Bluegrass Courtship (13 page)

Drew leaned back against the filing cabinets. “And what do
you
get, Chuck?”

“I get the best part of all, Drew. I get to be the guy who made it happen. Aside from God, of course, but lots of folks in this neighborhood haven't figured that out yet.
Yet.
God's credentials just went up threefold in TV land.”

Be careful what you pray for.
The platitude rang in Drew's head as he tried to take in what his future now held.
Missionnovation
would be bigger and better than ever before.

Would it?

Bigger, yes. But Drew wished he could be more certain about how much better it would be. A part of him wondered if he could keep the personal touch—the one-on-one connection that fueled him—on the grand scale
Missionnovation
would now have. He thought about matching up the artisans for the preschool garden. The stonemason whose family had been in the business for three generations and the blacksmith who made a gate especially for those little kids. The painter. And Janet.

What he'd told Janet was right;
Missionnovation
needed both the big chain stores and the small local shops. Could it be the same show with just HomeBase? Granted, HomeBase was filled with people, too, maybe even with unique craftsmen and folks who cared about building things like no one had ever seen—was he right to stereotype them as an uncaring conglomerate just because they were big? Could he lead the team that would strike that all-important balance?

God was leading him into new territory, no doubt about it. Drew just wished he could be more certain it wasn't a detour.

 

“
How
big?” Kevin's eyes flew wide open when Drew shared Charlie's packet of papers with the team and told them the budget they'd have for next season. “Are all those zeros for real?”

“Three buses?” Annie ran her fingers down a column of figures.

“Exclusive sponsorship evidently has its privileges.” Drew fingered a bag of Dave's chocolate chip cookies. “And a few downsides.”

“No Dave's?” Kevin reached over and clutched the bag protectively.

“Well, no free Dave's. But a bigger food budget so we can buy all the Dave's we want.”

“But…” Annie heard the hesitation in his voice and looked at him from over the top of her glasses.

“But that also means no milk and Dave's at the end of the show.”

“Aw, come on,” Mike groaned, putting down the wiring he had been fiddling with all through the meeting. Ever since gaining Vern's approval, Mike had become much more confident. And opinionated. “It's not like HomeBase sells milk and cookies and Dave's is their archrival.”

Everyone stared. Outbursts from Mike took a little getting used to. “Cookies or no,” Drew said, “God's still in control here, and I'm trying to keep open to whatever He's got in mind for
Missionnovation.
”

Mike's expression remained sour.

“Think of it this way,” Drew suggested, “We're getting the funds to improve Dave's bottom line by buying the cookies now.”

“Yeah,” Mike muttered, “that'll more than make up for
the lack of national television exposure.” The new Mike had more than enough opinions and suddenly wasn't reluctant to share them. Who knew a place like Middleburg would bring this out in the guy? Drew had to wonder what other surprises the next
Missionnovation
season had in store.

“Our main focus right now needs to be completion of the preschool and getting this season wrapped up.” After ticking through all the remaining elements of the construction, Drew turned to Kevin. “I'm going over the rest of the roof installation. Can you have another go at the cistern specs? Janet Bishop's not happy with either of them yet.”

“Let her talk to Howard Epson,” Annie offered. “He's so gung-ho on the cistern thing he's been touting it to every environmental group in the state. He called it ‘a civic showpiece' the other day.” She rolled her eyes. “He wants a photograph of himself holding the giant watering can as if he were pouring it.”

Kevin chuckled and nudged her. “Why did I just know Howard would want to get his hands on ‘God's watering can'?”

Drew watched Annie nudge him back. How had he not seen this before? “Just promise me you'll give them another once-over. Make sure everything's in shape.”

“Sure. But it's gonna be tight just getting everything done by the nineteenth as it is. You sure you want to mess with anything now?”

Of course he didn't want to mess with anything now. The HomeBase shareholders meeting was hanging over his head as it was. But he just couldn't get Janet's disapproval out of his head—and she was right, roofs were important.

“Just make sure. We haven't won her confidence, and I'm leaving no stone unturned.”

“You know,” Mike piped in again, “she'll be the last.”

“The last what?” Annie asked.

“The last local vendor. It'll all be HomeBase from here on in. She knows her stuff. You gotta wonder if we'll get folks like that from HomeBase.” He sounded an awful lot like Vern.

Drew ignored Mike's last remark. “Get back to me by four o'clock with ways to shave ten hours off our timelines. It's 24-7 now until we hand over the keys, got it?”

J
anet pulled the final birdhouse off the shelf and blew a layer of dust off the little red roof. It was two days before they'd need the birdhouses, but she'd been unable to sleep since dinner with her mom, and she thought she'd get up and pack the houses rather than lay staring at the ceiling for another hour.

Bebe had gone on and on about the spectacular new preschool. You'd have thought God himself had put up those walls, the way she raved about them. As a matter of fact, to hear her mom put it, God himself did put up those walls.
Missionnovation
was no less than the hand of God to Bebe Bishop. God's chosen messengers of renovation.

