Blue Ridge Setup

by Kimberly Rae

  “I noticed at church last week, while the teens seemed to enjoy giving their reports, yours seemed a little short on information, as well as enthusiasm. Seems like something — or someone — out there got you a little shaken up.”

  Ryan began swirling his glass again, this time purposefully making the ice clink noisily. It gave tone to his irritation.

  “Don’t worry.” Miss Bloom set her glass down and patted his arm. Her hand was damp with condensation from her glass. “The Bible may say it’s not good for a man to be alone, but it never said it wasn’t good for a man to get shaken up every once in awhile.”

  She offered him a plate of freshly-baked cookies. “Now, son, I’m going to tell you my plans, and then you’re going to decide just how we’ll do them. Okay?”

  Ryan shrugged and drank the rest of his tea. “Yes, ma’am.” If he’d learned anything from these past weeks, it was the fact that women, whether old or young, here or in a foreign country, were impossible to figure out.

  Chapter Four

  As he drove away from Laverne Bloom’s home, around the curved mountain road and back toward the church, he racked his brain. Who had Kayla been sitting by? If he could remember, he could ask them where she was.

  His mind, however, saw only her. Her shocked expression. Her eyes beginning to glisten. Her head turning away.

  The ache was back. His thoughts traveled backward again to that last night in Pakistan. Kayla had burned herself, anger making her careless. He had held her hand under the water, confused as to why she was so angry — particularly why she was so angry at him…

  ****

  “Kayla, I don’t know what’s going on here,” he had said, trying to sound in control though it was completely obvious he was not. “But I have not had, and do not at present have, any desire to ruin your life. I have no idea why you are yelling at me and burning yourself and crying and—”

  He’d stopped when she started crying again. She’d leaned over the sink, taking deep, gasping breaths. Ryan had frowned. This had been the very thing he had been so concerned about.

  Several times over their two-week trip, he had watched Kayla put a hand to her heart and struggle to breathe. Other times, when she’d thought no one was looking, she had closed her eyes, and he’d watched in dismay as fatigue had dropped over her features and something like pain had covered the beauty of her face.

  Something was wrong. He’d seen it, but only because he’d been paying attention. She’d seemed to be able to hide it from everyone else. And that was not good. Not in a place where the nearest decent hospital was a six-hour drive away.

  Ryan had felt fear hammering through his pulse at the thought.

  While his left hand had held her injured thumb under the water, Ryan had slipped his right arm around her waist. Maybe if he supported her, it would easier for her to breathe?

  Instead of jerking away or withering him with a look, she’d taken his confusion to a new level. She’d leaned into his strength, and rested her head against his chest and cried there, as if she had forgotten that two minutes before she’d been declaring him the source of her problems.

  “I tried so hard,” she’d whispered against him once her breathing had thankfully settled back to normal. Ryan wondered if she could feel his heart hammering against her ear. He’d wanted to tell her it was because she had scared him, not being able to breathe like that. It hadn’t been because she was so close.

  “I know something is wrong with me. I got a cold when I first came out here, and even after I got better it’s like it never really went away. I keep coughing like a chain smoker, and I get so tired. Some days I go to bed at six or seven, not even bothering to eat supper, but then I wake up at ten and can’t sleep the rest of the night.”

  He had unconsciously pulled her closer as she’d spoken. The water had continued to run. He hadn’t turned it off, afraid that if he moved, she would pull away.

  “Then this breathing thing started happening and it’s so scary, but I tried to keep everyone from guessing it was happening more often…”

  She’d sighed. “I tried so hard. Nobody knew how bad it was.”

  He’d rested his cheek against her hair.

  For one brief, heady second she’d nestled against him. Then suddenly she did what he had expected earlier and yanked away. Her hand banged against the spout, and tears erupted again.

  “It was you! You told them!”

  Ryan had turned off the water. “Of course I told them. You have a whole team of people who not only care about you, but are responsible for you. You can’t just go on pretending nothing’s wrong.”

