by Becky Wade
She had no expectation of acquiring Sebastian as a boyfriend. For one thing, he’d given her no reason to think he liked her in that way. For another, Ben was romantically interested in her, and Sebastian was his best friend. So even if Sebastian did like her in that way, nothing could come of it.
Which was actually . . . freeing.
She could talk with Sebastian, measure her responses, and indulge her curiosity without worrying that he might get the wrong idea.
The following night before leaving the hospital, Sebastian drew to a halt at Isabella Ackerman’s bedside.
He’d told Isabella’s parents that he expected their daughter to make it through surgery, and she had.
Isabella occupied the same room Josiah Douglas had occupied weeks ago. Before and after Josiah, numerous other babies had been treated in this room. As soon as they discharged one, others always arrived.
Josiah had been a full-term newborn. Tiny Isabella weighed less than six pounds. A cap covered her bald head. Long eyelashes rested against the ivory skin of her face.
Outwardly, she looked like a perfectly formed preemie. Her exterior didn’t reveal her life-threatening interior flaw.
Megan, Isabella’s mother, had told him they were trusting God to give their daughter a new heart. But Sebastian knew that one in four babies in need of a transplant would die before a donor organ could be found.
He pushed the thought from his head.
When Megan had asked him if he was a believer, he’d said that he was. Which was true. Yet his history with God was not clear-cut.
He’d had zero familiarity with God during his early years. Then the worst thing that could have happened to him—his only parent’s death—had happened. He’d landed with Christian foster parents who’d taken him to church. There, people had occasionally said things to him like “God’s ways are mysterious.” Or “God is with you in your grief.”
He hadn’t believed in God’s existence, so Christianity had seemed like an idiotic waste of time. But even if he had believed God existed, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with a supposedly all-powerful God who could have kept his mother alive and hadn’t. Mostly, the idea of God made him angry.
Then he’d been forced to take a scholarship slot on a junior high mission trip to El Salvador, which had only made him angrier. Their group had just finished running a kids’ sports camp for the day when a counselor had asked him and a few others to return equipment to a nearby building. He’d been carrying stacks of orange cones through a basement hallway when the earthquake hit and everything had gone black.
The floor and walls jerked and jerked. Terror subsumed him. Escape. Get out!
A girl was panting and gasping behind him.
Dropping the cones, he stumbled toward the dim light ahead. His shoulder rammed into the wall. Dust rattled over him, clogging his nose and mouth. Why won’t it stop?
A hand wrapped around Sebastian’s forearm and yanked him forward, then forward again. He staggered into a small central room where two hallways met. Rectangular windows at sidewalk level above revealed the scene. A kid named Luke had pulled him out. Ben and Natasha stared at him with terrified eyes, their arms spread for balance as they fought to stay upright.
The building groaned and metal screamed. Pieces of the ceiling crashed down. Two of the room’s concrete walls collapsed inward, crashing into each other and forming a tent shape above their heads.
His heart roared. We’re going to die.
He’d continued to believe that for every one of the eight days he’d spent underground. Ben, Natasha, Genevieve, and Luke had families who loved them and were desperate for their safe return. Next to them, he was the broken toy nobody wanted.
We’re going to die.
When the search and rescue team took the building apart in an effort to reach them, he’d been sure the structure would cave in and they’d be crushed. Instead, God had protected them in the clearest way possible.
Sebastian had come face to face with the God he’d denied.
God did exist. He’d been wrong about that. But what was he supposed to do with a God who hadn’t saved his mother but had saved him?
After returning from El Salvador, he, Ben, Natasha, and Genevieve spent months traveling around and telling their story to reporters, churches, authors, screenwriters. The Colemans brought him to church with them on Sundays, sent him to church camp in the summers, took him on another mission trip, talked with him again and again about faith.
When he was a teenager, he’d prayed for salvation. His motives had been partly good. He’d honestly wanted God to fill the hungry hole within him that longed for security. But his motives had also been partly selfish. He’d been a practical, street-smart kid who’d seen the wisdom in hedging his bets for eternity.
To this day, he attended church semi-regularly. However, he’d never gotten over all of his resentment toward God. Nor could he bring himself to trust God fully.
In high school, he’d worked for a college scholarship. In college, he’d worked for a med school scholarship. In med school, he’d worked to become a surgeon. Himself, his degrees, his job, his bank account. Those things he could trust in.
Yet even though he’d gotten everything he’d ever wanted, his life had been flat for months. Now that he could finally stop clawing and scraping for the next achievement, he was realizing that . . .
It still wasn’t enough. Which infuriated him and left him feeling betrayed. Deceived.
No one would look at him these days and think of him as a broken toy nobody wanted.
No one, that is, except him.
He’d worked incredibly hard to prove everything he’d had to prove. By rights, his accomplishments should have made him feel secure and given him vengeance over his mother’s death and repaid the loss he’d suffered when he was young.
