When I Fall in Love (Christiansen Family) (23 page)

“Thank you for visiting with us, Mr. Sharpe.” She kept her polite smile as she handed him his receipt.

He shoved it in his pocket, went outside, and gave his keys to a valet. Then he hid next to a palm tree until the valet brought back the Mustang.

Dropping the duffel into the backseat, Max got behind the wheel and gunned it. He’d never felt like such a chump in all his life.

He turned on the radio, trying to drown his thoughts. The country station came up, a song about running out of moonlight.

He should have stayed on the beach with Grace. Should have never answered his phone. But then what? His brother might have appeared with a company of reporters, forcing his hand.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, cutting through traffic, driving too fast. He earned a horn and gritted his teeth.

Brendon had called him selfish. It fit. The magnitude of his selfishness could flood his throat and choke him.

In fact, he remembered Grace’s words from their day at Pearl Harbor:
I don’t really care about anything on that list but a man who loves Jesus and loves me.

He did love Jesus. But until recently, his belief affected only
him. He didn’t have to focus on anyone but himself and only had to trust his future
 
—not anyone else’s
 
—to Jesus.

But the minute he let Grace into his life . . . Well, he didn’t know if he had enough faith for that.

The traffic screamed by.

This was why he shouldn’t fall in love, why he shouldn’t put his heart out for a woman. Why he should have never, ever shown up on her doorstep in Hawaii. The fact that she was Owen’s sister only made it worse because, guess what
 
—now Owen had more reasons to hate him.

He parked his car in the rental area and took a shuttle to the airport. At the airline counter, he put down his card. “I need a first-class ticket, one-way, to Minneapolis.”

Ticket in hand, he slung his duffel over his shoulder and headed toward the gate.

Still an hour and a half before his flight. He sat in the corner, pulled his hat down, slouched. He probably needed something to read. Reaching into his bag, he took out the magazine from his trip in.

The magazine naturally opened to the crossword. He traced his finger over the word
atoll
. And then
avast
. Swallowed past the boulder in his throat.

Max closed the magazine and pulled out his phone. Maybe he could find some sports scores, watch ESPN. He turned it on, seeing two more text messages from Grace. He deleted them without reading them.

He was checking the NHL preseason chatter and predictions when his phone rang. Brendon’s face appeared.

He grimaced and took the call. “Hi.”

“So how’d you do? Did you win? Of course you won.”

“No. I didn’t win,” he growled.

“No . . . really? What happened?”

Even to his brother
 
—maybe especially to his brother
 
—he couldn’t come clean. “One of us mixed up the salt and sugar and put salt in the dessert. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Aw, man, I’m sorry. I suppose that sort of thing happens.”

Not in a gourmet kitchen. Not with trained chefs. “Yeah.”

“So a couple more days in paradise and then you’re coming home, right?”

Max blew out a breath. “I’ll call you when I get to Minneapolis.”

“Swell. And then we’ll figure out when Lizzy and I can taste what you learned.”

“Sure.”

“Hey, Bro. Thanks anyway for your offer.”

Max made a sound, sort of a grunt, and clicked off. He couldn’t take any more. He shoved the phone back into his pocket.

A family entered the waiting area. A father, mother, and two little blond boys. The boys pulled their own carry-ons, featuring pictures of the Hulk and Iron Man. The husband, tall, lanky, wore a baseball cap imprinted with the Chicago Cubs logo. The woman sat down and pulled one of the boys onto her lap. Began to tickle him. The little boy’s laughter sweetened the air.

Max ground his jaw.

For a second he had the urge to race back to the hotel. Back to the woman he . . . yes, loved. The realization twisted inside him, twined around his heart.

He could go back and apologize. Pretend that it wasn’t ending. It wasn’t like she knew what he’d done.

But the lies could suffocate him.

He just couldn’t lead her on one more day. And that glued him
to his spot, watching passengers fill the gate area, tan and happy from their vacation. Too many wore
I Love Hawaii
T-shirts, leis, floppy hats.

He’d checked and found that he and Grace had been on the same flight back to Minneapolis. Now Grace would have to fly home by herself. No one to hold her barf bag. No one to ensure she switched planes safely. What if she sat next to a jerk?

Or a guy like him, who could recognize her beauty?

He picked up the magazine again, telling himself that would be best. He would have to break it off eventually anyway. He’d known going in that it was just a vacation friendship. It could never be more than that.

Maybe if he’d kept it to friendship . . . But one look at Grace and deep down, he’d known he couldn’t stop there. He’d lied to himself for three weeks, until he’d pulled them both in to drown.

Worst vacation of his life.

The gate attendant announced first class. Max grabbed his bag without a look back at the family, the other passengers. He handed her his boarding document.

“Aloha,” the pretty attendant said. “How was Hawaii?”

He ignored her and got on the plane.

Max had left Hawaii. Flown out or taken a ship or even swum. But he’d really left Hawaii. Without an explanation. Without a good-bye.

It took a full day for the truth to sink into Grace’s heart.

When he’d walked away from her after the competition, she stood, too stunned to do more than watch him go. Unable, even, to run after him. To stop him.

Keoni had driven her back to the hotel, his own expression grim, as if he was sorting through Max’s actions.

She’d changed, texted Max. Waited, texted again. Finally, around dinnertime, she went to his room.

A family dressed in beachwear, fresh from the mainland, answered his door.

Just in case he’d simply moved rooms, she asked about him at the hotel desk. They gave no information other than that he’d left.

She spent the rest of the evening by the pool, her eyes thick with tears, rereading page 3 in her stupid novel, listening to his words in her head.

He didn’t have time for mistakes.

