Flower Girl Bride (9 page)

When I looked up again, he was watching me, his expression having become serious. “I wanted to go.”

I swallowed. My throat felt so dry. My palms, fortunately not touching his, were damp. The moment was too intense. My temptation was to take the coward's way out and look away, but I wouldn't allow myself to do it.

“Me, too.”

 

Luke shifted into neutral and turned off the boat's ignition. Moving to portside—at least that's what I thought he'd called the left side—he lowered the anchor into the water where it caught and held.

Around us Michigan's blue-green waters shifted and swirled. Though the beach was still within sight, it was far enough that I wouldn't want to have to swim for it. Every few seconds, the beach repositioned itself in the distance as the boat rocked gently, tugging against its buried anchor.

Crouching low and dragging the life vest along with me, I moved to the L-shaped seating area near the stern of the boat.

“So this is what you meant by bobbing around?”

Luke joined me in the rear seating area. He was wearing a MSU cap, dark sunglasses and a white Michigan State T-shirt with a pair of swim trunks I recognized from the other day.

“Why, is your lunch coming for a return engagement?”

“No, I'm fine, I think.” Maybe a little green around the gills, but I would survive. Anyway, I didn't want to see the bologna sandwiches and the cheese puffs we'd gobbled down for lunch again. Especially not the cheese puffs.

“The water always feels a little rougher when you're anchored. You have the knobs of your motion sickness wristbands on your pressure points, right?”

I held my arms wide so he could examine the positions of my bands.

“They look good.” He brushed my wrists, making contact for the first time since that moment in the car, but the touch was brief.

“Give it a few minutes and see if you start to feel better. Keep your eyes on the horizon. If it doesn't help, we'll pull anchor in a few minutes.”

I didn't hold high hopes of anything other than tilting my face up and being sea sick like a human Roman candle, but I stared at the navy-blue line where the water and the sky kissed and hoped for the best.

“So what did you think of church today?” he asked.

Because I recognized he was trying to distract me, I smiled weakly and tried to answer. “It wasn't too bad for a first time back in a while. At least Reverend Lewis preached on the ‘Parable of the Talents' rather than something really tough.”

“Don't worry. He was just taking a break after last week. He preached on Matthew 7, where Jesus talks about knowing His followers by the fruit they bear. You know. ‘Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.'”

Still wearing the jean shorts and loose T-shirt I'd thrown over my new royal-blue tankini, I sank down in the seat, leaning my head against the backrest and closing my eyes. The sun heated my face and created a warm, orange glow inside my eyelids. I could have
pulled my sunglasses off the top of my head, but it seemed like too much effort.

“You okay?”

“Just relaxing.” To convince him that I wasn't just waiting for the eruption to begin, I continued our conversation. “Maybe your minister took pity on me. That sermon would have been a rough one for a backslider to return to.”

“Backslider? Nah. Just disillusioned after the divorce.”

I weighed his words and then shrugged. “Probably.”

How quickly he'd keyed in on something that had taken me years to figure out. Though I appreciated the fact that he didn't question me further, I still couldn't help asking, “How come you didn't ever question?”

“Who says I didn't? Or don't?”

My eyes opened. Luke's head was turned, and he was looking across the water and likely somewhere into the past. Settling my dark glasses in place over my eyes, I waited until he returned from those places for him to explain.

“After Nicole died, I kept taking Sam to church, but I started to question whether God really had a plan for our lives. Why would He allow my son to grow up without a mother when he'd already lived with parents who only tolerated each other? I never stopped believing that God created us, but I just didn't believe He was all that interested in what had happened to us since then.”

Luke lifted his face skyward and then turned back to me. “In time, my anger cooled, and I changed my mind about most of those things.”

“You went to church that whole time?”

“I just figured if I kept going through the motions of faith, I would feel something eventually. Healing takes time, but I haven't stopped believing.”

“It does take time. We also have to
make
time to listen when God's talking.”

He studied me for a few seconds. “You know this from experience?”

“God and I had quite a bit of time alone lately. We even worked out a few things.”

