“Yeah. And pow! You take out the door?” L’il Lee slapped him on the back, laughing. “Gimme that piece, boy.” He shot a grin at Mo-Jo, VL minister. “Don’t get Rock mad. He’ll fire first and never ask forgiveness!” He punched Noah on the shoulder. Noah had relished the pain that spiked down his arm.
“So, what’s the take?” Shorty Mac huffed up, looking like a proud father.
Noah handed over his spoils.
Shorty Mac opened the bag, dropped it, and burst out laughing. “Boys, we have a regular felon here. A real Billy the Kid. He goes in guns ablazin’ and comes out with—” he reached into the sack—“Doritos!”
Noah gasped, his stomach twisting at the memory. The lives he’d endangered for a bag of chips. Tears coursed down his face as he sat on the dock. He gazed heavenward and traced the first hint of stars in the bruised sky. His throat tightened, but he forced his words out. “Lord, I know I’m the worst candidate to be leading kids to You. You’ve seen my life and sometimes Your grace is simply overwhelming. But, God, these kids need Your salvation. Only You can wrench them out of death, drugs, and despair.” He swallowed, and regret lodged in his throat. “I handled it badly with Anne, Lord. She deserved better. Please forgive me.”
The memory of her slight smile when he’d offered to show her around camp hinted that maybe—just maybe—if he went crawling on his knees, she’d hear him out. Allow him to draw her a picture of the despair etched on the kids’ grimy faces and let him plead his case. She’d nearly ripped him to shreds with her cutting words, but the shred of pride that remained wouldn’t keep him from approaching her with his hat in his hands. He needed her. The kids needed her. And for their sake, she needed to know why. Then he’d cut her free and let her take the reins.
He smiled. Lord, You choose. If You want this camp to be a go, please change Anne’s heart. Please convince her to stay.
5
Noah gunned his motorcycle along Highway 61, one eye on his speedometer, looking for the gravel drive Edith Draper had described on the telephone.
If Anne Lundstrom hoped to hide from society, she’d picked the perfect place. Noah had hunted down Dr. Simpson at Pierre’s Pizza to find Anne’s address, and he’d spent several more minutes watching Sally Williams’s toddler drive toys around her sandbox while the Grace Church secretary dug up Edith Draper’s new telephone number.
He’d caught the elderly woman just as she was leaving for a dinner out at the Granite River Resort. “She’s staying on our property, Mr. Bear, but she doesn’t have a telephone.”
“Can I come by and wait on her porch?”
For some reason he pictured Edith pulling her chin as she thought that over. “I suppose so, but I don’t keep her schedule. She might be long.”
Had he scared her all the way back to wherever she hailed from?
The wind plowed through his hair. The air smelled of storm. Black clouds obscured the moon in a gloomy nighttime canopy. Noah felt as if he’d gone about three rounds with his former homeboys as he fought the urge to grab Anne’s ankles and beg for her help, instead of simply, calmly, without pleading in his voice, explain the situation and let God tug at her heart.
He couldn’t force her to work at Wilderness Challenge. Regardless of how she greeted him, he’d apologize. Knowing he’d ignited fear in her eyes more than once had helped him muscle the courage to hop on his bike and track down her address in Deep Haven.
The Draper driveway jagged off from the road to the left. He noticed a crooked sign tacked to an oak tree. Draper was written on the plywood scrap, probably posted for the plumber or UPS. Noah slowed as his wheels kicked up stones and dirt. The road wound toward the lake, between balsam and birch, the foliage providing a natural sound barrier to the highway. The forest closed over him briefly before he emerged into a cleared parking area. He parked the bike next to an outbuilding and considered the two trails—one leading toward a beautiful log A-frame with a wraparound porch. The other cut through more forest.
Noah chose the road less traveled and emerged at a tiny box cabin. Although it had seen better days, obvious by the saggy front porch and peeling paint, the cabin looked cozy, even comforting. Noah hopped up the stairs and knocked on the door, in hopes Anne had returned.
