by Delia Latham
Spinning around in a smooth, surprisingly graceful move—shouldn’t a man made of stone move with a bit of rigidity?—he marched off toward the lawn, pulled some kind of gadget that started the edger’s motor, and proceeded to kick up a noise that brought with it flying grass and little bits of pebble. One bounced off Autumn’s arm, and she yelped.
Cecily caught her elbow before she could storm off and try to break a chip off the stranger’s hard exterior. “Let it go, Autie. I’ll move the car. Miss Love did ask us to park under the carport, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” Autumn shot a baleful glare toward the source of the awful noise. “I just don’t think it was necessary for that…that hulk to be so rude.” She rubbed her arm where a red welt marked the point of impact from his electric slingshot. “And he shouldn’t be running that thing with people around.”
“He did warn us. Come on, let’s go.”
They climbed back in and pulled under the carport.
Autumn rolled her eyes at the wooden sign painted with fancy, flower-adorned letters reading, “Tenant Parking.”
Within moments, they had their suitcases out of the trunk. They’d brought Cecily’s car because she rarely allowed herself to be seen in Autumn’s reliable but hideously unattractive rust bucket.
Needing something to work off a little steam, Autumn gave the downstairs doorbell a double punch, then turned and sent a final glare toward the stranger. He’d covered his razor-sharp eyes with safety goggles and continued to kick up a loud commotion with his gardening thingamajig.
“Welcome, ladies!” The door opened simultaneously with the pleasant greeting.
Autumn swung around, instantly enthralled by the soft voice that made her think of birdsong—yet she’d had no trouble hearing it over the stony-eyed gardener’s noisy machine.
“I hope your drive from Bakersfield was pleasant. Please, come in!” A slender, older woman motioned them inside, the butterfly sleeves of her dress flowing around her arms like gently fluttering wings. “I’m Angelina Love, and I’m delighted to meet you both.”
Autumn glanced at Cecily, who seemed unable to look away from the woman. Miss Love’s welcoming smile coaxed answering ones, despite Autumn’s lingering displeasure from her encounter with the rock gardener.
Miss Love was tall—even taller than Cecily, who stood five-foot-nine in her socks. Twisted into an elegant chignon at the nape of her neck, the lady’s snow-white hair shone like a halo in the bright sunlight filtering through the doorway. Autumn’s smile widened. Seriously, how else would Angelina Love wear her hair? The woman had surely been born with those beautiful white tresses already arranged in perfect place.
A pretty twinkle lit up eyes the color of the sky on the clearest spring day. “Or I suppose we could try to talk over Russ’s commotion, if you really prefer to stand outside.”
“Oh! No, of course not.” Cecily found her voice first and even managed a throaty laugh. Good thing she’d brought Ceci along, because Autumn couldn’t stop staring at their hostess, and she wasn’t even sure she could speak. “I’m so sorry, Miss Love. You just caught me by surprise. You’re—you’re truly lovely!”
“Why, thank you, dear.” Miss Angie drew them both inside and closed the door, blocking out most of the noise from the rock god’s machine. “That’s very sweet, but look at you—both of you! Beautiful young ladies.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Autumn discovered she did have a voice, after all.
“Oh, please…call me Miss Angie. Everyone does.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Autumn resisted an eye roll in self-ridicule. Since when had she ever said “ma’am” twice in the same minute?
“Miss Angie, the lodge is breathtaking.” Cecily walked around the large living room, clearly enchanted. “The pictures online don’t even begin to do it justice.”
“That’s sweet of you, dear. It is a beautiful location, isn’t it? God’s creative ability never ceases to amaze me.”
Autumn blinked. So the lady was religious. She hoped that didn’t mean they’d have to endure constant, sneaky little messages intended to “save their eternal souls.” Hopefully, as a business owner…or manager, whatever—Miss Angie’s role at Paradise Pines hadn’t been clear in any of their communications—the woman would know better than to openly judge them for not being “Jesus people.” Otherwise, this could turn into a long, uncomfortable vacation. They were locked into three months at Paradise Pines Lodge. That could be an eternity under the wrong circumstances.
