Love Inspired June 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Single Dad Cowboy\The Bachelor Meets His Match\Unexpected Reunion (25 page)

Morgan came off the desk in a flying leap and snatched the thing out of her hands. It didn't weigh eight ounces, barely enough to protect her skull. Horror flashed through him.

“You're riding a cycle?”

“Just a moped,” she said with a chuckle. “A little old ancient thing hardly bigger than a bicycle.”

Morgan nearly swallowed his tongue. “What? That's insane! You'd be better off on a bicycle. No, wait. You're not strong enough for a bicycle. What are you thinking?”

She tossed her backpack to the floor again and glared at him, her hands at her hips. “I'm thinking that it's none of your business.”

“None of my—” Aware that he'd raised his voice, he broke off in midsentence and closed his eyes, slowly counting to ten. “Motorized two-wheeled vehicles are dangerous,” he said, quite reasonably.

“You ride one,” she pointed out, most rudely, he thought.

“I am an expert. I race the things. I am certainly qualified to ride them on city streets.”

Sticking out her chin, she said mulishly, “So am I. I have a permit and everything.”

“That's beside the point! You're still recovering. You're—” she glanced around them wildly, but they were quite alone now “—still weak,” he went on doggedly.

“I don't even have to pedal,” she pointed out, reaching for the helmet.

He set it on the desk behind him, out of her reach. Shaking his head, he said, “I have to speak to Brooks about this.”

She folded her arms. “You are the most arrogant, heavy-handed, presumptuous—”

“Faculty adviser,” he reminded her. He didn't need her to tell him that he was overstepping his bounds, but given the circumstances, he just didn't see what else he could do. The thought of her riding off on that tiny
death trap
gave him the shudders. If this was what came from keeping his distance, well, he'd just have to do better. “I'll drive you home,” he stated flatly, leaving no room for argument. Nevertheless, he thought he might well be in for a fight.

For several long seconds, she glared at him, holding herself so rigidly that he expected to see steam start leaking from her ears at any moment. Finally, she turned and marched to the door, leaving him to retrieve the backpack and bring it along.

A smile caught Morgan as he bent to snag the straps of the backpack. He didn't know why, really. The woman was as frail as eggshells, but she'd been out zipping around town on a moped that couldn't get out of the way of a paper bag blowing in the wind, her only protection a pathetic little helmet that might have saved her from a minor concussion but nothing more. Still, she had gumption. She'd found herself some transportation—inadequate, but transportation—and she didn't like being told what to do one little bit. But he couldn't let her go chugging off on her own, especially not after he hefted that backpack.

The thing was heavy, too heavy for her to be lugging around by herself and certainly too heavy for her to be hauling about on “a little old ancient” moped. It was a wonder she hadn't fallen over on the thing already. As he couldn't very well go schlepping around campus after her, toting her books like some lovesick swain, and drive her everywhere she needed to go, he'd have to get her a wheeled tote and provide her with proper transportation somehow. Obviously Chester had other things to do besides drive her around; either that or Simone couldn't bring herself to impose on him and the aunties when she needed to go somewhere. Well, they'd see about that.

“What about my moped?” she grumbled as they walked to his car.

“Give me the key. I'll have someone drive it over to Chatam House and park it,” he said.

“And then what?”

“We'll decide that later.”
After
he had spoken to Brooks about her. One way or another, he was going to get an accounting of her physical condition.

She didn't utter a word all the way to Chatam House. She didn't even look at him, and she didn't wait for him to come around the car and open the door for her, either. Instead, she bailed out of the Beemer the instant it stopped and reached back in to pull out the backpack before he could get to her.

“Here,” he said, reaching for the thing, “I'll carry that in for you.”

“No, thank you,” she retorted snippily, swinging it up onto her shoulder. “I can manage.”

Morgan resisted the urge to grind his teeth. “Simone, I'm just trying to—”

“Yes, yes, trying to help and all that,” she said, moving up the walkway. She muttered something about “petty tyrants” and marched up the steps to the porch.

Morgan considered going after her, glanced at his wristwatch and decided against it. Let her stew, if that made her happy. He was going to catch Brooks before he made midmorning rounds. She slammed the front door of Chatam House just as Morgan dropped back down behind the steering wheel of his beloved BMW Z4.

He let off some steam getting to the doctor's office across the street from the hospital. It was a short trip from Chatam House made all the shorter by his venting of his irritation. His timing proved impeccable. Brooks came out of the side door marked Private just as Morgan pulled the rumbling Beemer into the reserved space that he always claimed as his own.

Brooks shoved his hands into the pockets of his white coat and grinned. “To what do I owe the honor of this ambush?” he asked as Morgan climbed out of the car.

“To one very stubborn graduate student.”

