Small-Town Dreams (10 page)

“Am I allowed to see it yet?” he asked at a near whisper, not wanting to startle her.

Cassie turned to him with a smile as sunny as the bright fall day and chuckled. “Of course. I refuse to be temperamental and run around hiding my work before it’s finished, especially when I’m living and working in someone else’s home.”

Josh stood rooted in place as love for her overwhelmed him. Her hair was all ruffled from running her hands through it as she worked, and she had a streak of sky-blue paint smeared across one cheek. And she was perfect.

He didn’t remember walking toward her, but he suddenly found himself standing next to her at the easel.

He didn’t spend those precious seconds admiring her work, but rather God’s. Her blue eyes sparkled with happiness in the sunlight. They were alive with something he was afraid to try identifying. Instead, he reached out and stroked his thumb across her cheek where the paint was smeared. The paint stayed stubbornly there, but he forgot his mission as soon as his fingertips touched the silky texture of her skin.

Cassie’s smile faded and she turned into his arms. “Josh?” she said, her voice low and questioning. “What’s—”

He leaned closer and silenced her in the only way that felt right at that moment. He kissed her and knew for the first time how
right
a kiss could be. It was, of course, for him his first kiss, at least the first he remembered, and he was shocked at what he felt as every muscle in his body tensed.

But then came the feeling he knew all too well. That hollow detached knowledge. It made the hair on his arms stand on end as if a cold breeze had floated over him. A whisper of
before.

This was not a first at all. And worse, he knew he’d felt love and need before—for some other woman.

Cassie’s arms had risen to encircle his neck and she was clearly shocked when he reached up, took her wrists and all but pushed her away.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and turned to flee the confusion in her eyes and in his heart. He made it to the door before her call stopped him.

“Josh! I’m not sorry. Please come back. I wanted you to kiss me. I love you. Can’t you see that by now?”

Josh whirled back to face her, thrilled and horrified by her declaration. He’d never in a million years guessed that she could feel anything for him even close to the depth of what he’d come to feel for her. Looking into her gentle, caring eyes, he fully understood what he’d seen there earlier.

She did love him. Maybe as much as he loved her.

But it was an impossible love. A forbidden love.

“That should never have happened. None of this should. Don’t love me, Cassie. I’m not all here. It just looks like I am. Don’t waste another second thinking about me. Because I’ll never love you back. I can’t. I just can’t.”

This time he gave her no chance to stop him. He reached for the door and shut it behind him. Shut it on the woman he loved and needed as much as he needed air to live. Shut it on the life he wanted and couldn’t have.

Because he loved someone else more, and under His laws Josh wasn’t free to love this woman. Somewhere buried in his mind—in his past—was another.

E
very bone in Josh’s body screamed as he steered the truck into the parking lot next to Irma’s Café.

He’d been avoiding the house these past three days ever since that wonderful, disastrous kiss with Cassidy. That first afternoon he’d excused his absence to Irma and Henry by hiking up the mountain to Henry’s retreat cabin to ensure it was secure for winter. He’d left late in the day, so staying all night hadn’t looked at all odd to the older couple.

He’d come home the next morning dreading any encounter with Cassie, to find a note from Larry Tully, who needed help repairing a pasture fence. It hadn’t taken all day, but with winter coming, a home visit to see several of the parishioners who lived farther than most had kept him away till late that night.

As soon as he’d come home, he’d gone straight to bed. He hadn’t slept well, but at least he’d gotten through another day.

Then yesterday morning he’d gone up to spend time with George Taylor, who was dying of cancer. Josh had found George’s daughter and son-in-law exhausted and depressed when he’d arrived. They were determined that someone be with the older man when he died. So Josh had stayed and had taken the night shift so the couple could get some much-needed rest. George had gone home to the Lord just after his daughter returned to his bedside near dawn.

George’s death had reminded Josh just how fragile life was and that he could lose Irma or Henry at any time. He’d realized that he couldn’t stay away from home for the rest of Cassie’s stay. He was through hiding, but had no idea what to do next.

He set the brake on the truck and hopped out. With any luck Ma was working this shift. He needed to spend some time with her. Then he wanted to have a talk with Henry. He missed his family. Almost as much as he missed Cassie.

But he had to stay away from her. The only way to minimize the hurt he had caused her with his carelessness was to stay in the background until she left. He hoped Ma or Henry could think of something better than he had.

Josh felt a little lighter when he pulled open the door and Irma looked up from pouring coffee for Ted MacDonald. “Want a cup? It’s fresh,” she asked, then her eyes narrowed. “You look terrible. Rough night?”

