Love Inspired June 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: The Cowboy's Homecoming\The Amish Widow's Secret\Safe in the Fireman's Arms (17 page)

He stepped inside the café and glanced around.

George Bamford was standing at the till, dealing with a customer.

“Hey, Bannister,” the man said, giving him a cursory nod as he closed the drawer of the antique cash register. “So. Wedding went good?”

“It was great. Lots of fun. Brooke looked gorgeous. Too bad you couldn't have come.” Lee had heard via Keira that Brooke had asked George to come with her as her escort, but he hadn't shown.

“Allison was at the wedding too. One of us had to stay back and keep the grill going,” George said, glowering at Lee as if it were his entire fault he couldn't attend.

“Well, maybe next time...” Lee said.

“Next time being yours?” George asked slyly, looking over his shoulder to the back of the restaurant, where Lee saw Abby sitting.

“No. Heather's, for now,” Lee countered, then added a quick lift of his eyebrow as if letting the other man know that there might be another one in the future.

“Go get 'em, cowboy,” George said. “I'll be by with coffee.”

Lee grinned, then headed to the booth at the end, where Abby sat, looking down at the coffee in front of her as if it held the secrets of the universe.

“Hey, you,” he said, slipping into the booth. He wanted to kiss her but figured he'd hold off. Plenty of time for that later.

She simply looked up at him. Lee couldn't stop a twitch of concern at the haggard look on her face.

“You okay?” he asked, reaching over and laying the back of his hand against her cheek. “You look exhausted.”

She didn't reply, but she reached up and caught his hand, holding it against her face, her slender fingers curled around his wrist. Then she lowered her hand, still holding his, her fingers like ice.

“What's wrong, Abby?”

She gave him a smile, but Lee could see her heart wasn't in it. George came by with a pot of coffee. She declined a refill, but Lee nodded at George. When he left she pushed her cup aside, sitting back in the booth, her arms clasping her middle, and Lee had a nagging suspicion that she was about to tell him something he didn't want to hear.

“I saw my dad last night,” she said, her voice so quiet he had to lean forward to hear her. “He was parked in front of my mom's apartment. I saw him when I came back from...from the wedding.” She stopped there, teeth worrying her lower lip, her eyes still averted.

“How is he?” Lee asked, his heart faltering. Had seeing her father given her second thoughts?

“He's okay. He came to give me his blessing. On our relationship.”

Lee felt his breath leave him like air out of a balloon. “That's great. That's good to know.”

However, Abby didn't look as happy as he felt. “But while we were talking, I found something else out. Something important.” She bit her lip again, then looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “My dad told me that you weren't the one driving when he got hit. That there was another person in the truck when it hit you and he was the one driving. He was the one who hit my dad. Not you.”

Lee narrowed his eyes, trying to keep up. “I don't understand what you're saying,” he said, truly bewildered as he tried to process what she was saying. “I was the only person in the truck when Sheriff McCauley came by. Just me.”

“According to my father, after he was hit, he saw the truck hit the tree. That's when he saw two people in the cab. He said he saw the driver get out and pull the passenger—you—over to the driver's side. Then the driver ran over to my father.” A deep frown creased her brow, but she pushed on. “My dad couldn't see who it was, but he could see that it was a guy with blond hair, kind of long. Obviously not you. But he couldn't see his face. Then whoever it was ran off into the bushes and minutes later the police were there.”

“There were two people in my truck?” Lee repeated, trying to make sense of what Abby was telling him. “And your dad is actually saying I wasn't driving when I hit him?”

“Yes, that's what he said. You don't remember any of this?”

“The last thing I remember was walking with Mitch and David to my truck after the party.” Lee stared at Abby. “Is he absolutely sure about all this?”

“I had to drag the truth from him, but yes,” she whispered. “He was quite sure.”

Lee fell back against the seat, feeling as if he'd been punched in the gut. Too vividly he remembered sitting with his father at the lawyer's office across from Abby, her mother and Cornell's attorney while they laid out the terms of the settlement.

It was the lowest point in his life. Not only finding out what he had done, but realizing that his father would be paying for his mistake as well when the insurance company refused to pay up because this was Lee's third DUI. But the worst was seeing Abby glaring at him as if he was even less worthy than scum.