“What has Ms. Guilland done now?”

“She's riding a moped.”

Brooks gave him a bland look. “And?”

“And I'm worried that she isn't strong enough. She's carting around a backpack that weighs almost as much as she does and wearing a little soup pot of a helmet that wouldn't protect the brain box of a gerbil.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

“I want you to tell her to cut it out. That she's not healthy enough for riding around on a two-wheeled motorized vehicle. Or tell me that so I can tell her. I am her faculty adviser, and...” The grin that Brooks tried to hide behind a raised hand and a bowed head set Morgan off. “What? I
am
her faculty adviser, and she
has
had cancer.”

“So she told you, did she?”

“I guessed. She confirmed it. What I don't know,” he went on, trying not to fidget, “is how likely it is to come back.”

Brooks got that mulish look he always got when a patient's confidentiality was at risk, but Morgan waited, not even daring to breathe, and just when he was at the point of prayer, pleading or pounding, Brooks caved.

“Not very. I got her records, and from what I can tell, they took all the affected organs.”

Morgan nodded, saying softly, “She told me what that cost her.”

“The treatment was very aggressive, but it had to be. In time, she'll regain her strength and be fine, I think.”

“But she'll never have children.”

“No. She'll never have children.”

“She wanted to.”

“Yes, I know. It's in the records.”

“Should she be riding a moped?”

Brooks shrugged. “I don't know, Morgan. Bring her to see me, if you're so concerned, and I'll make an evaluation then.”

“What about driving a car?”

“Has she been passing out?”

Morgan considered and shook his head. “No. Someone would have called me.”

“Well, then, provided she has a license, I don't see why not.”

Rubbing his chin, Morgan weighed the options. “Maybe I should get her a car.” To his chagrin, Brooks burst out laughing. “Now what's your problem? I just don't want the girl to kill herself getting to school. I am—”

“Her faculty adviser. Sure. And her self-appointed white knight all rolled into one, apparently.”

Morgan felt heat rise in his throat and face, but he tried to brazen it out. “Oh, come on. She's a student.”

“And beautiful and brave and wounded.”

He tried not to, but Morgan couldn't help bristling. Of course she was beautiful. And brave. And wounded. When he thought of all she'd been through, he ached for her, but here she was starting a new life for herself when so many others would have curled into a ball and tried to make the world go away. Naturally Brooks would notice those things, but Morgan didn't want him to. Especially Brooks. His friend. The man who had married the woman Morgan had loved, the woman they had both loved.

This was not, however, history repeating itself. This was duty. Morgan knew that because he had prayed that it be so. He had prayed for the purest of motives where Simone Guilland was concerned, and he trusted that God would give him nothing less.

Anytime now.

Chapter Six

“I
t's a wonderful facility,” Simone gushed.

Morgan had driven her over to the Youth and Young Adult Ministry Center after prayer meeting at Downtown Bible Church that Wednesday evening, where she and his father had greeted each other like old friends. Now they talked as if they were already colleagues, ignoring Morgan as though he wasn't even there. He didn't like that very much.

Hub smiled. “Amazing what you can do with an old warehouse, isn't it? My grandfather built this place to hold cotton bales. He made his fortune shipping cotton on the railroad.”

“And now you've put it to use for kids who are riding the rails,” Simone surmised.

“We get a few of those,” Hub said. “Most go on to the big rail yards in Dallas or Fort Worth, but the more timid ones hop off here. I think it seems safer to them.” His gaze turned inward. “I never realized, never even thought about it.”

“Most folks don't,” Simone told him, “unless they've been homeless.”

“I suppose that's true,” Hub replied. “One of our board members at DBC is the yard manager for the railroad here, though, and he brought this need to our attention. We were surprised to find that we have more at-risk young people than we knew right here in town. This place has become a safe haven for them.”

“What's the age range?”

“Thirteen to twenty, but we try to keep them segregated into groups below and above seventeen, the legal age of emancipation.”

“There are overnight facilities?”

“Emergency only. We call Child Protective Services if the youngster is under seventeen years old. Occasionally they don't have a placement, so they send a worker to stay here with the child until something comes open. It's usually only one night. If they're seventeen or older, they have to go to the adult homeless shelter, but they can come back here during the day. We offer them food, recreation, literacy and GED classes, as well as counseling and someplace to bathe and wash their clothes. We also try to connect them with social and employment services. For the local kids, we're sort of a safe hangout. For the homeless ones...”

“You don't have to tell me,” Simone proclaimed. “I've been there. For those homeless kids, this place is the answer to a prayer.”

