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As soon as he’d stowed the last of her bags, he helped her off with her backpack and opened the passenger-side door. But before she could hoist herself up, a vehicle coming from the opposite direction pinned them in its lights, then pulled parallel to Garrett’s truck.
A ball-capped male poked his head out an open pickup window. “I should have figured I’d find you out here rescuing a pretty damsel in distress. Way to go, Preacher.”
Jodi turned toward Garrett, catching his deer-in-the-headlights look of alarm.
Preacher?
* * *
Uncomfortably conscious of Jodi’s questioning gaze, Garrett raised his voice over the rumble of the two vehicles. “Do me a favor, cuz, and keep this to yourself.”
“You can count on it.” The other man chuckled, then offered a parting wave as he guided his vehicle on down the snowy road.
Garrett didn’t meet Jodi’s eyes as he held out his hand to assist her into the truck, taking note of the curtain of straight red-blond hair now lightly dusted with snow. It would be too much to hope that she hadn’t caught Grady’s preacher remark. Nothing much ever got past Jodi, but she’d probably think it was a joke. Some days he wasn’t sure if that might be the case. God’s little joke, anyway.
As she settled herself in to secure her seat belt, he wedged the backpack at her feet. Then he shut the door and jogged around the front of the vehicle to climb aboard.
“Which cousin was that?”
She’d remembered he had a bunch. “Grady Hunter, the twins’ next-to-oldest brother. Luke, Claire and Bekka are all married, and Grady’s getting hitched in February. Rio’s still single.”
She nodded thoughtfully, as if placing long-forgotten faces to the names, maybe recalling that his mother was a sister to the dad of those cousins. He started the truck slowly down the road, its windshield wipers working overtime against the descending snow.
Thankfully, Garrett could trust his cousin to keep his mouth shut. He sure didn’t need questions raised about his personal conduct because he’d stopped to assist an old friend. This past year he’d toed a fine line as interim pastor of Christ’s Church of Hunter Ridge—as a single interim pastor, to be exact.
That was a slippery slope in a place used to family men. He couldn’t afford to leave doors open for criticism of his actions if he hoped to qualify for a spot on a highly-thought-of missions team. He was so close and needed a positive recommendation from church leadership to seal the deal.
But this was Jodi.
He couldn’t leave her stranded on a night like this because someone might not think it acceptable for him to escort her home alone. After all, they’d grown up like brother and sister, right?
Nevertheless, his ears warmed as he shoved away a memory he hoped she had no recollection of—although, from the look on her face when she’d recognized him, the odds of that were slim to none. He was pretty sure her grandma, rest her soul, hadn’t forgotten. He’d certainly received a well-deserved earful when she’d walked in on them that Christmas Eve. Thankfully, things hadn’t gotten beyond hot and heavy kissing. But he probably still owed Jodi a long-overdue apology.
He adjusted the windshield wiper speed. “What are you doing out here in the dark pulling that sled? Where’s your car?”
“I use public transportation—and I didn’t want to mess with renting a car.” Her words came almost reluctantly, as if uncertain how much to share with him. “The forecast showed flurries the next few weeks, so I thought I could get around on one of the bikes at the cabin. I caught a shuttle from the Phoenix airport this afternoon.”
Assuming they still lived in the Valley of the Sun, why hadn’t she spent the night with her folks or one of her sisters?
“When I got here,” she continued, “I made a mistake of stretching out for an intended quick nap. Only I woke up not long before sunset to several inches of snow. Who knows what it will be like tomorrow? So off I went.”
He glanced at her, hoping she’d elaborate on what she’d been doing with her life. But she didn’t. Incredibly, she wasn’t married, but were her sisters? Did her university professor folks still take short-term mission trips during semester breaks? It saddened him that the cabin was to be sold, although to his knowledge the family hadn’t gathered there as a whole since her grandma’s health abruptly deteriorated and she eventually passed away.
Jodi's mitten-clad hand patted the dashboard. “What’s with the monster truck?”
“A loaner from Hunter’s Hideaway.” That was the family business that had catered to outdoor enthusiasts since early in the last century. “With this cold snap, Grady and I’ve been delivering firewood to those in need.”
She laughed. “So you are a do-gooder now.”
Did she have to sound so surprised? Admittedly, growing up he’d been forever into mischief. Always pushing boundaries and looking for a good time wherever he could find it. Not a whole lot into thinking of others. But still...
“You even took time from your do-gooder efforts,” she noted, “to help this poor old lady stumbling along the side of the road.”
“You gotta admit you looked the part.” But she sure didn’t right now, with that silky hair cascading around her shoulders and a smile lighting her brown eyes. Those very assets had been his downfall the night a transformed sixteen-year-old Jodi showed up in town after a few years’ absence, leaving him stupefied and devoid of common sense.
Sort of how he was feeling at this very moment.
Not good.
After his most recent disappointment in the romance department, he’d steered clear of serious involvements. And for an interim pastor, this wasn’t a good time to start rethinking that choice. So why had it popped into his head that her arrival in town might be the answer to a prayer he’d uttered but twenty minutes ago?
