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Rusty grinned and stood between them. “Charity Sims, I’d like you to meet R.J.—I mean Rick McKinley, owner of R and J Construction, the general contractor on the project.” He turned to his boss. “Rick, I’d like you to meet Sister Charity, another fine member of Hickory Ridge Church. Now if you two will excuse me…” He started to walk away but turned back. “Oh, tell your mother hello for me, okay?”
Nodding, she turned back to Rick. He shoved his hair out of his eyes again. In need of a good cut, his hair was sun streaked from outdoor work.
“Now, you were saying…” he prompted, interrupting her observation.
“I was trying to say you could help me by turning off that awful music.”
He shrugged, that infuriating grin returning, as he indicated with his head toward the boom box that was indeed already turned off. “So?” he challenged.
Charity stiffened again, the power of her conviction making it impossible to relax. “You must know that music like that is inappropriate for work at a church setting.”
He nodded slowly, tucking thumbs through his tool belt in a casual pose, but his chiseled jaw tensed. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Miss Sims, but music makes work easier for my crew. Especially on a holiday weekend when every other Michigander is fishing at a cabin up north or cruising the big lake.”
Her arms folded again over her chest. How obtuse could this man be? “Mr. McKinley, it’s not music I’m opposed to. It’s the type you chose. Secular? Here at our church? What would people think if they drove up to meet with Reverend Bob Woods, our youth minister Andrew Westin or the deacons?”
His gaze hardened, and he seemed to have tightened all over. Sturdy muscles in his arms strained against his shirt. “They’d probably think my construction crew was playing some music. It’s not even offensive music. Just run-of-the-mill pop.”
“Whatever it is—” she paused, nodding toward the despised radio “—it doesn’t belong here at Hickory Ridge. I can’t believe you would defend it after I’ve made that clear to you.”
“Oh, you’ve made something clear, all right.” He jutted his chin forward. “You’ve proved a point, but it has nothing to do with music.”
Charity gritted her teeth, her face becoming hot. Why did she have to put up with this impossible man? “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I insist that you keep that music turned off.”
He stared at her a few seconds, his gaze furious enough to make her step back if she weren’t so determined to hold her ground. The mission of the righteous was never easy. When she was certain she couldn’t stay in that position a second longer facing his challenging stare, he jerked his hand sharply and startled her.
That hand ended up in an exaggerated salute at Rick’s forehead. “Yes, ma’am.” With that, he stalked over to the boom box, flipped the power switch and cranked the volume full blast.
“I said turn it off,” she shouted.
Rick glanced back at her and pointed to his ears, indicating he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Her hands tightened at her sides as she marched toward him. Rick McKinley would get a piece of her mind if she had to jam it right into his smug face. But when she got close enough to do just that, he didn’t even give her the satisfaction of meeting her gaze. Something behind her seemed to have all of his attention.
Unable to resist seeing what was more important than listening to her, she glanced over her shoulder. Andrew Westin’s car pulled farther up the drive, past the aging farmhouse that served as a parsonage, right toward them.
Her anger evaporated as embarrassment covered her like a sunbath. Charity shot a glance back at Rick before she turned to watch Andrew park and climb out of his car.
Why did she continually make a fool of herself in front of men? Why had she blown her top over something as trivial as a radio station? Antagonism from an infuriating man wasn’t excuse enough. No matter what her reasons for rebuking the builder—or for that other unpleasant showdown in her past—she didn’t plan to wait around to face both of these guys together.
“Obviously, I’m not going to get through to you, so I’m leaving,” she shouted, hiding behind a facade of anger. With that, she about-faced and stalked to the parking lot, passing Andrew without a wave. She wished she didn’t wonder about the looks focused on her back or why nothing made sense anymore.
Chased by feelings that had everything—and nothing—to do with the two men behind her, she rushed to the car and her escape. Only after she’d shot up some gravel in the church drive and had reached Hickory Ridge Road could she finally let go of the breath she’d held. Her relief was short-lived, though, as it was followed by hot and humiliating tears.
Chapter Two
Andrew Westin’s lips moved, but Rick couldn’t hear a word over the blaring radio. Feeling sheepish for letting that self-righteous so-and-so push his hot button, Rick jogged over to the boom box and shut off the power. Great, now you’re going to lose the contract. What will you do next, spit at Reverend Bob?
“Hey, Andrew, sorry about that.”
But the youth minister only waved away the apology, his focus on Charity’s retreating car. A smile lit his face when he finally turned back to Rick. “Did you hear me, man? It’s a boy.” It didn’t seem to matter to Andrew that he looked like he hadn’t slept since the Fourth of July and his hair had hat head, minus the hat.
“Oh, that’s great.” Rick stepped forward and gripped the other man’s hand. “Congratulations.” Andrew’s laughter was so contagious that Rick couldn’t help joining in, despite his sour mood.
