Flower Girl Bride

by Dana Corbit

  “No small-craft warnings?” he asked.

  Small-craft warnings? Somehow I managed not to ask it out loud, but nothing could have prevented me from turning my head to look at him. Luke, though, kept his focus on his mother.

  “Not unless something has changed since before Sunday school,” she said.

  “How big’s the boat?”

  “Just a twenty-four-footer. Big enough for an afternoon on the water but too small for travel.”

  “Where do they dock it?”

  “There’s an inlet about a half mile down the beach with a few slips in it.”

  What was going on? These two seemed to be talking from some parallel universe in which people discussed watercraft details rather than the matter at hand: Luke and I had just been set up on a date. I didn’t care how big or where the boat was—as long as it was seaworthy of course. All I wanted to know was whether Luke wanted to go.

  And then he turned to me. “Well, whatdya say, Cassie? Want to bob around in the water for a few hours?”

  Thoughts of a forty-pound salmon returned with a vengeance. “When you say bob, you mean inside the boat, right?”

  His grin made something tickle inside my belly. “If you insist.”

  “Then okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, good.” Yvonne nearly rubbed her hands together in glee. She probably couldn’t wait to get a call off to Europe. I could just imagine her running into the ladies’ room and holding her cell phone above the stall door to get a signal.

  After a few minutes of planning and directions regarding my aunt and uncle’s boat, Luke and I headed out the church doors, minus Sam. Luke walked me to his car and opened and closed the door for me before crossing to the driver’s side. It shouldn’t have felt any different since he’d done the same thing that morning when they’d picked me up for church, but it was different. This was officially a date—my first real one since the divorce was final.

  “Well, that was interesting,” I said, once he was in the car.

  “What do you mean?”

  Although I’d spent enough time with Luke the last several days to be at ease in his presence, I started fidgeting, not certain what to do with my hands. Finally, I clasped them together on my knee. “If that wasn’t a setup, then I don’t know what one is.”

  “Mom sure thinks she’s sly, doesn’t she?”

  I turned to look at him. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Why did you let your mother coerce you into this…boat trip?” For the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to say date. At least by not doing so, I wouldn’t have to graduate to the more telling term: charity date.

  Luke’s lips lifted. “You might not know me well enough to realize this about me, but I never do anything I don’t want to do.”

  My breath caught. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

  But then he turned to face me and placed his hand atop my clasped ones. For a few seconds, I glanced down at our hands, my pulse racing.

  When I looked up again, he was watching me, his expression having become serious. “I wanted to go.”

  I swallowed. My throat felt so dry. My palms, fortunately not touching his, were damp. The moment was too intense. My temptation was to take the coward’s way out and look away, but I wouldn’t allow myself to do it.

  “Me, too.”

  Luke shifted into neutral and turned off the boat’s ignition. Moving to portside—at least that’s what I thought he’d called the left side—he lowered the anchor into the water where it caught and held.

  Around us Michigan’s blue-green waters shifted and swirled. Though the beach was still within sight, it was far enough that I wouldn’t want to have to swim for it. Every few seconds, the beach repositioned itself in the distance as the boat rocked gently, tugging against its buried anchor.

  Crouching low and dragging the life vest along with me, I moved to the L-shaped seating area near the stern of the boat.

  “So this is what you meant by bobbing around?”

  Luke joined me in the rear seating area. He was wearing a MSU cap, dark sunglasses and a white Michigan State T-shirt with a pair of swim trunks I recognized from the other day.

  “Why, is your lunch coming for a return engagement?”

  “No, I’m fine, I think.” Maybe a little green around the gills, but I would survive. Anyway, I didn’t want to see the bologna sandwiches and the cheese puffs we’d gobbled down for lunch again. Especially not the cheese puffs.

  “The water always feels a little rougher when you’re anchored. You have the knobs of your motion sickness wristbands on your pressure points, right?”

  I held my arms wide so he could examine the positions of my bands.

  “They look good.” He brushed my wrists, making contact for the first time since that moment in the car, but the touch was brief.

  “Give it a few minutes and see if you start to feel better. Keep your eyes on the horizon. If it doesn’t help, we’ll pull anchor in a few minutes.”

  I didn’t hold high hopes of anything other than tilting my face up and being sea sick like a human Roman candle, but I stared at the navy-blue line where the water and the sky kissed and hoped for the best.

  “So what did you think of church today?” he asked.

  Because I recognized he was trying to distract me, I smiled weakly and tried to answer. “It wasn’t too bad for a first time back in a while. At least Reverend Lewis preached on the ‘Parable of the Talents’ rather than something really tough.”

  “Don’t worry. He was just taking a break after last week. He preached on Matthew 7, where Jesus talks about knowing His followers by the fruit they bear. You know. ‘Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’”

  Still wearing the jean shorts and loose T-shirt I’d thrown over my new royal-blue tankini, I sank down in the seat, leaning my head against the backrest and closing my eyes. The sun heated my face and created a warm, orange glow inside my eyelids. I could have pulled my sunglasses off the top of my head, but it seemed like too much effort.