His office assistant Melody Lenter—an energetic lady about his mom’s age—had called around lunchtime, informing him her father in Texas had a heart attack and she and her husband were on their way out of town. She’d have to bail out on overseeing the annual Christmas project she’d single-handedly spearheaded for the past twenty years. Between wood deliveries, he’d spent the afternoon phoning church members, trying to find someone to fill her shoes—but to no avail. He’d barely called out to God that someone had to cover for Melody—he sure couldn’t take on one more thing—when the capable and ever-dependable Jodi appeared on his doorstep.
Answered prayer? Or a desperate, not-too-bright idea?
“So where’s the motorcycle? And—” She peeked at the back of his head. “What happened to the ponytail?”
Although still waiting for her to zero in on Grady’s “preacher” comment, he managed a laugh. “The tail’s a thing of the past. I have an SUV now, but a motorcycle’s stashed for the winter in a Hunter’s Hideaway barn.”
The motorcycle made some in his congregation uneasy, which wasn’t surprising considering the noisy nuisance he’d made with one as a teenager. No doubt he hadn’t been high on the church’s interviewee preferences list for a few members. But his Grandma Jo, a force to be reckoned with, convinced them—and him—that his filling in while they searched for a permanent ministerial replacement would benefit all involved.
Coming back, though, hadn’t been easy. Nobody in town had a clue what it took to regularly face his old friend Drew Everton and the accusing stares of those who held him responsible for Drew’s debilitating injuries. While Drew insisted he wasn’t to blame, others weren’t so forgiving.
But his year’s commitment at Christ’s Church would be up at the end of the month, and he was more than ready to move on. Ready to live the dream Drew had been forced to abandon.
“Here we are.” He turned the truck into a pine-lined lane leading up to the Thorpe cabin, a wave of nostalgia washing through him as it often did when he drove by. While the porch light lent a cheery note this evening, in broad daylight the place always struck him as melancholy. Lifeless. Although a guy at the church kept an eye on it, that didn’t make up for the absence of the warm hospitality and sound of laughter he remembered. Or for missing familiar faces peeping from the dormered attic windows and the sight of his and Jodi’s grandmas relaxing on the broad front porch.
He turned to Jodi. “I felt really bad when I heard your grandma passed away.” He couldn’t imagine not having his Grandma Jo or Grandma McCrae around. That was one of the blessings of Hunter Ridge he’d sorely miss when he left.
“It’s funny,” Jodi said as she unbuckled her seat belt, “but even though I haven’t been here since high school, when I arrived I almost expected to see her step out on the porch to give me a big hug.”
“Smelling of freshly baked cupcakes and that honeysuckle hand lotion she always used.”
Surprise lit her eyes. “You remember that?”
“I remember a lot of happy times at this cabin.”
While his younger sister and Jodi’s siblings gravitated to each other to do girlie things, he and Jodi had teamed up to shoot baskets, climb trees and build woodland forts. It was difficult to reconcile memories of the somewhat stout, rough-and-tumble freckle-faced tomboy of his youth with the sixteen-year-old beauty who’d blindsided his eighteen-year-old self—and with the woman who sat beside him now.
“What do you say we get your stuff inside?”
But should he ask her if she could spare time for a project her grandma had at one time helped with—providing Christmas cheer for unwed mothers in the region?
Still undecided, he watched as she retrieved the backpack at her feet. Then just as he gave up on the idea and reached for the door handle, her gentle hand settled on his forearm, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Thank you—Preacher.”
Chapter Two (#uf9f5210f-3324-5f32-b33f-4e1d5a6d8c96)
It was all Jodi could do to get those words out with a straight face. Garrett would be the last man on earth to be mistaken for minister material. But there it was again—that same caught-in-the-act look she’d seen earlier. What on earth had Garrett been up to that his cousin would mockingly call him “preacher”?
He released his grasp on the door handle, his expression uncharacteristically ill at ease. “You caught that, did you?”
“I take it your cousin has a good sense of humor.”
“Grady,” Garrett said, as he slowly rubbed the back of his neck, “has a good sense of humor, all right.”
Obviously he didn’t want to explain. While as a youngster she’d have kept at him, pushed until she all but choked out the whole story, that wasn’t appropriate now. They were two adult strangers whose lives had moved on from each other. People were entitled to their privacy. Goodness only knew, she hoped he’d respect hers.
“I don’t think I want to hear about it,” she said with a teasing lilt, letting him off the hook as she opened the door and climbed out.
In a twinkling he was at the side of the truck, probably grateful for the reprieve, and lifting out the toboggan. He set it on the ground, then snagged several bags and placed them atop it. Pulling two more from the bed of the truck, he handed her one and gripped the heavier of the two in his own hand.
“Ready?” Garrett grabbed the toboggan’s tow rope. “Lead on.”
With the side porch light illuminating the way, they progressed through the snow and up to the porch itself. Garrett held open the screen door as she fumbled with the keys to unlock the dead bolt. Then she stepped inside the dimly lit mudroom.
Ah, the infamous mudroom. Scene of the crime. Or rather the not-so-romantic setting of their first—and only—kiss.