One side of his mouth lifted, as he must have recognized that he was responsible for giving me so much free time. “I don't know whether I should apologize or say you're welcome.”

“Neither.”

His mischievous half grin spread to the other side of his mouth. I wished I could see behind those sunglasses because his eyes were probably twinkling, too.

As if he recognized my curiosity, Luke pulled his glasses low and looked at me over the top of them. “Do you need me to leave you alone on the beach a while longer? Because I can. We can dock now, and you'll still have most of the afternoon to pray and listen some more.”

“No. I'm fine.”

“Are you?”

“You mean…” I paused to touch my stomach. Luke had done it, I realized. He'd distracted me until the wave of nausea had passed. Either that, or those ridiculous bracelets with hard knobs on one side really did help prevent motion sickness, and I was pretty skeptical about that.

“Good,” he said. “I didn't want to spend the day scrubbing out the boat.”

“You could have told me to hang my head over the side.”

He pointed his index finger as if to recognize my genius. “Good thinking.”

“Remind me never to get sick around you because you'd make a lousy nurse.”

I chuckled as I spoke the words, but my laughter died the minute I realized what I'd said: that Luke might be the one to care for me when I was sick. Worse than that, I'd implied that Luke and I had a someday. I stared down at the seat cushion, tracing my fingers along its rounded trim piece.

He'd removed his hat and glasses and was studying me when I finally looked up at him again. “You can't go and get uncomfortable being alone with me now. Ten minutes ago, you were all ready to toss your cookies in front of me.”

His grin was contagious, and soon I was wondering what had ever made me feel so self-conscious.

“Are you recommending that I begin all my dates with a vomiting episode to ease the jitters?” Just saying the word jitters only compounded mine. I was on a real date with Luke Sheridan, and no matter how hard I tried to argue that we'd finally given in to our matchmakers' pressure, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

“Might work, but it will definitely cut down on the number of second dates.”

With that, he lifted both hands to the tag of his T-shirt, and in one smooth movement, whipped it over his
head. Tan with windblown hair, he'd never looked more ruggedly handsome. When he caught me watching him, he lifted one firm-looking shoulder and lowered it.

“It's hot out here. I don't know about you, but I'm going for a swim.”

He didn't wait for an answer from me but stepped over the tiny latched door to the swim platform and dived into the water.

“How's the water?” I called out when he returned to the surface.

“It's amazing. You should come in.”

Well, it was either that or stay there alone in the boat with no one to talk to, no one to distract me with conversation from the rock-rock-rock of the boat.

And it did tend to rock-rock-rock.

With motions far less fluid than his had been, I pulled off my T-shirt and shed my shorts and the motion sickness bands. Then I buckled myself into a life vest. Luke wasn't wearing one, but he appeared to be a stronger swimmer than I was. Also, there was no way I going to ruin my summer vacation, not to mention my first date in forever, by becoming another Lake Michigan drowning statistic.

I slipped out to the swim platform and stood there gathering my courage.

“Come on in. The water's fine.”

“Here goes.” I raised my arms and took a scissor leap into the blue.

The second my toes touched the water I wished I could scramble back into the air and right back on the boat. A squeal escaped me before the waves closed over
my head.
Cold
did about as good a job describing this ice water as
forever
did at describing eternity.

Yes, the life vest had been a good idea since it only let me sink a few feet before pulling me back to the surface. I reemerged sputtering and flapping my arms. After several ineffectual strokes, I finally swam back to the platform and gripped its edge.

“Amazing?” I shrieked. “Fine? Are you kidding?”

It only took Luke a few long, smooth strokes to join me. “Maybe I should have said
brisk.
”

“Maybe you should have.”

“We could be grateful it's not as cold as Lake Superior.”

“Believe me, I am.”

“Well, now that you're in, you might as well enjoy the water.” He pushed backward off the platform and did the backstroke for about twenty yards before turning to look at me. “Come on. Don't be a killjoy. You'd do it for Sam if he were here.”