  “You okay?”

  “Just relaxing.” To convince him that I wasn’t just waiting for the eruption to begin, I continued our conversation. “Maybe your minister took pity on me. That sermon would have been a rough one for a backslider to return to.”

  “Backslider? Nah. Just disillusioned after the divorce.”

  I weighed his words and then shrugged. “Probably.”

  How quickly he’d keyed in on something that had taken me years to figure out. Though I appreciated the fact that he didn’t question me further, I still couldn’t help asking, “How come you didn’t ever question?”

  “Who says I didn’t? Or don’t?”

  My eyes opened. Luke’s head was turned, and he was looking across the water and likely somewhere into the past. Settling my dark glasses in place over my eyes, I waited until he returned from those places for him to explain.

  “After Nicole died, I kept taking Sam to church, but I started to question whether God really had a plan for our lives. Why would He allow my son to grow up without a mother when he’d already lived with parents who only tolerated each other? I never stopped believing that God created us, but I just didn’t believe He was all that interested in what had happened to us since then.”

  Luke lifted his face skyward and then turned back to me. “In time, my anger cooled, and I changed my mind about most of those things.”

  “You went to church that whole time?”

  “I just figured if I kept going through the motions of faith, I would feel something eventually. Healing takes time, but I haven’t stopped believing.”

  “It does take time. We also have to make time to listen when God’s talking.”

  He studied me for a few seconds. “You know this from experience?”

  “God and I had quite a bit of time alone lately. We even worked out a few things.”

  One s
ide of his mouth lifted, as he must have recognized that he was responsible for giving me so much free time. “I don’t know whether I should apologize or say you’re welcome.”

  “Neither.”

  His mischievous half grin spread to the other side of his mouth. I wished I could see behind those sunglasses because his eyes were probably twinkling, too.

  As if he recognized my curiosity, Luke pulled his glasses low and looked at me over the top of them. “Do you need me to leave you alone on the beach a while longer? Because I can. We can dock now, and you’ll still have most of the afternoon to pray and listen some more.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Are you?”

  “You mean…” I paused to touch my stomach. Luke had done it, I realized. He’d distracted me until the wave of nausea had passed. Either that, or those ridiculous bracelets with hard knobs on one side really did help prevent motion sickness, and I was pretty skeptical about that.

  “Good,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend the day scrubbing out the boat.”

  “You could have told me to hang my head over the side.”

  He pointed his index finger as if to recognize my genius. “Good thinking.”

  “Remind me never to get sick around you because you’d make a lousy nurse.”

  I chuckled as I spoke the words, but my laughter died the minute I realized what I’d said: that Luke might be the one to care for me when I was sick. Worse than that, I’d implied that Luke and I had a someday. I stared down at the seat cushion, tracing my fingers along its rounded trim piece.

  He’d removed his hat and glasses and was studying me when I finally looked up at him again. “You can’t go and get uncomfortable being alone with me now. Ten minutes ago, you were all ready to toss your cookies in front of me.”

  His grin was contagious, and soon I was wondering what had ever made me feel so self-conscious.

  “Are you recommending that I begin all my dates with a vomiting episode to ease the jitters?” Just saying the word jitters only compounded mine. I was on a real date with Luke Sheridan, and no matter how hard I tried to argue that we’d finally given in to our matchmakers’ pressure, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

  “Might work, but it will definitely cut down on the number of second dates.”

  With that, he lifted both hands to the tag of his T-shirt, and in one smooth movement, whipped it over his head. Tan with windblown hair, he’d never looked more ruggedly handsome. When he caught me watching him, he lifted one firm-looking shoulder and lowered it.

  “It’s hot out here. I don’t know about you, but I’m going for a swim.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer from me but stepped over the tiny latched door to the swim platform and dived into the water.

  “How’s the water?” I called out when he returned to the surface.

  “It’s amazing. You should come in.”

  Well, it was either that or stay there alone in the boat with no one to talk to, no one to distract me with conversation from the rock-rock-rock of the boat.

  And it did tend to rock-rock-rock.

  With motions far less fluid than his had been, I pulled off my T-shirt and shed my shorts and the motion sickness bands. Then I buckled myself into a life vest. Luke wasn’t wearing one, but he appeared to be a stronger swimmer than I was. Also, there was no way I going to ruin my summer vacation, not to mention my first date in forever, by becoming another Lake Michigan drowning statistic.

  I slipped out to the swim platform and stood there gathering my courage.

  “Come on in. The water’s fine.”

  “Here goes.” I raised my arms and took a scissor leap into the blue.

  The second my toes touched the water I wished I could scramble back into the air and right back on the boat. A squeal escaped me before the waves closed over my head. Cold did about as good a job describing this ice water as forever did at describing eternity.

