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Apple Blossom Bride
Lois Richer
After a car accident, Ashley Adams came home to Serenity Bay to heal her broken body - and her broken spirit.Her former teen crush, Michael Masters, was the last person she expected to see in town…and he was even handsomer than she remembered. Planning the town's winter festival brought Ashley back in contact with the dedicated single dad, and Ash found herself falling for him all over again, as well as his darling daughter.Yet pain-filled memories of the past threaten their budding romance. Only Ashley's search for the truth can lead them to love beneath the blossoms….
“Are you sure you won’t have dinner with me sometime?”
Ashley shook her head, smiling. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
The bald question took her by surprise.
“Because.”
“That’s not an answer.” Michael kicked at a stone on the ground before meeting her gaze. “I’m not looking for anything more than a friend I can talk to. My daughter’s great, but sometimes it’s nice to talk to another adult.”
“I’m sure there are lots of adults you can talk to.”
“But not you?”
She shrugged. “I won’t be here that long. Just enough time to put my world back together again.”
He nodded, his dark eyes full of empathy.
“Believe me, I understand that. If you want to talk, call me.”
“And you’ll make time in that busy schedule of yours?”
He lifted her hand, brushed his lips against her knuckles. “I’ll make time for you.”
LOIS RICHER
Sneaking a flashlight under the blankets, hiding in a thicket of Caragana bushes where no one could see, pushing books into socks to take to camp—those are just some of the things Lois Richer freely admits to in her pursuit of the written word. “I’m a book-a-holic. I can’t do without stories,” she confesses. “It’s always been that way.”
Her love of language evolved into writing her own stories. Today her passion is to create tales of personal struggle that lead to triumph over life’s rocky road. For Lois, a happy ending is essential.
“In my stories, as in my own life, God has a way of making all things beautiful. Writing a love story is my way of reinforcing my faith in His ultimate goodness toward us—His precious children.”
Apple Blossom Bride
Lois Richer
I am holding you by your right hand—
I the Lord your God—and I say to you,
Don’t be afraid; I am here to help you.
—Isaiah 41:13
This book is dedicated to my dad. I love you.
Contents
Prologue
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
Questions for Discussion
Prologue
Seventeen Years Ago
“How can they do it, Pip?”
Ashley Adams scrubbed at her cheek, struggling to eradicate tears that wouldn’t stop flowing. Sobbing made her hiccup. She had to pause to catch her breath before she could get out her next question.
“My parents promised to love each other until death parted them and now they’re getting a divorce. How can they do that?”
“I don’t know.” Piper Langley sat down cross-legged beside her on the fresh spring grass, her forehead creased in a frown of perplexity. “I don’t understand adults at all, Ash. I wish I did.”
“Me, too. We’ll be teenagers pretty soon. We’re supposed to get smarter about this love stuff but I don’t get it. I don’t want to have two homes. I don’t want to leave my dad or Serenity Bay.” She wept. “I just want my family together.”
Piper, good friend that she was, silently shared her grief.
“At Bible study last week Mrs. Masters said love is a decision.” Ashley sniffed as she plucked the tumbling apple blossoms off her sweater. “My parents could decide to love each other, they could decide to stay married.”
“If they told you about their decision today, it doesn’t sound like they’re going to change their minds,” Piper warned. She checked her watch. “I’ve got to get home. Gran told me not to be late today. I want to stay with you,” she hurried to explain, “but if I’m any later they’ll worry.”
“It’s okay.” Ashley sniffed, managed a weak smile. “I understand. You go on. I think I’ll stay here for a little while.”
“Don’t stay too long or you’ll be completely covered in apple blossoms.” Piper jumped to her feet, black pigtails bobbing. She bent, hugged Ashley once in a tight squeeze, then grabbed her backpack, climbed on her bike and pedaled down the road toward her grandparents’ home.
Ashley wished she could follow. Pip was so lucky. Her grandparents loved each other, and her. They would never make her choose between them.
You’re away at school most of the year, anyway, honey. You’ll spend the summers with me, and Christmas and Easter with your mother. Or would you rather have it the other way around?
Who cared? The point was she wouldn’t have a home. Not a real one.
A moment later her friend had disappeared from sight and Ashley was all alone in the churchyard with only the tumbling blossoms to listen to. Behind her, the woods rustled as the wind tickled newly sprouted leaves, but she paid no attention.
“I trusted you, God. I prayed and prayed, but they’re still getting a divorce. I’m scared.”
The words sounded worse when she said them out loud. She laid her head on her arms and wept for everything she was about to lose, uncaring that the afternoon sun weakened, unseeing when it let fingers of gloom creep in.
