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The Prodigal's Return
Lynn Bulock
HOMEWARD BOUNDLaurel Harrison longed to return to Missouri, and when her sheriff father fell ill it seemed to Laurel to be a message from above telling her to leave California behind. And she hoped that by moving back she would finally find a home for her restless heart….Deputy Tripp Jordan was trying the best he could to fill in for the town sheriff. But under the watchful eye of the sheriff's daughter his every move was challenged. He soon found himself looking for the faith he'd let go of long ago and praying Laurel would realize her heart belonged in Missouri–with him!
“Do you want to pray about this, Tripp?”
It wasn’t what Laurel intended to ask, but it just popped out.
“Not really. I’m sure God has better things to do than to handle my petty problems. Especially when I’m capable of handling them all by myself.”
“Oh, right. Your idea of handling this is rushing off to St. Louis, locking Ashleigh in a tower like Rapunzel.”
“Put that way, it does sound a bit rough. But she’s my little girl.”
“And she needs reminding of that. Gently, from a loving father. Do you want company?”
“Maybe I do. I’m out of my depth here. Maybe you can stop me from saying anything I’ll regret.”
“I can try. But I won’t make any promises. I’ve already seen you in action, Sheriff Jordan, and I can’t imagine you’re easy to stop in any situation.”
He tipped his hat up with one finger. “Some day we’ll have to test that theory.”
LYNN BULOCK
lives in Thousand Oaks, California, with her husband and two sons, a dog and a cat. She has been telling stories since she could talk and writing them down since fourth grade. She is the author of nine contemporary romance novels.
The Prodigal’s Return
Lynn Bulock
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 4:6–7
To Joe, always,
and
To my “other mother,” Louise Bulock:
I don’t think I could have
done this one without you.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Letter to Reader
Chapter One
“Ring, already,” Laurel Harrison told her silent phone. It was only nine in the morning in her cheery yellow kitchen in California, but that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that it was already eleven in Missouri. This was the information age, wasn’t it? So where was her information? She wanted the news from home and she wanted it now. Or maybe even ten minutes ago. That fit with her L.A. lifestyle.
She took a sip of coffee and made a face no one saw. Her latte had gotten cold. She’d already stuck it in the microwave once, so that wasn’t an option. She stood in the middle of her beautiful kitchen and tapped one foot, thinking.
Going to the freezer in the built-in, side-by-side refrigerator, she found the bag of coffee ice cubes. She knew without even wondering that no one else in her family kept ice cubes made of decaf espresso in the freezer. It just wasn’t the kind of thing one did in Missouri. And right this moment it seemed a little odd to her, too.
Shrugging off her discomfort, she took the bag of ice cubes over to the mini-bar between the family room and kitchen. Other houses in the neighborhood had a full-fledged wine bar there, or a cocktail island. Laurel had a coffee bar to rival those of the professionals. She poured her cooling drink and a generous portion of the ice cubes into the blender, put on the lid, and turned the appliance on.
As she poured the frozen concoction out of the blender a moment later, she looked up at the framed poster over the mini-bar. It was from the theater release of what had been Sam’s last movie. Somehow it seemed fitting that she needed to dust the glass.
“This just isn’t home anymore, Sam,” she said softly. Not for her, anyway. When Sam was alive this had been home. This morning it didn’t feel like anything but a house. Her elegant surroundings looked almost foreign to her.
A wave of desire to go home, really home, to Friedens, Missouri, washed over her. Granted, it hadn’t been home in almost seventeen years. But without Sam, Southern California didn’t feel like where she belonged anymore.
If Jeremy walked in on her while she was in this mood, he’d groan. They’d already had this discussion a few times in the past year, and each time Laurel’s feelings got stronger. Without Sam here, California didn’t feel like the place to raise a teenager. But Jeremy’s main argument against the move was that they probably didn’t even have skateboards in Missouri.
Not that she could argue with him much. They hadn’t seen many skateboards when they’d gone back to Friedens for her dad’s wedding. Was that really only six weeks ago? Laurel marveled at how her life had changed again in that amount of time.
When she’d gone back to California after the wedding, she’d managed to convince herself that maybe she did belong here, after all. Maybe Jeremy’s argument that he should go to high school here, with his friends at Westlake, made sense, and she could postpone moving until he was in college.
Instead, God trailed his fingers through her well-ordered life and stirred things up. In the course of half a day, her new direction was clear and obvious. Did the Holy Spirit make person-to-person telephone calls? Until this week, Laurel would have said no. Now she was pretty confident the answer was yes.