Everyone was on cloud nine about the show and the preschool.

Why not her?

Do you have to be such an ungrateful spoilsport? she asked herself as she used a dry paintbrush to get the dust off the tiny white window shutters. Drew is right—this is twice the school we'd be able to build ourselves. Since when did you start caring so much about that church again, anyway?

Her mom had said much the same thing when she dared to raise the topic of the less-than-perfect cistern at dinner. “God's hand is on this, honey. I think He can tend to His own watering can.” After that, Janet didn't dare bring up the subject of the roof.

Bebe offered, as she did with most problems, to “pray over it.” Somehow Janet failed to see how prayer was a substitute for good project management, but she'd lost that argument with her mother years ago.

It was near three o'clock in the morning, but she could still see the floodlights on over at the church from her kitchen window. They'd talked about working round the clock on their shows before. They were sure burning the candle at both ends this week. Ambitious didn't even begin to cover it. It was bordering on insane.

Without really thinking about it, Janet pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Why not head over there? It couldn't be any worse than insomniac birdhouse dusting.

She wandered through the site, saying hello to this volunteer and that person. She didn't know what fool handed Howard Epson a staple-gun at three in the morning, but he seemed to be holding his own as he tacked carpeting down to a set of risers. Two of her favorite customers—a young couple who'd bought a fixer-upper on the east end of town—were grouting tile on the sink backsplash. The man who ran a tack shop just up the street was painting a pair of pint-sized tables. She noticed a cup of coffee and a half-eaten Muffinnovation on the sawhorse behind him and laughed to herself. So many people out in the middle of the night just to lend a hand.

Unsurprisingly, she ended her wandering at the preschool windows, staring at the little circular garden outside.

Drew was there.

He didn't see her. He was angled away from her with his head down, pressing both hands against the giant watering can as if he were holding it in place. Somehow, without even knowing how she knew, she was certain he was praying over it. The way his shoulders seemed to lean into the casing, the way his fingers flexed against the wall in something that could only be described as a struggle. It was like he was wrestling with the cistern. Or himself.

It was a side of him she'd never seen. And it unnerved her that she could see it so clearly—she didn't think she knew him well enough to see so much strain in his body language. Drew Downing, unstoppable force of nature, was struggling. She saw him lay his head against the wall of the cistern and something enormous twisted in her heart.

He turned, startled, and she realized she'd put her hand up against the glass without even knowing it. His eyes. Maybe that was how he won people so easily—those eyes were so powerful you couldn't hope to pull yourself out of their gaze.

He stared at her for a long moment, over the distance of the garden and the window bay, and the enormous thing in her heart twisted further until she found it hard to breathe. Then, with a deep breath, he shook his head in a laughing, sort of surrendering expression and motioned for her to come outside.

He had good reason to be surprised—she was amazed herself to be standing in a preschool garden in the middle of the night. “I couldn't sleep.” It was dumb, and a bit obvious, but it was the only thing that came to mind after the shock of seeing him in so private a moment.

He leaned back against the watering can and tucked his
hands in his jeans pockets. He shook his head again. “I was just asking God what to do about you.”

How do you respond to a statement like that? It rattled her in a dozen ways. “What'd He say?”

“He didn't say much, but then again I didn't realize you were going to show up in a matter of seconds, so maybe He didn't need to say much.”

So he wasn't praying over the cistern, he was praying over her. Just when she thought she couldn't get more unnerved. Janet sat down on the concrete bench shaped like a tree stump. She couldn't pretend anymore that
it—
whatever
it
was between them—didn't exist. She tried to pull the conversation back to something more controllable. “You talk to God about your hardware vendors?”

His expression showed that he knew what she was trying and wouldn't go for it. “I talk to God about everything.” He paused a moment before he added, “Including women.”

Janet wasn't ready to go in this unsafe direction. “I hate to break it to you,” she said as matter-of-factly as she could, “but the Lord Almighty did not raise me out of bed and command me to go see Drew Downing.”

He took on a mischievous look, and she saw the grin that won thousands of hearts each week. “You sure?”

“We don't exactly speak much.”

The high voltage grin vanished and his voice softened to something more personal. “Want to talk about that some more?”

“No.”

“I do. I want to know why you don't talk much to God anymore. I want you to tell me what it was that happened to you.”

“Why? So you can fix it? I already told you.”

“You told me why you don't go to
church
anymore. I don't think that's the whole story. I think it's more personal than some guy committing fraud.”

Drew slid down the side of the cistern until he was sitting on the ground. “I want to understand it. It's not hard to figure out someone hurt you, Janet. You've got a wall four feet thick where men of faith are concerned, and those kinds of things don't spring up out of nowhere.”

“You want the whole story? Fine, I'll tell you.” Maybe now really was the time to let him know how deep that wound went. It might finally stop his pressure. Janet settled herself on the bench. This didn't condense down to a short story. “You're right, I've got a sore spot for people like you. I earned my thick wall. Or rather, had it given to me.”

