Love Inspired June 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Single Dad Cowboy\The Bachelor Meets His Match\Unexpected Reunion (34 page)

“So what are you going to do?” Brooks asked as they started up the aisle together.

“I'm going to lay my career on the line,” Morgan answered bluntly.

“Oh, well, you're about ready to retire anyway, aren't you?” Brooks bantered.

Morgan turned a bland expression on his friend and said, “As soon as we reach the sidewalk, I'm going to punch you.”

Brooks slung an arm around his shoulders and laughed.

* * *

Provost Haward was a busy man, so it was Monday before Morgan could get an appointment with him. He said nothing to Simone or anyone else about it, save his father and Brooks, but he prayed consistently beforehand, so he felt quite calm when he went into the large, well-appointed office. He expected to walk out with an ultimatum or, possibly, without a job, but he'd determined to cross that bridge when he came to it. There were other colleges where he could teach, perhaps not a Bible college, but an institution of higher learning. The thought roiled Morgan's stomach, but he laid it at God's feet and left it.

When Cordés Haward waved him into a chair and said, “Chatam, what can I do for you?” Morgan didn't beat around the bush.

“Sir, I have a problem with a student, a serious one, and I thought it best that I bring it to you, get it out in the open.”

“Who is she this time?”

“Simone Guilland.”

Cordés seemed surprised. He obviously knew the name, and well he should, given the unusual arrangements made for her tuition and the way she had entered into the program. “She doesn't seem the type. What's she done?”

“She hasn't done anything.” Morgan frowned. Then realization dawned. “Oh, it's not
that
sort of problem. She's not chasing me around campus or anything like that.”

“Then what
is
the problem?”

Morgan tugged on his ear and said, “The problem is that I'm in love with her.”

That rocked Haward back in his plush leather chair. After a moment, he templed his fingers and asked, in all seriousness, “What do you intend to do about it?”

“I intend to marry her,” Morgan stated flatly, leaving no room for doubt.

To his surprise, Haward leaned back in his chair, looked heavenward and said, “Thank You, Lord!”

“Sir?”

Haward rocketed forward, leaning over his huge walnut desk. “Do you know how long I've prayed for this day? Every year I hear it! ‘Chatam is the biggest distraction on this campus. Why doesn't he just get married? When is he going to get married?' Every year I tell them, the faculty and the regents and the parents, ‘Mind your own business. The man's never given us a scintilla of evidence that he encourages these girls to lose their minds over him.'”

“That's putting it rather strongly,” Morgan objected. “Losing their minds?”

“I've had girls in the medical clinic crying because you wouldn't pay them attention!” Haward bawled. “There have been times when I thought that if you walked across this campus wearing your motorcycle gear one more time, I'd have to throw you out of here.”

Morgan didn't know what to say to that. Modesty seemed to demand that he say nothing, so he clamped his jaw shut.

Haward waved a hand, decreeing, “So marry the girl, and the sooner the better.”

“I couldn't agree more. There's just one tiny problem.”

Cordés made a face. “Yes, yes, I see. She's a student. And we have rules for a reason.”

“I know that,” Morgan said solemnly, “and I have tried to live by them, believe me.”

“You haven't been seeing the woman?”

“Well, yes, for one reason or another,” Morgan said carefully, “
mostly
having to do with my responsibilities as her faculty adviser. Sort of.”

The provost closed his eyes. “Let me rephrase that.” He pinned Morgan with a very pointed stare. “You haven't been
dating
the woman, have you?”

“No,” Morgan answered, “not as such.”

Haward lifted a hand. “I'll take your word for it. As I've said, you've never before shown the slightest disregard for the regulations.”

Morgan considered saying more and decided to settle for a simple, “Thank you.”

“Now,” the provost said, picking up his reading glasses and putting them on, as if they would help him think better, “it seems to me that what we have to do is get your young woman on the faculty.”

“We thought of that,” Morgan admitted, “but someone else was hired for the only staff opening I could find.”

Haward sent him a look over the rims of his glasses that seemed to ask,
Who do you think you're dealing with here?
He cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair and mused, “She's in the social services program, isn't she?”

“Yes. She's doing a mission assignment and internship with my father at the DBC youth and young adult mission.”

“Ah. And naturally that threw the two of you together.”

Morgan fought against a smile at the provost's attempt to make convenient excuses for him. “Naturally.”

“Let me see what I can do. There's some talk about needing a coordinator between the Social Services Department and the community.”