Miss Angie held out a key ring. “A key to the apartment for each of you.”
Autumn stared at it, suddenly hesitant. Maybe she and Ceci should look into other options before moving in upstairs. If they never took possession, would the lodge hold them monetarily accountable for their three-month lease? “Uhm…hey, Ceci, can we talk for a minute? Outside?”
Miss Angie’s white eyebrows rose the tiniest bit, but her smile never wavered. “No need to go anywhere, dear. Russ is raising far too loud a ruckus out there.” She pointed towards a door at the end of the room. “You’re welcome to step into the kitchen. I’ll leave you alone for a moment.” Her eyes widened and she swung toward the door. “Actually, I do need to go outside. I forgot to ask Russ about those fall bulbs for the flower bed.” She glided out the front door before either of her guests could protest.
Cecily shot Autumn a horrified look—jaw hanging and violet eyes stretched dangerously wide. “Autie, how rude! What in the world were you thinking?”
“I know, I know. But, Ceci, I’ve got a funny feeling about this. Maybe we should see what other options we have. Paradise Pines may not be the best choice.” Autumn blinked hard when her friend’s chin dropped even lower. Cecily never wore that kind of expression in public.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Autumn, this place is perfect! Beautiful. Glorious. Beyond description. Why would you want to stay anywhere else?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Autumn blew out a breath. She should have known Ceci would fall in love with this place. She was kind of in love herself. But still.
“Well?” Cecily made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Hurry. Miss Angie will be back any minute. What’s bothering you?”
“It’s that comment about God’s creativity. She’s obviously over-the-top religious, Ceci, and I don’t mean just that comment. There’s…something about her. Know what I mean?”
Cecily closed her eyes and drew a couple of deep breaths. “And that matters because…?”
“Because I don’t want to be preached at for three months. Do you?”
“Oh, Autumn. You’re overreacting. Our hostess is a Christian—yes, that’s obvious—but I can think of a lot worse scenarios than renting from someone who’s sweet and honest. She’s like…an angel or something.” Cecily stepped close and pulled Autumn into a hug. “Honey, I know you have a sour taste in your mouth where religion is concerned, but maybe it’s time you got over it. Miss Angie won’t press her religious beliefs on anyone.”
Autumn made a sound she knew was probably rude. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
Her mind tossed up a dozen more reasons to scout out the local lodging arena, but why bother voicing them? Cecily would have all-too-reasonable answers to each of her theophobic arguments.
“OK, fine. We’ll stay here.” She blew a long, forceful breath that produced a rude, childish sound, and Cecily rolled her eyes. “But I can’t promise to be endlessly polite if Miss Angel Love tries to shove God down my throat every day.”
“Yes! Thank you, Autumn. I can’t explain why I think so, but this place…it’s special. I want to stay here, and…” She smiled and bumped Autumn’s shoulder with her own. “I’m even really, really glad I came.”
“You are? But what about what’s-his-name? That wine dude from—”
“Uh-uh-uh!” Cecily wagged a long, exquisitely manicured finger in her face and hiked both eyebrows up toward her hairline. “You p
romised.”
“Oops. Sorry.”
The front door opened, and Miss Angie swept in like a breath of sweet air right off the shores of Heaven—not that Autumn believed such a place existed.
“Well, girls? Have you decided to stay?”
Autumn and Cecily locked gazes for an astounded second or two. How had the woman known they were discussing whether to find another lodging place?
“Absolutely.” Cecily reached for the key ring that swung from one of their hostess’s fingers. “Just point us in the right direction, Miss Angie. We can’t wait to settle in.”
The older woman clapped her hands. “Oh, good! Right this way, then.”
They followed her out the door and around the southwest corner of the lodge.
Autumn walked as close to the house as she could, determined not to be hit by any more of the gardener’s flying ammunition.
