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A New Life
Dana Corbit
Widowed with three young children, Tricia Williams vowed never to get involved with another risk-taking man - ever. Her matchmaking friends thought she needed someone, and the blind dates began. No one could compare with her lost love - until she met Brett Lancaster, the quietly strong, handsome new man in town. Like Tricia's, Brett's emotional scars ran deep, and he too had lost his faith.They shared some quiet evenings, and her children grew to care for him as she did. But their budding relationship became strained once she learned that Brett was a state trooper. Another man with a high-risk job. Could she put her trust in God and find the strength to begin a new life with Brett?
“I want to see you again,”
Brett whispered.
“I don’t think—”
“I never got a real date. It wasn’t very nice to cancel that way.”
Tricia shook her head. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Good, then I’ll accept your apology Friday night when we go out. Think you can get a sitter?”
When Tricia hesitated, Brett pressed his advantage. “Because if you can’t, I can probably call your friend Charity to sit for you. But then I’d have to explain how you canceled out on the first date and—”
“I can get one.” And with that, she left with her kids.
He should have been counting his blessings that her son had tried to stop all this craziness before any real damage was done. But he could only feel relieved and grateful he’d get the chance to see Tricia again.
DANA CORBIT
has been fascinated with words since third grade, when she began stringing together stanzas of rhyme. That interest, and an inherent nosiness, led her to a career as a newspaper reporter and editor. After earning state and national recognition in journalism, she traded her career for stay-at-home motherhood.
But the need for creative expression followed her home, and later, through the move from Indiana to Michigan. Outside the office, Dana discovered the joy of writing fiction. In stolen hours, during naps and between carpooling and church activities, she escapes into her private world, telling stories from her heart.
Dana makes her home in Michigan, with her husband, three young daughters and two cats.
A New Life
Dana Corbit
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary; and they
shall walk, and not faint.
—Isaiah 40:31
To my parents, James and Janet Corbit and
Curt and Alice Berry. Thank you for being convinced
for me even when I wasn’t sure and for listening
to my stories, each more fanciful than the last.
I would like to wish a special thanks to
Lieutenant Joel Allen, Trooper Christopher Grace
and Trooper Rene Gonzalez of the Michigan State
Police for opening their world to me.
Any mistakes in the story are my own.
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
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Letter to Reader
Chapter One
“Strike. Yes!”
Max shot both hands into the air and did a happy dance on the lane, though two pins—the four and the nine—still stood firmly.
“Oh, brother,” six-year-old Rusty, Jr. said, shaking his head. “They call that a ‘split,’ not a ‘strike.’”
Max shrugged, showing off his million-dollar grin. “Split. Yes,” he called out, repeating the dance with the gusto of a four-year-old.
Tricia Williams laughed out loud, and her three children fell into a cackling heap on top of their spring jackets that were piled on the floor. Their squeals only added to the noisy Saturday night atmosphere at Milford Bowling Lanes, combining with the crash of pins and the loud music from a nearby private event room.
It felt great to laugh again, to really laugh and not to feel as if she had to push air from her diaphragm to bolster the sound. In the two years since her husband Rusty’s death, she’d sensed a compassionate—but relentless—scrutiny from her friends at Hickory Ridge Community Church who wanted to make sure she was all right. And she was. Her children were, too. Maybe her little family wasn’t back to normal, but they’d found a new normal. If only she could convince her friends that she was fine.
“Hey, sweet pea, why don’t you roll your ball again and see if you can hit one of those pins?” she told Max as she extracted him from the pile.
With another between-the-legs, agonizingly slow roll, the boy picked up the four pin, assisted by a good bounce from the gutter guards.
While the young mother marked down the score, her daughter Lani leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Do you think we should tell the man on the next lane that they can put the gutter things up for him, too?”
The struggle not to laugh again made Tricia’s chest ache. She’d been trying not to notice the dark-haired man on lane fourteen for the last twenty minutes, since he’d settled in and started throwing a record-setting number of gutter balls. He was either terribly distracted or the worst bowler she’d ever seen.
“No, we’d better not,” Tricia whispered back, giving her daughter a side glance. Lani’s sly smile showed she was joking and, as always, she seemed older than her seven years. Tricia reached up to ruffle the deep-brown tresses of her child’s bob haircut.
“Mom, watch me bowl.” Rusty, Jr. stood poised with an eight-pound ball, wiggling his backside into his best pro bowling form.
“Okay, let’s see you roll a strike. You’re doing it just right.”
It felt right, too, just being here on a rare night out with her three favorite people, even if it strained the tightrope budget she tried so hard to balance every month. Watching her children enjoy themselves almost relieved her guilt over telling the white lie that freed up her calendar for a bowling night. Almost, but not quite.
They continued through the frames of their game, but none of their performances compared to the show going on in the next lane. While before, the man couldn’t hit a pin with a two-by-four, now his black ball seemed unable to miss one. Tricia half expected someone to recognize him at any moment as an escapee from the pro-bowlers’ tour.
“Look, Mommy, the man isn’t throwing gutter balls anymore,” Max pointed out two octaves louder than his regular speaking voice.
Tricia pressed an index finger to her lips to hush her son, her cheeks burning. At least the guy had the decency not to look at them, though he must have heard. His chest moved slightly a few times as he seemed to be trying not to laugh. His profile transformed as a dimple, incongruous with the earlier determined flex of his jaw, appeared on his cheek. On his next frame, he even missed a pin.