Morgan was surprised to hear that. “Oh? Who's talking about that?” Maybe he could put a word about Simone in the right ear.

Haward smiled. “Me. Or I soon will be.”

Grinning, Morgan stood, placed both hands flat on the dean's desk and said, “Cordés, thank you. You've been an answer to prayer today.”

“My own!” The man chuckled. “Glad to do it. The policies in place are designed to prevent unscrupulous professors from dallying with impressionable young women, Morgan. You simply do not fit that description.” He got up and offered Morgan his hand, joking, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen, though. Eh?”

“Like the temple of the Philistines caving in on Samson's head,” Morgan admitted.

“I don't think Samson was this happy about it.”

Morgan laughed. “I doubt it. But, um, could we keep this between us for the time being? I haven't exactly popped the question yet. I needed to do this first. And there are some other issues. We could still use some of those prayers, if you have any left over.”

Haward nodded, escorting him toward the door. “Sure, sure. Best get her on faculty first. Do things in the proper order. The rest will work out.”

They shook hands again, and Morgan went out with a new spring in his step. He was perspiring a little, too, and who could blame him?

Was it possible that Morgan Chatam's bachelor days were about to come to an end?

“Oh, Lord,” he prayed, feeling a sudden chill, “I hope I'm not making a mistake.”

What if she agreed to marry him and then came to regret it, realizing ten years from now that marrying him had been the real death knell to her hopes of one day having a child? He knew that his father would tell him he was borrowing trouble by thinking like that, but he couldn't help it. No man wanted to disappoint the woman he loved, even if the only way to prevent it was to give her up.

Chapter Fifteen

W
hen Simone opened her student mailbox on Tuesday afternoon to find a letter from the provost's office, her first instinct was to panic. Surely someone had told the provost that she and Morgan were seeing each other, which wasn't, strictly speaking, true. Her second thought was to take all the blame on herself, for Morgan's sake. When she read the letter, however, she laughed for sheer joy.

Would she be interested in assuming a position as liaison between the Social Services Department and the community? If so, the department chair would like to speak to her about her duties, specifically coordinating volunteers and interns for various social service organizations in the area. It was perfect, a godsend. Simone ran straight to Morgan's office with the letter in her hand.

She was met there by a plump, freckle-faced, forty-something redhead who introduced herself as Professor Chatam's administrative assistant.

“Did you want to see the professor?”

Feeling a little foolish, Simone replied in the affirmative. “If it's not too much trouble.”

“He's with a student right now, but he'll be free in a few minutes. Would you like a cup of coffee while you wait?”

Looking around at the curious gazes of everyone else in the surrounding cubicles, she hesitated. “Oh, maybe I should come back or see him in class.”

Just then, the door to the only real office opened and Morgan came out, followed by a dark-skinned young man in baggy clothes and big glasses.

“Thank you, Professor Chatam,” the younger man said in heavily accented English.

“No problem, Burindi. Let me know if that new tutor doesn't work out for you.”

“I will, sir, and God bless you.”

Morgan smiled at Simone and said, “He already has, my friend. He already has.”

He clapped the young man on the shoulder, sending him off, and waved Simone forward. She couldn't help feeling that he already knew what she'd come to tell him.

Waving the letter in her hand, she asked, “Did you have something to do with this?”

“If that's a job offer,” he said, grinning, “I might have had a little something to do with it.” Leaning in, he told her softly, “I had a—how shall I put this?—
confessional
conversation with the provost yesterday.”

“Morgan!” she gasped unthinkingly, alarmed.

“Not to fear. He was very
pleased
to help.”

“That's wonderful.”

“It is, indeed.”

He placed his hands on her shoulders then and turned her to face the room at large, calling out, “Everyone! Everyone!” All the curious faces that had peeped at her earlier now emerged fully from cubicles around the perimeter of the space. “This is Simone Guilland,” Morgan announced. “She's joining the BCBC faculty as a—” he grabbed her hand and quickly skimmed the letter “—community liaison. Simone, this is my absolutely essential assistant, Vicki Marble, adjunct instructor, Deon Welch...” He went on introducing the various teachers and workers in his department, about half a dozen in all. Then he simply said to his department staff, “Well, we're cutting out. If you need me, you know how to reach me.”

Ducking into his office, he reemerged with a brown leather bomber jacket, which he folded over one arm. The other he looped about Simone's waist.

“So, want to go out to dinner?”

“Morgan!” she hissed, torn between laughing and throwing an elbow into his ribs. “They're all staring at us.”

