Love Inspired June 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Single Dad Cowboy\The Bachelor Meets His Match\Unexpected Reunion (27 page)

“I think you're done.”

“I am tired,” she admitted. She had promised, after all, not to overdo. “I'll just find a place to sit while the rest of you finish up.”

To her surprise, the kids themselves objected, saying they were ready to leave the park at any time. She knew that there were rides and exhibits yet in which several of them had expressed interest, so she shook her head.

“I'm perfectly content to sit and wait.”

“Tell you what,” Morgan said, “I think we could wrap this up in about an hour if we use a little organization.” He quickly ascertained who wanted to do what and split the party into groups, sending them off with instructions to meet back at the main gate in an hour's time or as close to it as possible. He then asked Rina to stay with Simone and set out on his own, returning about twenty minutes later with a wheelchair.

Simone grimaced. “I'm not crippled,” she protested.

“I'm well aware of that fact,” he told her. “Humor me.”

She glanced at Rina, wishing she could countermand the chair for the girl, but unable to do so without revealing her pregnancy.

“Hey,” Rina said, “if some dude got a wheelchair for me, I'd ride in it.”

“Well, then, you take it,” Simone proposed hopefully.

“Uh-uh.” Rina refused, grinning at Morgan. “I said some dude, not some uptight college professor.”

“Rina!” Simone scolded, trying not to laugh.

“The uptight college professor wants the exhausted graduate student in the chair,” Morgan ordered. “The rude teenager can walk.”

“Y'all take your time,” Rina said, trudging off with a wave. “I gotta make a pit stop. I'll catch you at the front gate.”

Simone sighed and got in the chair.

“That is one strange young woman,” Morgan muttered as he pushed the chair forward.

“It's not what you think,” Simone told him.

“You don't know what I think,” he retorted softly.

She knew that even in a grossly unfair world it was possible to have exhaustingly wonderful days that left her equally torn between tears and laughter.

* * *

Someone should kick him. No one would, so Morgan mentally kicked himself. How could he allow her to exhaust herself like this? He couldn't seem to get it right with her. He either got too close or he kept too much distance to realize when she needed protection. Her fragility was evident, but he'd let her go gallivanting all over town on a moped, of all things, and in the rain, and now she'd worn herself out at an amusement park, just as he had predicted and
while he was with her,
but he'd been so busy trying not to notice everything about her that he'd missed the most important thing. He wanted to howl with frustration.

She was always subdued, almost regally so, but her quietness tonight almost frightened him. Something had happened. Something had changed.

Who was he kidding? Everything had changed.

He didn't know for sure when it had happened. Maybe when he'd picked her up and put her on that roller coaster, maybe when he'd taken her hand. Maybe when she'd kissed him that night in his garage. Maybe even before that. All he knew was that he couldn't seem to get his equilibrium with her. He was either too close or too far. Or maybe he hadn't gotten close enough yet, and that was what really frightened him.

Never before had he pushed anyone onto a roller coaster or anything remotely resembling one. But he'd wanted so badly to share that with her, something he loved, something he craved, something he really got a big kick out of, and for all her protestations, she'd had a blast with it. Still, he shouldn't have done it, just as he shouldn't have let her wear herself out.

She leaned her head against the window of the van and was asleep before they got out of the parking lot, which was vast. The kids were great about it. They'd had quite a day and were ebullient, but they talked softly among themselves or not at all as he drove them back to Buffalo Creek. Rina sat alone, staring at Simone and occasionally at him, as if trying to puzzle something out.

Join the club,
he thought.

He dropped off everyone at the mission, everyone but Simone, who slept so soundly that she didn't wake until he gathered her into his arms to carry her up the walkway in front of Chatam House, where he'd picked her up that morning.

“Oh, are we there?”

“Um-hmm.”

“Good.”

Her arm about his neck, she laid her head on his shoulder and emitted a soft, snuffling snore. He grinned.

“You can't always carry me,”
she'd said.

“Yes, I can,” he whispered.

He couldn't, of course. He shouldn't. He wouldn't. Oh, but he wanted to.

He carried her into the house, pushing the door closed with his foot, across the grand foyer and up the great staircase.

This just got more and more dangerous all the time.

She was a student. He loved his job; it was his calling. There were rules about professors and students.

She was too young for him. Much too young. Almost twenty years too young. Well, fifteen. Okay, ten. Ten years too young.

She'd been dreadfully ill, with cancer. He'd already lost too much to cancer.

Morgan carried Simone along the landing to her room at the back of the house, dipped slightly to open the door, then stopped. His aunts were no doubt sleeping. The staff would have retired to the carriage house hours ago. There was no one to see him go into Simone's room, but he wouldn't do that. Instead of setting her on her feet, however, he shrugged his shoulder.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. You're home.”

