by Becky Melby
But he would have told her something like that. Or Yvonne would have told her. It’s not the kind of thing he’d hide from his church friends, his support system.
No imagined scenario gave him an easy out. The man had been—apparently still was—married.
At least she’d found out the truth before any real feelings for him had taken root. As it was, she might lose a night’s sleep, but she refused to lose any tears.
Her neck and shoulders ached from sitting in the same rigid position. She had to move, but it had to be calculated. When her gaze left the front of the room, she couldn’t let it sweep across Seth. She leaned back against the freestanding fireplace and turned her head to the left, away from Seth. At that angle, she was staring directly at Trace and Sydney McKay, newlyweds who somehow managed to hold hands while flipping through their respective Bibles.
As director of the chamber of commerce, Sydney collected rent checks from Yvonne and April every month. Over the course of a year, April had gotten to know her well. Just weeks after Caitlyn died, Sydney had announced her engagement. Though they were at very different seasons in their lives, they’d formed a bond, following the apostle Paul’s words: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” April thought back to Trace and Sydney’s wedding. Candlelight, a flowing dress encrusted with crystals, pale peach orchids, a wedding cake covered in chocolate and lacy white icing. And the groom, waiting at the altar with misty eyes. . .
April blinked, shocked by the sting of tears.
She looked down at her open Bible and forced herself to read and reread chapter thirteen of Second Corinthians. Verse eight jumped out at her. “For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.” Lord, grant me the strength to speak the truth.
Lost in outlining the speech that would corner Seth into the truth, April was startled by the sound of her name. Yvonne was talking about her.
“. . .Remember that we prayed for her after her sister died, and I’m sure a lot of you have heard her radio program, Slice of Life, on Saturday afternoons. She’s fulfilling a list that she made with her sister, experiences that celebrate life, I guess you’d say, and she’s sharing her adventures with her listeners. Anyway, she’s organizing a day hike on the Superior Trail for a week from Sunday. Anybody here interested in going?”
Heat flooded April’s face. Not now, Yvonne. This time, her training came to her rescue, and she smiled and nodded like the cool, calm professional she didn’t feel like. “I’m thinking of doing a five-mile loop, starting at Gooseberry Falls. It’ll be a slow pace, so even if you’re not an experienced hiker, it shouldn’t be difficult. If you’re interested, just e-mail Yvonne, and I’ll get in contact with you.” Now shift the focus to someone else, please.
“Let’s see a show of hands. Who thinks they’d like to go?” Yvonne looked around the room as she asked.
Yvonne’s hand lifted slowly, tentatively in reply to her own question, prompting April’s mouth to open spontaneously. “You’re going?”
Yvonne almost pulled off the look of offense. “I like the outdoors.” The circle burst into laughter. Obviously, they knew her well. “So who’s going to join us?”
Five hands rose. One of them was Seth’s.
Trying her hardest to concentrate on the closing prayer, April found it impossible. Her mind painted pictures of what could have been. . .climbing the rise to Gooseberry Falls, her hand in Seth’s, picking their way across the river on lichen-covered rocks, falling into his arms when her foot slipped. . . . The prayer ended, and the room buzzed with a dozen conversations at once. April stood, frantically searching for someone to talk to while she regrouped her resolve. But it was too late. She’d barely gotten to her feet when Seth crossed the room and stopped a foot in front of her. “Can we go outside for a minute?”
This wasn’t the way she wanted the scene to play. She’d planned on being the one to say, “We need to talk.” She’d planned on being in control. Setting her Bible on an end table, she nodded.
❧
“What’s wrong, April?” He leaned against the seat of a pale blue and shiny black motorcycle, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded over his chest, tightening the sleeves of his dark blue T-shirt. He scanned her face, patient once again.
What happened to the fury that she needed to carry this through? Why did her spine turn to Jell-O around this man? She took a deep breath and blew it out, puffing wind into her own sails.
