Her Minnesota Man (A Christian Romance Novel)

by Coulter, Brenda

  He had tried several times to pray, but he'd been unable to focus. So he'd given up and just sat on the porch drinking coffee and shivering.

  He loved Laney with all of his heart, but he was beginning to be angry with her for giving up on him. He was fully aware that he'd never deserved her friendship. But considering that she'd forced it on him and then trained him to count on it, she had a lot of nerve revoking it now.

  The wicker chair creaked as he uncrossed his legs. He was about to get up to refill his coffee mug when he remembered the pot was empty, and that he couldn't make a fresh one because he'd run out of ground coffee. He set the mug on the marble-topped table beside him, and then rubbed the whiskers on his chin and considered hopping in the Explorer to make a coffee run.

  He could get some cigarettes, too.

  No, better, not. He didn't want to risk running into Laney as she came out her kitchen door on her way to work.

  He remembered his old man's stash.

  Don't do it, his conscience begged, but he was already on his feet and making for the music room.

  He sat down at the desk and opened the bottom drawer. For several moments, he just stared at the three bottles of whiskey his father had left behind. Then muttering one of the expletives he hadn't used in weeks, he scooped up the bottles and headed back to the kitchen, where he poured every bit of the stuff down the sink.

  It smelled good. No sense in not admitting that.

  It would have tasted even better. But as hard as he'd fought to clean up his life, he wasn't about to surrender now just because he'd gotten his pathetic heart stomped on.

  He picked up the phone he'd left on the kitchen table and tried again to call Shari. It was two hours earlier in L.A., but he wasn't concerned about waking her up. After what she'd done to Laney, she deserved to lose some sleep.

  She still wasn't answering.

  He wondered if Taylor knew anything about this. An anomaly among rock drummers, who tended toward the psychotic, Taylor was a dropped-out sociology major who saw himself as Skeptical Heart's resident therapist. Whatever was going on with Shari, it was entirely possible that Taylor not only knew about it, but had already analyzed it.

  Jeb placed the call.

  "Jackson?" a sleepy voice inquired. "What time is it?"

  "Early," Jeb admitted.

  Taylor yawned. "Somethin' wrong?"

  "Maybe. This is awkward, Taylor, but—" He had to force the words out. "Is Shari pregnant?"

  There was a brief silence, and then in a wide-awake voice, Taylor said, "She told you?"

  Jeb slumped onto a chair. "So it's true."

  "Of course it's true." Taylor sounded almost offended. "Why would she lie about it?"

  Jeb lowered his head and squeezed the back of his neck with his free hand.

  Why had God allowed this to happen? Why now? Things had been going so well with Laney, and he'd begun to hope that—

  "Jackson? You still there?"

  "I'm here."

  "Are you comin' back to L.A.?"

  Jeb sighed.

  Come to me, Jesus said, and I will give you rest. But since the night he'd fallen to his knees in that hotel room and offered his heart to God, Jeb's life had only gotten more complicated.

  "Jackson?"

  "Yeah," Jeb said wearily. "I'll be there today."

  "For real?" Taylor sounded like a kid who'd just been promised a trip to Disney World. "So you're thinkin' about comin' back to the band?"

  Thinking? That was a laugh. At the moment, Jeb's brain was so fried he didn't even know his own name.

  Oh, wait. Yes.

  His name was Jackson.

  Pain slammed through him as he remembered how ugly those two syllables had sounded coming out of Laney's mouth. That utterance had flattened his spirit more effectively than any of the curses his drunken father used to hurl at him.

  "Taylor, I'll talk to you later," he said, and ended the call.

  He hadn't really doubted that Shari was pregnant. She was a hard woman, but she wasn't a liar. Still, he would insist on some tests before he made her any promises. He honestly couldn't remember being intimate with her, so he was going to need some irrefutable proof before he accepted this child as his own.

  If it was his child . . . Well, he wasn't sure what would happen next, but he knew he couldn't let it be like before. He'd protect this baby at any cost. So if it took a promise of marriage to make Shari agree to carry it and allow it to be born, Jeb would make that promise.