“It all happened so fast. He’s so tiny. It was exciting and scary. You just wouldn’t believe—”
“Is the baby okay?” Rick interrupted, trying to decipher the cryptic dialogue. “Is your wife okay?”
Andrew beamed as he breathed deeply and started again. “He’s great. Serena’s great. Eight pounds, twelve ounces. Him, not her. A head full of dark hair. That’s the both of them.” He stopped to chuckle at his joke. “Seth Michael Westin. Our boy.” He stepped away long enough to pass blue bubblegum cigars out to several crew members before handing one to Rick.
What did that kind of joy feel like? Rick couldn’t begin to guess, and he refused to let himself wonder and risk wishing. “What good news,” he said when he could think of nothing else to say.
Rusty saved him from further platitudes by hurrying through the framed area where they would eventually hang glass double doors. Never one to worry about his manly-man image, Rusty wrapped Andrew in a bear hug that had to hurt.
“Brother Andrew, don’t tell me you got yourself a boy.” He slapped the youth minister’s back when he finally released him.
“Sure did.” Andrew stuffed a plastic-wrapped gum cigar into the other man’s mouth. “He’s a keeper, too.”
Rusty pulled the candy out of his mouth and twirled it in his fingers. “What does your sweet step-daughter think of her baby brother?”
“Tessa hasn’t met him yet. I’m going to shower and then pick her up from Robert and Diana Lidstrom’s, so we can go visit Mommy and Seth.”
“Did the delivery go okay?” Rusty asked the question casually, leaning against the sawhorse in the relaxed pose of a seasoned father of three. “Any complications?”
“No, it was real easy—at least for me.” Andrew laughed again. “But it was strange having Charity as the labor and delivery nurse.” He glanced back to the drive Charity had just exited.
“Isn’t she great?” Rusty must have missed the way Rick tensed and Andrew startled when he said that. “She was in there when Tricia had Max two years ago. Didn’t even break a sweat when Max came breech and ended up in an emergency C-section.”
As the two sang more of Charity’s praises, Rick stepped away from both the conversation and comments he couldn’t reconcile with the scrubs-wearing shrew, who had made his acquaintance with a sledgehammer. At least he’d moved far enough away that they wouldn’t expect him to comment when Andrew wondered aloud why the object of their discussion had just raced from the church lot.
“Probably some woman thing,” one of them said, with the other buying that easy explanation.
Rick didn’t believe there was anything easy about understanding what made Charity Sims tick—double time. But then why was he wasting precious seconds thinking about that irrational woman? Just who did she think she was, anyway, being the censor and church police, all rolled up into one?
Everything about her was ironic, her name most of all. Charity. He couldn’t imagine anyone less charitable. And that sun-kissed exterior of hers couldn’t have been more incongruent with the dark inside he’d glimpsed. Without invitation, long tresses of golden thread appeared in his thoughts. She’d worn her hair tied back, but a few strands had escaped, making him imagine a riotous mane had it all been set free. But the green-gold eyes he envisioned next, their superior expression judging and convicting him with a single glance, cleared his thoughts of such nonsense.
This woman was a perfect example of why he kept his personal relationship with God just that—personal. She reminded him of those biblical Pharisees, praying out loud on the temple steps for show while they didn’t know the Father at all deep inside, where it counted. Was she just like them, a hypocrite play-acting her faith for an audience? She’d certainly deserved applause for that performance on the church lawn.
“Boss, if you’re planning to daydream all morning, then the rest of us would like to head off on our Labor Day weekend.”
Rusty’s chiding sent Rick slamming back to earth, bringing resentment along for the ride. “Funny, I thought my foreman and crew didn’t have to be led by the hand.” The words were barely out of his mouth, and he already regretted them. Rusty Williams was his best friend—his only friend. He’d never let anyone else get that close. “Hey, sorry—”
But the foreman shook it away with a wave and grin. Good ol’ Rusty. Rick moved back to his power saw as the table saw across the building site roared to life. As he marked a two-by-four to be cut, he concluded he wouldn’t waste any more energy thinking about the motivations of the annoying Charity Sims.
He would focus on more important things like completing this center project on time and proving that R and J Construction was ready to add more commercial projects to its residential work. Instead of worrying about that woman’s contradictions, he would concentrate on the irony that the Hickory Ridge project presented. In order to push his company firmly out of the red column and into the black, he had to work in the one place he had long disdained—a church.
Charity parked in the garage but couldn’t convince her body to climb out of the car. That made no sense at all. She needed to get her thoughts in perspective, and who better to help her than Mother? Laura Sims would applaud her, first for her dignity in facing the Westin issue and later for her fortitude in putting that nasty general contractor in his place.