“I think I should be asking what’s wrong with you. What’s wrong with a guy who’s living a lie—or a double life?”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Isn’t there some little detail you failed to tell me before you asked me out?”
Seth’s brow creased. “April, I’m sorry. I have no clue what you’re getting at. Spell it out.”
Her hands clamped on her hips. “My mother found your wedding announcement.”
He stared at her, but she wasn’t falling for the blank look. He wasn’t even going to defend himself or try lying his way out? Her indignation returned with a vengeance. “Let me jog your memory. You get married, you take a picture, you put it in the paper. . . .” Her voice amplified with each word, but she didn’t care. The tears she’d vowed not to shed teetered on her lashes.
Of all the expressions she would have expected from him, a smile was not one of them. Slowly it spread, deepening his dimple, forming little river deltas next to his eyes. April felt heat creep from her solar plexus to her temples. Could blood actually boil?
His hand reached for her shoulder. She jerked away. The infuriating smile didn’t fade.
“But sometimes, if your fiancée’s best friend works for a newspaper, you pose for the picture, you put it in the paper. . .and you don’t get married.”
Twelve
Check your facts; know your sources. The line had been drummed into her in school. She knew it like she knew her own name. Why in the world had she chosen this particular time to listen to her mother? She should have checked the public records. But the picture was evidence. It hadn’t crossed her mind to question it. Who took wedding pictures before a wedding?
April’s eyes opened, her jaw locked tight. Beneath the pineapple-shaped globe of a streetlamp, the blue on the Harley glowed like Caribbean water. Seth’s eyes appeared more black than brown—polished ebony, fixed on hers, holding her captive.
“You. . .didn’t. . .get married?”
He shook his head. His eyes danced. “Still Bachelor.”
He was playing with her, relishing her humiliation, yet the message that came through his teasing smile was unexpected. Grace. He wasn’t mad. She’d cornered him like a deranged banshee, but he wasn’t mad.
“I came frighteningly close to marrying the wrong woman, but I didn’t.”
The tears rolled over their banks, topping humiliation with fresh embarrassment. “I’m sorry.” She fished a tissue out of her pocket.
Seth stood and took a step toward her. “You and I are getting to be experts at new beginnings, aren’t we?”
All she could do was nod.
“Are you up for a moonlight ride?”
Wiping her nose, she nodded again, still fixed on the midnight glint in his eyes. A smile finally unparalyzed her face. “Promise you won’t get all astronomical on me?”
“Five minutes of moon phases, max. Maybe ten on Mercury. If we stay up late enough, we’ll be able to see it in the northwestern sky.” He grinned, turned, and unlatched the trunk compartment, pulling out a half helmet, two black leather jackets, and two pairs of gloves. His own helmet hung from a silver hook beneath the trunk. “Pays to keep a spare.” He held out the helmet, but when she grabbed it, he didn’t let go. “Before the thought hits your pretty head, this did not belong to my ex-fiancée.”
“Thank you.” His reassurance hadn’t come before the thought, but it did put it to rest.
April walked around to the opposite side of the bike as she zipped the jac
ket and fastened the strap on the helmet. “I love this color.”
“Suede Blue Pearl.”
“Anniversary edition, huh?” She ran her hand across the curve of the gas tank.
Seth stopped, one hand partway into a leather glove. “You do know something about Harleys.”
April glanced down at the Harley logo, silver wings upturned against an orange and black background. Above the wings was printed 105 Years; below them, it said, “1903–2008.”
“Yep, I know my bikes.”
“I’m impressed.” Seth tucked his sleeves into his gauntlet gloves. “Ready?”
“All set.”
He turned and reached out for the left grip. His hand stopped in midair. Turning, he grinned at her then touched his gloved fingertips to the anniversary logo. “I really, really hate being gullible. It’ll be a wilder ride because of that, you know.” He swung his leg over the seat.
April stepped onto the foot pad. Holding onto Seth’s shoulder, she hopped on. As he revved the motor, she yelled in his ear. “Bring it on!”