Though I figured I would have given even Sam a tough argument here, I pushed off after him. With a modified dog paddle, which was all I could manage with the life jacket, I finally reached the place where Luke was treading water. If I was going for the whole bathing beauty thing, I was falling a tad short.

“See, it's not so bad once you get used to it.”

Though I suspected that my body was getting acclimated to the water by becoming numb, I nodded. What hadn't killed me was making me stronger.

For the next twenty minutes—probably less but it felt like more—we floated around in the water, playing chase games as if Sam had come with us all along. Luke
tried to dunk me a few times, but my life vest gave me the upper hand, and he drank more than his share of lake water.

Finally, as he gripped the edge of the swim platform, he turned to me. “I don't know about you, but I'm getting cold.”

I paddled up and gripped the platform next to him. “Really? I think it feels refreshing.”

“Well, I guess we could stay in longer.”

He paused to study my face. I didn't need to see his grin to know that my lips were blue. It was all I could do to keep my teeth from chattering out a rhythm that would make Carlos Santana proud.

“No, we don't have to do that. I'll get out just for you. I'm a real sacrificial gal that way.”

“You definitely are.” He reached over to brush back my hair, but I recognized his ulterior motive and shot back so that he dunked himself instead of me.

“Don't mess with a master,” I warned when he surfaced again.

“I learned that lesson.” He popped below the water and reemerged, smoothing his hair back from his face.

I expected him to be mad for that last indignity, but he was grinning as he swam up to me again. His smile warmed my skin, even in the frigid water. Who needed candlelight? Luke Sheridan could make even swimming in the freezing lake more fun than any date I could remember.

Luke climbed the platform ladder and stepped over to retrieve our beach towels. While I stood on the ladder
waiting for him to return with mine, I glanced back at miles and miles of water. There wasn't a whale or even a forty-pound salmon anywhere in sight.

N
ow this was the life. Luke and I stretched out on the two loungers in the bow area in front of the cockpit, letting the sun evaporate the water droplets from our skin and remove the numbness from our limbs.

I had slipped back on the motion sickness bracelets, just in case they were the only things keeping my stomach from revolting. Shivering, I wondered how long it would be before my lips returned from blue to pink.

“Now this is the life,” Luke breathed, his sunglasses propped on top of his head and his eyes closed.

“What?” he asked at my chuckle, but he still didn't open his eyes.

“Great minds just think alike.”

He answered with one of those grunts that no longer bothered me the way they had when I first met him. Luke didn't waste words when a simple expression was enough.

I looked into the sky, taking in the frosted-blue backdrop with the cumulus clouds decorating it in cartoon shapes. Near the water's edge, a few seagulls
floated and dived for snacks. After more than a week at the beach, I had concluded that those birds were annoying beach vermin, but here, from a distance, they looked regal. Part of God's creation. Part of God's plan.

I was still peering up at the sky when I breathed in the fresh scent of the water, letting my lungs hold it for a few seconds before exhaling.

“It's beautiful here, isn't it?” I said, some of my awe coming out in my voice.

“Yeah.”

But when I glanced over, expecting him to say more, Luke had rolled to his side and wasn't looking at the sky at all. Or the beach. Or even the water.

He was looking at me.

My mouth went dry, and my cheeks heated, but his comment made me feel beautiful, whether he'd been talking about me or not. In case he wasn't, I didn't embarrass myself by thanking him. Bashfully, I looked up into the clouds again.

“A person could think about a lot of things while out here, surrounded by God's beauty,” he said after a long time.

I made one of those affirmative grunting sounds myself, not even feeling the need to cover it with words.

“What discoveries did you make this week?”

His question surprised me. I almost asked him why he thought I'd made any discoveries, but then I remembered I'd already said that God and I had worked some things out together. Even if I hadn't said that, he could have guessed from the fact that I'd attended church that something had changed.

Before, I'd been glad that he hadn't pressed me to talk about it. I'd barely had the chance to digest it in the privacy of my own heart. But now I found that I needed to share it with someone, even if he had as many scars as I did. Probably more.

