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Adam was nowhere to be seen.
Jacob’s heart gave one slow, painful thump, then revved into high gear. He crossed the room in two strides and batted the fluttering curtains aside to scan the damp parking lot. Sure enough, a bumper-sticker-encrusted Jeep that he’d noticed earlier had vanished, replaced by a rectangle of dry pavement.
Oh brother. This was bad.
Really, really bad.
The ceremony was due to start in exactly eight minutes, and Elvis had left the building.
He’d never had anybody actually bolt from a wedding before. This was uncharted territory.
Oh, he’d dealt with panicky grooms plenty of times. What minister hadn’t? That was why, when the first words out of Adam Larkey’s mouth had been “I don’t think I can do this, bro,” Jacob hadn’t taken it all that seriously.
Apparently, he should have.
He hadn’t believed for a minute that Larkey was serious about skipping out. Grooms never were, not really.
And there was no way Jacob could’ve suspected that this guy would be the world’s one exception because Jacob had never met either member of this wedding party before.
In fact, he still hadn’t laid eyes on the bride. He’d skidded into the church only a scant half hour before the wedding was scheduled to start. Since then he’d been so busy coping with Adam and Arlene that he hadn’t had time to speak with the bride.
Well, he was definitely going to have to go talk to her now. He checked his watch again and winced. Zero hour.
There was no way around it. He had to go tell some poor woman that her fiancé had just climbed out of a window rather than marry her.
This was not going to be fun.
Jacob threaded his way back through the narrow halls toward the bride’s dressing room, racking his brain for the best way to break the news. Unfortunately, Good Shepherd Church wasn’t much bigger than his own, and he was standing outside the door before he came up with anything useful.
He spread his hand flat against the wood of the door and bowed his head. Please, Lord. Help me to find the best words to explain this mess. Help this woman, whoever she is, to handle what I’m about to tell her with the kind of grace and peace only You can give. Carry her through this disappointment, Father, and heal her heart. Amen.
As if on cue, the door opened a crack, and Jacob found himself looking down into a woman’s wide brown eyes.
“Is it time?”
Her voice wobbled as she tucked loosened strands of maple-sugar hair back into a softly coiled bun. She wore no veil, and Jacob had seen enough brides to know that the simple hairdo and light makeup were her own work. Not surprising, since this was supposed to be a no-frills wedding.
He forced a smile and extended his hand through the cracked door. “I’m Pastor Jacob Stone from Pine Valley Community Church. I’m pinch-hitting for Pastor Michaelson today.”
“Oh! It’s nice to meet you.” The woman accepted his hand, her fingers icy in his. “I’m Natalie Davis. Are you ready for me now?”
“Not exactly. There’s been a small...uh...glitch.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he cringed. A small glitch?
“Another one?” Natalie laughed nervously. “First my car wouldn’t start, then the minister gets sick and now this. I’m starting to wonder if this wedding is even going to happen today.”
“May I come in? We need to talk.”
The bride’s creamy skin went a shade paler. “All right. Come on in and have a seat.” Pulling the door open wide, she turned sideways, making room for him to enter.
Jacob didn’t budge. For the second time that afternoon, he found himself frozen on a threshold with no clue what to do next.
He’d thought this wedding couldn’t get any more complicated. He’d been wrong.
In the back of his bewildered mind at least a hundred alarm bells were going off at once. He had no idea what to say. In fact, at that moment, he knew only three things for certain.
First, there was no way he was making it to that meeting. Arlene would just have to cope with Digby and the board on her own.
And second, he should definitely have taken Adam Larkey’s prewedding freak-out a whole lot more seriously.
Because the third thing he knew for sure was—that wasn’t a bridal gown Natalie Davis was wearing.
It was a maternity dress.
“You’re pregnant?” He didn’t know why he made it sound like a question. With a baby bump of that size, there was absolutely no doubt about it.
* * *
Natalie’s cheeks were stinging so hard that she knew they must be as red as apples, but she forced a little laugh. “Eight months and counting. Please. Come on in”
She made her way back to the worn armchair, her Bible lying open on its seat. A few more minutes and one short ceremony and she could get out of this church and stop blushing every time somebody mentioned her pregnancy. She wasn’t sure which of those two things she was looking forward to more.
It was hard being a new Christian when your past mistakes were so obvious.