Something slammed into the door on the inside. Then barking, low and somewhat desperate, with a lilt of whine at the end of the dispatch. Anne’s dog. No, Anne’s furry horse. “Anne, are you home?”
Again barking, but this time, more whine attached—enough to make Noah frown. Had something happened to Anne? Was she lying inside injured or ill? Maybe her reaction to him had triggered some sort of psychosomatic episode. “Anne?”
More barking, then the whines tumbled on top of each other, frantic, afraid. Noah flung open the screen and wiggled the doorknob. Locked. “Anne!” He pounded on the wood, hard enough that anyone reasonably near consciousness would hear him.
He thumped his shoulder into the door. Pain shot into his neck. The wood shuddered but held. He swallowed an expletive and let the screen door slam.
The dog howled.
An image of Anne in the throes of an epileptic seizure or a diabetic coma pitched his heart into his throat. He was going in.
Noah tried the window next to the door. Closed. But locked? Not likely, in this part of America. Noah flicked open his Leatherman, something much more useful than the switchblade he once carried, and jammed the screwdriver into the frame. The window argued as he jimmied it up six inches, the century-old frame reluctant to be manhandled. He pressed his hand in and found a screen. “Anne!” he yelled into the gap.
The dog nearly took his hand off. Giant paws slammed into the screen, then a tongue, snuffling. “Okay, okay, I’m coming. Back off.” Noah yanked the window up to waist height and again felt the screen. Old-fashioned tabs held it in place, and it took about thirty-five seconds for his childhood talents to pop them off. He pushed the screen open at the bottom and slid into the cabin, feetfirst.
Anne’s giant beast attacked him like a long-lost friend. Noah dug both hands into the dog’s hair, pulling him off while the animal bathed his face. “Where’s Anne?”
The Saint Bernard jumped back, sat on the floor, and swished her tail. Noah fumbled for the light, found it by the door, and flipped it on.
He gasped. “What happened here?” An antique, milk-glass table lamp lay shattered in a thousand bumpy pieces on the wooden floor. Intermingled with the white shards were the fragmented remains of a hickory log, perhaps used as an appetizer right before the animal dove into the main course—a lime green foam macramé pillow. The pillow’s shredded remains littered the room, along with what looked like a rejected portion out of the dog’s stomach. The stench, mingled with dog saliva and a very suspicious-looking puddle next to the woodstove in the corner, nearly knocked Noah to his knees.
A war zone, and no sign of Anne. Noah beelined to the bedroom, praying she wasn’t injured or worse. He popped on the bedroom light.
The pink knitted bedspread webbed the room, now an unraveled dog toy connecting the overturned lamp to a gooey pile of hand lotion. The bottle looked like it had waged a decent fight and spilled its contents in a final act of defiance.
“Oh, dog, you’re in big trouble.”
Noah knelt and finally accepted the dog’s welcome, his heart rate settling into a reasonable thump. Anne wasn’t here, she wasn’t dead, and hopefully he’d have time to clean the place up before she walked in the—
A scream nearly made him leap out of his skin. Anne stood in the bedroom doorway, her face ashen, eyes wide with terror and fixed on Noah. She dropped her bag of groceries, took a breath, and belted out another scream.
Noah jumped to his feet. “Anne, stop. It’s okay.” He glanced at the mess. “I’ll help you clean it up.”
When he turned back to her, the panic on her face halted him. She shook, on the thin edge of control, as if seeing an apparition. “Anne, calm down.”
He grabbed her arm as she wh
irled to escape. “Let go of me!” she shrieked. She hit at his arm, and he instantly released her.
For a second he felt sure she was going to race out the door, just like she’d floored it away from the camp. He froze, frustration and helplessness tying him into knots.
“You! What are you doing here?” Fury sizzled in her eyes. As her glare pinned him, words clogged in his throat.
She didn’t wait for a response. She hauled back and slapped him. The sting didn’t hurt nearly as much as seeing tears spring into her eyes and watching her crumple to the floor, sobbing.