And what about now?

“Did you know this all along?”

“No. No, I didn't,” Abby said, shaking her head vehemently. “Like I said, I had to drag the truth out of my dad. He made some vague comments and when I pushed him he finally told me. I had no clue. No earthly idea.”

“I spent three years in jail,” he snapped, his brain scrambling to absorb what Abby had just told him. “Three years of my life thinking I was nothing but dirt. And then another three years trying to pay my dad back.”

“I'm so sorry,” Abby said. “So sorry. I should never have pushed my dad to ask for a settlement.”

“You were the one who wanted to sue?”

“I encouraged him to,” she whispered brokenly. “I'm so sorry.”

“Sorry?” Lee shook his head, his confusion morphing into an irrational anger. “You're
sorry
. I spent years paying my father back the money you pushed your father to sue for. Money that your father squandered.”

He stopped himself, though the stricken look on Abby's face made him realize he couldn't take back what he said.

But he didn't have room for her right now. All he could think about was what she and her father did to him. The guilt that had dogged him. The look of disgust on her face when they had faced each other across the lawyer's table as they hammered out a deal. The money they had sucked out of his parents.

“I gotta go,” he muttered, grabbing his hat, slipping out of the booth.

Then he turned and strode out of the diner, shoved open the door and walked blindly to his truck. He got in, twisted the key in the ignition, then pulled out of the parking spot, his tires squealing, his foot pressed to the accelerator.

He had to get out of here. He couldn't be here right now.

Chapter Thirteen

A
bby sat back in the booth, her eyes stinging with tears, her heart heavy as a stone as she watched Lee stride away from her, each footfall like a hammer blow to her chest.

She leaned her elbows on the table, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, willing back the tears that even now spilled past her hands and down her cheeks.

Be with him, Lord
, she prayed.
Keep him safe.

She wanted to pray that he could forgive her, but she remembered how angry she had been with him over what she thought he had done to her father. It had taken her years to get to the point that she could forgive him.

How long would it take him?

She blindly fished in her backpack for a tissue. She wiped her eyes, but new tears flowed down her scalding cheeks. It didn't matter how long it would take Lee to forgive. She guessed that anything they had before had been destroyed in the aftermath of this particular storm.

She pulled a few bills out of her wallet and dropped them on the table. Then she struggled to her feet, grabbing her backpack, and made her way out of the café, hoping no one would notice her streaked makeup, her red eyes.

She wasn't sure how she made it back home. Her mother was waiting for her with a pot of tea, but Abby declined, retreating to her bedroom.

She dropped into her chair and turned on her laptop. She had spent the entire weekend editing pictures and writing up the article for the magazine. She had gone over it so many times, trying to catch the right nuances, give it the right due.

But the hardest part of all was seeing the pictures of Lee.

And there were so many of them: Lee on a horse. Lee with their dog, Sugar. Lee with the calf. Lee standing on a hill overlooking a valley. Lee smiling at her, his eyes twinkling.

Each picture hurt to look at. Each picture a reminder of what might have been.

And now she had the wedding photos to go through, as well.

She loaded them onto her computer, hoping, praying she could be dispassionate about them as she sorted through them all, discarding and narrowing the choices to her top picks.

She pulled up the last pictures she had edited and felt, again, that clench in her heart as Lee's smiling face stared back at her.

So close, she thought, her heart aching. They had come so close.

All the while, as she edited the wedding photos—softening, shading, adding highlights, enchanting and vignetting—Abby kept her phone beside her. She had tried to call him a few times, but he didn't answer and she didn't blame him.

What could they possibly have to say to each other now?

But each time she saw Lee's smiling face, it was like another bruise on her battered soul. She had been wrong about him twice. She wasn't worthy of him.

Not anymore.

* * *

“So let me get this straight, you weren't the one driving when your truck hit Cornell Newton?”

Monty sat back in the leather chair of his office, his incredulous look echoing the anger that had twisted Lee's gut when Abby told him.

“According to Cornell, there was another driver,” Lee said, turning to look out the window over the ranch he would become a part of. “He didn't know who, but from the description, I'd guess David. He's the last person I remember being with that night.” Lee pinched the bridge of his nose, his brain still reeling from the information Abby had dumped on him an hour ago. “I don't know what to do. What to think.”

