Fortress of Love

by Ann Nichols

  “Why the sudden interest now?” he asked guardedly. His voice sounded sharper than he had intended, but he was wound up tighter than a new coil and couldn’t help it.

  “Luke,” she licked her lips and spoke tentatively. “Something happened to me last night. Something amazing, actually.”

  An involuntary shiver ran down Luke’s neck.

  “Your cross reminds me of what was so special about my parents.”

  Something inside of Luke wanted to interrupt her, to stop the words; but he felt like the barren trees outside trying to stop the icy north wind from whipping through their branches, and he knew there was nothing he could do but listen.

  Melissa rubbed the cross again, oblivious to the chill that had settled in Luke’s heart, and continued her explanation. “My parents loved each other, but even more, they loved God. Their great love was possible, Luke, because they loved God first.” Her eyes searched his, imploring him to understand. “Honey, God is what—” she shook her head, correcting herself, “no, God is who is missing in our lives.” There was awe in her voice, as if she had just made the greatest discovery of all time. “God,” she repeated softly.

  With a crashing finality, Luke felt as though his world was collapsing around him.

  Seven

  Luke stood up abruptly, and Melissa had no choice but to release her hold on the gold cross.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. But he already knew the answer, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—deal with it. His parents were “good Christians.” They hardly ever missed a Sunday service, but they had missed—by a wide mile—how to treat their fellow human beings, and especially their children.

  “I’m sorry, Luke,” she stood up and took a step toward him, “but until we get ourselves straightened out with God, I can’t marry you.”

  “God?” he exploded. He turned his back to her and stared out into the darkness beyond the picture window. “You’re confused, Melissa,” he said sharply.

  She nodded her head. “You’re right, I am,” she agreed. “Which is precisely my point.”

  “You don’t have a point,” he said acidly, and for the first time he didn’t care if his words stung her. “You’re afraid of bees, you’re afraid of commitment, you’re afraid of yourself. And now you want to hang all the blame for your problems on God.” He swiveled around to glare at her and was amazed to see that she was smiling.

  “I think you’re exactly right, Luke. I am afraid of myself. My life is tumbling forward, slip-sliding out of control and—” she paused before dropping her voice to an imploring whisper. “Don’t you see? I have to put everything—everything—on hold until I learn—”

  “About God?” Luke finished her sentence with a derisive laugh.

  Melissa nodded. “Yes, about God,” she said firmly. Luke rolled his eyes. Ignoring his rude response, Melissa continued. “Last night, Luke, in the middle of the mess the robbers made of my room, I found my father’s Bible.” She shook her head. She was still amazed by the unusual turn of events. “Anyway, I think it’s the place for me to start finding out about God. . . and the cross. . .you know, exactly what it stands for.” She reached out and took the gold cross in her hand again.

  This time, something exploded inside of Luke with the force of an atomic bomb. He had never raised his voice to Melissa before, but he was shouting now. “Here, take it!” He yanked the necklace from around his neck and rudely slipped the chain over her head. “You seem to think it’s some sort of talisman, a good-luck charm, that holds all your answers—”

  “No, Luke,” she said, shaking her head and cutting off his verbal rampage. He turned his back on her and walked angrily across the room. Melissa watched as his breath heaved his shoulders up and down. She felt wretched, helpless, and totally confused by his explosive response. She was accustomed to hearing venomous remarks from her aunt, but this was a side of Luke Karalis she had never anticipated. But she also knew that there was no going back, only forward. She had to make him understand how she felt. Speaking to his back, she tried again. “I don’t think a cross is a good-luck charm, Luke,” she corrected his angry assessment. “It’s a reminder, a symbol of God—somehow,” she laughed sadly. “I’ve seen it as a piece of jewelry for so long that I don’t know exactly,” she admitted. She quietly turned toward the fire.

  When she started to speak again, Luke somehow had the feeling she was talking more to herself than to him.

