Thinking of her own lost faith, she felt suddenly adrift without it.
He studied her reaction. “Do you think of me differently now?”
She considered the question for a second. “No. I’ve always known you were a Christian, Lucas. It shows in you—in a good way,” she added, smiling. Her smile abruptly faded.
“Actually, I think I might be jealous,” she decided, acknowledging the pinch of hurt she was feeling. “You asked God for help, and He came to your rescue.”
Lucas nodded. “Within an hour of my promise, someone found me. They’d seen broken reflectors on the road, so they pulled over and climbed down the hill to investigate.”
The urge to cry caught Charlotte off guard. “I’m happy for you,” she said. At the same time, she wondered why God had answered Lucas’s prayers and yet had ignored her parents’ cries for help as their plane plummeted into the ocean.
“Have you lived up to your promises?” she asked, focusing on Lucas once again.
He shrugged modestly. “I’ve tried to. I quit the NFL, not that I could have played for another year. Then I had to do months of rehab before I could walk again. Once I was cleared to work out, I set my sights on what I thought God wanted me to do—to serve my country—and I trained to be a SEAL.”
“And obviously, you made the cut,” she replied, marveling at his accomplishment.
He gave a rueful laugh. “It wasn’t easy, believe me.”
“I know. I’ve heard there’s like an 80 percent attrition rate.”
“Sometimes more. My graduating class had seventeen graduates, and we started out at a hundred and twelve.”
“Wow. I hope my training at The Farm won’t be that rigorous,” she said under her breath.
He studied her frankly. “It’ll be tough,” he said, “but you can do it.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking his confidence to heart. “That means a lot.”
Noticing the waitress heading toward them with their food, Charlotte flicked another glance at Blanchard and found him frowning at his phone. Her stomach cinched at the thought that he might be messaging Dwyer. But how could he possibly have connected her and Lucas to his brother-in-law?
“Looks like you’re getting your meals with your appetizer,” the waitress said with a slight grimace of apology. “The cook is on fire tonight.”
“Fine with me,” Lucas assured her.
Charlotte’s mouth watered as she breathed the aromas—a blend of oysters, crab, fish, and shrimp, all cooked with butter. A portion of her appetite returned.
“Is there anything else I can get you? Tartar sauce? Ketchup?”
“I think we’re good,” Lucas said, encouraging her to move away.
Several minutes passed as they gave their attention to their food, pausing now and then to comment on the fare and to exchange bites off each other’s plate.
By all outward appearances, Charlotte thought, we look like a loving couple. Glancing at the ring on her left hand, she found she loved the way it looked. More than that, she cherished the way she and Lucas were connecting.
The sight of Police Chief Blanchard heading toward their table brought her sharply back to the present. Kicking Lucas under the table a second time, she met the police chief’s dark eyes as he bore down on them.
“Evening, folks,” he said, drawing up next to their table. “Enjoying the food?”
Charlotte found it difficult to muster a smile.
“Yes, we are,” Lucas responded with surprising ease. Dabbing his mouth with his napkin, he gazed up at the police chief enquiringly.
“Visiting from out of town?” Blanchard asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lucas.
“We’re from Texas,” Lucas replied, while Charlotte kept quiet.
“You’ve certainly come a long way. What brings you to Sabena?”
“We’re here for our honeymoon.” Lucas shot Charlotte a loving look.
“That right?” Blanchard finally deigned to look at Charlotte. “You must be stayin’ at the Magnolia Manor, then. That’s where all the honeymooners stay.”
Really? Charlotte wanted to reply. More likely Mrs. Digges had told the chief of police all about them, including their curiosity regarding Lloyd’s accident.
“You drive a Camaro, right?” the police chief asked Lucas.
Lucas stiffened slightly. “It’s a friend’s car. Don’t tell me the registration has expired.”