He heard the squeak of his father's chair and then a hand resting on his shoulder. “This is hard news, son. Very hard news.”

“I keep thinking of how guilty I felt. When I saw Abby at the lookout point when I first came back home, she was so angry with me and I felt I deserved every bit of it. But now...?”

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the window, thinking of the furious words he had thrown at her in the café. The guilt on her face. It destroyed him and at the same time he felt suddenly exonerated. He had thought himself worthless for so long. Unworthy of Abby. When she had accepted his apology, granted him forgiveness, he felt as if all the self-condemnation he had put himself through was eased away.

But all those emotions were for nothing. Everything was different now.

“Now you have to find a way through all this,” his father said. “A way to redeem this.”

Lee whirled around. “How? I lost three years of my life because of a lie. Abby's father took that away from me. And the lawsuit...the lawsuit Abby admitted to pushing her father to file...that took another five to pay you back. It set the ranch back for a number of years.” He spoke the words through gritted teeth, his hands clenched at his sides. “How am I supposed to get around that? My reputation was ruined for a crime I didn't commit. I wasted all that time and money trying to make up for what I'd done. All those years. Gone. Lost.”

Monty gave him a sympathetic smile, then leaned back against the desk, looking contemplative. “Maybe. But I remember hearing a sermon once on that very topic. The fact that nothing in our life is wasted. That God uses everything that comes our way.”

“Well, at least you got most of your money back,” Lee said with a harsh laugh. “I'm thankful for that.”

“You know I never asked for you to repay me,” Monty said quietly, his arms folded over his barrel chest.

“I know, but I owed you for what I'd put you through. You had to sell all those cows, borrow money against the ranch even though it was paid off. Now, turns out, I didn't put you through anything. Cornell and Abby did.”

“Don't blame Abby,” Monty chided. “At the time she was only trying to find a way to make up for what happened to her father.”

“I know that on one level, but it's hard not to feel humiliated at how I practically begged for her forgiveness when it turns out I didn't do anything to merit it.” He could still feel the sting of it all. Especially given the frosty welcome he'd received when he first came back to Saddlebank.

His father pursed his lips, tapping his fingers on his arm as if considering something.

“You've got your thinking face on,” Lee said, dropping his hands on his hips. “What's on your mind, Dad?”

Monty was quiet for another moment, and then he gave Lee a pensive look. “I'm thinking of Mitch and David. They were bad men. Evil, you could say, given what they did to your sisters.”

“Not hard to agree with that,” Lee said, wondering where his father was going with this dark history when they were talking about what Cornell had done.

“But you were friends with them.”

“In high school,” Lee protested. “And for a few months afterward.” Surely his father didn't hold him accountable for Mitch and David's actions?

“The accident happened after a party you attended with those friends,” Monty continued. “You were drinking with those friends.”

“But I wasn't driving.”

“I know—I understand that—but let's work this through.” Monty paused, then gave Lee a melancholy smile. “I can't begin to tell you how sad I am that you were falsely charged. And I'm also very sorry that this has caused a rift between you and Abby.”

Lee narrowed his eyes, puzzled that his father wasn't angrier himself at the injustice of what had happened.

“But the other reality is,” his father continued, “and it pains me to say this, but I wonder where you would have ended up had you not been in that accident.”

“Not in prison.”

“Yet.”

That single word hung between them, heavy with unspoken meaning.

“What do you mean—yet?”

“First off, you need to know that I love you and I'm very proud of you. Proud of the man you've become and humbly thankful for your return to your faith. But the fact of the matter is, you were headed down a dark path. You ended up in prison because it was your third offense. And we both know that you weren't living a good life.” He inhaled heavily, let it out slowly. “So when I see how Mitch and David's lives ended up, I'm wondering if you weren't spared a worse ending to yours.”

Lee wanted to refute his father's assumption, but even as his words of defense sprang to his lips, another part of him knew Monty was right.

“But it was wrong,” Lee protested, unable to leave that alone.

