He looked up at her with a cockeyed grin. “Is this a make-or-break our relationship type of thing?” He waggled his eyebrows, and she just about melted into a heap. Now that they were on talking . . . and occasional kissing . . . terms, he’d spent the last three days charming her silly. She’d relished every second, knowing she’d completely lost her heart to this rascal in leather.
“I don’t know . . . could be.”
“I’m all ears.” He tied the sack closed.
“Okay. Listen well. I don’t sleep on the ground, and I don’t tolerate bugs.”
Noah tossed her the sleeping bag. “Honey, you’re about to do both, in spades.”
She made a face at him, loving the way he teased her. Disarming in his full warrior regalia—a pair of army fatigues and a black T-shirt that looked about two sizes too small the way it pulled across his wide, muscular back—she could barely focus on packing the backpack at her feet. She pawed through her items, checking them off verbally. “Mosquito repellent, Bible, tennis shoes, three pair of socks, brush, comb, toothpaste, jeans—”
“Whoa, nix the jeans.” Noah crouched before her and hauled out her new Gap boot-cut jeans. “They’ll feel like two million pounds when they get wet.”
“Wet? You didn’t say anything about getting wet.” When he’d announced the ten-day canoe trip though the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Anne conjured up mental pictures of paddling gently through a wind-combed lake, listening to the melody of loons or the strident rattle of kingfishers, feeling the kiss of the sun on her face. Nothing in that dreamy scenario suggested moisture, other than the water on the paddle. “Make that three things—I’m not getting wet.”
“Right.” He laughed. “Just trust me on this one. Track pants and hiking boots. Three pairs of wool socks, two T-shirts, a flannel shirt, and rain gear. That’s it.”
“For ten days? You’ve got to be kidding. I won’t need the bug juice—I’ll repel the mosquitoes with my smell.”
He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “No you won’t because you’ll bathe in the lake.” He handed her a bar of Ivory soap. “It’s biodegradable. Does wonders for your hair.”
“No thank you. I’ll bathe when I get back.”
His expression told her how he felt about that.
She tossed the Ivory into her bag. How had she gone from dispensing medicines at the local public clinic to trekking the backwoods with a bunch of street punks . . . well, slightly adorable street punks?
She couldn’t deny that underneath the body piercings and the spiked, filthy hair lurked children who might be worth knowing. She’d been drawn in by their occasional eager questions that burst from their sullen postures like explosions of hope. And their smiles amid the grime on their faces could turn an iceberg into a molten puddle. Even so, she reserved the right to change her mind. Trouble festered . . . she felt it in the air. Like a rubber band tensing to snap. This camping trip, this trek through the wilderness, a zillion miles from medical care, was most definitely the worst idea Noah had ever dreamed up.
She closed the Duluth pack, sitting on it to get the leather straps into the buckles. “What about a pillow? Certainly—”
“Here’s your pillow.” He tossed her a life preserver. “Welcome to the wilderness.”
She stuck out her tongue.
He laughed. “Grab those bags, please. I need to fill them with gorp.”
She handed over a box of Ziploc bags. “I’m almost afraid to ask. What is gorp?”
“Granola, raisins, peanuts. A sort of trail-mix munchie. You’ll like it.” He opened a plastic container the size of a garbage can, grabbed a tin can, and began to fill a bag. “It’s healthy.”
She rolled her eyes. “Listen, pal, have you ever heard the phrase ‘you are what you eat’?”
“Yeah. I’m proud to be a chocolate marshmallow Frito.”
Hardly. Chocolate maybe, with that dark run-your-hands-through-me hair and tough-as-a-Frito shell . . . but marshmallow? When he put his arms around her, she knew without hesitation that he wasn’t a marshmallow. Still . . . he looked at her with such a sweet, lopsided grin, and here he was, getting ready to drag twenty unruly teens out on a camping trip that might change their lives. Because inside that hard and crispy exterior, he was a softie for their souls.
Okay, maybe Noah was exactly the definition of a chocolate marshmallow Frito.