She picked up the book and lowered herself gingerly back into the chair. She was glad she’d brought her Bible with her. Changing into her nicest maternity dress hadn’t taken very long, and as the hour of her wedding approached, she’d grown more and more nervous.
She’d seen the quick, sidelong glances as she’d hurried down the hallway to this room. It certainly wasn’t the first time church ladies had looked down their noses at her, but today, with her nerves already jumping, it was all a little too much. So she’d turned to the Psalms, hoping to find some peace.
The Bible was still pretty unfamiliar territory, but whispering the calming verses aloud had helped her settle down. Unfortunately, the serious look on this handsome minister’s face was stirring all her butterflies right back up again.
He lingered in the doorway for a second. When he finally did come over to claim the empty chair, his leg brushed hers and she caught a whiff of spicy, masculine soap. She scooted a little farther away, wishing their seats weren’t quite so close together.
This man sure didn’t look like any preacher she’d ever seen before. He was way too good-looking, for one thing. As if being born with golden hair and sea-blue eyes wasn’t enough, he also sported a strong square chin and broad, quarterback shoulders.
He was watching her silently, drumming his fingers on his knees.
“You look like you’ve had the wind knocked out of you, Pastor. I’m guessing nobody told you about my...condition?”
The minister cleared his throat. “No, I’m afraid not.”
Not this again. Old Pastor Michaelson had only agreed to marry them after a long and embarrassing lecture. She wasn’t sure she could take another one of those, not right now. “Do you have a problem performing the ceremony? Because I’m pregnant, I mean?”
This was exactly why she’d lobbied for a courthouse wedding. She’d been getting this kind of reaction from people ever since the day she’d had to change into maternity clothes. If she hadn’t needed her new faith so desperately, she might have given up on religion altogether.
As it was, she’d just given up on churches.
But this man immediately shook his head.
“No! Not at all.” The denial came out with such force that Natalie actually believed him. “Sorry, it’s just...there’s no easy way to say this.” The minister took a deep breath and looked at her directly. She braced herself.
“What?”
“Adam has had some...uh...second thoughts.”
“Second thoughts?” Natalie blinked. That was the reason for all this?
She’d had a few second thoughts of her own. But in the end she always came back to the same hard truth.
Marrying Adam was the right thing to do.
“But isn’t that pretty normal?” she asked. Especially for a man who’d basically been strong-armed by his grandmother into getting married in the first place.
She kept that last bit to herself. There was no need for everybody to know that the father of her baby had needed an awful lot of convincing to marry her. This situation was already humiliating enough.
“It’s totally normal, but I’m afraid this is more serious than an ordinary case of cold feet.” He paused. “I’m so sorry.”
Natalie’s heart fell. He was so sorry. That could only mean one thing.
The wedding was off.
She could feel him watching her, obviously braced for some kind of explosion. Well, he was wasting his time. She was way too exhausted for anything like that.
Instead, she just blinked at the burgundy carpet, her still-new Bible pressed against the bulge of her pregnant tummy, her brain struggling to catch up.
Could this really be happening? After all the praying, all the planning... Adam was dumping her here at the last possible minute? Seriously?
What on earth was she going to do now?
“Natalie? Could I go out to the sanctuary and get somebody for you? Your mom? A sister, maybe?”
She brought her gaze back to his face. “No,” she managed. “There’s nobody. I don’t actually...have much family.”
The worry in his eyes morphed into a compassion so warm that she had to fight a crazy urge to bury her face in his shoulder and sob.
“I understand,” he said. “Well, in that case, Natalie, I—”
He was interrupted by a knock on the door. A blonde woman who’d introduced herself to Natalie earlier as the church pianist poked her head in the room, her eyes wide. “There you are, Pastor Stone! I’m so sorry to interrupt, but there’s a lady out here who really wants a word with you.”
“Step aside, please.” Natalie winced as she recognized the voice booming from the hallway. She really didn’t feel up to coping with Adam’s grandmother right now.
Cora Larkey pushed herself into the small room, the stiff veil on her lime-green hat trembling. Her entire outfit was the same shade, and she had the white rose corsage Natalie had given her earlier pinned to her substantial bosom.
“This wedding was supposed to start a half hour ago. What’s going on?” Cora’s blue eyes flittered between Natalie and the minister. “Where’s my grandson? And who on earth are you?”
The last question was directed at Jacob Stone, who cast a quick, concerned glance at Natalie before rising from his seat. He introduced himself to the elderly lady and ushered her into the chair he’d just vacated.