Seth did a U-turn and headed north, out of town. The air that had felt balmy when they’d walked outside now chilled April’s cheeks. She wrapped her arms a little tighter around Seth’s chest. When the speed limit changed to fifty-five, she felt the gears change. The vibration increased, the motor roared. The road curved as they climbed the bluff. Molding her body to his, she leaned into the turn with him. They flew over the crest of a rise. April’s breath caught, and she felt like she’d left her stomach at the top of the hill. The wind rushed, and her eyes watered as they whipped along a straightaway and began to ascend again. Her hair slapped against the jacket collar. The road dipped, and they hit a pocket of cold air. April ducked closer into Seth’s shoulders to block the wind.
Yvonne’s words came to mind. Experiences that celebrate life. This moment, maybe her first in well over a year, was a celebration.
Seth had asked her if she could stand ten hours on a Harley.
Absolutely.
❧
“I was engaged to the second runner-up in the Miss St. Cloud Pageant.”
“Brenda Cadwell.”
“Mm-hm.”
They sat on an orange blanket embroidered with Harley-Davidson emblems. Below them, the lights of Pine Bluff scattered like diamonds across the valley.
“Very prestigious.” April watched his reaction, wondering how the breakup had really affected him.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought when I first met her. She was a broadcasting student, shadowing the manager of the station I worked at for a class she was taking. I knew who she was before she introduced herself. I’d seen some of the pageant coverage. I was blown away when she asked me out.”
“She asked you?”
A wry smile pulled at his mouth. “Yeah. Should have seen the manipulation red flags, but I was so caught up in the fact that she’d chosen little ol’ me. I was blind right up until a week before the wedding.”
“What happened?”
Seth picked up a stone and tossed it over the side of the bluff. It pinged against the rocks, the sound trailing off in the dark abyss. “I got a clue from her sister that there were a few little things she’d failed to mention in the two years we’d dated. Like the fact that she’d maxed out two credit cards and then run up thirty thousand dollars on Daddy’s accounts, which she’d promised to pay back. All told, we would have started our marriage sixty-four thousand dollars in debt.”
A long, low whistle slipped through April’s lips. “All for the wedding?”
“No. Her parents and I covered the wedding bills as they came along. She’d charged clothes, jewelry, makeup, spa services. . .anything to decorate herself. And she’d hidden the debt from me.” He pitched another rock. “When I confronted her, she denied it. The debt was one thing. The sin of omission and then the lying was what I couldn’t get past. I could only guess at what else she’d forgotten to mention.”
“So you broke it off a week before the wedding?”
“Worse than that. I did a credit check on her, and when she denied everything, I wanted to believe her. So I did some research. It took a few days to double-check everything. There was no mistake. I broke up with her an hour before the rehearsal dinner.”
“Whoa. I’m picturing a rather angry bride.”
Smile lines bracketed Seth’s mouth. “I think ‘livid’ is the correct word. She drew blood when she launched the ring at me.”
“Ouch.”
“A couple weeks before the wedding, she insisted on having wedding pictures of the two of us taken at a studio. Had to have the right lighting, you know.” He shook his head. “Her roommate worked for the paper and sidestepped the usual policy for her, letting her submit a picture early so it would come out in the Sunday morning paper. By the time they thought of it, the paper had already gone to press.”
April studied the relaxed set of his jaw. She’d seen him upset enough to know that his jaw muscles usually bulged when he was angry. “You seem to have dealt pretty well with it. I think I’d still be bitter.”
“That was the amazing thing. The second I told her I wasn’t going to marry her—in front of her parents, by the way—the relief was unbelievable.”
“But you weren’t miserable with her before that?”