She bit her lip to stifle a giggle, grabbed the pack straps, and hauled the pack up to her shoulders. “Ugh. This feels like a ten-ton boulder. You can’t be serious.”
“As a heart attack. Duluth packs are the best canoe luggage. They’re easy to handle, can be tossed into the bottom of the boat, and they’re sturdy as Sunday.” He sealed a gorp bag and set it on the worktable. “And they make you look like Happy, one of the seven dwarfs.” He winked at her.
“Oh, very funny.” She let the pack plop to the ground. “Just for the record, I feel I need to say it again. Clearly, in English.” She leaned over, trying not to let his wild grin and delightful mock exasperation rabbit-trail her words. “This trip is a Bad idea—capital b, little a, little d. Bad. Trouble lurks in the forest, Noah, and these kids are going to find it.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her close. The smell of soap and leather sweeping over her as she fell into his embrace turned her pliable. “Have a little faith, my sweet thundercloud. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”
He kissed her on the nose, and she disentangled herself before she abandoned her reputation—one that didn’t involve gossip about her and the resident, tough-and-tender camp director.
“So, I gotta know,” she said, sitting on the Duluth pack-slash-Rock of Gibraltar. “How did a Vice Lord transform into the crunchy granola Boy Scout I see before me?” She shook her head. “You seem so . . . so born for the backwoods. It hurts me to think of you hanging with the Vice Lords I knew in high school, so I’ve decided to conjure up a different life for you.”
“Oh, really?” She had his attention. “Tell me more.”
“Okay. You grew up in a cabin in the woods, not far from here, learning to fish with your dad and cook with your mom—”
“Cook?”
“I told you this is an alternate reality. Now hush.”
He rolled his eyes but smiled, his eyes twinkling dangerously.
“You ran track and played football through high school. In fact, that’s how you got your scar on your cheek. State play-offs against the Moorhead Spuds. You were decked while making the game-winning touchdown.”
“Okay, I can dig this alternate reality. How about girls? I’ll bet I was popular—”
“Oh no!” She laughed. “You were much too shy and polite. You spent all your free time chopping wood—”
“And roasting marshmallows?”
“Absolutely. In fact you won a 4-H prize for excellence in roasting.”
He nodded, like that fit perfectly into his resume.
“Then when you graduated, you went to a nice Bible college and decided to run a youth camp.”
“Now that part isn’t so far from fact.”
She shrugged. “I’m good. What can I say?”
He came close and crouched before her, his hands on her knees. “Let me finish. I start this camp. One day this beautiful, knock-my-breath-away brunette shows up with Bigfoot the dog and begs to work as a camp nurse, just to be close to me and my charisma.”
“Oh sure, back to fantasy,” she said, but her throat threatened to close at how accurate his last words were.
“Shh. This is my version. She, of course, can’t help but fall for the handsome hometown hero—”
“And they live happily ever after in Deep Haven.”
He smiled. “I like that ending.” His eyes were on hers, piercing, probing, as if the answers to some unspoken question could be found in their depths. She felt herself redden, and her heart pounded like a drumroll in her chest.
Then suddenly he broke her gaze, swallowed, and blew
out a breath. “You know how to tell a good story.” His smile turned wry. Abruptly he stood and stepped away. “I’d like to keep it.”
She somehow dug her voice out of her constricting chest. For the briefest of moments he’d reminded her of someone she’d met a year ago. A man she finally happily freed into the recesses of distant memory. It wasn’t as if the dream of meeting her split-second singing hero from the past ever held any element of reality. “Well, you haven’t really told me much about your past. . . .”
She thought he might give a puff of agreement, but a dark shadow crossed Noah’s face. His smile dimmed. He looked away, grabbed another plastic bag, began to fill it with gorp.
“Noah?” Oh no, now what had she done?
He shook his head and paused. “Anne, like I mentioned before, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” The way he said it, soft and not a little mournful, made her insides clench.