  “Strange, isn’t it? I’ve read thousands of books, but never once have I read the Bible.” She took a deep breath. “But thanks to the break-in, I’ve found the book—the actual book— that was the center of my father’s faith. I’ve discovered the same Bible that he used to read to my mother and me.” Luke was intrigued by the faraway quality of her voice. He turned to look, but when he saw that she was lost in her own little world, his curiosity turned back to anger. He felt as though he was suddenly of secondary importance to her—if she even still cared about him at all.

  “But I’m going to read it now,” she was saying. “I’m going to read every word.”

  He looked at the gentle curve of her hips and how her ebony hair cascaded over her shoulders, and he was reminded of the first time he had seen her and called her melissa—the social bee flitting from one group to the next at the Christmas ball. But now, in his anger, he thought sersegia was a more apt description. The sersegia were killer bees that buzzed during the summer months in Greece. That’s what she was doing, killing a part of him that he doubted would ever find life again.

  Melissa had stopped talking and she was looking at him as if she expected an answer to a question he hadn’t heard. Instead of responding to her, he launched into his own little diatribe. “Who are you, Melissa?” There was a steely quiet to his voice. “A little girl who is frightened of the unknown? Or a woman who likes to break engagements, to sting the men of your life with a stinger you keep well hidden until it suits you to use it?”

  His sudden reference to her previous broken engagement hit her like a solid punch to the stomach. Closing her eyes and whispering a prayer for strength—the first real prayer of her adult life—she responded with a gentleness that surprised her and completely disarmed Luke.

  “I don’t think I’m either of those, Luke. I’m just a woman who’s confused and has been for a long time. But I think I’ve finally figured out where to find answers.” She paused for a moment and then said, “And I just want you to know about it too, and to explore it with me—together.”

  She looked at Luke and smiled sweetly. He realized with a helpless feeling that there was nothing he could say.

  “I don’t want to break our engagement, Luke,” Melissa continued. “I just want us to wait a while to get married. A few more months, maybe,” she suggested.

  “A few months?” he mocked.

  “Luke, I love you. But I’ve been filling my days with senseless activities for so long that I’ve never learned who Melissa Kincaid is, or what she believes. You’ve been pushing me to get married, and I finally said ‘yes,’ but before I can think about building a marriage, a home, and a family with you. . .I have to learn who I am. Please. . .give me some time so I can be the wife you need.”

  In a deep, far-off corner of his brain, Luke knew that what she said made sense. It was even logical. But even more logical was the thought that invitations had been sent and guests were planning to attend their wedding—in less than two weeks!

  Casting aside her argument without comment, Luke tried a different tack. “Melissa. You do realize that my sister, Anastasia, her husband and daughter, my godfather, some close friends, and my parents have all made arrangements to come from Greece for our wedding?”

  “Luke!” For the first time, exasperation sounded in her voice. “We can’t get married just because it would upset our guest’s plans if we don’t. I’m not ready to walk down the aisle. I have to—”

  “Sorry, Melissa,” he cut her off, speaking her name as if it were an unpleasant word.
“You can’t have it both ways.”

  “Both ways?” She was surprised at his stubbornness. She had expected him to be upset, but not like this. She didn’t want to break up, just postpone things awhile. “Luke! All I want is a little more time!”

  “No.” He was adamant. She had taken all the patience he had to give. There was nothing left.

  “Why?” she said.

  He remained silent.

  “Luke, just a little time,” she pleaded again. A quivering fear began to creep in at the corners of her mind—and she was terrified at the thought of losing him. For months he had been her only security in this very scary business called life, and it had never occurred to her that he wouldn’t give her the time she needed. He had given her everything else she’d asked for.

  “No.” The answer was flat, final.

  She looked at him with an expression that he couldn’t quite read. He saw unshed tears begin to pool in the corners of her eyes, but even when her shoulders slumped and she reached down to pull her engagement ring from her finger, he saw a strength in her that he had never seen before. And it was a strength that had nothing to do with him.