Blanchard waved a hand. “No, no. Nothin’ like that. I check all the cars that run through town. It’s good to know who’s comin’ and goin’. That’s how I keep my town so safe. You mind showin’ me some ID since I can’t tell who you are by your car?”
“No problem.” Lucas’s tone was still light and nonconfrontational.
Charlotte wanted to protest that it wasn’t legal in the state of Virginia for cops to request identification unless a law had been violated. But getting upset over a simple request wasn’t worth the possible consequences. As Lucas opened his wallet, she dug into her purse for the ID that had come only that morning. The restaurant grew quiet as Charlotte and Lucas waited for the police chief’s reaction.
Blanchard inspected her ID first. Fitz had assured her it would appear authentic. It apparently did, for the police chief handed it right back. It was Lucas’s ID that held more interest for him.
“So, it’s true,” the police chief said, shooting a triumphant glance at his table full of underlings. “You used to play for the Dallas Cowboys, didn’t you?”
Charlotte heaved an inward groan while awaiting Lucas’s reaction.
“Yes, I did,” he admitted with grace. “You caught me.”
“Hah! I thought so.” Smiling with more warmth, the police chief handed back Lucas’s ID. “The fellas owe me ten bucks apiece,” he admitted. “And I thank you very much for proving me right.”
“You are very welcome.” Twisting in his seat, Lucas smiled wryly at the table full of glowering patrolmen.
Blanchard inclined his head in farewell. “You two have a good night. Enjoy your stay.”
“Thank you.”
Charlotte and Lucas went back to eating, and the police chief returned to his table. They said nothing about the episode until the volume in the restaurant had returned to normal.
“What do you think?” Charlotte asked, taking a sip of her tea. “Has he been texting Dwyer this whole time?”
Lucas moved the noodles around on his plate. “I don’t think so. I think he was looking up pictures of me and making bets with his men.”
“Then we’re good.” Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to fully believe it. “Unless Dwyer told his brother-in-law that one of his SEALs used to play for the Cowboys,” she added under her breath. “I really don’t want to see Jason and Laura Dunn again,” she admitted to Lucas.
“We’re good,” he assured her, putting a hand on the table for her to take.
Playing the part of his new bride, she immediately took it. She’d have taken his hand regardless.
Lucas’s eyes glimmered with a teasing light. “You having fun yet, Justice?” he inquired.
“Totally,” she agreed, aiming for a note of sarcasm. Truth was, she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so content. Pretending to be married was fun, but only because Lucas was her partner. She caught herself thinking loving him would be so easy, if only he could accept her career choice.
“So, you don’t want a wife who works?” she prompted, feeling him out.
He shot her a startled look. “Sure, you can work, honey. But the kids and I still need to come first.”
Even knowing he was role-playing, she could tell he was serious about the kids. “Children?” she asked quietly. “How many are we having?”
“Three, at least,” he said sincerely. “Not right away, of course,” he added, no doubt reading the dismay she couldn’t hide. “One every couple of years.”
“You’ve planned that, too, huh?” Under the guise of needing to wipe her fingers, she with
drew her hand from his.
“I guess I have, but I’m starting to wonder if God has different plans for me.”
She decided he was referring to his breakup with Monica. Obviously, his timeline would need some adjusting unless he got back together with her.
“Don’t give up on her,” she advised.
“Who?” Lucas asked, frowning.
“Monica, of course.” Banishing her sudden disappointment with thoughts of the exciting career awaiting her, Charlotte added, “What should we do after dinner?”
He glanced casually over his shoulder. “Head back to the Manor and stay there,” he decided. “I think we’d better keep a low profile for the rest of the night.”
“I agree. Let’s pray Blanchard doesn’t get on Facebook and boast about Jonathan Strong visiting his corner of the universe,” she murmured. Jason and Laura Dunn could be after me before midnight came the unsettling thought.
“Praying never hurts,” Lucas agreed, hailing their waitress.