Anne hugged herself as her own omissions rammed into her brain. He might have a tattoo, a very permanent reminder of the man he’d been before salvation, but she had scars—ugly, pitiful scars that screamed out the fears she still dodged. Today. In spite of her salvation. If she hoped that Noah could ever, ever be God’s embrace around her, a flesh-and-blood embodiment of unconditional love, she would have to let him see the real Anne Lundstrom, complete with pain and heartache and gunshot wound. She swallowed a choking lump.
It was one thing to tell her story to Granny D., Katie, and Melinda. After all, they’d seen the reddened starburst on her back and the pucker of stitch marks on her abdomen while hunting for broken ribs after her fall. Then telling her story had seemed, well . . . natural. But the idea of telling Noah and bringing him into her dark yearlong floundering . . . she exhaled hard. Perhaps she could just omit it. Did he have to know everything about her? Couldn’t some things be kept private? The thought of facing the moment when her world and her faith had caved in made her shudder.
Besides, what if her scars and her story repulsed him? made her seem . . . ugly? pitiful? She fought the dark pull of shame and raised her chin.
The look on Noah’s face made her wonder if he’d been reading her mind. Horrified, guilty. A perfect mix of rejection. Anne stiffened.
“Anne, listen. Obviously you know that I haven’t been the stellar example of holiness. But there are some things about my past that are . . . buried. If I bring them into this relationship, I am afraid . . .” He tightened his jaw and ducked his head, and suddenly Anne sprang to her feet.
She wasn’t the only one hiding scars.
She hopped over the backpack and touched him on his shoulder.
Noah closed his eyes. “I don’t want to tell you.”
Anne’s heart twisted, moved by his wretched expression that so mirrored her own. Gently she rubbed the light stubble of late-afternoon whiskers. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t have to know. But if you want to tell me . . .” Whatever he had to tell her, it couldn’t be that bad, could it? “I’ll understand.” She wondered, if the roles were reversed, would he be saying the same thing to her?
“Let’s sit down.” His tight voice made her frown.
He led her to the backpack, motioned for her to sit, then sat on the floor beside her. He opened his mouth twice before the words finally emerged. “I . . . when I was in the gang, I had a friend, a good friend named Shorty Mac.” His chest rose and fell, and he didn’t look at her. “He was killed—beaten to death—by the Gangster Disciples after he and I tried to boost a car from their turf.”
She fought the horror that rose in her chest. “I’m sorry, Noah.”
He shook his head and stared at his dusty boots. “It was devastating. His mother, she . . . blamed me.” He closed his eyes. “I can still hear her screaming. Telling me I’d killed him.”
She touched his arm. His muscles were bunched, as if he were holding his emotions together.
“I um . . . well, when you join a gang, you become . . . family. Especially for a foster kid, which I was, the gang meant everything to me. I had to avenge his death.” His voice changed, as if he was reliving the moment, the rationale behind his actions. “I didn’t even think twice. I just . . . I was so angry. It fueled me like a drug.” He dug his hands into his hair. “We came up with this plan to take out the Disciples minister and his foot soldiers—”
“Take out?” she whispered.
“Kill.” His jaw clenched. “I had murder in my heart.”
Tears burned her eyes, but she said nothing.
“We . . . uh . . . snuck into their turf. It was supposed to be a drive-by, but I hid out across the street with another Vice Lord soldier. We waited until they came out on the porch and—” his voice stumbled—“well, I was young and stupid and by the grace of God no one was killed.”
“You didn’t shoot.” She heard the relief in her voice.
“Oh no,” he said harshly. “I aimed and shot. And missed.” He groaned. “I shudder every time I hear the screams of fear that filled the night.”
“But you missed.”
He raised his face. His eyes were red. “But I wanted to kill them. And that’s just as awful.”
Words left her. She knew how it felt to want to kill someone. She’d wrestled with those very emotions while her attacker’s trial filled the newspapers, every time she saw his face on the news.
“What happened?”
He looked away again, and she saw him flinch. “I froze. The Vice Lords hit the gas, and Jay-Jay, the other shooter, had to grab me, haul me into the car.”
“You got away?”