At the base of a set of steps leading to another pair of oak doors, Miss Angie waved the girls ahead of her. “After you.”
As they reached the large deck at the top, something swooped by Autumn’s ear with a soft flutter of wings, and an even softer, gurgling call. As if humans possessed no power to frighten him, a stunning blue jay landed on the railing not two feet away. He fixed her with an unblinking stare, hopped one direction and then the next, but made no move to fly away.
Autumn froze, afraid to take another step, lest she scare the beautiful jay off the railing and out of sight.
Raising his head high he opened his pointy little beak, and uttered the most beautiful song, leaving her completely breathless. It continued for a full minute, while the three women stood still, awed by the little creature’s magnificent aria.
With his song still echoing in the air, he opened his wings and lifted a few inches off the railing where he hovered, his bright eyes fixed on Autumn. She couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t look away until he rose higher and soared off into the forest surrounding Paradise Pines.
From behind her, Miss Angie spoke almost beneath her breath, but Autumn heard every word. “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord, little blue jay.”
Autumn spun around to stare at her.
She lifted one shoulder. “That’s from Psalms one-fifty, verse six. One of my favorite scriptures.”
Autumn wanted to be angry. They hadn’t yet seen the inside of their place, and Miss Angie was already spouting Bible verses. But somehow anger had no place in the moment. That bird had been praising God, or whatever deity birds worshipped—if avian creatures even did such a thing. She wasn’t convinced God existed, but that blue jay sure thought He did.
“I didn’t know blue jays sang like that,” she said. “I was under the impression they made a rather harsh, abrasive sound—kind of hawkish, you know.”
“Oh, they do, although now and then they come up with a pretty tune I like—a little queedle-queedle sound. And sometimes, unless you actually see them in action, you’d think a chickadee was nearby, because they sing a little chick-a dee-ee tune.” On both the queedle-queedle and the chick-a-dee-ee, Miss Angie trilled the sounds exactly like a bird—without missing a beat between speaking and birdsong.
The lodge hostess seemed unaware of Autumn’s stunned expression.
Miss Angie’s white eyebrows lifted high. “They’re amazing little creatures. When they want to, they can copy the songs of several other birds, much like a mockingbird does. Usually they do that to misguide predators or to warn other jays about nearby danger. But now and then, they borrow the voices of other birds just because. Or, who knows? Whether totally deserved or not, the blue jay’s reputation is not bright and shining, so maybe they do it to irritate.” She patted Autumn’s shoulder and her beautiful smile came out again. “Today, I think our little visitor sang that pretty song to welcome you to Paradise Pines, Autumn Warren…and to praise God that you’re here.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but it certainly made my day special.”
She gave her head a shake and followed Ceci into the apartment...but as she closed the door, she cast one last, searching glance toward the edge of the forest. Somewhere in there, the oddly brave blue jay perched on a branch or hovered in flight, singing—or cawing—his little birdy heart out, bursting with praise.
~*~
Russ Amundsen turned off the edger and swiped at his brow with his sleeve just as Miss Angie and her two guests disappeared around the edge of the lodge.
He shook his head, recalling the hot-headed one—the one with miles of hair the color of a vivid sunset. For a moment, he’d thought she might actually nip at his heels like one of those pesky little lap pups some of his customers owned—the ones that made up for their small stature with a snippy attitude and a yappy bark. One side of his lips persisted in turning upward at the thought, no matter how hard he tried to maintain a disapproving demeanor.
She sure was cute, even with those big, brown eyes flashing fire. If looks could kill, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Not that it mattered to him, no matter how cute she was. He’d had his share of headstrong women who cared about nothing and no one except themselves.
He wiped down all of the tools he’d used before placing each one in a designated storage slot in the back of his truck—which he’d parked in a grass clearing bordered on three sides by a white picket fence. A neatly painted sign on the open side read, Visitor Parking.