  Laney was lost to him in any case.

  He knew he ought to pray, but bitterness had seeped into his ravaged heart, so he returned to his music room and sat down at the piano hoping to find oblivion. He considered for a few moments, and then he lifted his hands and—

  Slammed them down, producing a loud, discordant sound that accompanied his own anguished cry.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  At 7:30 on Thursday morning, Laney phoned the Graces. She explained that she'd had a terrible argument with Jeb the night before, and said she couldn't face the day without first confessing her fault and asking his forgiveness.

  If Caroline was shocked, she didn't let on. "You go mend your fences," she said. "Aggie and Millie and I will hustle over to the tearoom and find your baking list and get started on it."

  "It's on my desk," Laney said. "Thank you." She hung up and resumed pacing in her kitchen, biting her thumbnail as she mentally rehearsed her apology to Jeb.

  Ordinarily, she wouldn't have disturbed him at what was to him the middle of the night. But she suspected he was having as much trouble sleeping as she'd had, so she wasn't going to wait any longer to end this awful estrangement. She had just spent a heart-healing thirty minutes in prayer, and now she meant to march over to his house and pound on his door until he woke up and let her in and heard her apology so he could have peace, too.

  She stopped pacing to stare out her corner windows at the breaking dawn. As soothing pinks and calm oranges flooded the eastern sky with hope, she prayed again, her eyes and her heart wide open.

  "Lord, please let me be a comfort to him. Help me to say exactly what he needs to hear this morning."

  A minute later, she stepped inside his screened porch. Like hers, Jeb's kitchen door was half glass, and through that window she could see him slumped at his table, both fists propping up his jaw. He was reading his Bible.

  She tapped on the glass. He startled and looked up. She let herself in.

  Haggard and even more unshaven than usual, he regarded her with wary eyes.

  "I'm so sorry," she blurted. "I didn't mean it, Jeb."

  He closed the Bible and stared intently at its cover.

  She knew his silence wasn't meant to punish her, but it hurt all the same. When had Jeb ever needed to guard his heart from her?

  "I don't remember everything I said," she confessed, twisting her fingers together, "but I'm sure it was all mean and untrue, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought up that other baby. God has forgiven you for your past, and I had no business throwing it in your face."

  "You couldn't help being reminded of your father." Still not looking at her, Jeb traced the embossed letters on his Bible's cover with an index finger. "I understand that."

  "But you're not like my father, Jeb. I shouldn't have said that. It's just that I felt—" She squeezed her fingers, frustrated by her inability to recall the speech she had so carefully composed. "I mean, I was just so—"

  "Disillusioned," he supplied.

  "No, that's not—"

  "Because all these years," he continued inexorably, "you've been clinging to the idea that I'm a wonderful person at heart."

  "You are, Jeb." Determined to regain control of the conversation, she rushed on: "And what I said to you was unfair and mean, so I came to ask you to forgive me. If you need to be mad at me for a while, that's okay. I'll leave if you want. But not before I tell you how sorry I am."

  "I didn't lie to you," he said quietly. "I could never do that."


  "I know." Feeling a tear tremble on her cheekbone, she impatiently dashed it away. "It was stupid of me to—"

  "But I've hidden some truths." He finally raised his eyes to her face. "And maybe that amounts to the same thing."

  "It doesn't matter now. Honestly, Jeb." She pulled a chair away from the table and moved it as close as she could to his, and then she sat down and put an arm around his hunched back. "I love you," she said. "Right this minute, I love you more than ever before."

  He tried to shrug away from her touch, but she wrapped her other arm around him, too, and held on tight.

  "I love you, Jeb."

  She didn't need a response. All she needed was for him to believe her. She squeezed him hard, wishing she could somehow push the words inside him and make him accept their truth.

