The Love of Her Life: A Christian Romance (The Callaghans & McFaddens Book 3)

by Kimberly Rae Jordan

  Gabe xoxo

  Maya lowered the card and stared at the flowers again. Her first flowers from a man. Her first card from a man. Well, her dad had given her flowers on a few occasions and a card to go with them, but that was totally different from something like this. These were given without any reason other than the fact that Gabe liked her and wanted to give her something to show that. She had all the money she’d ever need and the ability to buy herself anything she wanted, but at that moment, none of that compared to how she felt about a simple card and a bouquet of flowers. Definitely priceless.

  “I see you found Gabe’s gift.”

  Maya turned to see Makayla standing just outside her office, her arms crossed and a smile on her face. “Yes, I did. How on earth did he arrange this with the holiday and everything?”

  Makayla moved to the front of the desk and looked down at the flowers. “He picked up the bouquet on New Year’s Eve since the stores were still open and then my mom made sure to keep it cool until this morning when I brought it in with me. Now when he bought the card, I have no idea.”

  Maya grinned. “This is such a beautiful surprise. A shock really. Thank you for your part in getting them here.”

  “Well, now that I’ve got a man of my own, I’m all about helping out romance where I can.” Her smile faded into a frown as her gaze went to the hallway leading back to the offices. “Wish there was something I could do for Bennett and Grace. I love them both so much, but it is hard to see Bennett hurting because Grace won’t acknowledge the feelings between them.”

  “Do you think Grace really does love Bennett?” Maya had heard bits and pieces of their story over the time since she’d started working at C&M, but she had no idea if it was really a case of unrequited love on Bennett’s part or if Grace did love him in return but chose not to be with him for some reason.

  “Has she ever said the words? No,” Makayla said. “I think her crazy belief that everyone she loves and lets into her life will die on her is what’s keeping her from letting herself get close to Bennett. In the past few months, she’s been relying on him a lot, and they’ve grown close. I don’t think she even realized how often she talked about him, or how her eyes lit up when she did. He was also the one she called when her labor started. They need each other. Bennett has realized it, but Grace is living in fear and denial. Never a good way to live life.”

  Maya thought about her mom and the way she had been so overprotective of Maya for so long. She knew fear was her mom’s motivation as well, and Maya had lived that way too, but she was trying her best to move past that. So far, she felt like she was successful in her efforts.

  “Anyway,” Makayla said, her smile coming back, “I was happy to give Gabe a hand.”

  “Thank you again. This is amazing.”

  The office phone rang, and when Maya answered it, Makayla gave her a quick wave and headed back to her office. Mitch and Tristan walked in a short time later, and the business day was underway. It was surprisingly busy considering a lot of businesses were still in holiday mode, but each time she glanced at the bouquet, she couldn’t help but smile.

  Maya wasn’t sure if Gabe had access to text messaging while he was in Thailand, but she went ahead and sent a message to thank him for the flowers. Nothing came back from him right away, so Maya set aside her phone and focused instead on work. It wasn’t until around seven that night that she received a message from him.

  Gabe: I’m so glad you liked them!

  Maya smiled and quickly tapped out a response. They are beautiful. Definitely brightens up my room!

  Gabe: Just the way you do!

  She shook her head at his comment. Never had Maya felt like she was the “light up the room” type of girl. In fact, her parents had worked hard to make sure that she wasn’t the center of attention. It wasn’t until later in her teens that she’d understood why she and her parents had different last names. Her dad had done that to create some distance between them as a precaution against kidnapping attempts. She hadn’t realized how much her dad had hidden her connection to him until she’d googled herself and found nothing. And when she’d googled her dad, there was mention of her mom but nothing about Maya.

  So to be told that she brightened up a room was something new and a bit unbelievable.

  How is Thailand?

  Gabe: Hot! And wet! But we’re heading out to the Mahawangchang Elephant Camp to go on an elephant trek.