But that’s not how things had gone down. He might look healthy on the outside, just like Isabella Ackerman did. But, like her, he was flawed on the inside.
As flawed as he’d always been.
He smoothed the tubes draping over the side of Isabella’s bed.
The team at the Clinic for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Diseases had helped Isabella as much as she could be helped at this point. Their task now? Keep her alive until she reached the top of the transplant list.
The intensivists and the experienced group of nurses here made it their business to know every detail about every child. The best nurses came to care for each patient and, often even more so, their parents, because the parents were the ones who talked with them, who shared their stories and their fears.
Sebastian couldn’t afford to invest too much of himself in any one patient. Or, after the things that had happened to him, in any one person.
Leah included.
So how come he still couldn’t let her go?
“There’s something special about you, Sebastian. Something appealing.” Her words to him were nothing, really. Yet, he’d replayed them over and over. When stressed. When he couldn’t sleep. When he retreated to his office after receiving bad news on one of his patients.
The memory of her saying that to him loosened the hard knot at the center of his chest.
But as soon as the knot loosened, he’d remember how Ben felt about Leah, and shame would twist his stomach.
He had more than enough to keep him busy here at the hospital. His life should be complete. But it was as if Leah’s reentrance into his world had shined light on the emptiness that had been inside of him for a long time.
He’d been pretending the emptiness didn’t exist and doing a semi-decent job of that.
Until her.
The morning after Leah and Dylan returned to Misty River in late July, Dylan rushed off to see his friends as purposefully as a baby animal seeking its mother.
Once Leah had clothes tumbling around inside the dryer, the fridge stocked, and her suitcase stored in the garage, she turned her attention to her search for her birth parents.
So far, the only thing she’d decided concerning Trina and Jonathan was that she wanted to see them. Live and in person. In order to accomplish that, she needed a current address.
She placed a call to her Misty River real estate agent. After what felt like more than enough time exchanging empty pleasantries, but may not have been enough time (Leah never knew), Leah informed the older woman that she had a question.
“All right. How can I help?”
“Is there a way, using home ownership records, for me to type in the name of a person who lives in a certain town, and discover which house is theirs?” She winced. The question sounded ripe with unpleasant, potentially illegal motivations. Perhaps the opening pleasantries had been wasted on this conversation.
“Are you thinking about investing in real estate?” the agent asked. “Oftentimes investors will want to access to the names so they can send notes to owners, letting them know they’re interested in buying their home.”
“No, I’m not interested in investing in real estate at this time. Maybe someday.”
A few confused seconds of silence passed.
“You can access a seller’s name on MLS,” the older woman said, “which is used by real estate agents.”
“And if the property is not for sale?”
“Some appraisal districts have websites. In that case, you’d go to the appraisal district’s site and search for a property by owner name.”
“Excellent! Thanks so much.”
Within seconds, they disconnected.
Leah hunted the web until she found appraisal district sites for the counties nearest the house where Trina and Jonathan had lived at the time of her birth. Fulton County. Gwinnett. Forsyth. DeKalb. Cobb. And finally, Cherokee. Each time, she ran a property search by owner’s name.
Each time, she found no properties.
Chewing on her bottom lip, she peered through the windows at the comfortingly familiar curves and dips of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
On a fresh wave of inspiration, she swiveled back to the screen. She found an appraisal district database for her own county, Rabun, and input the name Sebastian Grant.
This time fortune smiled upon her.
He owned property at 1248 Black Cherry Lane.
What an excellent house number. 1, 2, 4, 8. Each subsequent number doubled the one that came before. Very promising.
Tomorrow was Saturday, and he often spent his weekends in Misty River. She’d already been planning to go walking tomorrow for exercise. So instead of a hiking trail, why not amend her plans?
She’d walk past his house instead.
The next day she parked a mile away from Sebastian’s address and set out on the three-mile loop she’d charted. Striding at her fastest clip, she started in a neighborhood of half-acre lots. Gradually, the lots grew bigger. Then bigger, until nature surrounded her on both sides. The road plateaued before climbing steeply.
Whenever she had her backpack with her, she kept her phone inside. For quicker, less remote walks like this one, she carried her phone and car key in a band strapped to her upper arm. After a time, her phone’s male Irish voice spoke from that arm band, notifying her that 1248 was coming up on the right.
Male Irish voice was rarely wrong. Which was one of the things she valued about him. She reached over and turned off the GPS.
At first, Sebastian’s house played hide-and-seek between the trees. Leah continued forward until a luxurious modern-day cabin slid into view. Dark wood siding. Stone chimneys. A short central hallway connected the two main wings, the narrow front sides of which faced forward. The wings were of equal width and both had identical obtuse rooflines. However, the one on the left was one story. The one on the right, two stories. Porches spread forward from the bases of the wings, and a balcony jutted from the second-story sliding glass doors.
Manicured grass and planting beds curved between stands of pines. No driveway to be seen, so that must wrap around from a different point to the rear of the building.
It was a fantastic house.