  "I wanted so much to be a good Christian," he said, "but I'm the same man I was before. I'm still angry and confused and—"

  "But Christians aren't perfect, Jeb." Loosening her hold on him, she eased back to see his face. "We don't always think and act the way we should." She gave a self-conscious little laugh. "Haven't I proved that?"

  When he tried to look away, she caught his face between her hands and made him watch as she shook her head slowly and emphatically. "You are not the same man. You've come a long way, Jeb."

  He grasped her wrists and gently pulled her hands away from his face.

  "It's . . . possible that Shari's baby is mine," he said with obvious difficulty. "I was drinking and doing drugs. There are whole days and nights that I can't remember."

  Sensing that he had more to say, Laney remained still and waited.

  "Last night—" His voice had roughened; he cleared his throat. "Last night I told you I'd never touched Shari, but now . . ." He released her wrists and shook his head at the Bible in front of him. "I don't know if that's the truth." He raised tortured eyes to her. "Laney, I don't know anything."

  "You should know this," she said firmly. "Even if you did father that baby, God has already forgiven you."

  "Has he?" Jeb's deep voice was barely audible, but his longing couldn't have been clearer.

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. "I know you've done some bad things, Jeb, but didn't you ask God to forgive you for those sins? And since the night you did that, haven't you been trying your hardest to live a life that pleases him?"

  Jeb made a choking sound and wrapped his arms around her. When he bowed his head and pressed his face against her shoulder, she reached a hand up through the circle of his arms and stroked the soft hair at his nape.

  "Regret's understandable, Jeb, but hating yourself for the things you did before you became a Christian is like calling God a liar."

  "I'm not calling God a—"

  "Aren't you?" She turned her head to study his face. "His Word says that if you confess your sins, he'll forgive you. So what business do you have trying to hold on to guilt God has already taken away?"

  He raised his head and palmed the back of hers to tuck it under his chin. Snuggling against him, she felt a sigh ruffle her hair. They were both still for a few minutes, and as she felt his body relax in small increments, she silently thanked God for helping him find peace.

  "Laney."

  "Hmm?"

  "When you said that you loved me." His rumbly voice was adorably hesitant; she hid her smile against his flannel shirt. "How did you mean that, exactly?"

  "I think you know how I meant it," she answered carefully. "But you might be a father now, and I think you need to focus on that and save any discussion about the two of us for later."

  "You're right."

  He withdrew his arms and leaned back in his chair. Laney sat up, too, unease rippling through her.

  "And anyway," he said, "I have to leave for the airport in twenty minutes."

  The airport. "You're going to see Shari?"

  His eyes remained locked on hers as his head moved almost imperceptibly: Yes.

  She swallowed hard. "You were planning to leave without saying goodbye?"

  He continued to regard her steadily.

  A tiny sound of protest escaped her throat, but then she got control and said in an almost normal tone, "But you'll come back."

  More silence. His eyes begged her to understand.

  She didn't understand, but was it any wonder that she loved him? Jeb would never make a promise he wasn't sure he could keep.

  His cell phone rang, startling them both. He picked it up off the table and checked the display.

  "Not her," he said tersely, laying the still-ringing phone back on the table.

  Laney drew a slow breath before asking, "So you haven't talked to her yet?"

  He shook his head and then looked out the window, his expression bleak. "But I'll insist on some tests before I make her any promises."

  Promises? Laney stared. Was he talking about marriage?

  What about the fact that Shari wasn't a Christian? What about the fact that Jeb didn't even like her very much?

  What about me?

  Laney pressed a hand over mouth to keep those selfish words from escaping.

  She was no disinterested party to be advising him on this difficult matter. He was smart enough to call Pastor Jerry or Pastor Ted for counseling. She would just have to give her fears to God and trust him to work things out for the best.

  "Laney." Jeb turned to look at her. "I am so sorry."

  She blinked and felt a hot tear slide down her cheek. His tortured eyes followed its slow progress to the edge of her jaw.

  His Adam's apple moved.

  "The hockey game," he said, clearly desperate to change the subject. "I'll be sorry to miss it."

