An Angel for Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  “I’m busy.”

  “I already told him you were free.” Sylvia winked. “Give the guy a break. It’s Valentine’s Day. And he’s taking you to dinner at the top of the space needle.”

  “He won’t be able to do that,” Glory protested in relief. “People had to make reservations weeks ago for Valentine’s night there.”

  Sylvia smiled. “I know. Matthew says he made them weeks ago.” She turned to leave and then said over her shoulder, “Wear your black dress—with the pearls.”

  “It’s too short.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  The dress was too short. Glory frowned at herself in the mirror. Especially to be with Matthew. She didn’t want him to think she was trying to get his attention. If he wasn’t interested in her in blue jeans, he wouldn’t be interested in her in a black dress that showed more leg than it should.

  The doorbell of her apartment rang. That must be him. She’d told Sylvia she’d meet Matthew at the foot of the needle. But Matthew was a stubborn man. He’d told Sylvia he had hired a limo to take them to dinner, and she would be picked up at six-thirty.

  Glory almost walked away from the door instead of toward it. She wasn’t looking forward to tonight. She expected Matthew did want to talk to her, to explain how sorry he was that he was unable to be more to her than a distant friend because of his feelings for his late wife. But Glory would just as soon skip the speech.

  The doorbell rang again.

  When Glory answered the door, Matthew stood there in a black tux holding a dozen red roses. She’d never realized how good he would look in a tux. His chestnut hair was brushed back in soft waves. His freshly shaven chin was set in a determined smile. His blue-green eyes looked hopeful.

  It was too much. Glory almost shut the door in his face.

  Matthew watched the emotions chase themselves across Glory’s face. He’d held his breath until she opened the door, fearful she wouldn’t come, and when he saw her he almost couldn’t get his breath anyway. Glory was dazzling. Her golden-bronze hair was pulled up in the Grecian-goddess style he well remembered. She could be Venus with arms. Her eyes went from molten to icy in the space of a heartbeat. Quicksilver. That was Glory. She wore a black dress that was too sophisticated and sexy for him. He wondered if he’d even get the nerve to talk to her when she looked so polished. And then he saw it. Around her neck she wore a little silver angel charm on a chain.

  Glory saw the direction Matthew’s eyes were taking and stifled the impulse to hide the charm with her hand. She’d forgotten to take it off. She was so used to wearing it under everything she wore and not having it show that she’d forgotten about it. She hadn’t realized the low-cut black dress would reveal that much about her.

  Matthew smiled. “I’m glad you’re wearing my angel.”

  Glory gritted her teeth and nodded. “I like silver.”

  Sitting in the restaurant at the top of the space needle was like sitting on top of the world. The tables were arranged in a circle on the inside rim of the revolving restaurant. Each table had a big window to view the city below. At night, the lights below sparkled clear to the ocean.

  “How are the boys?” Glory asked politely as she folded the linen napkin on her lap.

  “Fine. Thanks for calling them at Mrs. Hargrove’s. They get so excited.”

  Glory nodded. “I’m fond of them.”

  “They like you, too,” Matthew replied.

  “They have really good bread here,” Glory said as she took another piece of fresh sourdough from the basket.

  Matthew despaired. Were they going to small-talk the night away?

  “My boys aren’t the only ones who like you.” Matthew took a deep breath and plunged. There, he’d started it.

  Glory looked at him skeptically.

  Maybe, Matthew thought, he needed to be more specific. “I like you, too.”

  Glory smiled woodenly. “Thank you.”

  Silence stretched between them.

  “When you went away, I felt like Job,” Matthew finally said. Glory looked at him quizzically. He had her attention. “The day Job said, ‘He hath taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces.’ That was me with God. He needed to get my attention and turn me around before I could be any good to Him or anyone else. Fortunately, He did….”

  Matthew had his hand lying on the table and Glory reached over to cover it with her own. “I’m so glad,” she said.

  “I’ve never prayed so much in my life. Not even in seminary. Now I know what it means to wrestle with God. You lose and win all at the same time.”

  Glory looked into Matthew’s eyes. If she hadn’t been so distracted by her own emotions earlier, she would have noticed the peace she now saw there.

  “I went up to Havre for a couple of weeks and stayed with an old minister friend of mine,” Matthew continued. “I never listened before when he said other ministers have gone through what I did.” Matthew smiled. “I thought I was the only one who’d ever been deeply disappointed. He told me I needed to learn I wasn’t in control of the world. God is. As believers, we can pray to Him, but our job isn’t to carry the world on our shoulders. Our job is to trust.”

  “You’re going back to the ministry, aren’t you?” Glory asked softly. Joy rose within her.

  Matthew nodded. “In Dry Creek for now. I don’t want to move the twins again, and this way I can keep working at the hardware store, too.”

  “Mrs. Hargrove got her wish, after all.”

  “Mrs. Hargrove is so pleased with me she’s even watching the twins for me while I’m here.”

  Glory smiled. “So this is what you wanted to tell me. Sort of like the steps in Alcoholics Anonymous where you go and speak to the people you’ve met and tell them you’ve changed.”