He bent his head and said right into her ear, “Get used to it, sweetheart. We are, as of this moment, a very public couple.”

She laughed delightedly. All the way across campus.

It was so freeing to be with Morgan without pretense or fear of compromising his position with the college. While he drove to the bistro that was quickly becoming their restaurant, she called the head of the Social Services Department and set up a meeting for the next day.

By the close of business Wednesday, she was officially employed, so when Morgan openly took a seat beside her at prayer meeting that next evening, she linked her arm with his and quietly exulted. Rina had intended to come along again, but halfway down the carriage house stairs, she'd decided that she was just too tired.

“This kid hasn't let me sleep in days,” Rina had said, holding her belly with both hands. “I think she's dancing hip-hop in here, and my back is sure feeling it.”

“Things will probably calm down soon,” Simone had told Rina. “She has to be running out of space.”

“I suppose that's true,” Rina had said. “I sure am.” With that, she'd laboriously turned and headed back up the stairs.

This time when the moderator asked Simone if she had any prayer requests, she mentioned Rina and the baby. Then she said, “And I have a praise. I got a job at BCBC.”

Over the many congratulations that came her way, Brooks, who was sitting in front of the aunties, twisted in his seat and waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Morgan, asking, “Any other good news?”

Morgan draped his arm across the back of Simone's chair and said, “We've been dating all of two days. Give a guy a chance.”

Simone bit her lip at the titters, gasps and happy exclamations.

“Okay, but you're not getting any younger, you know,” Brooks jabbed playfully. “I'm just saying.”

Morgan put his head back and groaned, to general laughter. “Doesn't someone somewhere need a doctor? Anyone? Anywhere?”

Someone did, actually, but they didn't know until nearly an hour later. After the prayer meeting ended, quite a few people stopped to congratulate Simone on her new job and wish her and Morgan well. Several commented how happy they were to see Morgan interested in someone. An older woman named Tansy Burdett asked how Simone and Morgan had met. The question did not seem entirely innocuous.

Simone opened her mouth to admit that they had met at the college, but then she remembered. “We met at Chatam House, actually.”

“That's right, we did,” Morgan said, “and it so happens that Simone is the sister of my cousin Phillip's wife.” Again, it was entirely true.

Simone nodded enthusiastically. The woman thawed considerably.

“Is that so? My own granddaughter is married to one of Morgan's cousins.”

“Reeves Leland,” Morgan supplied. “You remember, the cousin that Brooks and I share in common.”

“Oh,” Simone said, “the one whose wife is—”

“Anna Miranda,” Morgan said.

Simone wisely swallowed the words
trying to have a baby
and said instead, “Ah.”

“Mrs. Burdett is a college regent,” Morgan told her with a stiff smile. “As, of course, is my aunt Hypatia.”

“Of course,” Simone murmured, smiling. She offered a hand to the older woman. “It's a pleasure to meet you.”

They escaped several minutes later. Once they were safely alone inside his car, Simone having let the aunties know earlier that she wouldn't be riding back to the house with them, she gave him an apologetic smile.

“Oops. I guess I still have to watch what I say.”

“No, it's okay,” he told her. “Tansy is a stickler, but we haven't really done anything wrong. Besides, Provost Haward would back me, as would many others, or so I have reason to believe. I just don't see the point in roiling the waters unnecessarily.”

“I can't argue with that.”

They drove up to Chatam House a few minutes later to find an ambulance there, its lights throwing macabre images against the white brick in the dark night.

“It can't be the aunties,” Morgan said. “They're standing on the lawn.”

“Chester and Hilda, too,” Simone noted.

“And there's Carol,” Morgan pointed out, identifying the housemaid, Hilda's sister. That just left...

“Rina!” Simone gasped, jumping out of the car.

She slogged through the thick gravel of the driveway. Morgan caught her easily, taking her arm.

“You don't think he found her, the baby's father?” Simone worried aloud.

“I don't know.”

They made it to the ambulance just as the emergency medical technician was about to close the doors. Rina spotted her and held out her hands, crying, “Simone!”

Without even thinking, Simone climbed into the back of the ambulance, asking, “What's wrong? What's happened?”

“Premature labor,” the EMT answered. “We'll do our best to stop it.”

“Oh, Simone, I'm so sorry,” Rina said. “I—I just didn't realize.”

“It's not your fault,” Simone assured the girl, smoothing hair out of her eyes. “It's going to be all right.”

“Will you stay with me?”

“Of course.”