Shocked, Morgan wondered how a girl from a family with three chefs on the payroll had wound up homeless, even for a short time. No, wait, that was the Guilland family—her ex's family. Frowning, Morgan realized that Simone had actually told him very little about her own personal background. He knew that she'd worked on the ski slopes in Colorado and attended classes at a college there, but beyond that he knew only about her illness and her disastrous attempt at marriage. Perhaps it was best that he didn't know. The more he knew about her, the more he liked her.

Hub said something about her heart being in ministry to homeless youth.

“I suppose that's true,” Simone admitted, smiling.

“Perhaps that was God's purpose in your own experience,” Hub went on.

“Do you think so?” she asked wistfully. “I'd like to think it had a purpose.”

“It must certainly account for your maturity,” Hub said.

“Oh, I don't know about that.” She shook her head, sighing. “Sometimes I amaze myself with my own stupidity.”

Hub chuckled. “The first sign of wisdom.”

She laughed. “Well, there's hope for me, then.”

After a few more minutes of discussion, they agreed that she would work fifteen to twenty hours per week. The stipend was small, but she wasn't paying rent, and Hub made no bones about wanting to turn the whole organization over to someone else capable of handling it at the first opportunity.

“I'm not getting any younger, you know,” he said.

They shook hands on it, and she was hired. When Morgan stepped up and announced he'd walk her through the building while Hub closed up the place, she seemed surprised to find him there. That pricked his male vanity, which was probably a good thing, or so he told himself.

“That went well,” Morgan assessed, strolling along beside her.

“I think so. But I don't buy that ‘I'm not getting any younger' guff. How old is he, anyway?”

“Seventy-nine as of this past August.”

“Wow. He has more energy than I do.”

“He hasn't been ill.”

“I hope he never is.”

Morgan nodded in agreement with that. Hub had buried two wives, and for a time he had convinced himself that he was feeble, but he'd snapped out of it when Morgan's sister, Kaylie, had married.

“The Chatams are known for their heartiness,” Morgan told her. “My grandpa died at ninety-two, and his father was even older. And, as Brooks is fond of pointing out, those were the days before medicine had made much of itself.”

She smiled. “Praise God for modern medicine, is what I say.”

“Amen.”

They exited the building with its old-fashioned brick facade and went down a trio of concrete steps to the dusty parking spot below. He let her in the passenger door of the BMW and went around to get behind the wheel.

“I'm glad Dad's so spry,” he said conversationally, “because I've always figured I'd be the one to take care of him in his old age.”

“Oh? Why you?”

He started up the engine, engaged the gears and backed out of the parking space. “My brothers and sister are all married and either have families or are starting families, but I've just got me, so it only seems logical that I be the one to look after Dad when he can no longer look after himself.” He put the transmission in gear, moving the car forward. “I think he thought Kaylie would do it. In fact, I don't think he wanted her to get married at all.” He paused the car at the edge of the lot before pulling out onto the street. “She can thank our dear aunties for that. They didn't marry. Instead, they took care of their father until he died. At ninety-two.”

“But Odelia and Kent—”

“Have been married just over a year,” he said, shifting gears.

Simone gaped at him. “That's all?”

“It was a year in July. Oh, they were engaged way back when, but they broke up for some reason. And got back together fifty years later.”

“What a story!”

He chuckled. “It's the family love story.”

“What about you?” Simone asked. “Why haven't you married?”

He slowed at a dip in an intersection, downshifting. “I wanted to marry.” He surprised himself by adding, “She married Brooks Leland instead.”

Simone caught her breath, but it might have been the way he accelerated.

After a moment, she asked, “What happened?”

“I don't really know. I asked her to marry me. She said yes. We were planning a wedding. Then a couple months before the big day, she gave me back the ring. The next thing I knew, she married my best friend.”

“That's awful.”

It seemed odd that he could smile about it now, but he did just that. “I certainly thought so at the time.”

“No wonder you don't like Dr. Leland.”

Morgan shot Simone a surprised look. “I love Brooks,” he blurted unashamedly. “Brooks Leland is my best friend.”

“But—”

“I hated him at the time, it's true, and I went off on a real tear for a while.” He focused his attention on the scene unfolding outside his windshield, even as the words reeled off his tongue. “Wine, women and
stupidity.
But before long I started to hate me even more than I hated him, so I got myself right with God and went on with my life.” He slowed and made a turn before saying, “Then, a year or so after they married, I realized that Brigitte was ill.”

“What was it?” Simone asked softly.

He didn't know why he whispered it. “Inoperable brain tumor.” He made himself go on. “She had some good months still, but she died just over two years after they married.” To his surprise, Simone reached over and covered his hand on the gearshift knob with her own.

“I'm so sorry.”

“We had enough time to make our peace,” he said, “and I got back two people I loved, even if it wasn't the way I'd imagined.”

“You've never felt that God punished them for what they did to you?”