Josh settled his tired bones on the counter stool and nodded. “George went home to the Lord at around seven this morning. I stayed to help make arrangements.”

Irma reached out and patted his hand. “That’s always the hardest duty a pastor faces. I remember Henry’s first deathbed vigil. Have you talked to him yet?”

Josh shook his head. “I stopped here. I’ll go home and grab a few hours’ sleep after I fill him in.”

“Cassidy’s been looking for you. For nearly three days now. She seems to think you’re hiding from her.”

“I’ve been…” Josh sighed and nodded. “Yeah, hiding from her.”

Irma shook her head, her gaze shrewd. “She seemed awfully sure, but I told her you’d never be such a coward.”

“I’m trying to keep her from getting hurt, Ma. She thinks she’s in love with me.”

“Only ‘thinks’? Now, correct me if I’m wrong. We’re talking about Cassidy Jamison. I’d guess she’s about thirty.”

“Twenty-nine,” he corrected automatically, then leaned his elbow on the counter and groaned as he covered his eyes with one hand to squeeze his aching temples. He knew where this was going.

“Hmm. You’re right. She’s twenty-nine years old. A forthright, strong modern woman. Don’t you think she deserves to have her feelings taken seriously and not discounted as if she’s too dim-witted to know what she feels?”

He dropped his hand to the counter and sighed. “I have. But she can’t love me.”

Irma raised an eyebrow that somehow managed to change her sweet motherly face to imperious stone. “You had better not spout some self-deprecating platitude like ‘I’m not good enough for her, Ma,’ or I’ll starch your underwear for a month.”

Josh managed a little smile for her, then he dropped his eyes to his hands and fingered the slight bump on the ring finger of his left hand where his finger had been broken—where a plain band once must have rested. It was one of only two clues to the truth of his past. “I know money and social position don’t mean anything to her. That’s not it. She can’t love me because I’ll only hurt her.”

Irma covered his hand with hers, and he looked up into her soft gray eyes. “Son, you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“I’m married, Ma. You know it. I know it. Most important, God knows it. I have to honor my vows even though I don’t know who I made them to or where she is.”

Irma took his coffee away.

“Hey!”

“There’s nothing I can say to you that I haven’t already. But I can tell you that you don’t need caffeine. You need sleep so you can think with a clear head and not with your emotions. Then when you wake with a clearer head, I want you to have a long talk with Henry. Talk this out with him one last time, then put it to rest. You have to give it up, son. Your memory is just not coming back. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next year. I truly believe that.”

He wished he could believe it. For the first time, he really wished he could believe it. But that was only because now the future held something precious that the past did not. Cassie.

He stood and leaned over the counter to give Irma a peck on the cheek. “I guess I should go. Thanks, Ma.”

Josh left, and Irma smiled at his back, adding silently,
Have a nice chat with Cassidy. If anyone can talk you out of this stubbornness, it’s her. She’s one determined young lady. Don’t be surprised if she corners you.

Josh stumbled up the last step to the second floor a few minutes later and could almost feel the mattress under his back. Half a second after his turning in to the hall, a small paint-flecked hand landed smack in the middle of his chest.

“We need to talk,” Cassidy said, determination written on her every feature.

He was too tired for this. “No, we don’t. I need sleep—and you need to get on with your life.”

She stepped back, planting her fists on her hips and effectively blocking the hall to his room. “So you kissed me and it meant nothing?” she asked, her eyes flashing.

He propped his shoulder against the wall for a little help to remain standing, and if he looked like a punk the way the guy in “Rebel Without a Cause” had, then so much the better. Maybe she’d believe him capable of leading her on. “Yeah. Something like that. Let’s just forget it and go back to being just friends.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and she tried to blink them back. “And that’s all you ever felt for me. Friendship?”

Josh pushed away from the wall and tried to steady his breathing as he looked at her, his heart twisting in his chest, his throat aching. He blinked away a flood of tears in his own eyes. He couldn’t lie to her. He just couldn’t let her think he didn’t care.

“No. It’s not. You were right, Cassie. We need to talk.” He took her arm and steered her into the room she used as a studio. He’d put an easy chair in there for her, and now he directed her toward it.

“What do you think we need to talk about?” she asked as she sank reluctantly into the old chair.

Josh grabbed an old desk chair from across the room and sat in front of her. He leaned forward and braced his forearms on his thighs. “We need to talk about a lot of things. Me. Who I am. What I feel. What you deserve.”

“What do you feel?”

“I love you more than life, Cassie.”

She smiled. He adored that smile, and the light of love that suddenly shone in her eyes—even knowing he’d have to extinguish it.

“Then what’s the problem?” she asked.