He knelt beside her, his chest throbbing with each wretched sob. Had he done this? What fear prowled under her skin that roared to life every time she saw him? He longed to draw her into his circle of protection, to smooth her hair and comfort her despite the fact she thought him a close relative to a street rat. The lady was afraid and crying.
He wasn’t about to let pride stand between him and chivalry. Even if she was bound to slug him. Again. He braced himself, reached out. His hand grazed her arm.
She jerked away. “Don’t touch me!” When she looked up, her agonized expression made him cringe. The emotions in her eyes told him that she’d seen things and held secrets that put substance to her fearful behavior. He felt sick to his soul when she whispered, “What kind of criminal are you?”
Anne had never seen someone turn white so fast. She knew it; she just knew it. The guy in front of her, despite the worry on his face, probably had a case file at police headquarters so thick they used it as a footstool. She gritted her teeth, not caring that he looked like he’d been hit in the gut, pale, slack-jawed. She wondered how soon she could charge him with breaking and entering. And if she did, wouldn’t that erase her camp problem?
Then he clamped his mouth shut, as if coming to his senses, and backed away from her. Way away. As if he couldn’t put enough distance between them. He even stood and stalked across the room, standing with his back to her as he faced the woodstove. It unnerved her the way he shook.
She wondered how fast she could get to Edith’s telephone. First item on Anne’s to-do list tomorrow was to order her own service. She would even pump bad gas at Mom and Pop’s to pay for it.
Something about Noah’s demeanor made her throat raw. His shoulders were hunched and he’d cupped his hands over his face. Even eight feet away, she could see his neck muscles tense.
Then Bertha tackled her. Slobbering and smelling of—hand lotion? “Get off me!” She ran her hands over Bertha’s thick hair, thankful beyond words for her giant companion. Just think what the hoodlum would have done to her place had Bertha not been here. He’d probably locked the poor thing in her bedroom while he ransacked Anne’s tiny home.
Ransacked—why? Anne pushed the dog away and surveyed the carnage. The chaos nearly sent a wave of fresh tears. “What, taking me prisoner wasn’t enough? You had to demolish my cabin too?”
He shook his head, his back still to her. “I found it this way. Your dog—”
“My dog did this? I highly doubt that.”
She watched his broad shoulders rise and fall, as if breathing in calm. When he turned toward her, the moisture in the corner of his eyes shocked her silent. “Yes, your dog did it. I don’t have a habit of chewing up pillows, even when I’m near starvation. And maybe if you came home a littler earlier and took her out for a walk, she might not resort to eating logs!” A tiny muscle twitched in his bronze cheek, right below that intriguing round scar.
She blinked at him, fixed for a moment. Then she dismissed the spark of familiarity and registered his accusation. “Excuse me, but I was out trying to recover from your attempt to sell me into slavery. Edith promised to take Bertha out for a run, not that it’s any of your business.”
“She was whining.”
“What?” He had this annoying habit of shaking his head while he talked, as if he were patronizing a small child, and when he forked his hand through his luxurious black hair and looked up to the heavens, her fury boiled over. “Get out! Get out this second or I’ll call the police and have you arrested for breaking and entering.” Milliseconds away from snapping, the last thing she wanted to do was confront the fact that she’d left Bertha at home without a bladder break and starving since breakfast. Or the fact that, for a hideous split second, she’d been paralyzed in the past, watching her life explode in slow motion.
“No. I’m not leaving.”
“You are leaving. Right now.”
“No, not until I help you clean up this mess and apologize for hurting you today.” His eyes, a breath-stealing brown, held her like glue, and for a moment, her focus zeroed in on his expression, awash with a raw desperation that made her heart bang hard against her ribs. He had an unrefined charisma about him that suddenly tangled her fury into confusing knots. She fumbled for a response and watched in dismay as Bertha, Saint Benedict Arnold, ran over to him and pawed his chest.
Noah scrubbed the dog behind both ears and even leaned down so the animal could lick his chin.
Anne clenched her teeth. “Some guard dog you are.”
“Let me help you, Anne.” The voice, softly toned, soothed the ragged edge of her nerves. “And then let me tell you why I wanted you to spend the summer with me.”