“Home,” she said groggily.

“Home,” he repeated, so very thankful to have her safe at Chatam House.

She sucked in a deep breath, kicked a foot, glanced around her. The bright deep pink collar of her jacket framed her lovely face. Her gaze came back to his, and she said softly, “You're carrying me again.”

“So I am,” he told her, aware that his face was too close to hers, their noses all but touching.

She made a helpless sound, tilted her head slightly and kissed him, her hands sliding up the nape of his neck. He'd never felt quite so happy, so he kissed her back, deeply, joyously, unwisely. He felt like the most powerful man on earth, standing there with his feet braced wide apart, holding her in his arms, cradled against his chest, kissing her, feeling her delicate hands slip possessively about his head. She cupped his ears, sifted her fingers through his hair, measured the shape and size of his skull, as if storing up memories to savor, while he marveled that he should feel such things for this girl, this student, who could cost him everything. She was too young, too broken, too dangerous. And somehow perfect.

He didn't know who pulled back first. Perhaps it was mutual. One moment their lips were melded, and then their foreheads were touching. Finally, he had to let her down.

Tears stood in her glorious eyes, but she wouldn't shed them. He knew instinctively that no tears would fall. She was strong enough to hold them back. A part of him was glad; another part resented it greatly. She had been through much, but he was nineteen years her senior, by far the wiser of them, and torn to shreds inside. He had loved and lost in the cruelest of ways, and just as his father had buried two wives, he had buried two mothers. Yet here she stood, as fragile as eggshell outside but as strong as tempered steel inside. She was enough to make him want to risk it all, when he knew,
knew
how disastrous that would be.

He skimmed a hand over her cheek and said, “That cannot happen again.”

Then he left her as quietly and quickly as possible, shaken to his core.

Chapter Eight

M
organ and his father had always had a good relationship. For that matter, Morgan was on good terms with everyone in the family. Bayard, the oldest of Hubner's four children, was a dutiful if somewhat distant son and brother, his and Morgan's mother, Ardis, having died in a silly accident when Morgan was ten.

Their younger siblings, Chandler and Kaylie, were the children of their stepmother, or “second mom,” Kathryn. She had been pure joy, and Hub had cratered after her death from cancer. He'd aged twenty years in two and had chained Kaylie, a nurse, to him with guilt, fighting with Chandler over every little thing.

Thankfully, those days were behind them. Chandler and his wife, Bethany, were happily raising their son on a prosperous horse ranch in Stephenville. When Kaylie had married, she'd planned for Hub to live with her and Stephen. Hub had insisted, however, that he would have his own space, so they'd built him an apartment with a private entrance.

Hub, eldest Chatam, former pastor, father, grandfather, twice-widowed husband, was himself again, a wise and caring man, so even at forty-five years of age Morgan didn't hesitate to go to his dad when he had a problem that he couldn't solve alone. He waited until after the morning service on Sunday, shamefully glad that Simone had not come even if the aunties had scolded him for letting her tire herself out the day before, before he tooled up the impressive drive of Kaylie and Stephen's soaring house on the southwest outskirts of Buffalo Creek, seeking wisdom and strength and confirmation, he supposed, of what he knew was right and best.

He drove around to the far end of the house and parked in front of the single-bay garage where his dad kept his old car. Hub steadfastly refused to allow Stephen to buy him another, saying that he could buy his own anytime he wished, which was true. Morgan got out of the BMW—it had seemed the appropriate auto for this address—and walked up to knock on his father's door.

Hub answered a few moments later in his house slippers and suspenders, blinking owlishly behind the lenses of his wire-framed glasses. “Morgan! What brings you out this way, son?”

“Simone,” he answered simply.

“Ah.” Hub nodded in understanding, almost as if he'd been expecting this visit and its subject matter. “Come in. Let's talk it through.”

He led the way down a terrazzo-tiled hallway, bypassing a tiny, barely used kitchen on the way to a comfortable sitting room with a cheery gas blaze in a lovely rock fireplace. A wall of glass overlooked a professionally maintained garden in the backyard, and a large flat-screen TV took up another.

“You find her a temptation,” Hub surmised, waving Morgan into a seat on the comfortable leather sofa.

“To put it mildly.”

Hub chuckled, sounding genuinely pleased. Morgan came right back up off the sofa to pace the room with agitated strides.

“It's not a laughing matter! I could lose my job over this. You know what strict policies are in place for Bible College professors.”

“Yes, of course, and rightly so,” Hub said solemnly. “But the strictest policies concern undergraduate students.”