A rustle behind her drew her attention. But, before she could check it out, hard fingers locked on to her arm, pinching so tight she dropped her tissue.
“Get up. Slowly now. Don’t make a sound.”
Ashley blinked, startled by the command of a man who looked like a storybook hermit. She obeyed automatically, thinking she must know him. A friend of her father perhaps?
But when they reached the curb and he opened the door of a battered station wagon, her confusion gave way to uncertainty, concern, then full-bodied fear. She opened her mouth to protest but he thrust her inside, then climbed in beside her.
Panic gripped her so fiercely she couldn’t breathe or make her legs work. The sensation of spiders crawling over her skin made her scratch at her arms. But that was nothing compared to the wave of dizziness that rose inside when she glanced over her shoulder and saw two suitcases on the backseat of the man’s car.
You have to be careful, Ashley. Her mother’s constant refrain accompanied the warning bells that were filling her brain.
She hadn’t been careful. Now she was being kidnapped.
“Stop!”
But he didn’t stop, and before she could scramble out of the car he’d already shifted into gear and roared past the church, past the apple blossom tree where she’d always found sanctuary.
“Let me out,” she whispered, pressing herself against the door. Her throat was so dry so could hardly speak. “Please let me out.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. His attention was on his rearview mirror, his foot heavy on the gas pedal. He was moving too fast for her to jump out of the car.
They neared the center of town. Surely someone would notice that Ashley Adams was in a strange man’s car?
But the stores were closing, the streets almost deserted. Only the coffee shop still shone its bright neon lights onto the street, welcoming people into its cozy interior.
“Let me go!” she pleaded. “I’m supposed to be at home now.”
He ignored her. Perhaps he knew that her parents were too busy with their divorce plans to notice she hadn’t been home all afternoon. Maybe that’s why he’d taken her—maybe people could take one look at her and know that she was going to be like the kids in school she’d always felt sorry for.
As the car whizzed over the road Ashley tried to pray, struggled to think about God and those loving arms Mrs. Masters always talked about. But she couldn’t feel them. All she felt was alone and very scared.
The man hunched over the wheel, his face set in a forbidding angry mask. Every so often he’d glance in his rearview mirror. Then his lips pinched together and his fingers squeezed the wheel so tightly they turned pasty-white. Anger emanated from him like smoke from a fire ready to ignite.
She had to get out of this car!
They approached the only traffic light in town, a yellow light which quickly turned red. It was now or maybe never. Ashley slid her fingers around the door handle and prepared herself. When he jerked to a stop she yanked the door open, hurled out of the vehicle and raced across the street to Mrs. Masters’s coffee shop.
“Hey! Wait. I’ll take you home,” the man yelled after her.
Fat chance!
Ashley didn’t look back nor did she stop running until she reached the coffee-shop door. Using both hands she dragged it open, burst into the pungent warmth that surrounded her as she drew deep gasping breaths into her lungs. She glanced from face to face, searching for an ally.
There were two customers at the counter. Mrs. Masters was laughing with them, but she stopped when Ashley locked the café door. By the time her sobs gurgled out, her Sunday school teacher was there, holding her.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
“A man.” Ashley clung to her capable hands as if to anchor herself. “A man tried to take me away. In his car.”
“What man?” Mrs. Masters peered through the coffee-shop windows, shook her head. “I don’t see anyone.”
“He was there. I was at the apple tree by the ch-church and he grabbed me. He was trying to k-kidnap me.” She was shaking and didn’t know how to stop.
As if through a fog she heard Mrs. Masters speaking, felt herself being pushed down onto a chair. Someone pressed her hands around a cup. It warmed her icy fingers so she clung to it while people came and went.
“She said a man took her.” She felt their stares and looked away, locking her gaze on the table, the chair, anything but the street in front. A while later her father came and took her home. To the home she wasn’t going to have anymore.
That night the dreams started: nightmares so real Ashley could feel those bony fingers pressing into her skin, hear the gravel rattling beneath her feet as he pulled her across it, feel the biting odor of freshly cut spruce sting her nostrils and the hard metal pressure of the window handle against her back when she crouched in the car and waited for a chance to escape.
And every time she’d wake up, shaking, crying, knowing that some time, someday, somewhere he’d come back.
And that when he did, she wouldn’t be able to leave.
Chapter One
Ashley shoved open the door of her Vancouver condo with her crutch and hobbled inside, absorbing the stale odor of a place too long uninhabited. She let the door swing closed behind her, made sure it was locked, then concentrated on inhaling deep breaths.
She was home. She was safe.
The mail sat neatly stacked on a side table, thanks to her landlord. But Ashley ignored it, coaxing her body to move a little farther into the room.