Unfortunately, though, for her purposes, it sat dark and empty.
However, when she walked by his house again, one week later . . .
He was home.
CHAPTER NINE
Even before Leah arrived at Sebastian’s house for the second time, she could see through the foliage that some of his interior lights were illuminated.
Anticipation floated upward within her.
Glass covered much of the front of his house, so chances were good that she’d be able to see him inside as she passed. If so, she planned to knock, explain that she’d been walking by, noticed him, and wanted to say hello.
And he likely wouldn’t mind the intrusion because they were friends. . . . Or friendly, at least.
When she reached the edge of his property, she saw him standing on his lawn, attempting to start a push lawnmower.
“Sometimes I amaze . . . even . . . myself.” The Han Solo quote stumbled like a drunk person through her head.
Sebastian was just yards away. Wearing basketball shorts. And no shirt.
Leah resettled her attention respectfully forward. She hadn’t prepared a plan for this particular scenario! She wasn’t experienced at carrying on conversations with shirtless men.
He didn’t have the self-indulgent, puffed-up body of someone who lifted heavy weights at the gym. Nonetheless, he clearly did spend time exercising. His frame was imposing. His chest and abdomen, firm and smooth.
“Leah?”
At the sound of his voice, she turned, her motion halting.
He’d straightened to his full height, his face a portrait of surprise.
“Oh! Hello.” She approached him.
The dark stubble on his cheeks informed her that he hadn’t shaved this morning. Hurriedly, she worked to absorb the remaining details of his appearance. . . . The piercing pale gray of his eyes. The blunt nose and determined lips. The weathered plane of his forehead. The vertical furrow between his brows. He looked like a man who’d been to war and lived to tell the tale.
“Dr. Grant.”
“Professor Montgomery.”
“Nice to see you again.”
“Nice to see you again, too.”
“You told me once that you like to mow your lawn.”
“And you told me once that you like hiking.”
“I guess neither of us was lying.”
He smiled. “What brings you to this part of town?”
“I get bored walking my neighborhood, so I frequently drive to areas of town I haven’t yet explored and walk other people’s neighborhoods,” she lied.
“You’re not carrying a purse.” His attention flicked down to her tennis shoes and back up. “So where’s your graphing calculator?”
She laughed. “I’m heartened to inform you that I actually can accomplish quite a bit of math in my head, so I keep my calculator near me most of the time but am not obliged to keep it with me all of the time.”
“You’re not afraid you might encounter a math problem you can’t solve in your head while out walking?”
“If I do encounter that type of problem while out walking, I’m confident that I’ll be able to remember it well enough to input it into my calculator at the first available opportunity.”
“Very brave.”
And there it was, that living, crackling, thrilling allure. And not because of his shirtlessness. Because of him. His quickness and understated humor. And also them. Their alchemy.
Very, very intriguing.
It was glorious to banter with him again. In fact, talking to him gave her the same feeling she’d experienced when she’d returned to Misty River from New England—the delight of coming home.
“Ah,” she whispered.
Wait. Had she said that out loud?
Ah what?” Sebastian asked. He could not believe that Leah Montgomery was standing in front of him. He felt like he had the first time he’d seen her inside his wrecked car—dazzled and s
tupid. His responses to her were much too big. Ridiculous. His heart was pounding, and his senses were rushing.
She’d dressed in a light blue workout top, yoga pants, socks that had pom poms at the back of her ankles above her tennis shoes. She’d pulled the front of her hair to one side and fastened it with a barrette. Exertion had turned her cheeks pink, and she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Ah, isn’t this summer heat wonderful?” she finished in answer to his question.
“Ah, isn’t this mountain air perfect?” he countered.
“It is.”
“Go on any doomed road trips recently, Professor?”
“No.” She sniffed. “I did, however, go on a lovely road trip. Have you repaired any damaged baby hearts lately?”
“A few. Competed in any chess tournaments?”
“Sadly, no. Listened to Sinatra?”
“Happily, yes.”
“Driven off the side of any roads?”
He made a sound of amusement. “Nope. Gone out to dinner with my friend Ben?”
“Not yet, but we’ve scheduled it for Wednesday.”
That information sent a slash of pain through him. After a few moments, he realized he’d been staring at her too long without saying anything. He motioned toward his house. “Would you like to come in?”
“Certainly, though I don’t want to interrupt your mowing.”
“The mowing can wait.”
They walked across overgrown grass he wished he’d had the chance to cut before she’d seen it.
Mowing his lawn was a throwback to the set of foster parents he’d lived with the longest. Jim had taught Sebastian to mow. Once he’d learned how, Sebastian had run the lawnmower over their front and back lawns every two weeks.
Jim’s motto had been “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” By that point in Sebastian’s life, after El Salvador, Sebastian had agreed. He’d found that he liked mowing and mowing well. It relaxed him to do something outdoors with his hands. Back then, many things in his life—mostly the fact that he had no parents—had been a mess. But he’d had the ability to cut the grass perfectly.