“Kids, what are we here to do? Bowl or talk?” Tricia said finally.
“Bowl!” the three chorused as they turned back from their interesting neighbor.
So they returned to the game, with Tricia’s applause and encouragement accompanying her children’s giggles. But no matter how hard she tried to focus on the game, she couldn’t help sneaking curious glances at the next lane.
Why was such a handsome man bowling alone on a Saturday night? Why had he seemed so preoccupied when he’d arrived? And an even bigger question: why did it matter to her? He was probably just like the four of them, trying to get one last visit in before the bowling alley closed so it could be renovated into a minimall. Besides, she hadn’t been so much as curious about a member of the male gender in the last two years.
No one would know it from the number of blind dates she’d gone on recently. It seemed that everyone with a Christian friend-of-a-friend had introduced them, hoping to create a perfect match. Her friend Charity probably had the same hopes for the blind date Tricia was supposed to have been on tonight. If she hadn’t cancelled.
Didn’t these matchmakers realize she was already in love—with Rusty. And she always would be. He’d just gone to be with God a little ahead of her, that was all. She couldn’t blame her well-meaning church friends; they just didn’t understand. God only gave people one love like that in a lifetime, and she’d already had hers. Even though she was a widow and only twenty-six, she didn’t think it was fair of her to ask Him for more.
Trying to focus, Tricia rolled her ball. She smiled at her children over her dismal effort but suddenly felt too guilty to laugh with them. It wasn’t her blind date’s fault that her heart was permanently off the market. She’d been rude to cancel at the last minute. Tomorrow, right after church, she would phone him and try to reschedule.
Obviously, she needed to stop being nosy about the man in the next lane and focus on her own behavior. Still, out of her peripheral vision, she watched the man as he stepped off the lane and sipped his soda. He swiped his hand through his dark-brown hair, but since it was clipped so close, it did little more than flutter. Funny how the haircut made his strong jaw appear so pronounced.
“My turn now,” Max called out, grabbing his ball and rushing up to throw it.
It might have been his best effort yet if he’d bowled in the right lane, instead of the one being used by their distracted neighbor.
“Wait, Max,” Lani called out too late.
Max’s eyes were wide as he turned to look back at the man. Tricia choked back a laugh. Maybe it was time to turn in those glamorous bowling shoes. But she’d paid good money for this game, and she wasn’t about to leave until they’d bowled their last frame.
Prepared to apologize for her child, she turned toward the guy she’d been trying to ignore all night. A pair of startling light-brown eyes looked down at her before the guy threw back his head and laughed.
Brett Lancaster couldn’t believe he was laughing. Especially at the woman staring back at him. Or about any female after the day he’d had—the last few years he’d had. But then she laughed along with him, her children joining her like a merry pack of hyenas.
Before, he’d noticed how striking the woman was. Only a blind man would have missed that. But when a smile spread across her heart-shaped face, she transformed into movie-star dazzling. With the contrast of that shiny, dark hair and fair, flawless skin, she resembled a porcelain doll, one that had just been removed from the box for a trip to…the bowling alley.
The crash of pins from that slow-moving ball stirred him from his reverie in time to remember his manners and stop staring. He turned to see the pins, in real-time slow motion, fall one by one.
“Wow, sport, you got a strike.” Brett stepped forward and extended his hand for a high-five. The boy looked to his mother for approval before giving a slap that smarted.
“Sorry.” Twin pink spots stained the woman’s cheeks. “Max accidentally bowled on the wrong lane.”
“Why are you apologizing? Young Max here just improved my score. Thanks, kiddo. You know, I wasn’t doing so well earlier.”
“Yeah, you needed some of these gutter things like we have,” the older boy chimed. “If you ask at the desk—”
“Thanks, but I don’t need them now. My score’s getting pretty good.”
“Because I got a strike,” Max announced importantly.
“I’m doing really good, too.” The older boy pulled the sheet off the scoring table and flashed it at him.
“Why aren’t you keeping score?” asked the girl who looked like a junior version of her mother.
“I didn’t figure I’d win any trophies.”
He couldn’t help smiling at the endearing way the children angled for his attention, perhaps as they would when their dad came home from work. Did he come home? Discreetly, he glanced at the mother’s left hand. She wore no wedding ring, or any other rings for that matter.
An unsettling sensation moved inside his chest, something he attributed to indignation on this family’s behalf. These sweet kids were probably victims of another deadbeat dad, like so many of the troubled youths he dealt with in his work. The guy had probably walked out on this young mother after promising her the world.
The woman caught him staring and blushed even more prettily, fidgeting with her delicate hands. “Come on, guys, we’ve bugged the gentleman for long enough.” She glanced at her watch. “We need to finish this game and get home. It’s getting late, and we have church in the morning.”
“Aw, Mom,” came the trio in chorus.
“Please, just one more game?” the girl said.
Brett was glad the child hadn’t turned that cajoling tone on him, or he might have given her his car and thrown in a twenty-CD changer for good measure. A bad idea since he was driving a loaner from his dad’s dealership tonight.
Not taking time to wonder why he wanted to spend even more of his Saturday night in a bowling alley with a mom and her passel of children, he approached the taller of the two petite brunettes.