“It was. But your mother and I spent many hours in prayer over you. Seeing you go off to jail was not what we had hoped, but at the same time, maybe it was an answer to those prayers. You returned to your faith. You became a responsible young man. And yes, you may feel like you wasted your time and a lot of money, but I believe, firmly in my heart, that when we put our lives in God's hands, nothing is wasted.”

The last three words hung between them, echoing in the silence.

“And what about the money? Surely you can't just dismiss that?”

“It's only money. And we're doing better now than we have in years. We don't miss the money.”

Lee scrubbed his hands over his face, the reality of what his father was saying wearing at his anger and sense of injustice. He thought of Mitch and David, where they had ended up. David, dead after driving drunk. Mitch, now in prison, as well. He thought of the lies they had told Abby about him. They were the reason she didn't come with him to the party. They were the ones who had come between him and Abby.

How different would his life have been had he ditched them as his parents had repeatedly begged him to do?

“I know this is difficult to face, son. And, as I said, I'm sorrier than you can know that you were unjustly treated. But be assured, you are in good company. So was Jesus, the one who died for your sins. The one you returned to in jail, a result of injustice that brought you back to him.”

Lee closed his eyes, his father's words finding root in his weary and wounded soul.

“Can I pray with you?” Monty asked.

Lee nodded slowly, then sat down in the chair across from his father's desk. A chair he had spent many hours in, listening to his father plead with him to turn his life around. Now here he was. Changed, broken and so different. Was Monty right? Had he needed to go through what he did to get to where he was now?

His father sat down across from him, took his hands in his and together they bowed their heads.

“Lord, we come before you now, praying that you will heal the hurt in our lives. That you will show us where you want us to be. We want to thank you for your faithfulness to us. For your love that sacrificed so much so that we could live. Be with Lee now as he deals with this blow. Give him strength and courage to trust that you will use everything that happened in his life. Amen.”

A simple prayer but it settled into Lee's soul. He waited a moment, then lifted his head, giving his father a wan smile.

“Thanks, Dad,” he said.

His father gave his hands an extra squeeze then pulled away. “I love you, son. And I'm praying that you'll give Abby another chance. She's a good person. You've always cared for her, I think.”

Lee held that thought. He knew his father was right. And he knew he couldn't blame her for what had happened. “I think so too, but for now, I just need some time.”

“Of course. This is a huge downshift for you.”

Lee nodded, then pushed to his feet. “I'm going out for a ride. I need to clear my head and think.”

He gave his father another hug, then walked out of Monty's study.

Half an hour later he was riding along the valley he had taken Abby to, what seemed like months instead of mere days ago. He let his horse amble along the ridge as he took it all in.

Maybe it's a good thing you ended up in jail
.

Abby's words returned to him. At the time they had hurt and made him angry, and by all rights, he should be even angrier now.

But he couldn't get his father's words out of his mind either. How nothing is wasted.

He stopped his horse and dismounted, crouching down in the grass, looking over the cattle grazing in the pasture. In spite of the turmoil of the past few hours, he felt a gentle peace wash over him. He was home.

Would he have appreciated it as much had he stayed? Would he have had this same sense of fulfillment had his life gone on the trajectory it was headed, hanging around with David and Mitch, repeatedly getting into trouble? Would he even be here now?

He eased out a long sigh, thinking again of Abby. How she had forgiven him. Given what he knew now it seemed pointless. Yet...

She had granted him the pardon with the information that he had harmed her father.

His hands clenched momentarily as he thought again of the injustice of it all.

Yet...

Could he do any less? He had lived with anger long enough, and he didn't want to go back to that. Didn't want to let it consume him as it had done those first two years in prison. He didn't want it to determine his actions.

He knew he cared for Abby. Always had. They had a chance to be together. The shadow that hung over their relationship, from his point of view, had now been taken away.

However, that now meant that the onus of carrying forward lay on his shoulders, and he wasn't sure he could do it.

But what was the alternative? Holding on to his pride and sense of injustice? And what comfort would that be?

His father was right. Abby was right. His life had been going in a bad direction. Maybe, just maybe, this ironic twist had saved him from something worse?

He pulled in a long, slow breath. “Help me, Lord,” he whispered. “Help me to accept that all the twists and turns of my life brought me here. Help me to forgive.”