“I can’t love you more than my Lord. I have to stay faithful to Him.”

Cassidy’s heart nearly stopped at the desolation and determination she heard in his voice. She stared at him and wondered how he could think she wanted him to be less than he was. “Have I ever given you any hint, inkling or glimmer of an indication that I expect you to give up your commitment to the Lord, to the church or to Henry?”

“No. I’m not saying this right. I—” He stopped and looked down at the floor for a long moment, then back up.

The sadness and loss in Josh’s eyes truly frightened her. “Just say it!”

“It’s not that easy. Maybe if I start at the beginning.”

He seemed so torn apart that Cassie reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. “That’s usually a good place to start.”

He nodded and fished his wallet out of his back pocket. “After I was awake a few weeks—”

“Wait a minute. I thought you meant our beginning as in when I came to Mountain View.”

“No.
My
beginning. That’s the real problem. There were two clues to who I really am. One was this—it was in my suit coat pocket when Irma and Henry found me.” He handed her a picture he’d pulled out of his wallet.

Cassidy didn’t want to look, but he seemed to need her to. And what she saw broke her heart. It was Josh—a little younger, a lot more polished, wearing a dinner jacket—and a woman with black hair wearing a long, light blue gown. It wasn’t the sight of him with another woman that broke her heart. No. What dealt the blow was the near worshipful look in his eyes as he gazed down at the dark, petite beauty who stood within his possessive embrace. “Who is she?”

“I have no idea. Well, actually I have an idea, but it’s only that. A speculation. Cassie, the other clue was that a ring had been torn off my left ring finger when they found me. The police and the pathologist who examined my hand in those early days confirmed that it was a ring I’d been wearing for years.”

“But pathologists are for—”

“I was on life support and there was every chance I’d die. The state police were trying to find out who I was and what had happened. As it was, almost all evidence of a ring was gone by the time I woke.”

“And you think she was your wife.”

Josh nodded. “I’m sure of it.”

“But you said you don’t remember anything.”

“That’s true.”

“Then, how can you be sure?”

“Because this awful sadness descends on me like a dark cloud when I look at her picture.”

“I don’t want to sound insensitive,” Cassie said, twisting her hands. She hated to hurt him, but one possibility leapt out at her. She took a breath. “What if she was with you when you were attacked? They may have killed her.”

“Apparently the police thought so at first, but no body was ever found. Besides, this feeling I get is different from mourning her death. It’s more like I know she’s out there but I’ve lost her.”

“You love her,” Cassidy said, her heart breaking a little more each minute.

Josh blinked, and a look of utter despair settled over his features. “No. I love
you.
I don’t even know her. She’s a stranger to me—but I know I’m married to her.”

“You don’t know any of this for sure.” Cassie fought the urge to add that he could be feeling unhappy when he looked at the photo because he somehow knew she’d had a part in what had happened to him. Neither the idea that the woman had been killed nor that she’d tried to have
him
killed were pleasant thoughts, so Cassie held her tongue.

“I’m obligated to keep myself for her,” Josh said. “I’m her husband. I can’t go against God’s law just because it isn’t making me happy right now.”

Cassidy grew more incredulous by the moment. “And you think God wants you to remain faithful to a picture?”

Josh nodded. “If I took vows to the woman in that picture, then, yeah, that’s what I believe.”

Cassidy saw the truth of his word in the pain written on his precious face. And she understood something else. Her presence here was sheer torture for him. Just as his would be for her.

He’d said they should go back to being just friends. But that wasn’t possible. They couldn’t be just friends. Their feelings went too deep. Their need for each other was too strong.

“Then there’s not much else to say, is there?”

He shook his head and stood. “No. There really isn’t. Except I’m sorry, Cassie. I wish with all my heart I could go back on my principles, but they wouldn’t be principles if I ignored them when they became inconvenient, would they?”

Her heart breaking, Cassidy stood and hugged him. “No. They wouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry I’m hurting you. I wish—”

She silenced him with a finger against his lips. “I’m a big girl and I’ll be fine.” She forced a smile and choked back any evidence of tears. “Go take that nap. You look dead on your feet. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

He gave her a quick nod and turned away. “Yeah. Ask Irma to wake me for dinner, would you?”

“Sure. See you then.” Cassie waited for the door to close before she let her face crumple into silent tears. She’d lied to him. Earl had finished with her car, and she would be gone by the time he woke.

It took her less than an hour to pack her car and write a check for Irma. But she hadn’t been able to write the letter she’d started to the elderly woman. She finally gave up and decided that it was bad enough to be a coward with Josh, but she could at least say a proper goodbye to the Tallingers.