Deciding to do something practical while she waited for the phone to ring, Laurel got a clean cotton towel from the kitchen and dusted the poster frame and glass. The small date down in the corner, from two years earlier, still didn’t look right. It was hard to believe Sam had been gone for 18 months, too sick to work on screenplays for half a year before that.
If she needed a reminder, there was his computer. It sat silent these days, except for Jeremy’s e-mail and video games. She and Jeremy were the lone occupants of this house that was far too big and grand for just the two of them.
Usually mornings found her sitting at the breakfast bar making lists over a cup of coffee. Her silly coffee was her one indulgence. She wanted a really good cup of coffee to start the day, and Sam had always made sure she had one. Now it was up to her, along with everything else. And with each passing moment she grew more convinced as the adult in charge that “home” didn’t need to be Southern California.
When the phone rang she dropped her towel in surprise, even though she’d been waiting for it, listening for it, for over an hour. Her fingers hesitated over the handset of the cordless phone. Answering it would end her suspense, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that.
She should have flown to St. Louis to be in Friedens for her father’s surgery. But nobody won an argument with Hank Collins, even when he was arguing from a hospital bed, so in the end she sat in California and waited for the call. Everyone had assured her that her dad would be even more upset if she came all the way home again so soon after her trip to his wedding.
So here she was, in a standoff with her own telephone. It rang again. No sense in assuming that it was Claire. It could be anybody. She picked it up. “Hello.”
“It’s me.” The sound of her sister’s voice made Laurel search for her chair with her free hand behind her. She suddenly felt too weak to stand and listen to the news. Not that there was anything in Claire’s tone that said the news was going to be bad. It was just that hearing her voice made Laurel realize just how long she’d been waiting, almost holding her breath.
“Tell me it all went fine.” Her slightly panicky voice bounced off the pale yellow kitchen walls, the pristine tile and sparkling glass.
“It really did. I can’t imagine how many people were praying us through this one,” Claire said. She sounded almost as shaky as Laurel felt.
The conversation passed by in a blur, and before Laurel knew it she was holding a quiet phone in her hand again. She realized she hadn’t told Claire she’d finally made the decision to move back to Friedens. That was probably for the best. Claire would just say she was overreacting to Dad’s surgery.
Maybe she was, partly. Laurel was pretty sure this decision to move was brought on by much more than her dad’s health.
It took her a moment to realize that she needed to hang up the phone. Doing so, she breathed the first of several silent prayers of thanks that her dad was okay.
Her lanky teenager stumbled into the kitchen a moment later. “Was that Aunt Claire or Aunt Carrie?”
He pushed a shock of brown hair out of his face. Laurel could see concern in those brown eyes that looked so much like his father’s.
“It was Aunt Claire. And everything is fine. Grandpa made it through the surgery and is in recovery already.”
A smile lit up his face. Laurel treasured it. Jeremy smiling that broadly wasn’t something she saw every day. There were a lot of challenges to raising a fourteen-year-old boy alone, and one of the biggest was putting up with his adolescent moods.
Before she could give him any more details, or even a hug, the phone rang again. Jeremy picked it up, talking to the person on the other end just long enough that Laurel began to think it was one of his friends. Just when she’d turned to get herself a cool drink of water, Jeremy handed her the phone.
“It’s Grandpa Sam.”
Laurel realized that she should have called her father-in-law once she got off the phone with Claire. No one there in Friedens would have thought to tell the older gentleman how Hank’s surgery had gone, though he’d be interested.
“Hello, Mr. Sam.” Nobody aside from Jeremy called the elder Sam Harrison anything but “Mr. Sam.” “I guess you’re calling about Dad?”
Sam’s voice on the phone was gruff. “Not exactly. I hope he’s doing real well. The shorter time I have to deal with that idiot deputy he put in charge, the better.”
“Oh?” His tone told her there was a story here, and Laurel knew he didn’t need much urging to keep telling it, whatever it was. Mr. Sam was never at a loss for words.
“The fool sure isn’t the same caliber of law officer as your father. Do you know what he had the nerve to tell me this morning?” He didn’t even pause for breath to let her guess. “He said that if he caught me breaking even the slightest traffic law in Lurlene, even failure to signal a turn, he was going to take my keys. Ban me from driving within the city limits of Friedens. Can you imagine that?”
“I hardly think that’s legal.” Even when the individual in question was eighty-two and his car was an aqua vintage Cadillac that was a city block long, that didn’t strike Laurel as right. “Maybe you can lay low for a little while and he’ll forget about you.”
