Love Blossoms: 7 Spring-Fresh Christian Romances

by Kimberly Rae Jordan

  All Ryan could do was move forward. Onward to the future. There was no reason to look back—

  Oh.

  That explains it.

  Ryan was too ashamed to look at Tamsyn. In one moment, she had exposed his heart, and the reason it hadn’t mattered to him one iota at all if old houses were destroyed to make way for new construction. He didn’t want to remember the past.

  Now his own personal gripe had spilled over to lovely Tamsyn.

  Now he was about to destroy her memories, just because his own were ripped away from him at an early age.

  How could he possibly do that?

  “Tea and tour?” Tamsyn asked again. She seemed to sense his loss, his emotions, and somehow, similar to what he had tried to do for her earlier, she now tried to lighten his load.

  They seemed to complement each other.

  “Sounds like a deal,” Ryan said. “I’ll take any hot tea you have.”

  “I have all kinds. Darjeeling, Earl Gray, Assam, Chai, Jasmine…” Tamsyn headed for front door. “We can sit on the back porch and watch the grass grow.”

  Ryan laughed.

  “Maybe we can figure out how to save this house.” Whoa. Ryan caught himself. When had that thought formed in his heart?

  Tamsyn stopped in her tracks. “Seriously?”

  “If it means this much to you, I want you to be happy.”

  “Me? You’re thinking of my happiness?”

  “Yes, I want you to be happy.”

  “Sounds like this is going to be a pleasant afternoon.” Tamsyn smiled. “God is good.”

  “He always is.” Ryan glanced at his watch. “What about work? Don’t you have to work?”

  “You remember Mike, who called in sick with stomach flu last Saturday? He’s filling in for me.”

  Ryan nodded. “The day I volunteered without pay at your office?”

  “I’m paying you with a cup of hot tea.”

  “Fair enough.” Ryan stopped at the front door and hesitated.

  What about them thar historical germs?

  Oh well.

  He held the door for Tamsyn. “After you, ma’am.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The classic Queen Anne style house from the late nineteenth century was dark and old. That much, Tamsyn would admit. She led Ryan from the vestibule through the parlor and to the sitting room where an ornate fireplace held court.

  She watched him study the walls and ceilings and floors.

  Ryan walked toward the fireplace and placed his hand on the ornate carvings leading to the mantel. An oval mirror hung on the wall on top of it.

  In the mirror, Tamsyn saw Ryan’s face. His eyes were on hers.

  Self-conscious that her hair was undone, she looked away. “I spend a lot of time outdoors.”

  “I would too. It’s very dark in here.”

  “Well, it’s Victorian. What did you expect?”

  “Don’t you find that ironic?” Ryan walked toward an old settee, which was pretty much an extra-long sofa to most people.

  Tamsyn didn’t think he’d be interested to know that the tapestry was Aubosson, brought from France some sixty or seventy years before the sofa was made.

  “Ironic? In what way?” Tamsyn couldn’t read his face anymore. It remained stoic.

  “This house looks like a museum.”

  “It is a museum. I was hoping—dreaming—to restore it, and make it part of our tour of homes and gardens.”

  “But?”

  “It takes time and money to get there. I had some estimates, but even if I sold Tamsyn Tours, I couldn’t afford the restoration. I do have some estimates, but I don’t have the means.”

  “What about Save Old Savannah?”

  “It’s doing modest fund-raising to take out ads, but our sponsors emailed me saying Rosa Pendegrast Lane is a lost cause.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you asked. Now you’ve heard my side of the story.” Tamsyn pointed to the painting of a happy couple above the settee. “Ebenezer Pendegrast commissioned that painting in 1820 for his wife, who died several years later in childbirth together with their baby daughter. Ebenezer never remarried. After he passed away without issue, his younger brother, my great-great-grandfather, Henry Pendegrast, brought the painting here when he built this house in 1882.”