  “I could have!”

  A small group of teenagers had crowded into the kitchen doorway. Ryan cringed.

  “All I had to do was make it five more months and my two-year term would have been fulfilled. Five months. And you’ve ruined it all. They’re sending me back!”

  She’d burst into tears and bolted. The group in the doorway parted as she ran through to her room.

  “Man, she is totally mad at you,” one of the teens said.

  Ryan had groaned. He’d asked God to make it easier to leave. Having Kayla despise him was not exactly the method he had expected God to use…

  ****

  The church came into view. Ryan would need to shift his thoughts before the evening service or he’d make a fool of himself again.

  He parked the truck and let his head fall down against the steering wheel. Would she come to church that evening? He had run from the youth room as soon as the service was over, searching the departing crowd of churchgoers, but he had found no sign of her. It was as if she had disappeared.

  God, I want to find her. I want to explain. I just — want to see her again. Could You arrange that somehow?

  For some incomprehensible reason, of all the places in the world, Kayla Madison had reappeared into his life.

  The question was, why? And if they were ever face to face again, would there be any way to break through the barrier he had unwittingly created?

  Chapter Five

  Kayla awoke slowly. Her gaze drifted lazily around the room. A chaise lounge sat like a reclined woman against the far wall. The Victorian-style vanity next to it whispered elegance from its curved legs all the way to its gilded, oval mirror.

  A rested face peered across the room at her. Kayla was surprised what a good night’s sleep could do. She’d glanced in the mirror two nights before when she’d arrived, and her aunt had escorted her to the lavishly decorated guest room. Her own image had winced.

  This morning, however, as cheerful sunbeams sneaked across her bed between slightly parted lace curtains, the dark circles under Kayla’s eyes had faded and, though her hair stuck up all around her head like she’d just invented static cling, the rest of her looked better than she had throughout the past two stressful weeks of packing and saying goodbye.

  She snuggled back under the thick satin comforter and onto the plush pile of pillows that were “mushy like a good romance novel,” according to Aunt Lavender. She still had not decided which had been worse: saying goodbye to the street kids or to her own dreams.

  I’m not thinking about that today. Kayla fluffed the pillows, and her body seemed to sigh in delight as she sank deep into them. I’m in a canopy bed in a fairytale room in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Today I’m not thinking of one single unhappy thought.

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  She jolted upright. What was that?

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  Hammering. Someone was hammering. Right outside her window, from the sound of it.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Groggily, half-falling from the high bed, Kayla hunted for her robe. Not finding it in the small pile of items she had unpacked yesterday after her nap, she pulled a pink crocheted blanket from where it draped invitingly across the cream chaise lounge, wrapped it around herself over her light blue sweatpants and purple t-shirt — she had not bothered to unpack her pajamas, too tired to remember which suitca
se they were in — and dragged herself into the small hallway that led to the side screened door.

  Surely whoever was out there would not mind putting off his quite loud, quite annoying hammering once he knew she’d just gotten in the night before last and was having her first decent sleep in days.

  Rubbing her eyes with the hand not holding up the blanket, Kayla used her elbow to push open the screen door. The wooden door had already been opened, letting in a flood of sunlight.

  Aunt Lavender must be an early riser. Kayla yawned. Yippee for her.

  The screen door creaked in complaint as it swung wide.

  Looking to her left, Kayla saw the back of a man. He was standing on a ladder, hammering in the top panel of a white lattice overhang. Below him, still on the ground, sat a two-seater, wooden swing, surrounded by chains and several tools.

  “Excuse me.” Kayla yawned again. The hammering continued. “Excuse me,” she said louder.

  Was the guy deaf?

  “Hey!” she shouted.

  The man swiveled, dropped his hammer, lost his footing, and half slid, half fell to the ground. Through all of this, his eyes were wide with shock.

  “Kayla?”