Stopping in midstride, Morgan gaped at him. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Obviously, Simone is a graduate student, and mature for her age, I'd say. I like her.”

Morgan glared at him, astonished. “You're not helping! I expected a stern lecture...”

“Great lot of good those do,” Hub muttered.

“...a helpful meditation exercise...”

“Oh, those I have in abundance. But so do you.”

“...maybe even a stunning insight into midlife crisis.”

Hub shook his head, brow furrowed. “You know, I've never figured out when midlife is. I don't think anyone does until it's long past.”

Morgan dropped down onto the sofa again, his head in his hands. “I'm terrified that I'm going to do something stupid, and you're talking esoteric nonsense!”

“Morgan,” Hub said calmly, “half your problem is that you haven't done anything truly stupid in decades.”

Morgan looked up sharply at that. “Well, how's this for stupid? I keep kissing her!” Hub beamed so brightly that Morgan felt duty bound to amend the statement. “Actually, she keeps kissing me, and I sort of kiss her back.”

“And why is that?” Hub asked with a face as straight as a plumb line.

“Because I want to,” Morgan admitted baldly. “Because I like how it makes me feel.”

“And how is that?” Hub asked.

Morgan threw out his arms in disgust. “Like I'm ten feet tall and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!”

Hub clucked his tongue. “Oh, that's terrible.”

“No, that's wonderful. But it's all wrong, Dad, for so many reasons. It's not just my job or my career that we're talking about. It's my
calling.
If I'm not true to that, I'm not true to God.”

And there it was, the worst of it, the thing that frightened him most. Morgan rubbed his hands over his face. Could he really be tempted to so grievous a failing? His father seemed to think so.

“This I understand,” Hub told him soberly.

“And she's so very young,” Morgan went on, eager to lay it all out now. “I know Kathryn was younger than you—”

“Nineteen years.”

“Really? That much
exactly?
” Morgan was surprised. He'd thought fifteen years or so. At every birthday, they'd joked about keeping her age a secret, and everyone had known it was because of the age difference between them, but somehow it hadn't seemed important, especially as she had died first. It had been five, six years now since her passing. Whoa. Time passed so quickly.

“Gave me pause,” Hub was saying, “but I had you, and you needed a mother.”

“She was a wonderful mother,” Morgan said, smiling.

“And a wonderful wife, and I'll tell you what she told me when I balked. You come to a point where you're either both adults or you're not, and she figured she'd given me long enough to mature.”

Morgan could just hear Kathryn saying it. He hadn't been quite eleven years old when they'd married, but it had seemed to him that she had made his careworn father younger with her vibrant love and personality. The whole church had been abuzz with talk that Kathryn had pursued the widowed minister, and she'd freely admitted it.

Simone was not Kathryn, however. They were as different as night and day. Kathryn had been all flutter and gaiety, all sparkle and whirlwind; Simone was quiet, self-possessed, sometimes stormy, sometimes a serene zephyr, a little mysterious, often unexpected. Kathryn had always left Morgan feeling stuffed with her presence; Simone left him wanting more, as if he couldn't get quite enough of her. It disturbed him, that feeling, worried him. He feared that she could become an addiction.

“There are things you don't know, Dad,” Morgan said softly, aware that he was betraying a confidence. “Please don't tell anyone else.”

“I'm adding pastor's vestments to my father's mantle now,” Hub told him in all seriousness.

“Simone cannot have children. She's had cancer.”

Hub winced at the news. “Dread disease.”

“That's why I've been so concerned about her. Brooks says she's beaten it and just needs time to recover.”

“But the specter is always there, especially after Brigitte and your stepmother.”

“It's not that so much,” Morgan said, realizing that was true, “but realistically speaking, for Simone to have children, she will need to adopt.”

“And you're too old to begin that process in the normal way of things,” Hub surmised. “Yes, I see. But, Morgan, we've gone from kissing to marriage and raising children in a single conversation.”

“I seem to recall you telling me that's where kissing leads,” Morgan teased, feeling better for simply having it all said aloud now.

Hub chuckled. “So I did, and so it does. But there is a little thing called courtship first.”

“Yowza,” Morgan joked, “maybe in a past generation.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And that brings us full circle to right back where we started. BCBC has clear-cut policies against professors and students dating or otherwise becoming romantically involved.”

Hub tapped a finger against the cleft in his chin. “I seem to recall a few exceptions to that rule.”

“Spouses who enroll as students. Faculty who are also students. That's about it.”

Hubner spread his hands. “Is there no faculty position for which Simone might be qualified? The good Lord knows we don't pay her enough to keep body and soul together at the mission. She'd starve if she wasn't with your aunts.”