Why did that certain approval hold so little appeal for her today? Again, she wondered whether she’d been right to reproach the builder in front of his crew, even if he had been wrong. She still could see the shocked expression on his bronzed face and the contempt that had trailed so closely behind it. Could she possibly deserve his derision?
The squeak of the interior garage door helped her shake the image that filled her with humiliation rather than the holy vindication she would have expected.
“Charity, dear, you’re not planning to spend the whole morning in the car, are you?” Laura stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ve been holding breakfast for you, and here you are letting it get cold while you sit behind your steering wheel.”
“Sorry, Mother—”
“I should think so. I didn’t even get a call that you would be late. I deserve that much consideration. You know how I worry.”
As much as she resented her mother playing her, Charity felt her strings being plucked and recognized she had no choice but to produce a melody. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have called, but I didn’t want to wake you. I know how you like to sleep in on Saturdays.”
She would have mentioned she was twenty-nine years old—plenty old enough to care for herself—if she’d thought it would have made a difference. It wouldn’t have.
“But it’s even more important to me to know you’re safe,” Laura responded as she pulled her daughter into the house. “You’re all I have since your father went to his heavenly home, bless his sweet soul.”
Hearing the standard soliloquy on her late father’s many attributes cuing up, Charity spoke quickly to interrupt the tape. “I’m glad you care, Mother. Now let’s eat before your great breakfast gets cold.”
Between bites of eggs and fried potatoes, Charity filled her mother in on the details of her embarrassing experience at the hospital. She mentioned stopping by the church as an aside.
“Oh, you poor dear.” Laura made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head before sipping her coffee. “That had to have been so difficult. We both thought Andrew was the perfect choice for you—the Lord’s choice. He seemed so much like your dear father. But Andrew’s decision to marry that divorcée shows we were mistaken.”
Obviously. And apparently Laura still resented the woman who’d eliminated her daughter’s chance at the handsome youth minister. She wished her mother would just let it go, as Charity finally had. Especially after today.
“I’m fine, Mother.”
“Sweetheart, the godly man we’ve always hoped for is out there somewhere, waiting for you. We have only to wait for God to reveal His plan.”
“I know you’re right,” she answered, anything but sure. How many times had she heard those same words—and believed them? So why did they sound so empty now?
Absently tracing patterns in her remaining scrambled eggs, Charity let the questions plaguing her lately resurface. She’d always figured with her devout mother and near-sainted late father, she’d received faith as a birthright. The rest she was beginning to question. But what more could she do? She already walked the Christian walk and talked its talk head and shoulders better than others in her church. Not that she expected a reward, but didn’t God answer the prayers of the faithful?
As if she noticed how quiet Charity had become, Laura reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m just sure you’ll meet him soon.”
Charity’s fork stilled as Rick’s face—too handsome for his own good—sneaked uninvited into her thoughts. She’d met a “him” all right, but if first impressions could be trusted, he didn’t belong in this conversation at all.
“Good, you can be sure for the both of us.” If only her attempt at humor didn’t sound so strained.
“What did you work on at the church?” Laura asked as she cleared away the dishes.
“I couldn’t get focused. I didn’t get much done.” She couldn’t explain why she was reluctant to discuss that exchange with Rick, even if her mother had given her a perfect opportunity to broach the subject.
Laura offered her a closed-lipped, all-knowing mother smile. “You probably just got impatient and left. You’ve always been impatient.”
The comment ruffled her, but Laura was right. If not for Charity’s rush to find a husband, maybe she wouldn’t have chased Andrew so desperately or been so furious when he rejected her. Not for the first time, she wondered if her accusing him of having an affair with Serena had been inspired more by revenge than holiness.
She would have thought she’d learned a thing or two from that humiliating sequence of events. Like, for instance, that making rash judgments could result in undue embarrassment for all those involved. Andrew had told her there was a perfectly good explanation for his overnight presence at Serena’s house, if she would only wait for it. But Charity hadn’t waited; she’d gone right to the deacons with her charge. And then it had come to light how Andrew and Serena had been counseling Reverend Bob’s pregnant teenage daughter.
Shame over that situation still made Charity hang her head low. If you learned so much, what were you doing, attacking that poor builder? That Rick McKinley was wrong suddenly didn’t seem a good enough defense for her actions.
“Charity, dear, stop daydreaming and eat some toast. You’re going to waste away to nothing. And just look at your eyes. You look exhausted.”
Maybe that’s because I worked all night. That unkind response startled Charity so much she straightened in her chair. Guilt appeared immediately, but she covered it with a smile and a nod. It wasn’t like her to talk back to her mother, even in her thoughts. Mother always had her best interest at heart. She needed to remember that. “You’re right. I am tired.”
“You go straight to bed then. I’ll clean up the kitchen. I did most of the cleaning while I was waiting for you, anyway.”
“Thanks, Mother,” she said, choosing not to respond to that last comment or the mild censure that came with it.