There was a harrumph from Mr. Sam’s end of the phone. “Maybe. You haven’t met Tripp yet, have you? He’s a pretty persistent guy. And up until today I would have said he had good sense, too.”
“Having good sense” was the older gentleman’s highest compliment. It was also one that was instantly withdrawn when someone crossed him. “Do you think a call from me would help?” Laurel asked.
“Not likely. I mean, what could you do? You’re two thousand miles away.”
“I could be a lot closer.” The words came out in a rush. “I’m really regretting not being there for my dad and my sisters. How would you feel about a houseguest for a while?”
There was a pause. “One houseguest?”
“No, you know it would be two.”
Mr. Sam cleared his throat. “As long as it would be the two of you, I think I could stand it for a while. Maybe that would keep me from tangling with Tripp again. Your father won’t be back at work for a while, will he?”
“Afraid not. Although if I know Dad, he won’t stay down a moment longer than necessary.”
“Good. Maybe if you two come out and keep me company, I can find a way to keep my car keys.” They made small talk for a few moments, and then Mr. Sam hung up, conscious that he was spending money on long distance in the middle of the day.
Each call seemed to strengthen Laurel’s resolve that going home was the right thing to do. Talking to Mr. Sam wasn’t as disturbing as getting bad news about her father, but it was close. She worried about Sam’s father, living alone in a large house, driving his huge car and getting into who-knows-how-much trouble around town. He’d been cantankerous as a younger man and hadn’t aged gracefully.
How long would Jeremy have his grandfathers around? Laurel knew she was doing him a disservice by living as far away from them as she did. Mr. Sam didn’t hold with new things like e-mail. Even when Sam had gotten his father a computer before he’d gotten terribly sick, Mr. Sam hadn’t take to the new means of communication. And though money wasn’t a problem for him in any way, he still didn’t pick up the phone and call long distance very often.
Not that her father was much better. He’d taken to the computer a little, out of necessity. Even a police department the size of Friedens’s did a lot of work on the computer these days. So naturally his new familiarity with it all spilled over into Hank’s personal life. Marrying Gloria had helped him overcome his long distance phobia a little, too. Laurel knew she’d heard from him more in the past two months than she had in previous years.
With this sudden health problem, that communication felt like a blessing. She felt secure knowing that if things went terribly wrong, she wouldn’t agonize over what she hadn’t said. She’d healed whatever wounds she had with her father many years before, and now told him she loved him at every opportunity. That was one of the many legacies Sam had left her. She wasn’t shy anymore about telling anyone close to her that she loved them. Time was too short for that.
Now that she didn’t have to sit around and wait on a phone call, Laurel got busy around the house. Today she was especially glad she’d never given in to Sam’s argument that they needed household help. Even when Sam had been well and working from home, there wasn’t much to clean up after three people. Most days about an hour took care of all the housework she needed to do. Another hour spent doing laundry, and maybe as much time running errands left her with a lot of time on her hands.
She liked being home where Jeremy could find her when he needed her. That was becoming less frequent every day, of course. Independent teenage boys wouldn’t admit they needed a mother for anything less than broken bones, dramatic blood flow or money. Fortunately the traumatic two out of the three weren’t a daily occurrence, even with Jeremy’s wild skateboarding.
An hour later Laurel was out of chores. She didn’t plan to leave the house to run errands today, just in case Claire or Carrie called back. She was still full of nervous energy, and searching for a way to tell Jeremy that his summer was going to be far different from what he’d planned.
Maybe she’d go into the storage room and sort things out to decide what suitcases they’d need for an extended visit to Friedens. She wanted to look at all of them, including some that hadn’t gotten a workout since Sam’s days on location, when he’d watched directors shoot his screenplays.
She headed for the desk in the hall where the cordless phone sat. Or, at least, where it should have been. Jeremy was forever borrowing the handset and losing it in his bedroom. She pushed the button that activated the pager in the handset and cocked her head to listen. Was there a muffled beeping coming from some pile of dirty laundry in Jeremy’s room? It was hard to tell.
Before she could activate the pager again, the phone rang. “Rats.” Nothing aggravated her more than a ringing phone that she couldn’t answer. “Jeremy, you have my phone,” she called. It was still ringing.
She went to Jeremy’s room, looking around for the telephone handset as she went. “Jeremy Samuel, answer that phone. It might be one of your aunts again.”
By the time she got into his room, Jeremy had rescued the telephone from whatever corner it had landed in, and was talking to someone. “Yeah, hold on. Wait a minute, my mom wants to talk to me.”
He looked up at her. “It’s for me. Todd.”