  That didn’t sound too dangerous. In fact, Maya thought that perhaps she might like to try that herself some day. Maybe people were exaggerating his need for dangerous adventure.

  Hope you have fun! Say hi to Dumbo for me.

  Gabe: LOL I will! Check out my FB page for pics and vids.: D

  I will.

  Gabe: Guess I better run. The day starts early here, and I want some breakfast before we start out. Take care of yourself. <3

  Maya stared at the heart at the end of the text before tapping out her reply. You take care of yourself too. Stay safe.

  Gabe: Will do!

  Maya let out a long breath, sort of relieved that Gabe’s leaving didn’t mean losing all contact with him. She was still incredibly confused by how she felt about Gabe. The differences in how they lived their lives seemed almost insurmountable. She didn’t expect him to change his life for her, but Maya wasn’t sure that she could be in a relationship with someone who traveled as much as Gabe did. Her dad traveled a lot less than Gabe did, and still, she and her mom missed him tons. She couldn’t imagine being with someone who was gone even more. And then there was the matter of what he did while he was away. The danger he placed his life in on a regular basis.

  Then she’d shown up at work and seen that bouquet, and she’d been ready to chuck all her reservations out the window. Maya turned her head and looked at the floral arrangement that sat on her desk. She’d managed to sneak it into the house when she’d arrived home from work earlier. Makayla had helped her cover it all up so that the frigid temperatures couldn’t nip at the delicate blooms. Now it was safe in the warmth of her room where she could enjoy it for as long as it would last.

  The sound of an incoming Skype call had Maya rolling off her bed and heading for her desk. Since there was only one person who ever contacted her that way, she leaned over and accepted the call even before sitting down in her chair.

  “Hey, Lainie!” Maya said with a big smile. “Happy New Year!”

  “Happy New Year, sugar,” Lainie said as she appeared on the screen. Her blonde hair was piled in a messy knot on the top of her head, and she looked happy and relaxed as she stared into the camera.

  “How was your New Year’s Eve?” Maya asked. They hadn’t connected much over the holiday, partly because Maya hadn’t wanted to explain why she was on a private jet or, later, in an opulent hotel in New York City. “How was your party?”

  “Oh, girl, it was incredible,” Lainie said. “As it turned out, my cousins brought some of their friends who didn’t have anywhere else to go. I met someone!”

  “You did?” Maya leaned forward, staring at the excitement on her friend’s face. “Tell me all about him.”

  “His name is Stewart, and he’s a resident at the hospital with my cousin, Darcy. We spent the whole time just talking about life, and even when I would leave to get something to eat or drink, he’d search me out again.”

  “Oh, hun, I’m so glad you found someone you connected with,” Maya said, meaning every word since she had a new understanding of what that could really mean for someone.

  “And that’s not the best part,” Lainie said. Her friend seemed to be practically bouncing in her seat. “The best part of it is that he already knows all about my history with cancer. Darcy has known him for a couple of years and talked to him about me early on in their friendship. She told me after the party that he knew exactly who I was. He knew who I was and still wanted to spend time with me. It was amazing!”

  “I’m so happy for you, sweetie. I know that was something tha
t you were worried about.”

  Lainie let out an audible breath. “I honestly didn’t think I’d find someone who would be willing to take a chance on me given my past and the risk in my future. And even though I never thought I’d be interested in someone in the medical community, I can see a benefit since he would understand things more than the average person. You know how people can be when they hear the word cancer.”

  “Yeah, a doctor would understand what remission is and what it means.” Maya wondered once again how Gabe might react to the word. Would she ever find out? “Are you going to be seeing him again?”

  “Yes! I thought maybe I’d imagined things, but he texted me just a few minutes ago to ask if we could meet up for coffee on the weekend.” Lainie squealed and clapped her hands. “I told him yes, so we’re going to be going out on Saturday afternoon.”

  “That’s so great!” Maya was genuinely happy for Lainie given the heartache she’d experienced in her past attempts at a relationship. She really hoped that she wasn’t going to have to endure similar heartaches before finding someone she could spend her life with. If that was even part of what was in her future.