  Kayla stared, mouth open. There, three feet away, stood Ryan Cummings. Muscles bulging out of his construction-labeled T-shirt Ryan Cummings. Staring at her Ryan Cummings.

  “Kayla? Is that really you? What are you —?”

  His gaze turned from one of confusion to amusement as it swept down to her bare feet, then up past the pink blanket to her wild, unbrushed hair.

  Suddenly remembering her current state, Kayla squealed, reaching her hands up to run through her disheveled hair. The blanket fell, and she squealed again, dropping her hands from her hair to grab the blanket and hold it up against her.

  When he started chuckling, she growled, literally, in his direction, and ran back inside.

  I can’t believe that just happened. Kayla slammed the door to the bedroom and looked into the mirror. Small, round nose. Generic hazel eyes — rather wide and wild at the moment. Average-size lips and chin. Heart-shaped face. Insane hair. Stupid pink blanket wrapped around her mismatched pjs.

  “Tell me he did not just see you looking like this.” She picked up an antique mother-of-pearl brush and frantically ran it through her hair. Stopping mid-brush, she glared at her reflection. “Wait a minute. What do you care what he thinks of you? You’re not trying to impress him.”

  Still, it wouldn’t hurt to put on clothes that matched at least and maybe tame her hair a little before she went back out to find out how he had discovered Aunt Lavender’s home and why he was hammering on it, despite the ridiculously early hour of the morning.

  Dressing quickly, adding a touch of lip gloss, then yanking out a tissue through the crocheted tissue-box cover and wiping it off again, Kayla gathered what little pretense of dignity she had left and slowly, hopefully regally, walked back outside.

  He was still there, only now he had an elbow draped over one rung of the ladder, a leg set casually on the rung closest to the ground, and one side of his mouth pulling downward as if trying with great effort to keep the other side from tilting upward any higher than it already was.

  “Kayla Madison,” he practically drawled. She did not remember him having an accent in Pakistan. “How nice to see you again.”

  Now he was full-on grinning. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “Me?” She pointed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “So? I asked you second.”

  He laughed out loud, and she had the urge to kick the ladder out from under him.

  “I thought they sent you back to Michigan.”

  At the word sent, Kayla felt herself stiffen. “Well, when I mentioned my great-aunt Lavender to you when we were in Pakistan, I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

  “I don’t.” He picked up his hammer, flipped it like a cowboy would a gun, and dropped it with flourish into the tool belt he wore loosely over his worn jeans.

  “Then what are you doing here?” Kayla hands spread over the property. Did he think she was stupid?

  “I’m doing the construction job I was hired to do: build a lattice canopy over a wooden swing, add a mosaic stone walkway, then—”

  “But if my aunt didn’t hire you, then who did?”

  “The lady who owns the house. Who else?”

  This was feeling like a bad rendition of “Who’s on first?” Kayla took a deep breath. “This is my Aunt Lavender’s house.”

  Ryan’s eyebrows met together. “It’s Laverne Bloom’s house. She’s new at our church, but she told me she’s lived in this house for forty years.”

  “Laverne Bloom?” Scowling, Kayla did a full turn, looking over the home, yard, and the hill sliding down behind it. When her eyes came around to Ryan again, they widened.

  He raised his eyebrows. “What? You just figured out you’re staying in the wrong house?”

  Kayla was huffing. “She didn’t. No, she wouldn’t possibly—”

  “Wait, you’ve lost me.” Ryan caught up to where Kayla was suddenly speed walking around the house toward the front porch. She stomped up the steps, past the set of matching rocking chairs, and marched inside.

  ****

  “Aunt Lav!” Kayla continued through the entryway into the hallway that led to the kitchen. Ryan followed her, glancing at the wall where several family photos hung in an eclectic pattern.

  He stopped and did a double take. That photo in the center. Backing up, he looked closely at the face.