Charity let herself be shooed up the stairs to her room, but the tiny daisies that covered the bed, walls, filmy curtains, even her picture frames, immediately crowded her. It was a little girl’s room. Nothing had changed in that room in twenty years, except the grade level of shelved textbooks and the arrival and upgrades in her desktop computer.
She couldn’t sleep here, or anywhere else. Not as confused as she felt after the events at the hospital. And not with Rick McKinley’s smug face reappearing in her thoughts. Before this morning, she’d only seen him that one time at the groundbreaking, and now his image wouldn’t go away. More frustrating than that, just one confrontation with this guy had dissatisfaction with her whole life twisting inside her like a tightening noose.
That made no sense. Her life was fine. Settled, even. So it had to be something else. Something about the man himself. Crawling under her blankets, she tried to push away the images as well as the agitation that kept her breathing from steadying toward sleep. She could still see him measuring and sawing wood, outside in the September morning. Outside the church.
“Wait. That’s it.” She looked about the room, as surprised at having spoken aloud as having sat straight up in bed.
She’d never seen Rick inside her church. Maybe he didn’t attend anywhere. Come to think of it, she didn’t recognize any of the crew from Sunday services, and since she never missed one, she should know. Oh, Rusty attended regularly, of course, but the rest were definite prospects. Maybe her preoccupation with Rick was a sign of her mission to bring that motley construction crew into the church.
Letting her head float back to the pillow, she imagined all the men, tool belts still slung on their hips, lining the church’s front pew. But her plan stalled, only halfway formed. Before she could act as a candle leading those men to light, she needed to make amends with their difficult leader.
A case of nerves. Nothing else could explain the way her pulse tripped at the thought of facing Rick again. She flipped onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow and pressing her heart into the mattress to slow the beat.
Maybe it was anticipation for the mission ahead. It had nothing to do with being under the scrutiny of those huge, unreadable eyes or absorbing the tension he radiated in waves. No, she had been and would continue to be unaffected by the rugged Rick McKinley. But an uneasiness settling deep inside made her wonder.
Rick took the last bite of his sandwich during his lunch break, wishing he could bite back the resentment that had soured his mood all morning. That he couldn’t shake the irritation only made him angrier. He stood up from the picnic table, stowed his cooler under a tree and stalked toward the building site. Rusty caught up with him halfway across the parking lot and fell into step beside him.
“Hey, Boss, sorry about the run-in with Sister Charity. You’ve just got to understand that—”
“That what?” Rick jerked to a stop and faced the other man. “That she’s a shrew? That she had nothing better to do than to come here and bother me?” He glanced at his shoulders that had lifted to about ear level and carefully lowered them to a relaxed pose. “No big deal.”
Rusty nodded. “I can see that.”
“Can see what?”
Rusty countered Rick’s sharp look with a sheepish grin. “I know Sister Charity can get under the fingernails of the best of them, but she’s not so bad really. She’s got a real good heart when she lets it shine through. If I had my guess, I’d say it was her mother who taught her to hide it so well.”
Rick didn’t need to hear this, didn’t care what made the spitfire spit. It was like hearing a serial killer explain how he didn’t get enough hugs as a child. So he had no idea what made him ask, “What do you mean?”
“After Mr. Sims died, Sister Laura moved to Milford with Charity, who was about three from what I’ve heard tell. Her mother was a founding member of Hickory Ridge, around since the church still met in an empty storefront at Main and Commerce.”
When Rick prompted him to move along in the story with a twirl of an index finger, Rusty held up his hand. “I’m getting there. It’s said that the late Joseph Sims was a real good Christian man, a deacon who had just been called into the ministry when he passed. Sister Laura has spent almost three decades preparing her daughter to marry someone just like him.”
Rick started walking again but turned to speak over his shoulder. “What does that have to do with attacking strangers on construction sites?”
Rusty raised both hands in a gesture of simplicity. “Charity is trying to act the part of a perfect minister’s wife, hoping that will help her catch a minister. But she’s got it all wrong.”
“That’s pretty obvious, but I don’t see how any of this matters.”
“Hear me out, okay?” Glancing first at the parsonage, Rusty turned back to his boss. “Almost two years ago, when Andrew started his fellowship at Hickory Ridge, Charity chased after him like toilet paper stuck to a shoe, and she was appreciated about as much. It was a real blow to her when he married Serena instead.”
Andrew and Serena who had just had a child together? With Charity as their nurse? A seed of pity for the woman he’d immediately disliked threatened to sprout inside Rick, but he pushed it safely underground. “I bet that made it uncomfortable today at the hospital.”
“It might have been, but I just know Sister Charity did everything she could to make the delivery comfortable for Serena. Charity’s a great nurse. You can just tell how much she cares about those babies—and their moms. That’s how I know she has a good heart.”