  After they had talked about Lainie’s new guy a bit more, she asked about Gabe and how Maya’s New Year’s had been. Maya took advantage of the opportunity to spill her most recent feelings about him, and then she showed Lainie the bouquet.

  “That is seriously beautiful! And the card too,” Lainie said with a grin. “Gotta love a guy who gives a girl flowers.”

  “Yeah,” Maya agreed with a sigh. “But I’m not sure that’s a good thing for me. I have no idea how our lives would mesh. He’s been after me to get on social media.”

  “Do it! I’ve told you for awhile now you should get a Facebook account at the very least.” Lainie paused then leaned forward a bit. “Can you send me his social media information? I won’t try and friend him or anything, but I’d like to see what’s public anyway.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that.” Maya picked up her phone and found the message that Gabe had sent her with the links. She took a minute to copy and paste it into a message for Lainie and then sent it off. “I haven’t had much chance to look at it. Truthfully, I’m a little scared to.”

  Lainie scrunched up her nose as the alert on her phone went. “Scared? Why?”

  “There have just been some comments made, and after watching him on the climbing wall, I realized that he’s much more into dangerous adventures than I’d realized. I guess I don’t really want to watch his stuff and see my fears confirmed, especially while he’s on this trip to Thailand.”

  “Do you want me to check it out for you and let you know,” Lainie offered.

  Maya considered her offer then said, “No. I think I’ll have to watch it for myself and make a decision.”

  “If you change your mind, you know I’ll do that for you.”

  Maya did know that. She and Lainie had been there for each other for so many things—well, as much as they could be when they lived so far apart. Maybe one of these days she’d fly to meet her. It felt like the strings her mother had held around her life were finally loosening. Or maybe the knife she’d been using to try to cut through them was finally fraying the ropes. Either way, she was just glad that things were changing for the positive in her life.

  They talked for a bit longer before Lainie had to go. Maya went down to the kitchen and got herself a cup of tea then went back upstairs to take a bath before bed. While in the tub, she used her phone to make a Facebook account and then found Gabe’s. She went ahead and sent him a friend request even though she wasn’t one hundred percent sure whether she wanted to follow his trip through his pictures and videos just yet.

  Throughout the next week, Maya received a few texts from Gabe, but there was no regular schedule for when they would come through. She was still on the fence about her future with Gabe. She’d look at the card or the bouquet that was still looking beautiful on her desk at home and would feel like she could happily spend the rest of her life with the man. But then she’d remember that his texts were coming from Thailand, where riding an elephant was probably the mildest adventure he was going to experience, and she’d feel as if there was no way they could make their lives mesh.

  Saturday was the first day that she hadn’t received any sort of text from Gabe. When, by Sunday night, she still hadn’t gotten anything from him, worry began to flourish within her. Horrible scenarios began to filter into her mind. Though she knew she shouldn’t do it, Maya sat down at her laptop and pulled up the message Gabe had sent her with links in it and clicked on the one to his YouTube channel.

  Maya had spent a lot of time on the website over the years, since, for a long time, it was her way of connecting with people’s lives virtually when she couldn’t do it in real life. Watching people’s vlogs of their everyday lives had always been a huge fascination for her. She had never watched anything like Gabe’s though.

  The first one she watched was of him in a shark cage from a few years earlier. It was among the first he’d done. He was holding up what she assumed was a waterproof camera, showing the shark that was headed straight for the cage. Maya stared in shock as the cage shook with the impact of the shark hitting it. As the shark moved away, Gabe swung the camera toward his face, and through the mask he wore, she could see the familiar crinkling of his eyes as he reacted to the attack. Even without being able to see his mouth, Maya could tell that he was beyond excited about what was happening.