Natalie wished he hadn’t. As Cora sank down, a dense cloud of her expensive perfume replaced the light scent of his soap, making Natalie feel faintly queasy.
The minister unfolded a metal chair that had been leaning against one wall and sat down across from them. Natalie listened tensely as he repeated his news to Cora, adding some details that made Natalie cringe. Now she was the one bracing for an explosion. She knew from personal experience that Adam’s grandmother didn’t take bad news well.
“He did what?” Sure enough, Cora started spluttering in the middle of the explanation. “That aggravating boy! Of course,” she added quickly, darting an alarmed look at the minister’s face, “he’s young. He’ll come around and do the right thing eventually, I’m sure. But this is quite...difficult.” Her small eyes flickered back over to Natalie. “Could I have a moment alone with the bride, Pastor? The two of us need to talk privately.”
“Of course.” The minister stood. Judging by that relieved look on his face, Adam wasn’t the only man who wanted to run away from her today. “I’ll be just outside if you need me.”
As soon as he’d closed the door, the older woman shifted in her chair and pointed a finger at Natalie. “I should have known the two of you would pull something like this. Well, it won’t work. I made myself very clear. You’re not getting any help from me until you’re decently married.”
“I had nothing to do with this!”
“You expect me to believe that? You never wanted to have this wedding in a church. You made that very plain.”
“I just thought a civil ceremony would be less stressful for everybody, and more appropriate, given the...circumstances. That’s all.”
“The Larkeys do not marry in courthouses. And the circumstances you find yourself in are your own fault.”
“Not only mine.”
Cora made an impatient noise. “Of course not. And that’s why we’re here. So that Adam can do the responsible thing for once in his life. I should never have left him alone. I should have been watching him like a hawk.”
“But I never wanted to force Adam into this. If he really doesn’t want to get married...” Natalie trailed off. She had no idea what to say next.
She’d truly believed that this wedding was God’s answer to her prayers. When Cora had talked Adam into proposing, Natalie had set her own doubts aside, gathered up her fragile faith and put all her eggs in one shaky basket.
And now that basket had climbed out the church window and left her to deal with his grandmother.
Sometimes, Natalie reflected, life was just not fair.
“Don’t be silly,” Cora was saying. “Of course Adam doesn’t want to get married, but what choice does he have now? You certainly can’t take proper care of that baby on your own. You have no education, no job, no family worth talking about.”
“I had a job up until last week. I only quit it because I was moving here.”
“Waitressing at that tacky little diner? That hardly counts. And no great-grandchild of mine is going to be brought up in an Atlanta housing project, I’ll tell you that.”
Natalie pressed her lips together tightly and said nothing. There was nothing to say. On that one point, she and Cora were in total agreement.
“Adam has to go through with this marriage, for that innocent baby’s sake,” Cora continued. “Although goodness knows, I don’t see what else I can do. That boy has hoodwinked me for the last time. I’ve already told him, unless he does the proper thing, he’ll not see another cent from me. And believe you me, I meant it.”
“I know you did.” Adam had known it, too, which was why he’d suddenly resurfaced after months of dodging her phone calls and texts. It was humiliating to know that it took the prospect of losing his grandmother’s money to get Adam to propose. But when you were buying your maternity clothes at thrift stores and could barely afford even the small co-pays for the local public health clinic, pride was a little out of your price range.
Even so, Natalie hadn’t much liked the idea of a shotgun wedding, but she’d wavered when Cora had discussed setting up a college fund for the baby. Then Cora had mentioned giving them her late husband’s hobby farm to live on.
The promise of the farm had finally done it. Natalie had looked around her shabby apartment, awash with flashing lights from the police car parked outside her building for the third time that week. She’d imagined her son roaming the housing project with the other children of the overworked mothers, most of them single like her.
She’d known exactly where that path could lead. Just last week she’d tried to comfort a neighbor whose fourteen-year-old son had been arrested for selling drugs. The neighbor wasn’t a bad mother. She just wasn’t a match for the bad influences that lurked on every trash-littered corner of this neighborhood.
If Natalie stayed, one day her child could be the one in trouble. She couldn’t let that happen, and she couldn’t get out of there on her own.
Not soon enough, anyway.
Cora was right, Natalie had decided. The best thing to do was marry Adam and make it work somehow. Their baby was all that mattered.