Drew stretched his legs out and crossed one ankle over the other, settling in as well. She was thankful he didn't try to close the distance between them. “Tony Donalds?”

“We were…involved.” She fumbled with the words. It had been years since she'd talked about this with anyone but Dinah and Emily.

“Serious?” Drew cocked his head to one side.

“Ring shopping, if that's what you mean by serious. We were planning to announce our engagement after he'd raised all his mission support. I was really, really involved in MCC at the time, if you haven't guessed. But when Tony did…what he did, it all came undone. Everything I knew about him, everything I knew about faith and serving and integrity…was gone. I had no idea if any of it was true. I loved him. I wanted so much to be part of the amazing future ahead of him.” Janet hated how the words caught in her throat, how it made her feel weak and wounded to talk about Tony. “Tony never came back for me because he never came
back at all.” She felt the old hurt surge back as if the news had come yesterday. “So you'll forgive me if I've learned not to trust a charming man with big ideas who claims God is on his side. I've seen too much to take anyone high and mighty at their word.”

She expected him to make some high-intensity response, to jump in and tell her that jerks like Tony didn't represent how real men of God conducted themselves. She'd heard enough of such responses from the few people who really knew why she and Tony broke it off. The fraud was one thing, but to have the brutal heartbreak on top of it—well, she'd never worked up the ability to forgive God for all that pain. The mighty, loving God she'd once known no longer fit into a scheme that included such pointless injustice.

Drew, however, said absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, it was the first time she'd seen him still and silent since he came into town. Good, she thought. Now you know. All of it. Now you'll back off.

“So,” she said, when he still didn't reply. “Now you know.”

“I'll spare you the few choice adjectives running through my head at the moment,” he said in a dark tone she'd not heard from him before. “It might not improve your already fine opinion of me.”

“You're better than most,” she offered halfheartedly.

“So are most of us. It burns me to hear about guys like him. So many people are trying to do the right thing and some guy like that comes along and undoes a million good deeds. Shreds people's faith in ways that take years to repair.”

Or not repair at all, Janet added silently. She thought about leaving, about getting up and just walking away from
Drew now that he knew, but something in the way his back pushed against the cistern behind him made her stay. She knew he was burning up behind those eyes, reaching for some persuasive theological comeback, but in the end he just looked down and kicked some muck off his boot. “All the more reason to do the right thing here, isn't it? The last thing you need is one more guy in here messing things up.” After a moment, he looked up at her. “Don't lump me in with that jerk. I've made my share of goofs, and I have no idea how to convince you that if I tell you I care about you, then I really mean it. But that's the whole point, isn't it? Janet, I'm at a loss for how to handle this.”

She ought to pretend she didn't know what he meant by that. That she didn't hear the phrase “care about you.” “What do you mean ‘this'?”

“It's been a crazy week and I'm so tired I could lie down and sleep a week this second…” He paused. “But there's something I want here even more that I
can't have.
” He pulled his hands from his pockets and braced them against the tank wall behind him. “I think you already know why things have been so tough between us. Why we fight. You and I…we can't…and I'm not exactly handling it well. That's my fault, and I'm sorry.”

Janet couldn't bring herself to reply. She gripped the bench and tried to deny what he was suggesting—what he'd already said—but found she couldn't. What point was there in denying it anyway? They'd known how they felt about each other back on the bus the night before he left. Talking about it only made it worse. Only complicated things. Didn't he know that?

“You're right. There's a huge part of me that wants to jump in here and make everything better. But you and I
know that won't happen. It can't happen, actually. Even if I weren't leaving…and I am leaving…I have no business getting into a relationship with someone who doesn't share my faith.” After a long moment, he added, “But you did once, I think you still can and I can't believe how much I'd like to ditch my convictions right now and show you what it could really be like. But that's egotistical and unwise, and I'm not handling things well now as it is. I'm sorry I've added to your list of lousy men of faith.”

She panicked, blindsided by his confession. “There's nothing happening between us.”

“Don't,” he said, almost wincing. “Don't tell me something's not there because I think that would just make it worse. I need to do the right thing here—especially knowing what I know now.” He looked straight into her eyes. “But you feel it, don't you?”

The thing twisting in Janet's chest threatened to overtake her. “It doesn't really matter, does it?”

“Maybe I should never have said anything—” he raked his hands through his hair “—but when you showed up just as I was praying…I'm tired, I'm not thinking straight, and I'm really attracted to you. I just thought we might fight less about the other stuff if we put our cards on the table about this.”

“Wait a minute.” Janet stood up off the bench. “You think my reservations about the roof and the cistern are about something between us? That's really low of you.” The thought infuriated her—every bit of discrimination she'd ever endured as a female hardware store owner roaring back to life.

“No!” He rose to his feet. “I thought maybe if you knew how much I thought of you, how much I think I feel for you, how hard it is for me…”

“That what? It would make it easier for both of us? Does this feel any easier? How did you think I would take a comment like that?” She couldn't believe she was choking up.

“I don't know.” He began pacing. “I don't know what to do about you.”