Shocked, he took his eyes off the road long enough to gape at her. “No, never.” He couldn't help wondering what had prompted such a question. “I think it was all for the best. She said to me once that if her illness had happened while she was with me, I'd have made her fight it. And she was right. I couldn't have done what Brooks did. He looked at the medical options, realized that he'd be putting her through a lot of pain and misery for no good reason other than his own desire to hold her here, so he let her go. That was what she wanted, to live her life to the fullest while she had it, not to live sicker than she had to.”

“Sometimes,” Simone said slowly, “the cure really is worse than the disease.”

“I know that's true,” Morgan told her, “but I don't know how you...don't fight.”

“There was a moment,” Simone said, “when I thought about giving up.”

“You must have weighed the cost and wondered if it was worth it.”

“That's it exactly.”

“But you fought.” He turned his hand palm up so he could squeeze her hand. “Brigitte was only twenty-five, so about your age, and it was nearly sixteen years ago. Medicine is light-years ahead of where they were then, but I'm not sure if, even now, she would choose to fight her disease.”

“It's not always an easy decision.”

“I understand that. I'm just saying that, for me, in the end...”

“You would have to fight, no matter how small the odds.”

“Yes. Even if it might not be the right thing to do.”

“So Brooks was the right man for her.”

“Yes.”

“I'm glad you have that assurance.”

“So am I. And I'm glad that you chose to fight your disease, no matter the cost.”

She smiled, nodded and took her hand away, changing the subject. “So why haven't you married? It's been sixteen years!”

He shrugged, chuckling. “I don't know. I was always open to it, but it just didn't happen. Now, at forty-five, I'm too old for it, too set in my ways.”

“Now, that's just sad,” Simone chided. “You could still be a father, after all.”

He shook his head. “I'm not sure I'd want to start all that at this late date.”

“But you said yourself that the Chatams are a hearty, long-lived bunch.”

“I like my life just as it is, thank you very much, and this world has plenty of Chatams already.”

“Please yourself, then, Professor.”

“I always do,” he admitted, grinning.

When, he wondered, his grin feeling strained, had that started to seem just a bit lonely?

* * *

Hub joked that she didn't let the air settle before she was off on a new project, but Simone knew too well how desperate a kid on the street could feel. Having someplace to go, even for a little while, when night closed in, would be a real comfort. Hub agreed to the idea of an evening “check-in” for homeless teens in the area, provided two adults were always on hand. Morgan promised to round up graduate students to staff two-hour shifts.

Half a dozen kids showed up that first evening. One eighteen-year-old, Rina, was overweight and sloppy with short blond hair, a sullen attitude and an eyebrow ring. She walked out in a huff when Simone suggested she find a job, but the girl seemed entirely capable of supporting herself, just unwilling.

Hub declared himself thrilled with Simone's efforts, and Morgan seemed pleased with the reports he received. Simone felt that she was doing something worthwhile, something that counted.

She'd have been happy if not for Chester. She did her best to stay out of her uncle's way, but whenever she came across him, Chester always looked at her as if he was trying to puzzle out something about her.

She had quietly resumed riding her moped after it had been returned to the estate, taking care to park where she wasn't likely to be seen and leaving the helmet with the bike. No one had told her not to ride the thing, after all—no one but Morgan, and he had no true authority over her.

To raise extra cash, she started selling her ski gear online, which allowed her to throw a little money at the homeless kids who most needed it. When the storm clouds rolled in during that second week in October, she thought about dipping into her savings to take a taxi over to the mission, but in the end, she couldn't bring herself to spend her funds that way. Instead, she donned a bright orange hooded plastic poncho over her helmet and climbed on her trusty moped that Thursday evening. The poncho was one she'd used on the ski slopes when wet, slushy snow had made navigation miserable. She tucked the ends up under her and used plastic sleeves, called gaiters, to protect her lower legs from splashes. Then she headed across town.

What had started as a steady drizzle soon became a drenching downpour, however. By the time she puttered into the rutted parking lot, she could barely see the street in front of her headlamp, and her pant legs were soaked from the knee to midcalf. She parked right next to the steps and scrambled up them blindly, lunging for the door beneath a veritable waterfall of runoff. As the heavy metal door closed behind her with a decided
ka-shunk,
she swept off the poncho, trying to minimize the rain spatter on the slick concrete floor of the corridor, and reached for the chin strap of her helmet, only to freeze at the sound of an all-too-familiar voice.

“I don't believe it! What on earth were you thinking, riding that thing over here?”

Simone mentally sighed. “Hello to you, too, Morgan.”

“I mean it, Simone. Of all the stupid, illogical things to do!”

“I'm fine.”

“You're not fine. You're soaked. Your jeans are wet.”