  She gave him the ring, but when her hands reached up to remove the cross, he encircled her wrists with his fingers, stopping her.

  “It’s yours.”

  She looked up, confused. “I can’t keep your cross. It’s part of your heritage, part of your family.”

  “My family,” he said with a sarcastic snort. “Funny, but I thought you were going to be my family in another two weeks.”

  She tried to remove the necklace again, but his hands tightened around her wrists. “Don’t you see? The ring would bind me to you, but the cross frees me from you. I would never wear it again after today, anyway. You seem to love it—so you might as well have it.” He dropped his hands and walked across the room to the Christmas tree.

  “You’re wrong, Luke,” Melissa said as she followed him across the room. “The cross binds me to you much more than the ring ever could.” She clutched the shiny pendant tightly in her hand, and said, “I don’t know why, but the symbolism behind the cross seems a whole lot stronger than the significance of the ring. And when I can explain why that is, I’ll give it back to you.”

  “You do that.” Reaching up to the top of the tree, he angrily grabbed the little man-and-woman ornament and tossed it into the woodpile.

  “Luke, I understand how you might be frustrated, but your anger is really disturbing after all the times you’ve told me you loved me.”

  He turned abruptly on his heel and walked into the kitchen, where he filled a container with water. Striding purposefully back into the living room, he poured the water on the fire. “This is what our love has become, Melissa.” The fire went out, leaving only a sizzling pile of soggy ashes. “Black ash and smoke.”

  “Luke, please,” she implored again. “Even after all the hurtful things you’ve done and said today, I still love you—and not like ashes and smoke.” Luke glanced over his shoulder at her. “Let’s not break up,” she continued. “We can postpone our wedding and do it right—when we’re right.”

  Luke didn’t say a word. He finished putting out the fire, and when he had dumped the last of the ashes into the can outside, he slid behind the wheel of the Jeep and waited for Melissa to lock up the cabin. The drive back to town was as quiet and as lonely as anytime he could remember.

  ❧

  For the next two weeks, Melissa spent every spare moment with her nose in her father’s Bible. When Jane Bond heard about the broken engagement—and why, she called Melissa and invited her to church the next Sunday. The pastor’s sermon on the love of God touched Melissa deep in her heart, and when she met with the pastor the next Monday, he explained the good news in a way that made a lot of sense to her. As Melissa studied and prayed, the significance of the cross—and her understanding of the Christian faith—grew and grew.

  On the day that should have been her wedding day, Melissa gave her life to Christ, and by the following week she was ready to face Luke and tell him about the cross—the one and only foundation on which to build their love.

  But by then it was too late.

  Luke was gone. He disappeared without a word to anyone.

  Dr. Robert Kincaid was livid when it became apparent that the young surgeon was not going to return, and he blamed Melissa for causing the situation. Their relationship, which had always been distant, became even more strained. Melissa’s aunt could barely look at Melissa without becoming angry, and she spoke to her niece only when absolutely necessary.

  When loneliness and regret washed over Melissa over the next several months, she visited the shuttered cabin at Lake Breeze to think and dream and pray about Luke.

  Her love for him had never been stronger.

  Eight

  Greece

  Eighteen months later

  The picturesque ruins of the Byzantine castle of Beauvoir sat atop a jutting peninsula overlooking a vibrant blue bay, where a public swimming beach belied the area’s bustling ancient and medieval past. Olympia, about twenty miles to the east, once had its seaport here and artifacts of those early days still could be found deep beneath the waves, where only divers can read the archaic story.

  Luke’s history—on his father’s side—was here too. But he wasn’t thinking about the past as he gazed across the undefined horizon from the veranda of a modern fortress of stucco and marble.

  He was thinking about the future.

  He fingered the letter in his hand before glancing down at Melissa’s neatly penned words. He didn’t need to read them. After nearly a month, he knew every word on the scented pages.