  Glory gave a sigh of relief. She didn’t know what she’d expected of the evening, but it wasn’t this. She was happy about Matthew, though, and glad she’d come to dinner.

  “No,” Matthew said in alarm. “That’s not it. I mean—that’s part of it. But I can’t stop with that.”

  “Oh. I haven’t done something, have I? Something I need to apologize for?”

  “What could you have done?” Matthew asked in astonishment.

  “Then it must be you. Did you do something you need to apologize to me for?”

  Matthew finally realized what she was talking about—the AA practice of asking for forgiveness. “No! This has nothing to do with AA.” Matthew was starting to sweat now and it was February in Seattle. “I guess the subtle way isn’t working. I’m trying to work up to asking you to marry me.”

  “Marry you?” Glory was dumbfounded.

  Matthew grimaced. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out quite that way. “Well, now that I’m back in the ministry and…”

  Glory’s heart went from hot to cold. “That’s why you want to marry me,” she said flatly. “Because you’re in the ministry and every minister needs a wife.”

  Just then the waiter appeared with their dinners. “Blackened chicken for the lady and grilled mahimahi for the gentleman. Will there be anything else?” The waiter beamed.

  Glory found her teeth were beginning to ache from the effort to keep her jaw from clenching. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to go, ah, powder my nose.”

  Glory stood and walked to the ladies’ rest room.

  Matthew stared after her in dismay. How had everything gone so wrong? He knew he wasn’t a Don Juan, but he hadn’t expected to chase a woman away from her dinner with his proposal.

  Glory stood in front of the full-length mirror in the rest room and counted to ten. She supposed she shouldn’t be so angry. At least Matthew had been honest about what he wanted. He hadn’t pretended to have a feeling that he was apparently reserving for the memory of his late wife. Glory sighed. It was so hard to compete with a dead woman. But still, the marriage offer did come from Matthew.

  Matthew watched Glory walk back to the table. She held her head high with pride, and he sc
rambled around in his mind for words to apologize with….

  “All right,” Glory said quite calmly as she picked up her fork. “I’ll marry you.”

  “What?” Matthew’s roar was so loud the other people in the restaurant looked at him. He didn’t care.

  Apparently Glory did care. “Eat your fish. It’ll get cold.”

  Matthew was speechless.

  “Well, you did ask me,” Glory reminded him after a moment of silence.

  “But—” Matthew looked at her. “You don’t seem very happy about the idea. I don’t want you to marry me out of pity.” Matthew had a sudden insight. “It’s the boys, isn’t it? You’re marrying me for the sake of the twins. You think they need a mother.”

  Glory’s heart broke. She’d forgotten. She couldn’t marry Matthew. “I can’t be a mother.”

  “But you like the twins.”

  “I love the twins. But I can’t have children myself. I’m sorry, I should have told you before I accepted your proposal. I, of course, withdraw my acceptance.” Glory speared another bite with her fork. “Delicious chicken.”

  “Hang the chicken,” Matthew said. The muscle along his cheek started to twitch. “Look at me. We’re not going to get married for the boys or for the ministry.”

  Glory laid down her fork, but she couldn’t look at him. Not square in the eye. She didn’t want him to see the tears that waited for a moment’s privacy to fall.

  “You may not be able to marry me because you love me,” Matthew said softly. “But please, at least, marry me because I love you.”

  “You?” Glory lifted her eyes. “You do?”

  “Of course. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “Well, it wasn’t very clear.”

  Matthew held her eyes steady with his. She’d never seen him look so serious. “Then let me make it clear. I love you, Glory Beckett. I love you so much it takes my breath away. It has, in fact, taken my breath away a time or two. I can’t even begin to count the ways in which I love you. You own my heart.”

  “But what about the children I can’t have?”

  “We have the twins. If we want more children, we can adopt.”

  “And what about Susie?” Glory couldn’t help asking. “On Christmas Day I saw you looking at her picture and crying.”

  Matthew smiled. “I was crying for all the anger toward God I’ve carried inside me because of Susie. Seeing that gun pointed at you that night—with me being unable to save you—brought everything back. Feeling so helpless. But it was you I was crying for. Susie doesn’t make me cry anymore.”

  “Really?”

  Matthew nodded. “Really.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a minute. The restaurant was filled with candlelight and the sound of soft music.

  “You’re sure?” Glory asked again.

  Matthew nodded. “I’m sure.”

  Glory studied him some more. “Really?”

  Matthew grinned. “Finish your chicken so I can take you someplace and convince you I’m seriously in love with you.”

  Glory smiled and rose from the table. “I’m not really that hungry, after all.”

  “Me neither.”

  The waiter insisted on boxing up their dinners to go. He didn’t seem surprised about their decision to leave early. He said it happened quite often on Valentine’s Day.

  The limousine chauffeur didn’t find it odd that they returned after just twenty minutes, either. He merely suggested a drive around to look at the lights of Seattle. Matthew told him to make it a very long drive—maybe over to Puget Sound—and Glory couldn’t have agreed more. After all, Matthew had promised to tell her, in detail, why he really, really loved her. And she was going to do the same.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7215-0

  AN ANGEL FOR DRY CREEK

  Copyright © 1999 by Janet Tronstad

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