He shrugged. “No. I mean, yes, in a way. I was so shocked by what I’d done, I felt sick. But an hour later I wanted to return and finish the job . . . so I snuck back.”
“You went back?”
Noah stiffened. “Yeah. Well, the police had swarmed the place. I hadn’t made as clean a getaway as I thought. The Disciple minister saw me, and when the cops noticed me prowling the block, they picked me up. I was carrying.”
“You had a gun on you.”
He nodded. “Stupid. I know. I had five years in prison to come to that conclusion.”
He looked so utterly broken she barely stopped herself from throwing her arms around him. Instead, she took his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “So you’re an ex-con.”
The sorrow she saw on his face sent tears down her cheeks. “Amazing what God can do, isn’t it?” Anne smiled when she said it, and then, before he could protest, she leaned close and kissed him. “I would have never guessed. But thanks for trusting me.”
He blinked at her, as if in disbelief. Then he smiled, small and tentative. It made her want to sing. Yes, Noah was exactly the hero she’d asked God for . . . vulnerable and gentle, wounded, yes, but healed. And noble. So noble he’d wanted to spare her the darkest parts of himself.
He put his arms around her and drew her down to the floor next to him. She could feel his heart beating as quickly as hers. He slowly tangled his hand into her hair and leaned his chin on the top of her head. “Never once, as I was doing time, did I imagine this life God had for me. I always thought I’d be nothing more than a street punk, surviving from job to job, hoping to live till my twenty-first birthday. But God has given me this, you—” his voice grew thick—“I know I don’t deserve it.”
Anne didn’t comment. She’d asked God for one thing—safety. Sitting within Noah’s embrace, she knew He’d answered. Not only had He given her this haven of rest but also a man to hold her. A man to keep her safe. A man to make her forget her past and offer her a future.
So what did that mean? That she’d solved an argument with the Almighty? Where were You, God? Had He simply bypassed her questions and moved on to healing?
Perhaps. Perhaps her battles were behind her, and peace was ahead. It didn’t seem like enough to simply ignore her ugly history and go forward, but maybe that was exactly how she’d find joy in her faith. Not dwelling on the absence of God in the past, but His obvious pres
ence now. Loving her through the tender, miraculous touch of Noah Standing Bear.
Noah lifted her chin with one gentle finger. A smile, full and joyous, graced his face and lit his gorgeous eyes. “I knew as soon as God got ahold of my heart that I had to spend my life telling the kids on the street about salvation. This camp is a small part of that vision.”
Just sitting near him, seeing the joy of his salvation, made her tingle. Yes, this was the man she’d waited for. A man with a heart, with passion, with a desire to love the lost. She could see herself with him, running this camp. Tucked safely in this nook in the woods, creating a world away from the inner city, a place where kids could escape for the summer. She bought into his dream without him even selling it.
Perhaps she didn’t need to make peace with God over her tragedies in order to enjoy His blessings. She could simply skip over the sordid, painful details and start now.
Wasn’t that exactly why she’d moved to Deep Haven?
“Do you have bigger plans? Do you want to extend the camp, make it year-round?” The thought of cozying up beside him in the lodge before a flickering fire while snow blanketed the lake and pushed drifts against the windowpanes made her warm to her toes. No past . . . only tomorrows. Yes.
“Oh yes, Anne. This is just the beginning. When I take these kids home, I’ll be able to walk with them, to encourage them toward the commitments they made here at camp. I’ll know them, and I’ll stand in the gap between their street life and their new life.”
Anne blinked at him. “Um . . .” An uneasy feeling rippled down her spine.
He touched her cheek with his fingertips, and they felt cool against her warm face. “You have a way with the girls. They like you. They respect you.”
She stiffened, pulled away. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. What exactly are you saying?”
His eyes darkened, shadowed by a frown. “I want you to come with me. Work beside me. You’d be great at the job.”
She held up her hand as if to stop the flow of words, the way he was looking at her with such bewilderment. Dread wrapped cold fingers around her chest. “Come with you where?”
Deep Haven [02] Tying the Knot Page 21