  And the footage that followed the cage dive, when he was back on the boat, confirmed it. His hair dripped water down his tanned skin as his smile reached from ear to ear, his blue eyes sparkling with excitement. It was a look she became acutely familiar with as she continued to work her way forward through his videos. Some of the adventures were fairly mild—at least by Gabe’s standards—but most were things a normal person wouldn’t even consider trying. He seemed to intersperse his more dramatic adventures with milder ones, but still, there was a disturbing pattern that Maya couldn’t ignore.

  It wasn’t until she reached a video labeled VOLCANO BOARDING-FAIL that she finally paused. For some reason, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it. The unease that was already present in the pit of her stomach grew as she considered what the video might show. Obviously not his death since Gabe was walking around alive and well—at least as of the last time she’d heard from him.

  She glanced at the clock on her desktop monitor. 12:15 AM. She’d spent the last four hours watching the videos on Gabe’s channel. She had to be up for work in less than seven hours, and she still had one more to watch. Or did she?

  Maya read the title once more, wishing it was clickbait, but given that Gabe hadn’t seemed to be in the habit of doing that for other videos, she doubted he’d done it for this one. She reached out and clicked the mouse to start the video.

  It started out like most his videos did, with an explanation of where he was and what he was doing. There were others with him, just like in his previous videos, some of them even looked familiar to her now. She was beginning to see that he traveled with a lot of the same people. These were the people who—like Gabe—lived for the adrenalin rush only the most dangerous activities could bring.

  “I’m here in Leon, Nicaragua with Matt, Eric, Alex, Jill, Nathan, and Sue. If you’ve been following my vlogs, you’ve been able to see a bit of this beautiful country as we’ve traveled around. I figured that what we’re going to do today deserves a vlog all of its own. We’ve done a few crazy things in our time, but this is a new one for us.” Gabe paused to turn the camera away from him to face the view. Out in the distance, a mountain rose high and dark. “This is Cerro Negro which means Black Hill. It’s an active volcano—the youngest in Central America at the age of one hundred sixty-seven years old—but its last eruption was in 1999. We are going to be climbing to the peak, and then we’ll be heading back down on what is basically a short wooden board.”

  The group joked around for a bit, each talking
about what they were looking forward to in the day’s adventure.

  “Well, I can tell you what I’m not necessarily looking forward to,” Jill said. “The walk up to the top and then trying to not get blown away.”

  “Just remember how they said to hold your board, and you should be good,” Gabe said. “But if you start to feel like the wind is going to carry you away, just grab onto Eric. You know he’s the one with the lead foot.”

  “Hardy. Har. Har.” A tall, dark-haired man scowled as he crossed his arms. “A couple of speeding tickets and suddenly I’m the butt of all the jokes.”

  “Well, you can enjoy your need for speed today,” Gabe said as he focused his camera on the volcano once again. “It’s going to take about forty-five minutes or so for us to walk up it. And once we get to the top…” He turned the camera back on himself and grinned. “The adventure begins.”

  Up a live volcano? Just so they could slide down the side of it? That wasn’t Maya’s idea of adventure. That was plain foolishness.

  As she watched, the video went into about a five-minute sped-up time lapse as they made their way up the volcano. Every once in awhile, it would return to regular speed, and Gabe would ask someone a question about their hike before going back to the time-lapse speed. As the climb progressed, Maya could see the wind picking up, and the two girls were struggling against it.

  When they got to the top, the time lapse slowed to normal speed, and Gabe panned around where he stood. He showed Eric down on one knee feeling the ground around the edge of the volcano, expressing how it was hot to the touch.

  Again, Maya just shook her head at why someone would want to be that close to an active volcano. Gabe turned around and then slung his arm around the shoulders of one of the girls—Jill—and held his camera out, so they were both in the frame.

  “Still got both feet on the ground, I see, Jilly.” Gabe grinned down at her. “Hanging in there?”

  Jill looked up at him and returned his smile, and Maya saw something there that made her frown. The woman was looking at Gabe with clear adoration on her face. Had the two of them dated? Her name sounded familiar. Maya paused the video and went to Gabe’s Facebook page and the post he’d made before leaving for Thailand. That had been the only post she’d read so far.