Like the wrong ingredients.

The wrong partner.

Her.

It still seemed so impossible that she’d driven him clear out of Hawaii.

By the next day, the unfairness rooted in her bones, turned her brittle and angry. What kind of person simply abandoned the team? Upset or not, he owed her an explanation. She had stopped texting him, given up after leaving a couple voice mails.

Still, like a lovesick fool, she kept her phone by her side. Hoping. Hating herself for hoping. Running conversations over in her head, none of them satisfactory.

She sat on the beach while the sun burned her, watching the surfers, the lovers strolling hand in hand, trying not to remember Max’s arms around her, the way one look from him made her feel strong. Capable. Extraordinary.

By Sunday morning, she simply wanted to endure until her late-afternoon flight. She got up, showered, and packed. Hating
that she looked like a swollen crawfish, she donned her sunglasses and went outside for breakfast on the terrace. The Twinkies sat at a table and lifted their hands to her. She waved but made a U-turn and headed toward the beach.

Sunday seemed like any other day at the resort
 
—paddlers on longboards in the lagoon, surfers testing the swells, children digging channels out to sea, women in bikinis on straw mats soaking in their vitamin D.

At home, her family would be returning home from church. They took up an entire row, sometimes two. Surely Darek and Ivy had returned from their honeymoon by now. Tiger would have taken a perch between them, although sometimes he opted for Grace’s lap. She too often let him play thumb wars with her when the sermon got long.

They’d all be gathered at home for brunch
 
—something Grace would have prepared
 
—or they’d grill, eating outside on the picnic table. Casper would take volunteers to go fishing. Darek would disappear to work on the framing of his house, now in the rebuilding stage. And in the evening, they’d gather for their ritual Sunday night s’mores around the fire.

What was she doing here in Hawaii alone, when she should be in Deep Haven with her family? Why had she agreed to this trip, this disaster? The entire thing seemed like a trick, as if God had held her dreams out in front of her only to yank them away.

She’d stepped onto the hot sand, heading toward the water, when a sound caught her attention. Music. A hymn.

“‘O, how He loves you and me . . .’” A flute played the melody and lured her closer, toward where a man dressed in a blue Hawaiian-print shirt was singing. A woman in a matching blue floral dress danced a sort of hula to the words. Fifty or so
onlookers sat in folding sports chairs or in the sand, some under tents, listening.

Grace leaned against a palm tree.

The man finished the song, then welcomed them to Waikiki Beach Church. “There’s no better place to worship the Lord than on the beach in Hawaii.”

Grace folded her arms.

“I know that for many of you, this is a dream vacation. Something you’ve saved for, planned for, hoped for over many years. I hope it has been
 
—or will be
 
—all you wanted.” He gestured to the ocean, the beauty. “But I’m here to tell you that you can find paradise without ever leaving your homes.”

Grace pursed her lips and started to walk away.

“Paradise is not what you see, but a relationship with the One who made it.”

She’d heard this before. And had no interest, really, in sitting through a sermon about how if she just trusted God more, she might find happiness.

She’d reached out
 
—no, flung herself out
 
—on this great adventure, and God had dropped her. Hard.

“The key to finding what God has for you is not reaching out for paradise . . . but letting go. Falling. Losing control.”

She stopped.

“But most of us are too afraid to truly let go, to hold open our hands and receive what God has for us.”

Maybe just another minute . . .

“Consider the journey of Peter, who left his nets to follow Christ and ended up denying Him. Peter believed in Jesus, followed Him, but hadn’t been transformed by Him. He walked with Jesus, obeyed Jesus, and called Him Messiah. But until that
dark moment of denial, Peter hadn’t come face-to-face with his own heart, selfish and angry and afraid. It wasn’t until Peter saw the kind of person he was and regretted his sins that life began to change for him.”

Grace tucked herself back under the palm tree.

“John 21 tells the story of a repentant Peter who longs to make things right with his Lord. And when Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him, Peter heartily replies three times that he does. Peter is confronted with grace. Jesus doesn’t condemn him for his actions. Rather, He charges Peter with a new command: ‘Feed My lambs.’ Peter wasn’t just to follow his Lord, but to be so close to Jesus that he became Jesus to His people. Love, forgive, serve. Peter would share a relationship with God like Jesus has. This is the transformation Jesus intends for us, a wholeness, a closeness in our relationship with God that is beyond our wildest hopes.”

The preacher scanned the crowd. “So many of us come to Hawaii because we long for paradise. For more than our lives give us. That
more
is waiting for you right here.” He lifted his Bible. “You may be walking with Jesus, but has truth broken your heart? Have you been undone by the gospel in the face of your own sins? The truth is that you can follow Jesus . . . or you can walk with Him step by step. The Bible calls this abiding with Him. It starts with transformation and ends with the joy, the abundance, you long for.”

He gestured to the ocean, where a man and woman dressed in Hawaiian attire stood at the waves’ edge. “If you would like to experience more joy, more hope, more peace . . . abundance, I invite you to come forward and be baptized today. Repent
 
—regret your sins and let Jesus forgive you. Fill you with His grace. His love. A new life. More than you could have ever asked for or imagined.”

Grace’s feet moved.

She looked down, seeing herself shuffle through the sand, her throat thick.

For years she’d been clinging to her own expectations of what God should be giving her. She had come to Hawaii looking for something, and when it hadn’t turned out just as she hoped, she let it burn a hole in her faith. But what if God had brought her to Hawaii for this one thing? To face her own selfishness, her own fears, even her anger?

What if He’d heard the silent longing of her heart and answered it, not with Max but with
Himsel
f
?