Chapter 10
Lucas tried to sleep in the overstuffed chair in their room at Magnolia Manor. The chair was comfortable enough. He had propped a pillow between the chair and the wall, giving him a headrest. Even so, sleep eluded him, which was fine. He was supposed to be keeping watch and couldn’t afford to sleep too deeply, given Police Chief Blanchard’s relationship to Dwyer.
Unrelated thoughts occurred to Lucas as he listened, with his eyes closed, to the eerie quiet of the old house. Every now and then a floorboard would groan in the hallway, causing him to lurch upright, fully awake. If Commander Dwyer had confirmed Charlotte’s identity through the man poised in the tree outside of Saul’s house, The Entity was swarming by now to locate her.
You can’t have her, Lucas thought as memories of their evening together panned pleasantly through his mind. He enjoyed himself with Charlotte in a way he never had with Monica. Quick-witted and willing to take risks, she kept him on his toes, waiting to see what she would do or say next. Life with her would never get boring, he acknowledged.
For a moment in the restaurant, he had questioned his carefully planned future. What if God meant for Charlotte to be his partner in life? The possibility had electrified him, but then he’d quickly come to his senses. Her career plans were even more demanding than Monica’s. Plus, Charlotte’s expression when he’d mentioned having children couldn’t have made it more apparent they weren’t on the same page at all.
What a shame, he thought, saddened by the prospect of watching her go on her merry way.
He turned his thoughts to more practical concerns, like whether visiting Sabena had been a good idea, or not. Luckily, Blanchard had seemed more interested in who he was than in who Charlotte was, but that could have been a pretext. Who was to say Commander Dwyer’s brother-in-law wasn’t a member of The Entity himself?
“No!”
Charlotte’s frightened cry brought Lucas fully awake. He turned his head to look at her.
Enough moonlight penetrated their drawn curtains that he could see her lying as rigid as a board on the four-poster bed. She had managed to kick off both the sheets and bedspread while thrashing earlier. Lucas figured she was probably cold and having bad dreams because of it.
Leaving his pistol on the arm of the chair, he got up to draw the covers over her. He was pulling them to her shoulders when she lurched with a gasp and locked her arms around his neck in a chokehold, not a loving embrace.
“Hey, hey,” he croaked, impressed with her strength. “It’s me,” he added, before she could cut off his airway.
Her grip slackened and she reared back with a look of horror on her face. “Did I hurt you?”
“Almost,” he admitted with a laugh. “I was pulling your covers up,” he explained before she could ask. “Sounded like you were having a nightmare.”
With a despairing groan, she pushed herself into a seated position. “Yeah. It’s always the same one.”
The helplessness in her voice tugged at him. “You want to talk about it? Maybe that’ll help.”
She regarded him a moment in the shadows, then reached over and switched on the lamp next to her. Her hair, a disheveled red halo, framed a face that struck him as haunted.
“All right,” she agreed, though her voice was hesitant as if she abhorred admitting to any kind of weakness.
Lucas sat on the edge of the bed by her knees and waited.
“I dream that I’m in the plane with my parents when it’s crashing,” she said at last.
Dear God. He should have realized this would be about her parents’ accident. He wasn’t sure he could actually help her feel any better. “What happens in the dream?” he prompted.
Instead of answering right away, she told him, “My dad was the pilot. Did I ever tell you that? He had his pilot’s license, just like you do, and he owned his own plane, a Cessna Citation. When I was younger, he used to take me up in it and teach me the rudiments. So, in my dream, I’m the copilot, kind of like when I was a kid. All of a sudden, the plane does this nosedive, and I realize my father has had a heart attack or something. He’s passed out over the yoke, pushing it forward and causing the plane to dive. I yell for my mom and, together, we pull him out of the pilot’s seat.”
“Is that what happened to your father? He had a heart attack?” Lucas gently queried.
“No. The last time anyone heard from him, he was over the ocean, issuing a mayday about engine failure.”