Morgan shook his head. “That wouldn't be a true solution. It would only take care of one problem.”

“Well, we'll pray about it,” Hub said. “There's your only real solution, anyway.”

“I know, Dad,” Morgan told him. “I feel better with you praying about it, too.”

“That's what I'm here for,” Hub told him warmly, “to pray for my children. It's my burden and my privilege, as much my calling as the pastorate ever has been, a joy among sorrows, more precious to me than jewels.”

For the first time, Morgan felt a definite pang at his lack of offspring. He prayed for his students, of course. Simone was just one for whom he'd prayed over the years. Many more would need his care and concern in the years ahead. Which was all the reason he needed to avoid temptation and protect his calling. Why did it suddenly feel like such a gargantuan task?

* * *

She lay in wait like a thief, and in her own house, no less, but Hypatia felt compelled to have a private word with Simone. The child had looked like death warmed over on Sunday morning, with dark circles under her eyes and an alarming pallor. Clearly the trip to the amusement park—Hub had told them all about it—had been too much for Simone. Hypatia had seen no choice but to press the girl to stay home in bed, and she'd felt quite put out with her nephew about it. She'd thought that Morgan, above all others, could be trusted to see to it that Simone did not overtax herself, but there the poor thing had stood, looking on the verge of collapse.

“I'll have a word with Morgan Charles Chatam,” Hypatia had announced, feeling Simone's forehead for sign of a fever. “What was he thinking to let you get into such a state?”

“Were there roller coasters involved?” Odelia had asked, all worried curiosity. Roller coasters! Hubner seemed to find Morgan's fascination with the things amusing, but Hypatia couldn't help thinking that it was rather undignified for a grown man.

Simone's reaction had been most telling, however. She had paled even whiter, before her face had bloomed bloodred, and she had grabbed Hypatia's hand in both of hers, imploring her, “Oh, no, you mustn't blame Morg—er, Professor Chatam. He was such help to me! He's always been so very much help to me.”

Hypatia had exchanged a glance with her tittering, romantically minded sister, then quickly shooed the same from the room. It wouldn't do to have Odelia building love affairs out of blushes and chance remarks, but Hypatia hadn't been able to dismiss so lightly the troubled softness in Simone's tired gray eyes or her concerns about a developing relationship. A crush on Simone's part was one thing; anything more could be catastrophic.

She lifted the edge of the lavender silk sleeve at her wrist and checked the time on the face of her watch. If Simone proved true to form, she'd be coming down those stairs anytime now on her way to Monday morning class. Morgan's class. Simone never missed it. On occasion, she skipped one or the other of her classes but never, apparently, Morgan's. That could be because Morgan's class was a prerequisite for her acceptance into the graduate program, or it could be because Simone felt a debt of gratitude toward him. Or it could be...

Hypatia frowned. She was not given to romantic nonsense herself, but even she had to admit, secretly, that of all her nephews Morgan was by far the most appealing. Everyone knew that half the females on campus threw themselves at his feet every semester without fail, but stalwart fellow that he was, he had remained true to his calling and the memory of his Brigitte. Hypatia had always considered him a Chatam after her own heart, happy in his single state. Now she feared that Simone might upset that balance a bit, and someone could get hurt, perhaps Simone, perhaps Morgan, perhaps both.

Simone came skipping down the stairs in a whispered rush, her tread so light that Hypatia would have missed her if she'd waited in the parlor or library as she'd considered doing. Calmly rounding the curved post at the foot of the staircase, Hypatia put on a welcoming smile.

“There you are. Looking fit, I see, and feeling better, I trust.”

Simone drew up on the bottom step, smiling down at Hypatia. She looked slim and sleek but healthy in wheat-colored jeans and a matching hooded jacket worn over a bright orange T-shirt and orange canvas shoes, the ubiquitous backpack slung over one shoulder. “Thank you. I feel well.”

“That bag looks heavy.”

“It is, but I only carry it to and from the car.” She leaned forward, winking conspiratorially, and added, “Don't tell the professor. He gave me a rolling case some time ago, and it's a great help on campus, but it's more trouble to lug up and down the stairs than the backpack.”

“He does try to see to your needs,” Hypatia mused.

“Oh, yes. He's very kind.”

“And you are falling in love with him,” Hypatia ventured gently.

Simone seemed more dismayed than shocked. “Ma'am,” she said carefully, “you know that students cannot date professors. It's strictly forbidden.”

“And that has precisely what to do with your feelings?” Hypatia asked in a kind tone.

Licking her lips, Simone let down the backpack. She seemed to be breathing with some difficulty. “I—I'm trying to explain to you that I can't have feelings for Professor Chatam.”