“Tell him I'm sorry.”

“Who?”

“Professor.”

Simone shot a puzzled, anguished look at Morgan. “I'll follow behind,” he said. Then he called out to the girl, “Rina, I'm praying for you. We're all praying for you and the baby.”

The girl nodded, swiped at her tears, then grimaced and gritted her teeth. The EMT spoke into the radio clipped to his shoulder, pulled the door closed and waved Simone down onto a narrow padded ledge next to the gurney. The ambulance eased into motion, rocking slightly side to side. Simone began to pray silently, but despite all efforts and all prayers, Rina's baby girl was born prematurely at four-forty Thursday morning. She weighed all of four pounds and three ounces.

“Could have been worse,” the pediatrician announced when he came out to the waiting room, explaining that the baby was probably less than two months premature. “She's scrawny, but she seems well developed. All the same, given the lack of prenatal care, we'll want to take every precaution.”

They would be transferring her to a neonatal unit in Dallas, but the doctor had no problem with Simone snapping cell phone photos and recording a short video of her in her incubator first.

“You can go on into the nursery,” he said. When Morgan hesitated, the doctor nodded at him, too, saying, “Just be quick.”

Surprised but pleased, they both donned the necessary garb and went in. She was a spunky little thing, pushing at her pink sock cap with both fists and kicking her tiny feet. Simone wished desperately to hold her, but that was not to be, of course. Morgan seemed to sense the need in her and wrapped his arms around her as the nurse whisked the baby away.

“Simone,” he whispered, “I want to give you your every heart's desire, but I'm so very afraid that—”

She stopped him, reaching up to press her fingertips to his lips. “Don't,” she said. “Someone recently told me that we have to ask for what we want, and we asked to be together, didn't we?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.”

He put his head to hers, and they both closed their eyes. “Lord,” Morgan said, “somehow I know You'll make a way for us. I must believe it.”

“I must, too,” Simone whispered.

They shed the nursery gear and walked arm in arm to Rina's room. She was sitting up in bed, eating pudding and sipping a soft drink.

“Have you seen her?” she asked anxiously, pushing away the bed tray.

Simone nodded. “The doctor says her lungs need some development, and she must put on some weight, but so far as they can tell, she's fine.”

“I tried to take care of her,” Rina said, hanging her head. “I guess I didn't do a very good job. I hope you're not disappointed in me.”

Simone glanced at Morgan. “I'm very proud of you, Rina. You did the best you could under very difficult circumstances. And she's fine. You'll be released from the hospital in a day or so, and I'll take you into Dallas to see her. I'm sure they'll let you hold her. I read somewhere that babies thrive best when they're cuddled.”

“Oh, no,” Rina said, shaking her head. “I couldn't. Anyway, I've already called my aunt up in Missouri. That lawyer found her for me. She's coming down to get me, and I'm going to stay with her, maybe go to college up in Springfield. She says there's a few Bible colleges up there.”

“I'll write you a recommendation, if you like,” Morgan offered, and Rina beamed.

“That would be cool. I'll take you up on that.”

Simone's heart was breaking to think that Rina would never even hold her child. She knew it was probably for the best, but still...if that had been her own little girl, no power on earth could separate her from that baby. She pulled up the photos on her phone and handed it to Rina, asking, “Don't you even want to see her?”

Rina took the phone and thumbed through the photos. “So tiny,” she said in an awed voice. “She's pretty, though, don't you think?”

“She's beautiful,” Simone told her. “There's a video.”

Rina played the video, smiling. “I told you she was a mover and a shaker.”

Simone chuckled. “You did.”

Rina watched the short video again and thumbed a tear from her eye before handing the phone back to Simone. “So what are you going to name her?” she asked.

For a moment, Simone did not react. The question made no sense. She thought she'd misheard. Then Morgan said, “What?”

Rina looked from one to the other of them. “I just thought I'd ask. It's okay if you don't want to tell me.”

Something started inside of Simone, a glowing, trembling, shattering pinprick of light, a stunning, joyous, unbelievable hope, the tiniest tip of a realization. Morgan put his hands on Simone's shoulders and stepped up very close, his feet bracketing hers, his chest pressed to her back.

“Rina,” he said carefully, “why would we be choosing a name for your baby?”

She shifted her gaze back and forth between them. “She's not
my
baby. She's
your
baby.”

Simone would have fallen to the floor if Morgan hadn't wrapped his strong arm around her waist. “Rina!” she gasped. “What are you saying?”