The tiny space had been dark that night, too, an unexpected cocoon of privacy in a cabin teeming with family and friends readying for the Christmas Eve service. Now she self-consciously set the bag and backpack on a counter—the same counter she’d leaned against for support when her legs threatened to give way as Garrett’s lips tentatively touched hers. Or tentatively at first, anyway.
Taking a quick breath, she flipped on the light switch, the bare bulb overhead banishing both the shadows and too-vivid memory. Avoiding meeting Garrett’s gaze—afraid his own memories might have followed hers—she returned to the door and took the proffered bag.
He quickly transferred the remaining ones to the mudroom floor, then propped up the toboggan outside the door. “Looks like that about does it.”
“Thanks, Garrett. I’ll put the sled in the shed later.” She slipped out of the old coat and hung it on a peg of the knotty pine–walled room. “Would you like to come in for a cup of cocoa? Or I could fix coffee.”
In all honesty, she didn’t want to invite him in. The less she saw of Garrett or any other old acquaintances during her brief stay here, the better. She needed time alone to work through things—the aching loss of Anton’s recent death—and to make decisions for her professional future. Time to privately commemorate the loss of an unborn life. This use-it-or-lose-it vacation forced on her at the end of the year couldn’t be better timed. But the introspective hours she craved could too easily be aborted if she didn’t guard them closely.
“Thanks for the invitation, but I have to get back to...” His uncertain gaze darted to hers as his voice trailed off.
What was with him tonight? Garrett in his youth had never been one to act unsure of himself or beat around the bush. “Get back to what? Your female fan club?”
Everything used to come easy to him. Athletics, schoolwork, making friends—and girlfriends. She used to give him a hard time about the latter, masking her own supersized crush.
His mouth twitched. “Believe me, no fan club these days. Actually, I need to get back to the church.”
“Picking up another load of wood for delivery?”
“Not exactly.” He cast a look upward as if appealing to the Heavenly realms. “I have to finish my sermon for tomorrow.”
“Sermon?” She laughed, Grady’s remark finally making sense. “You got roped into delivering a message at the old family church, didn’t you? Garrett, whatever were you thinking?”
He ducked his head slightly, then looked up at her with one eye squinted. “I’m thinking that as the pastor of Christ’s Church of Hunter Ridge, that’s one of my responsibilities.”
What? “Come on, tell me another one.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “As impossible as it may sound—and believe me, some days it probably seems more impossible to me than it does to you—I’m degreed in church ministry and have been interim pastor here for the past year.”
She stared. He wasn’t joking. His cousin hadn’t been joking.
“Wow, Garrett.”
He chuckled, no doubt in reaction to the stunned look on her face. “Yeah, wow.”
“This is...is quite a stretch. I mean,” she quickly amended, “a turnaround.”
As they’d progressed from Sunday school days to youth group teen years, he’d become increasingly restless, adventurous, more prone to risk-taking. A party boy who’d enthusiastically indulged a wild streak, he’d certainly never anchored himself to anything spiritual, let alone God.
But then, she couldn’t exactly point fingers...
“Which goes to prove—” his smile widened “—that God’s still in the business of transforming lives.”
“When did— How?” She never would have expected anything like this. Not in a million years.
He shrugged. “Looking back, God’s been dogging me at least since my first rafting trip on the Colorado when He really opened my eyes to the beauty and intricacy of His creation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t willing to listen until about five years ago.”
He was serious. This was for real.
“I’m sorry I laughed, Garrett. I was just so—”
“Shocked? Don’t feel bad. My family, except for Mom and Grandma Jo, still isn’t quite sure what to make of it. Some church members who knew ‘the me that was’ haven’t bought into it, either.”
She couldn’t help but continue to stare at him. “This is amazing.”
“That it is.” He took a step back. “As usual, though, time’s gotten away from me this week and my Sunday message awaits. But maybe we could get together while you’re in town. Catch up.”
She didn’t want to catch anybody up on her life outside Hunter Ridge. Things she wasn’t proud of. Wounds that had yet to heal. A faith that was currently so wobbly it wasn’t funny. “Let’s see how it goes, okay? There’s lots to do to get this place ready to sell.”
“You’ll be at the worship service tomorrow?”
Not eager to interact with those who might remember her—or to see young mothers with their precious little ones—she hadn’t planned to go. But having laughed at him, expressed such blatant disbelief, might Garrett take a refusal the wrong way?
“You can count on it.”
“See you there then.” Eyes smiling, he lifted his hand in a parting wave as he stepped off the side porch. “Ten thirty.”
A few strides away, he halted in his tracks as if he’d thought of something he’d forgotten to say. Maybe he wanted to offer her a ride to church? Then apparently changing his mind, he tramped on through the falling snow.
Almost dazed, she stood at the door watching as he disappeared into the darkness. Garrett McCrae. A pastor. A heavy weight settled into the region of her heart as she closed and bolted the door.
Sorry to point this out, Lord, but your timing stinks.
She’d barely turned off the porch light and entered the kitchen when the door rattled from a firm pounding knock.
When she turned on the light and reopened the door, there stood Garrett once again.
“What did you forget?”