Seth shrugged. “Did you ever have a tag on the neck of a shirt that was stiff and scratchy, and all day long, you’re kind of subconsciously aware of it, but you’re too busy to focus on it? That’s what our relationship was like. On some level, it wasn’t feeling right. She wasn’t interested in much of anything I like to do. I sometimes wonder if she was interested in me at all, or if she was just addicted to the male attention and any guy would do. Honestly, I think she would have been just as happy dating a full-length mirror.”
It was April’s turn to pick up a smooth, flat rock and pitch it into the darkness. “I’m glad you found out before it was too late. Do you still have contact with her?”
Seth’s sigh carried notes of weariness mingled with frustration. “Only when I have to. Unfortunately, our paths cross often. . .professionally.”
“I’m sorry I lashed out at you. I should have checked the facts.”
“Forget it. A wedding announcement sure looks like fact. Besides. . .” His fingertip traced the outline of her hand on the blanket. “Your righteous wrath was kind of flattering.”
April aimed her smile at the distant lights. “And why is that?”
“Because it just might mean that in spite of all our ups and downs, you’re developing some feelings for me.”
“And you’d consider that a good thing?”
His arm slid around her shoulders. “I’d consider that a very good thing.”
❧
He’d been waiting for the right moment to put his arm around her. When he did, she nestled against his shoulder and looked up at him. Close enough to kiss. Slowly, he bent his head toward hers.
“I hear we’re in for a storm tomorrow.”
The sparkle in her eyes told him she knew full well what he’d been about to do. And he was pretty sure the distraction technique was more to lead him on than away. He’d gladly play that game, and he had just the strategy to make it a short round.
“Thunderstorms are usually instigated by several factors: sufficient moisture, usually at low levels near the surface; a vertical profile in the atmosphere that is unstable, meaning a parcel of air will continue to rise if given a push upward”—he gestured with his hand—“and a mechanism to give the air parcels a push, such as a cold or warm front. Simply stated, moisture, instability, and lift. When these three things come together within certain parameters, we can be pretty sure of a thunderstorm.”
Her eyes stayed fixed on his, her bottom lip firmly clamped between her teeth. She wasn’t going to cave in as easily as he’d thought.
“It is possible that thunderstorms can arise with just two of the three parameters. . .for example, when there is no surface front or ot
her mechanism to lift the air, but there is great instability and plenty of moisture. If the air parcels rise”—he inched closer and lifted his hand to illustrate—“due to the instability and there is nothing to stop them, a shower or thunderstorm may—”
Her hand reached out and grabbed his in midair. “Okay. I surrender.” Her head pressed into his shoulder. “Let’s. . .” Her eyes closed. “Let’s just. . .talk about tornadoes.” Her eyes popped open, her lips spread into an amazing smile.
“O. . .kay. . .”
Her fingertip pressed against his lips, sending prickly sensations down his spine. “Specifically, when do we get to chase one?”
Seth laughed against her finger and then graced it with a featherlight kiss. She lowered her hand but rested it, palm up, on her knee. Saving his kiss? “You do realize, my dear, that there has to be a tornado in the vicinity in order to chase it.”
An elbow boxed his right side. “And here I thought you’d create one just for me.”
“I would if I could.” Her deep blue eyes suddenly seemed a bit too deep, a little too inviting. Folding his legs under him, he turned sideways to face her. “June is the biggest month for tornadoes in Minnesota, so we should have an opportunity soon. I’ll introduce you to Darren, the storm-chasing guru. Are you free Friday night?”
“Yes.”
“Darren’s coming over for pizza. How about if I ask him to bring his family, and we’ll make it a five-and-a-half-some.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Ah. One child and one on the way?”
He nodded. “Denisha is due in about a month. Wesley is four. . .going on fifty.”
“Wesley. . .nice name. Thank goodness they didn’t pick a D name.”
“I tried to convince them to give him my middle name. Darren, Denisha, and Dalton—has a nice ring, don’t you think?”
“Your middle name is Dalton?” Amusement danced in her eyes before she discreetly looked over his shoulder.
“Yeah. . .I don’t like it either. I was named for my dad’s alma mater in Georgia.”