  “Lovely couple,” Ryan said. “What did the Pendegrast family do?”

  “You mean their trade? They were sea merchants, and that helped them survive after the Civil War when railroads in Georgia had been decimated. Farmers couldn’t get any of their goods, like cotton, to the port of Savannah. The Pendegrast family continued to bring in goods from Europe and Asia to sell to the locals.”

  When Ryan didn’t reply, Tamsyn continued. “If you must know, the Pendegrast family never traded in slavery.”

  “Good to know.”

  “And my great-great-grandfather Henry married a Cherokee.”

  “He did?”

  Tamsyn nodded. “Unfortunately, Henry loved to travel the world and sail the seven seas, so to speak. He perished in the Indian Ocean in a storm, leaving his widow to raise seven children on her own, one of them being Eugene Pendegrast, my great-grandfather, born in this house in 1890.”

  “You remember all that in your head?” Ryan asked.

  “Dad said I should write it all down.”

  “Good idea. Then you can hand out brochures.”

  Tamsyn ignored him. “Twenty nine years later, Eugene married Rosa Silverman in this very house, and five years after that, my grandfather, Wilbur Pendegrast, was born.”

  Ryan stood at the window. “The road out there is Rosa Pendegrast Lane.”

  “Yes. My great-grandmother was a philanthropist before the stock market crashed in 1929. They had renamed the road after her because of her generosity to the city of Savannah and the surrounding coastal region. After the crash, well, everybody suffered.”

  Tamsyn took Ryan to the library on the other side of the sitting room. Every wall in the library was covered with bookshelves and books.

  “Wow. Lots of books in here,” Ryan said.

  Tamsyn walked about. “These bookcases are original, made out of live oak wood from St. Simon’s Island, the same type of oak they used to build the USS Constitution.”

  Ryan stepped forward to take a closer look at the spines of some of the books. Then he sneezed.

  “Oh, please don’t sneeze into those books. They’re very old. Some are hundreds of years old. They belonged to my great-grandmother, who started the first collection.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that it’s—uh, a bit dusty in here.”

  “Let me show you something, and then we’ll be out of here.” Tamsyn went to a secretary. She opened a door below the desktop and produced an old Bible. “Check this out.”

  Ryan didn’t want to touch it.

  Tamsyn thought that was funny. “This Bible was printed in 1829. Nice, isn’t it?”

  “It looks old.”

  “Don’t touch it if your hands are not clean.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.” Ryan told the truth.

  Tamsyn turned on the reading lamp sitting on the secretary, and carefully opened the Bible for Ryan to see. He peeked.

  “Live births and deaths,” Ryan read aloud. “I wouldn’t think you’d have live deaths.”

  “So you think there should be a comma there?” Tamsyn asked.

  “I failed history, not English, in college.”

  Tamsyn let it pass.

  “It should be in a museum, in some sort of temperature-controlled casing,” Ryan said.

  Tamsyn gave him a look. Now he’s talking. “So you think it should be preserved.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “For posterity.”

  “For our children’s children.”

  “That’s posterity, Ryan.”

  “I don’t mean our children, literally, as in yours and mine—”

  “I know what you meant: future
generations.”

  “Right.”

  “So you don’t hate history at all.”

  “Hate? That’s a strong word,” Ryan said.

  “Then why tear down this city block?”

  Ryan had nothing to say.

  Tamsyn tried to continue the conversation but she had nothing more to say to him either. Ryan would have to get it—understand it—himself.

  Well, there was one thing she could say.

  Somehow they had reached the renovated kitchen and Tamsyn didn’t remember how she had led Ryan there. She guessed it had been her usual route coming home from work. She’d dash straight into the kitchen to make herself dinner or a cup of tea. She could get there from the front door with her eyes closed, even zigzagging through the arches and narrow halls.

  “I’ll boil some water to make tea,” Tamsyn announced.

  “Is the tour over?” Ryan sounded disappointed.