Her voice broke on the final word, and the tears hovering in her eyes slid soundlessly down her cheeks, wringing Lucas’s heart.
He longed to hug her, but he feared that wasn’t the best idea. She was vulnerable, and he was far, far too drawn to her to trust himself.
“In my dream,” she forced herself to keep talking, even though her voice quavered with emotion, “my mom is working to resuscitate my dad, and no one is there to fly the plane but me.”
Chewing her lower lip, she fought to keep her composure. “I try. I really try to remember everything my father has taught me, but it was so long ago that I can’t remember what to do.”
Her face crumpled suddenly, and more tears rolled down her cheeks.
Lucas changed his mind about keeping his distance. Give me strength, Lord, he pleaded, closing the space between them. Not comforting Charlotte would be cowardly.
Holding her, he offered whatever consolation his embrace might bring. She’d said earlier that his hugs were the best thing in the world—an exaggeration, no doubt, but they were all he had to offer at the moment.
Hiding her face against his shoulder, she sobbed in heartbreaking silence.
“Let it out,” he heard himself urge. Speak through me, Father. Give me the words.
“It’s okay to cry, baby.” The endearment caused him momentary concern. But they’d been acting as newlyweds all afternoon and evening, and the word slipped out before he could stop it. Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s over for them,” he added, wanting desperately to console her. “They’re free and at peace and together. The world can’t hurt them anymore.”
Charlotte went still at his words, then she tipped her head back to look at him. Her red-rimmed eyes stared directly into his. Her lungs convulsed as she drew a deep breath.
“I do think of that,” she choked out.
He nodded with encouragement.
“My mother loved God. My father never talked about Him but he always went to church,” she added.
A clear image of her parents popped into his head.
“I just don’t understand why God let them die like that,” she continued, anger creeping into her voice and wiping the smile from his face. “Knowing the whole way down that they weren’t going to make it? Why?” Her eyes implored Lucas to give her an answer that might possibly restore her faith.
Lucas listened for the still small voice inside to provide an answer, but all he heard was silence. Raising a hand to her face, he wiped the moisture from one cheek with the pad of
his thumb. His gaze fell helplessly to her lips, pink and tremulous. The longing to kiss her welled in him.
“I don’t know, Charlotte,” he whispered regretfully. “All I can tell you is what I think—that death isn’t as awful as we make it out to be. I think this because I thought I was going to die. There’s peace in it. I had regrets, but I wasn’t afraid. Maybe they weren’t afraid, either. You say your mom loved God. Then I have to think that God was with them the whole time. He could have taken them to heaven even before their plane hit the water.”
She seemed to hang on his every word. “I never thought of that,” she whispered.
“I think death is so much harder for those left behind than for the ones facing it.”
She drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“You’ve suffered more than they ever did, baby. You can stop now.”
He only meant to comfort her. Whether he bent his head or she lifted her mouth to his, he couldn’t say, but suddenly they were kissing, and it was too late to stop—not that he wanted to. On the contrary, he wanted to convey all the comfort and admiration and attraction he felt for her in a way that she would never forget.
A long time later, he lifted his head for air and to relieve the clamoring in his blood and body.
Charlotte stared up at him with an expression of astonishment. “That was nice,” she said, but her tone conveyed it was far more than that.
To his bemusement, she slipped out of his grasp and scooted off the far side of the bed.
“I need a minute,” she explained on her way to the restroom.
As the door clicked shut between them, Lucas cleared his thoughts with a deep breath.
He told himself to get up and go back to the chair, but he couldn’t seem to move. The taste, the texture of Charlotte’s mouth lingered in his memory. His heart thudded, working hard to move the blood that seemed to have turned to glue inside of him.
The light under the bathroom door went out, and his pulse accelerated. The door opened and Charlotte edged out, pausing when she saw he hadn’t moved. They regarded each other in the lamplight for what seemed an eternity.
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