Neat and tidy, just the way Russ liked things. A place for everything, and everything in its place. That’s what his Grandpa Amundsen had taught his three boys, and Russ’s dad had passed it down to him.
Even as a teen, he had adhered to the familiar bit of instruction more often than not.
A little later in life, love came calling, and Russ married the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. They welcomed a baby into their lives just prior to their first anniversary. Life was perfect…or so he’d21 - thought.
Then Linda left him and Dalynn, and moved on to whatever it is that women who don’t know how to be wives and mothers move on to. That’s when keeping things where they belonged became an obsession.
In one of their many counseling sessions during the “post-Linda” year, Russ’s pastor had suggested that his fixation with orderliness was nothing more than Russ taking charge of what he could control.
Nothing wrong with being orderly, but he had a little girl who didn’t always remember to put things away, and who had no interest in turning her bedroom into a princess’s boudoir—and she shouldn’t have to.
Russ had to find a balance between compulsion and a normal desire for neatness, for Dalynn’s sake.
The initial shock when Linda walked away, followed by hurt and then bitter anger, could have put him on a fast train to nowhere good...except that his four-year-old daughter needed him. Russ thanked God every day that his wife hadn’t taken their only child when she left.
Part of him had wanted nothing more than to hide out in the home he’d barely finished building—a home designed around Linda’s likes and dislikes, her specifications. He’d longed to close all the blinds, turn off the lights and forget to breathe, but he didn’t have the luxury of committing such selfish emotional suicide. Dalynn required lots of hugs and plenty of assurance that her daddy wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t quite comprehend a world in which mommy didn’t sing along with the radio in the car or dance wildly across the living room while cuddling a karaoke microphone close to always glossy lips. And how she missed dressing up in Mommy’s cast-off, but still fancy outfits…or smearing on a dab of bright lipstick and draping herself in pretty necklaces and bracelets from her mother’s constantly growing collection.
Because he loved Dalynn more than his own life, Russ had shaken off his own sorrow and shouldered the job of being father and mother. Most days, he went to bed thinking he’d failed at both.
But then there were the other days…the days when he did something just right, and Dalynn gave him that incredibly sweet smile that
made him willing to slay dragons, or she laughed until tears rolled down her little round cheeks and she howled that her belly ached. The days when she made him laugh like that. He could almost always trace that rare sense that all was right with the world back to something his little girl did or said.
He was determined to protect that inner beauty in his daughter...to see that it survived and carried her all the way through her life. His love for her, tempered with proper demonstration of core values, would put her on the right path. Teaching her about Christ would foster a respect for what Russ’s grandpa had called “the straight-and-narrow.” Being an example, in ways Dalynn could see and relate to, would make her want to forever walk that road.
At least, that was the plan. For now, he tried to keep Dalynn’s mind occupied with little girl stuff, and off of Linda. When she thought too much about her mother, the light went out of her big, bright blue eyes. Every time that happened, Russ’s heart broke in a brand new place. How many breaks could one heart take?
He used a nearby water fountain to wash his hands and dried them on a cloth he kept in the truck cab, tucked under the seat. Then he climbed in and headed back to the nursery that was his source of income. Taking care of the lodge grounds for Miss Angie—that was pleasure. Helping out a friend who seemed more angel than human fell into the category of blessing, for him as much as for her.
As he guided the truck toward the main road, Russ’s gaze drifted to the rear view mirror, and he chuckled at the irony. Much as the tiny, snarling redhead had annoyed him, he couldn’t deny hoping to catch a glimpse of her before he reached the curve in the road that would hide the lodge from view.
He rolled his eyes, deriding himself for being a fool. On the other hand, maybe this bit of idiocy was an indication of healing. It was the first time he’d taken a second look at any woman in the two years since his wife walked out. As he turned onto the highway, Russ pressed the accelerator harder than he should have. First…and last. I don’t need a woman and Dalynn doesn’t need a mother. He flipped on the radio and turned up the volume, determined to drive the image of Miss Angie’s new tenant right out of his mind for good.