing that.

  “Is there a day you don’t work?” Jace asked.

  “Sunday.”

  “Day of rest, like you used to tell me,” he said. “Day to attend church.”

  Don’t read more into the comment than necessary, Tess reminded herself as she nodded and turned away from him. You don’t have to make excuses for your choices or that you don’t go to church as much as you used to.

  She started her mother’s cappuccino, the bean grinder drowning the conversation her mother struck up with Jace. She made quick work of her mother’s drink and handed it to her in a mug, like she preferred.

  “I imagine I’ll be seeing you at the meeting tonight, Theresa?” Deborah asked, as she took the mug from her daughter.

  Tess’s mind skipped frantically backward, mining for a hint of which meeting her mother was referring to.

  “You’ve forgotten, Theresa. Haven’t you?” Deborah’s disappointed sigh cleaved the air. “After promising me you would come? If you’d come regularly to church, you would have read the notice on the bulletin.” She turned to Jace. “I swear this girl would lose her head if I knew she wasn’t so stiff-necked and stubborn.” Her mother’s teasing smile almost negated the reprimand in her mother’s voice. But not quite.

  “Tonight is the second meeting for the fundraiser for the Crisis Counseling Center. You said you were coming to the first one, and you missed it.” Deborah cupped her hands around the mug, angling her head to one side in question. Not a hair on her perfectly coiffed head moved. “You do owe me.” Her arched brow underlined the simple statement, reminding Tess of how grateful she’d been when her parents helped her move to her new apartment. When she told her mother that if she ever needed anything, just ask. That was six months ago, and she assumed her mother had taken her promise as another way of saying thank you
.

  Apparently she’d been wrong.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot.” Tess reached up to push a stray strand of hair back behind her ear, then stopped, trying not to fidget. Thankfully, Jace had moved to a table, so she and her mother spoke privately.

  “You can make up for lost time. I asked Dale Andrews, the chairman of the fundraiser, if you could still come, and he said yes.” Deborah glanced past Tess and smiled again as Claire showed up behind Tess. “There you are, Claire. I had wondered where you’d gone. Maybe you can help me convince Theresa to live up to her obligations and help out with the fundraiser?”

  “Is that the one for the Crisis Center?” Claire asked, tossing a towel over her shoulder, then adjusting the bandanna holding back her dark hair.

  “That’s the one.”

  Claire frowned, then shook her head. “Sorry, Tess. You can’t go to that fundraiser, anyway.”

  Thank goodness. Her dear sister was getting her off the hook. She knew she could count on Claire to have her back around her mother.

  “Why not?”

  “That’s Tess’s birthday,” Claire explained.

  Deborah lifted one perfectly plucked brow. “And?”

  Claire sighed. “I was going to have a party. It’s her thirtieth, remember?”

  Right. Tess preferred not to remember that inevitable milestone. While it was lovely that her sister had come up with an excuse to get out of the fundraiser, Tess would have preferred the reason to be anything but this—it was a reminder of where she was in her life.

  Many years ago, she hadn’t imagined that on her thirtieth birthday, she would be a single woman flitting from job to job, still unable to settle down with either a man or a career.

  Her vision, at that time, included a promising career as a real estate developer.

  That same vision included being married to the man now sitting in her sister’s cafe drinking coffee as he glanced over some papers spread over his table.

  “But I’ll be attending the fundraiser, as will your father,” her mother protested. “Surely you can have her party on another day?”

  “We always have the thirtieth birthday parties right on the day. Tradition,” Claire said, angling her sister a triumphant look.

  Tess glanced from her sister to her mother, dread settling into the pit of her stomach.

  Caught between a rock and a hard place. Commit to the fundraiser and end up working with her mother, or commit to the birthday party and spend the night being confronted with the stark reality of her life.

  “I think we can make an exception to this tradition,” Deborah said. “This is for a superb cause. The meeting will be at six-thirty. Tonight,” she said, turning to Tess, her voice rife with expectation.

  Tess caught her mother’s implacable look, wondering if it was worth the battle.

  “You know how important it is to live up to your commitments. We talked about this.” This was a gentle dig at other times Tess had missed or forgotten things, even though in the past few years, she’d gotten better. She wanted to tell her mother that she wasn’t flaky, wasn’t forgetful and irresponsible. She had simply been...distracted.

  “Okay. I’ll be there.” Not willingly, but she had no other choice.

  “That’s wonderful. Even better, Jace will be on the committee, as well.”

  Jace? On the committee? No. No way. She couldn’t do this.

  * * * *

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  Also by Carolyne Aarsen

  The Only Best Place is the first book in the Holmes Crossing Series.