When he smiled at her, her traitorous mouth said, “Okay.”
6
Anne sat on the porch, watching the stars shift among approaching storm clouds, beacons of hope against the blackness. The smell of rain layered the air, and the breeze carried with it the moist breath of the lake. Anne tugged the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her knuckles and wrapped her arms around her waist. At least she’d stopped shaking.
It had taken a mere hour to subdue her terror after she’d discovered Mr. Standing Bear in her house. She winced, remembering how she’d completely unraveled in front of him. The last thing she wanted was him peeking at her vulnerabilities. Especially when he had turned out to be so . . . so . . . infuriatingly gentlemanly. It would be a thousand times easier to hold a grudge and brand him the local menace if he hadn’t just swept up debris, untangled her bedspread, and washed her bedroom floor with the finesse of a cleaning team. And he’d hummed a hymn—“O, How I Love Jesus”—while he’d done it, something that made her want to burst into idiotic tears.
She got up and leaned on the porch rail, gazing out over the cliff a few yards away and onto the shoreline below. In the intermittent moonlight, the foam looked silver, ringing a mysterious opal lake.
She didn’t know how to tell the handy hero inside her cabin that she wouldn’t be spending the summer baby-sitting his campers. She might be able to forgive him for trying to trap her into a job, and she might even be able to overlook the felony of breaking and entering.
But she simply couldn’t spend one hour, minute, or second in the company of someone who reminded her of everything she’d escaped from. Someone who oozed danger, despite the sincerity in his eyes.
The screen door slammed. Mr. Bear walked out, two paper bags filled with trash—shards of glass, wood fragments, paper towels dripping with dog slime—under his arm. He tossed her a lopsided grin as he bounded down the steps and shoved the bags into the metal garbage can. The lid scraped as he replaced it. She braced herself as he hopped back up the stairs.
“Are you okay?” Something about the tenderness, the concern in his musical voice made her tingle to her toes.
She couldn’t look at him as she nodded. She couldn’t deny the possibility that despite his rough exterior, inside lurked a man of honor.
Then again, he did break into her home.
She watched as he knelt beside Bertha and rubbed her behind the ears. The dog licked him on the chin, and he laughed. It sounded so rich and enticing Anne had to smile. “Thank you for cleaning up my house.”
“Would you like to go for a walk?” He indicated the shoreline below. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“Mr. Bear—”
“Noah, please. Call me Noah.”
“Anne—”
“No, hear me out. I’m pretty sure you came here to convince me to work at your camp, but you can save your breath. I’ve already made up my mind.” She stared at his worn work boots, the ones he’d worn earlier that day while roofing the lodge. The wind chose that moment to reap his scent—fresh soap, the smell of clean cotton, and authentic male aroma that made her feel strangely safe. “I’m sorry but I can’t work for you. I’m going to ask Dr. Simpson for another assignment, and if he can’t give me one, then . . . well . . .”
Actually, she hadn’t worked out anything beyond that. In the first scenario she’d conjured up, she marched into Dr. Simpson’s office at the crack of dawn and unleashed both barrels of indignation. Later images, birthed sometime after Mona Michaels had mixed her a soothing cup of tea, contained elements of sanity, including a constructive discourse on the ethics of assigning a young, single woman to live in the backwoods with a male stranger.
“That’s okay, Anne. I understand. I wanted to trust the Lord to work it out, but my faith took a nosedive and I handled it poorly. I’m going to talk to Dr. Simpson in the morning and tell him to let you off the hook. But I wanted to apologize to you.” His voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “I treated you with disrespect. Will you forgive me?”
The sincerity in his voice made her search his face—the hard jawline, a smattering of whiskers, and a small scar that insinuated a suspicious past. But those gorgeous eyes drew her in and his chagrined half smile, full of remorse, made her insides tumble. The Noah Standing Bear package might have an intimidating wrapper, but she suspected that inside lurked a man who might be worth knowing. A man of character.
Deep Haven [02] Tying the Knot Page 7