  “Pretty much. I don’t think I’ll show you the upstairs since my bedroom—chamber, as they called it way back when—is there, you know.”

  “I understand. No need. Are those stairs in the foyer the only way up?”

  Tamsyn nodded.

  “The narrow treads look treacherous.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve slipped on them more times than I want to remember.” In fact, Tamsyn had thought about those stairs more than any other elements of the old house. In cases of an emergency, this was the only flight of stairs down to safety from her bedroom.

  That, or through the window upstairs—but first she had to take the emergency ladder out of the box it came in and read the instructions on how to lower it out the window.

  She didn’t want to think about climbing down a rope ladder.

  Yikes.

  She made a note to herself to figure out—as soon as possible—how to get out of her house through the second floor window on her emergency ladder.

  Today. After Ryan leaves.

  “Tea?” she asked.

  “Tea will be fine. Do you have crumpets?”

  “Crumpets?” Why did he ask for crumpets? Tamsyn decided to brush it off. It was pointless to try to understand a visitor to the city who would be going home soon.

  “No, but I have shortbread cookies. Will that suffice?”

  “Sure.” Ryan looked around. “This kitchen is modern.”

  “Well, there was no way I was going to cook on an old stove circa World War II.” Tamsyn folded her arms.

  “You’re a contradiction.” Ryan laughed. “You talk about old things, but in this kitchen, you have brand new appliances and they don’t even look old style.”

  “Something old, something new. I don’t see why old and new cannot live together.”

  “That so?” Ryan stepped toward her. “If you come to Atlanta, look me up. I’ll show you the future of architectural design.”

  Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to get a new perspective. “All right. That sounds fair.”

  “Glass and steel aren’t all that bad, you know.” Ryan took another step.

  “If used sparingly.”

  “If used artistically.” He was right in front of her.

  “Sparingly artistic.”

  “Artistically sparing.” Ryan reached for her face.

  With a gentle, feathery touch, the back of his knuckles brushed her cheek. Tamsyn felt it deeply in her chest, and her eyes widened at her own reaction.

  The tea kettle whistled and broke her muse.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Have you ever photographed this entire house?” Ryan asked as he sat down on the rocking chair on the side porch overlooking a garden of roses, gardenias, azaleas, and lilies.

  The chair rocked, and his cup of hot Darjeeling sloshed about in the dainty teacup, but he managed to catch the tea on an equally dainty saucer.

  “I took some photos of the house, yes.” Tamsyn placed the teapot on the side table that separated Ryan’s chair from hers.

  “I mean a professional photographer. I have a friend who does this for a living. I’ll call him. See when he could come here to—”

  “How much would it cost?” Tamsyn asked.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s on me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to help you preserve this house. Lots of memories here, you said.”

  Tamsyn eyed him with what looked like suspicious brows. “Why?”

  “Because I lo—uh, I’m doing you a favor.” He sipped his tea, trying to shut up.

  “A favor? After the photography is done, the house is gone?”

  “If you sell it. If you don’t, then it’s a new day. What if you found some investors willing to help you save the house?”

  “I tried. Save Old Savannah failed before it even really took off.”

  “Ah. So that was what SOS was for.” A tiny horn sounded, and Ryan’s eyes went to the source. It was a little car going down Rosa Pendegrast Lane.

  “Back in the old days, we’d be watching horse-drawn carriages instead of putt-putt cars,” Tamsyn said.

  “Oh boy. Can you imagine the smell of horses?”

  Tamsyn gave him a look. “You’re no fun.”

  Ryan knew she was joking. “Must be nice to have your last name on a street sign.”

  Tamsyn shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “Thank you for the tour. That was enlightening.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Seems to me that your mother did a lot of work preserving the history of the house.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though it’s Rosa Pendegrast Lane over there, the house and garden are here today because of Caleigh Pendegrast.”

  Tamsyn nodded.

  Ryan wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw tears pool in her eyes.