  I’m going to be in Greece researching the country’s castles. I’d like to see you. I want to give you back your cross. . . Luke reached up and rubbed his fingertips against the back of his neck, where the clasp of the chain would have been if he still had it. I know the meaning behind it now. . .

  But after more than a year of missing her, Luke knew the meaning behind the cross, too. It meant death. It had taken her from him and destroyed their love. Melissa had loved it— and whatever she thought it stood for—more than she had loved him.

  He balled up his fist, inadvertently crushing the letter in his hand. Sweet Melissa. Lovely Melissa. Confused, hurtful Melissa. The only woman Luke had ever loved.

  He’d wanted to be everything to her. Instead, he’d become nothing.

  He tilted his head upward as military planes from the nearby air force base blasted out from behind the extinct volcano to buzz over the sprawling villa, shaking its windows. Luke laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. Melissa was about to invade his home, and he could only hope she wouldn’t drop any bombs.

  As the subsonic vibrations of the jet engines faded out over the Ionian Sea, they were immediately replaced by the insistent buzz of a giant bee, a sersegia. The segue in the sound fascinated Luke.

  With narrowed eyes, he watched the bee as it moved to and fro above his head. He remembered how scared Melissa had been of the smaller bees up at Lake Breeze, but he had never been afraid, even of sersegia.

  As he watched in amazement, the bee suddenly alighted on the square nail of his left ring finger. A frown flicked across his face. His first impulse was to shake it off, but his scientific mind restrained his reflexes. As he sat in the cool, symmetrical shade of a stoic cypress tree, he scrutinized the insect as it crawled up his finger and settled just below the third knuckle

  Five times bigger than most bees, the sersegia was like seeing a normal bee through a magnifying glass. The difference was that this specimen was very much alive—and very, very dangerous.

  “You’re playing a deadly game,” Luke’s friend, Gabriel Crown, warned as he walked up beside him. “Remember what it did to me last summer.”

  The chief of security at the American embassy in Athens, Gabriel had almost lost his life to a sersegia sting the previous summer. Except for cortisone, adrenaline, and Luke’s skill as a
physician, the bee would have accomplished in peaceful, rural Greece what years spent in war-torn countries hadn’t managed to achieve. Luke’s lips thinned as he remembered gravely that Gabriel had almost been done in by a bee.

  “How delicate, beautiful—vulnerable even,” Luke observed. But when the bee turned and he could see the barbed stinger, it took every bit of his self-control, and the steady hand of a surgeon, to avoid a quick movement. Long, sharp, and threatening, the stinger was not something to treat lightly. “And how menacing—just like Melissa,” he muttered.

  “Get rid of it,” Gabriel ordered, taking command of the dangerous situation. “And get over it,” he said with a wry lilt in his voice.

  Luke ignored Gabriel’s comment. He was engrossed in his analytical case study of the bee—in all its connotations. “Melissa’s ‘stinger’ wasn’t as openly apparent,” he muttered sardonically to himself. “In fact, until the day of the ‘sting,’ I didn’t believe she had one. One that she would use, anyway.”

  The bee on his finger began to buzz—a warning. For an instant, as it lifted off and hovered above his hand, something primitive, a primeval force deep inside him, demanded that he flick the insect to the ground and crush it with the heel of his shoe. But again, Luke didn’t move. Instead, he watched as the sersegia charted its course down over the sweet-smelling bluff to the deep, blue sea below.

  Luke was about to heave a sigh of relief, when Gabriel knocked the wind out of his sales with a sharply spoken question. “If Melissa upsets you so much, then why did you invite her to come?”

  With narrowed eyes, Luke turned to look at his friend. Gabriel’s tall, slender build and professorial goatee belied the iron that lay beneath his fair skin. Luke knew that Gabriel was a professional security man, who calculated risks and took protective action.

  “I don’t want Anastasia hurt by Melissa being here,” Gabriel continued, and Luke understood what Gabriel’s concern was all about.