  Laney opened her mouth to ask what game he was talking about, but then she remembered the tickets the Graces had given him. Weren't they for this Saturday night?

  "Maybe one of the guys from church . . ." Jeb let that sentence dangle meaningfully.

  "No," Laney said. "I don't think I'll be in the mood to go."

  "I hope you change your mind," he said. "But if you don't, you might offer the tickets to Ollie."

  "Yes," she said without enthusiasm. "Crystal—his wife—loves hockey as much as he does."

  "That's good, then." Jeb cleared his throat. "Princess, it would be better if you left now."

  Better, how? she asked him with widened eyes.

  He sighed. "I think we've said everything. I'm glad you're not mad at me anymore. I would hate to leave here knowing that you—" He shrugged and looked away from her.

  "We're okay, Jeb," she assured him. "Just like always."

  Deciding that he was right about not prolonging this painful goodbye, she rose from her chair and leaned over to press a lingering kiss on the top of his head. He sat motionless as she wound her arms around his neck and hugged him, but she understood. This was all very hard for him, in part because he knew how hard it was for her, so he was fighting his feelings, just as he'd been doing all his life.

  "I'll be praying for you," Laney promised in a shaky voice, and then she forced herself to let go of him and move toward the door. Aware that she was being followed by a pair of haunted gray eyes, she spared him further agony by not looking back.

  He didn't say a word as she slipped out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As his plane taxied to its gate at LAX, Jeb turned his phone back on and tried first Shari's cell number and then her landline. She still wasn't answering, so he called Taylor.

  "Hey, man." Taylor answered in a husky morning voice.

  Jeb glanced at his watch. Subtracting two hours for Pacific Time, he noted that it was barely 11:30 in L.A.

  Back home, Laney would be up to her elbows in flour and butter, keeping the tearoom's customers supplied with fresh hot scones. In Nashville, Jonathan Rice's clever minions would be hammering out a plan to divorce Jeb from his current record label.

  "Sorry for waking you up twice in one day," Jeb said. "I'm trying to get in touch with Shari, bu
t I'm not even getting her voice mail. Any ideas?"

  Taylor yawned into the phone. "I would've told you before, but you hung up before I could explain. She started havin' trouble with her cell phone when she was in Iowa for her brother's wedding, and she didn't get back from there until late last night, so she hasn't had a chance to get it fixed yet."

  "But she's not answering her landline, either," Jeb said.

  "Yeah, 'cause she's stayin' at my place."

  Jeb blinked. Why would she be staying with Taylor?

  "I'd let you talk to her," Taylor went on, "but she's asleep right now. That trip was hard on her. Bad scene with her parents. And with her morning sickness and all the stress over wedding plans, she can't hardly—"

  "Wedding plans?" If Jeb hadn't been hampered by a seatbelt, he'd have risen to his feet in outrage. The woman was assuming an awful lot!

  "Yeah, I think she wants to tie the knot three weeks from Saturday," Taylor said. "I told her not to wear herself out, but you know Shari."

  Yes, Jeb knew Shari. But she didn't know him very well if she thought she could railroad him into marriage. He didn't know what God expected of a man in these circumstances, but until he did, he was going to be extra careful not to make any wrong moves.

  "She didn't tell me she'd set a date," he said dryly.

  "Yeah, well, she says if she's gonna do it, she might as well do it quick and get it over with," Taylor said. "Not very flattering, I guess, but any man would be lucky to get a woman like Shari."

  Shaking his head, Jeb wondered about Taylor's definition of luck.

  "So, you plannin' to be there?" Taylor inquired.

  "I don't know," Jeb said, although his thoughts were flowing more along the lines of never, no way, not in a million years. "She and I will have to work some things out before I decide."

  "What things?"

  Jeb frowned at the uncharacteristic note of belligerence in Taylor's voice. "Personal things," he said shortly. Like a paternity test, for starters. "Listen, Taylor, I'm at LAX right now, just getting off a plane. I'd like to come over to your place and talk to Shari."