  “Mom did an enormous amount of work trying to get back some of the furniture that my uncle and aunts carted off after my grandfather passed away. She spent a fortune. Dad let her do whatever it took to preserve the family heirloom.”

  She sighed so loudly that Ryan was startled.

  “And here I am. I’ve failed my mother, my grandfather, my great-grandmother, and whoever else up the family tree had something to do with this house.”

  “Failed? Failed is a strong word, Tamsyn.” Ryan wanted to reach for her hand, but the teapot and the side table blocked his access to her.

  They sat in silence for a while, sipping Darjeeling.

  “You know, you won’t part with this house because your mother put so much of her life into it,” Ryan finally said.

  “She did. This garden is—was—hers as well.”

  “You feel that if you let go of this house, you’ll let go of your mother’s memories.”

  “I don’t want to forget Mom.”

  “You won’t. Aren’t you supposed to write a book or something?”

  Tamsyn didn’t reply.

  “You haven’t written it because you didn’t want to revisit the difficult days of losing your mother.”

  “She died of cancer,” Tamsyn said quietly. “It’s been tough for Dad.”

  “And you. Talking about your mother might help you with your grief.”

  “Will it?”

  “How about this? Why don’t you tell me and I’ll write it down for you?” Ryan wasn’t sure how that idea popped into his head, but he could take dictation, especially if it meant spending more time with Tamsyn.

  “You?”

  “Are you insulting me?” Ryan asked. “Just because I flunked history in college doesn’t mean I can’t string two sentences together.”

  “If you string two sentences together, that’s called a run-on sentence.”

  “Har, har.” Ryan drank more tea as he processed what she had just said.

  Silence again.

  Ryan thought of something else. “I could help you with the architecture of this house.”

  “You don’t care about the past.”

  “I do care about architecture.”

  “Great.
An architectural paper with human footnotes.”

  “Or human appendices.”

  “You crack me up. If Mom heard us—”

  She clammed up.

  “God called her home to heaven,” Ryan said.

  “She’ll never see me get married or babysit my children.”

  Get married.

  Have children.

  Never before had those phrases affected Ryan as they did at this moment, this early May afternoon, warm and muggy in the low seventies as they drank… hot tea!

  What is wrong with us?

  “Why are we drinking hot tea?” Ryan asked.

  “I drink hot tea year round. I drink ice tea at Piper’s Place or other restaurants, but rarely at home.”

  “Okay. For a moment there, I thought we were in love.”

  “With tea?” Tamsyn asked.

  “You know how falling in love can make you do irrational things.”

  Tamsyn laughed so loudly her teacup and saucer rattled against each other. “It’s never irrational to drink hot tea in the summer in the South. Where are you from, anyway?”

  “Georgia. I’m a native.”

  “Then you should know we do things like drink hot tea in the summer and eat fried ice cream.”

  “Yeah. Well, my family is non-traditional in many ways. We don’t drink much tea since Mother—Anyway, I never had a hankering for fried ice cream. I prefer sushi.”

  Tamysn’s eyes softened. “I’m okay with sushi, but Mom loved it. We’d sit on Dad’s riverboat and eat sushi for dinner at least once a week. Dad didn’t care for it at all. He’s a hamburger guy.”

  “Ah, we’re going to get along, your dad and I.”

  “I think Mom would’ve loved to meet you too…”

  Tamsyn’s voice trailing off broke Ryan’s heart.

  He wasn’t sure what to do.

  Tamsyn closed her eyes. She rocked in her rocking chair. “Mom and I used to sit out here, drink tea, talk about antiques and which parts of the house she was going to restore next. It was a costly hobby, but Dad didn’t mind as long as Mom was happy. Then the cancer…”

  Her voice trailed off again.

  Again!

  Ryan couldn’t bear it.

  Ryan put down his cup and saucer on the side table. He took Tamsyn’s cup away from her, and neatly set it next to his.