  The Only Best Place

  All In One Place

  This Place

  A Silence in the Heart

  Any Man of Mine

  About the Author

  Carolyne Aarsen was a city girl until a tall, blonde and handsome man entered her life and she convinced him to marry her and he did. Then he brought her to live on a farm where her resume garnered some interesting entries. Growing a garden, sewing blue jeans, baking, pickling and preserving. She learned how to handle cows, ride a horse, drive tractors, snow machines and a John Deere loader. Together they raised four amazing children and took in foster children. Somewhere in all this she learned to write. Her first book sold in 1997 and since then has sold over fifty books to three different publishers with 1.5 million copies of her books in print. Her stories show a love of open spaces, the fellowship of her Christian community and the gift God has given us in Christ.

  To find out more about Carolyne

  www.carolyneaarsen.com

  carolynewriter@xplornet.ca

  Excerpt - The Only Best Place

  Smile. Think happy thoughts. Take a deep breath and…

  “Hello. I’m Leslie VandeKeere, and I’m a farmer's wife."

  No. No. All wrong. That sounds like I'm addressing a self-help group for stressed-out urban dwellers.

  I angled the rearview mirror of my car to do a sincerity check on my expression and pulled a face at my reflection. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Both the polar opposite of the VandeKeere signature blonde hair and blue eyes repeated throughout the Dutch-based community of Holmes Crossing.

  During the past hour of the long drive from Vancouver to here, I'd been practicing my introduction to varied and sundry members of the vast community of which I knew about four and a half people. I'd been trying out various intros. That last one was a bust. I'd never been a farmer's wife. Would never be a farmer's wife. I’m a nurse, even though my focus the next year was supposed to be on our marriage. Not my career.

  I cleared my throat and tried again. "Our year here will be interesting."

  Worse yet. Most women could break that code faster than you could say "fifteen percent off." Interesting was a twilight word that either veered toward the good or the dark side.

  Right now my delivery was a quiet and subdued Darth Vader.

  I had to keep my voice down so I wouldn't wake my two kids. After four Veggie Tales and a couple of off-key renditions of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," they had finally drifted off to sleep, and I didn't want to risk waking them. The eighteen hour trip had been hard on us. They needed the rest. I needed the rest, but I had to drive.

  I stretched out hands stiff from clutching the steering wheel of my trusty, rusty Honda, the caboose in our little convoy. My husband, Dan, headed the procession, pulling the stock trailer holding stage one of our earthly goods. Next came his brother-in-law Gerrit, pulling his own stock trailer loaded with our earthly goods stage two.

  I had each bar, each bolt, each spot of rust on Gerrit's trailer indelibly imprinted on my brain. Counting the bolt heads distracted me from the dread that clawed at me whenever I saw the empty road stretching endlessly ahead of me.

  A road that wound crazily through pine-covered mountains, then wide open, almost barren, plains. Now, on the last leg of our journey, we were driving through ploughed and open fields broken only by arrow-straight fence lines and meandering cottonwoods. Tender green leaves misted the bare branches of the poplars edging the road, creating
a promise of spring that I hadn't counted on spending here.

  I hadn't gone silently down this road. I had balked, kicked, and pleaded. I had even dared to pray that a God I didn't talk to often would intervene.

  Of course I was bucking some pretty powerful intercessors. I'm sure the entire VandeKeere family was united in their prayers for their beloved brother, son, cousin, nephew, and grandchild to be enfolded once again in the bosom of the family and the farm where they thought he belonged. So it was a safe bet my flimsy request lay buried in the avalanche of petitions flowing from Holmes Crossing.

  The one person I had on my side was my sister, Terra. But she only talked to God when she'd had too much to drink. Of course, in that state, she chatted up anyone who would listen.

  The friends I left behind in Vancouver were sympathetic, but they all thought this trip would be an adventure. Interesting adventure, my friend Josie had said when I told her.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at my sleeping children. Nicholas shifted in his car seat, his sticky hands clutching a soggy Popsicle stick. The Popsicle had been a blatant bribe, and the oblong purple stain running over his coat from chin to belly would probably not wash out. A constant reminder of my giving in.

  Since Edmonton, I'd been tweaking my introduction, and now that we had turned off the highway, time and miles ate up what time I had left. I had only ten minutes to convince myself that I'd sooner be heading toward the intersection of "no" and "where," otherwise known as Holmes Crossing, Alberta, than back to Vancouver.

  We would still be there if it weren't for Lonnie Dansworth--snake, scumbag, and crooked building contractor. The $90,000’s worth of unpaid bills he left in the "VandeKeere Motors" inbox tipped Dan's fledgling mechanic business from barely getting by to going under. The Dansworth Debacle, in turn, wiped out the finely drawn pictures I'd created in my head of the dream life and home Dan and I had been saving for. The home that represented stability for a marriage that had wobbled on shaky ground the past year.