  It was not a recent photo, perhaps taken in high school, but there was no question whose face it was. Green-brown eyes, heart-shaped face, straight brown hair—smiling at him from the photo was the face that hadn’t left his thoughts for the past two weeks, and especially the past day.

  The face that had suddenly reappeared back in the hallway and was now looking at him, eyes slits of suspicion. “You knew I was coming, didn’t you?”

  He glanced back at the photo. It looked friendlier. “How would I know you were coming? I’ve never met your Aunt Lavender in my life. Do you have an Aunt Laverne, too?”

  “Laverne Bloom is my Aunt Lavender.”

  He held his hands out. “Whoa. Seriously? Are you — I mean — seriously?”

  She leaned one hand against the kitchen doorframe, tapping her nails against the wood. “She never uses the name Laverne. She hates that name. Hasn’t used it since she left home in her twenties.”

  His hands went forward, as if in surrender. “Look, don’t blame me. She’s been coming to our church for a few months now and always uses that name.”

  “But—”

  “But why would I use a name I hate when Lavender is so much more appealing?”

  Both Kayla and Ryan turned to see the white-haired woman enter the hallway from a side bedroom. Ryan glanced in and noticed that everything he saw, from the bed covers to the curtains, was all a soft purple color.

  It was dizzying.

  Laverne Bloom — or Aunt Lavender — whoever she was, smiled benignly at them both, the picture of serenity, and led the way back into the kitchen, pausing before the photograph Ryan had earlier been studying.

  “Pretty, isn’t she?” Her smile was knowing, and Ryan was getting the distinct feeling he’d been swindled.

  Shifting her lace-trimmed cardigan, she gave a graceful sweep of the arm.

  “Mr. Cummings,” the woman said with all the aplomb of a great southern lady. “I’d like you to meet my great-niece, Kayla Madison, my guest for the summer.”

  She then turned toward where Kayla leaned back against a kitchen counter, both hands gripping it, both eyes piercing him with wary uncertainty.

  “Kayla, honey, I’d like to present Mr. Ryan Cummings, the associate pastor of my new church, who happens to have a side business in construction. Isn’t that handy?”

  Kayla was not smiling. “Aunt Lav, fess up. I didn’t spend a
ll this money and come all this way to become a character in one of your books.”

  With a soft sigh, the woman smiled dreamily. “Oh, but what a character you would be.” She turned to Ryan. “And what a story you two could create.”

  Ryan watched Kayla’s face turned as pink as the crocheted blanket she’d wrapped herself in earlier. “Aunt Lav!” She put a hand up over her face and shook her head. “Please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing.”

  A secret smile was the response.

  Ryan swallowed. What was going on here? Kayla was looking at him from behind the hand spread over her face, which was not hiding the red that had crept up from her neck, across her cheeks, and was now even claiming her ears. She moaned. “Somebody help me.”

  Chapter Six

  Kayla was about to make a run for the bedroom, her only sanctuary, when Ryan’s voice caught her attention. She peeked through her fingers again to see him shuffling his feet just inside the kitchen doorway. “I’d love to help you out,” he said. “But I still have no idea what’s going on here.”

  “Oh, forgive me, dear.” Laverne — or Lavender — was all hospitality again. “Let me cook us all some pancakes while I explain.”

  Kayla stepped in. “I’ll cook while you talk.”

  “Oh, how sweet you are, honey. What a good wife you’ll make someone someday.”

  Kayla rolled her eyes, took a pan from the cupboard, and pointed it in Ryan’s direction.

  “Oh yes.” Laverne Bloom motioned for Ryan to sit across from her at the small kitchen nook. “It’s really very simple.” She reached her hands up to smooth microscopic wrinkles from the daisy-yellow tablecloth. “My parents named me Laverne, and I always detested it. Such an old-fashioned name. Sounded to me just like a grape that wanted to be a prune, or the way lima beans taste. I’ve never liked lima beans — the texture is like eating paper towels.”