  Yes, the life vest had been a good idea since it only let me sink a few feet before pulling me back to the surface. I reemerged sputtering and flapping my arms. After several ineffectual strokes, I finally swam back to the platform and gripped its edge.

  “Amazing?” I shrieked. “Fine? Are you kidding?”

  It only took Luke a few long, smooth strokes to join me. “Maybe I should have said brisk.”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  “We could be grateful it’s not as cold as Lake Superior.”

  “Believe me, I am.”

  “Well, now that you’re in, you might as well enjoy the water.” He pushed backward off the platform and did the backstroke for about twenty yards before turning to look at me. “Come on. Don’t be a killjoy. You’d do it for Sam if he were here.”

  Though I figured I would have given even Sam a tough argument here, I pushed off after him. With a modified dog paddle, which was all I could manage with the life jacket, I finally reached the place where Luke was treading water. If I was going for the whole bathing beauty thing, I was falling a tad short.

  “See, it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

  Though I suspected that my body was getting acclimated to the water by becoming numb, I nodded. What hadn’t killed me was making me stronger.

  For the next twenty minutes—probably less but it felt like more—we floated around in the water, playing chase games as if Sam had come with us all along. Luke tried to dunk me a few times, but my life vest gave me the upper hand, and he drank more than his share of lake water.

  Finally, as he gripped the edge of the swim platform, he turned to me. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting cold.”

  I paddled up and gripped the platform next to him. “Really? I think it feels refreshing.”

  “Well, I guess we could stay in longer.”

  He paused to study my face. I didn’t need to see his grin to know that my lips were blue. It was all I could do to keep my teeth from chattering out a rhythm that would make Carlos Santana proud.

  “No, we don’t have to do that. I’ll get out just for you. I’m a real sacrificial gal that way.”

  “You definitely are.” He reached over to brush back my hair, but I recognized his ulterior motive and shot back so that he dunked himself instead of me.

  “Don’t mess with a master,” I warned when he surfaced again.

  “I learned that lesson.” He popped below the water and reemerged, smoothing his hair back from his face.

  I expected him to be mad for that last indignity, but he was grinning as he swam up to me again. His smile warmed my skin, even in the frigid water. Who needed candlelight? Luke Sheridan could make even swimming in the freezing lake more fun than any date I could remember.

  Luke climbed the platform ladder and stepped over to retrieve our beach towels. While I stood on the ladder waiting for him to return with mine, I glanced back at miles and miles of water. There wasn’t a whale or even a forty-pound salmon anywhere in sight.

  Chapter Nine

  Now this was the life. Luke and I stretched out on the two loungers in the bow area in front of the cockpit, letting the sun evaporate the water droplets from our skin and remove the numbness from our limbs.

  I had slipped back on the motion sickness bracelets, just in case they were the only things keeping my stomach from revolting. Shivering, I wondered how long it would be before my lips returned from blue to pink.

  “Now this is the life,” Luke breathed, his sunglasses propped on top of his head and his eyes closed.

  “What?” he asked at my chuckle, but he still didn’t open his eyes.

  “Great minds just think alike.”

  He answered with one of those grunts that no longer bothered me the way they had when I first met him. Luke didn’t waste words when a simple expression was enough.

  I looked into the sky, taking in the frosted-blue backdrop with the cumulus clouds decorating it in cartoon shapes. Near the water’s edge, a few seagulls floated and dived for snacks. After more than
a week at the beach, I had concluded that those birds were annoying beach vermin, but here, from a distance, they looked regal. Part of God’s creation. Part of God’s plan.

  I was still peering up at the sky when I breathed in the fresh scent of the water, letting my lungs hold it for a few seconds before exhaling.

  “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” I said, some of my awe coming out in my voice.

  “Yeah.”

  But when I glanced over, expecting him to say more, Luke had rolled to his side and wasn’t looking at the sky at all. Or the beach. Or even the water.

  He was looking at me.

  My mouth went dry, and my cheeks heated, but his comment made me feel beautiful, whether he’d been talking about me or not. In case he wasn’t, I didn’t embarrass myself by thanking him. Bashfully, I looked up into the clouds again.

  “A person could think about a lot of things while out here, surrounded by God’s beauty,” he said after a long time.

  I made one of those affirmative grunting sounds myself, not even feeling the need to cover it with words.

  “What discoveries did you make this week?”

  His question surprised me. I almost asked him why he thought I’d made any discoveries, but then I remembered I’d already said that God and I had worked some things out together. Even if I hadn’t said that, he could have guessed from the fact that I’d attended church that something had changed.

  Before, I’d been glad that he hadn’t pressed me to talk about it. I’d barely had the chance to digest it in the privacy of my own heart. But now I found that I needed to share it with someone, even if he had as many scars as I did. Probably more.

  “That I was partly to blame for my divorce,” I blurted, turning on my side the way he’d been before.

  He was still resting just that way on the lounger across from me, but now he was looking at me skeptically. “So you forced him to cheat on you at gunpoint?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, not that way.”