“That I was partly to blame for my divorce,” I blurted, turning on my side the way he'd been before.

He was still resting just that way on the lounger across from me, but now he was looking at me skeptically. “So you forced him to cheat on you at gunpoint?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, not that way.”

“Then how?”

“I agreed to the five-year plan.”

“You agreed to let him cheat for five years?”

By now, I was smiling. “No. Forget the cheating part, okay?”

“Okay. So what was the five-year plan?”

“When I married Alan, he was ambitious and charismatic, a real go-getter. He had this plan of leaving the logistics company he worked for and building a company of his own in—”

“Let me guess. Five years.”

I pointed to the tip of my nose to say he'd gotten the answer on the nose. “We were saving for that launch. Until we reached
our
goal of being financially secure, Alan thought we should delay starting a family.”

His head propped on his hand, Luke seemed to consider. “Sounds like a reasonable plan…if you're into things like food and shelter and other frivolous nonessentials.”

“Do you want to hear this or what?”

Suddenly becoming serious, he nodded.

“When I said ‘financially secure,' what I really meant was ‘well-off.'” I paused to let that settle before continuing. “After a few years, he starting hinting that he didn't want children at all, that our life together was perfect the way it was.”

“Only it wasn't.”

“No, it wasn't. That made it an even bigger slap in my face when he left me for a woman who was pregnant with his child. It wasn't that he didn't want kids. He just didn't want them…with me.” I hated it that my voice cracked then. I hated it even more that it still mattered.

“You don't know that, Cassie.” Luke shook his head adamantly. “He could have just played around and got caught.”

I shrugged, but I wasn't ready to believe him.

“I'd thought you might have had fertility problems.”

“We hadn't exactly…er…tested the system let's say when it came to the whole baby business.” My cheeks and neck heated, and I had this infantile temptation to giggle, though nothing should have embarrassed me now. If I'd survived us discussing my ex-husband's infidelity, then I could live through this.

“Good. I felt lousy just thinking you might have had trouble, especially after I'd pointed out that you weren't even a parent and you were giving parenting advice.”

“You were just fending off an attack.”

“Well there's that,” he said with a chuckle. “That didn't give me any excuse to be cruel.”

“You don't have it in you to be cruel.”

Though his eyes widened, Luke didn't try to argue
with me. “So tell me, how does this make you partly responsible for your divorce? If you were a prosecutor, I'd say you haven't made your case.”

I sat up on the cushion and planted my feet on the boat deck in front of me, frustrated because he couldn't get it. “I said I agreed to the five-year plan. But that was just a symptom of having my priorities all out of whack. I wanted all of those things that money could buy.”

Luke sat up and faced me. “Cassie, everybody wants things.”

“But I'm such a classic overachiever. I was so ambitious, so driven that I married a man who was just like me—and all wrong for me. God had someone out there who was perfect for me, who would bring out the best in my character rather than the worst, but I wasn't listening.”

“We've all been guilty of not listening. You just paid more than most.”

“But it was more than choosing badly. After I was married, I didn't honor my husband or my marriage. I was so driven that I threw myself into my job one hundred percent. I even volunteered as a reading mentor after school. If my husband had actually come home from work once in a while, I still wouldn't have been there to spend time with him.”

Luke shook his head, still refusing to buy my argument. How thickheaded could he be?

“Fine. You made a lousy choice, and then you made some mistakes. Those things happen. But you would have made changes to make your marriage work somehow. You didn't break your vows or jump ship.”

I started to disagree again, but a sudden realization
had me clamping my mouth shut again. Maybe I was the thickheaded one here. I finally understood why he'd defended me. He was right: I would have stayed. Just as he would have stayed with Nicole, if given the chance. In that way, Luke knew me better than I knew myself.

“Thanks for saying that.” I stared at my fingers, their tips still wrinkled from the water.

“And Cassie…” He waited until I lifted my gaze to his before he spoke again. “I told you before that your husband was a creep. But he was more than that. He was a fool not to recognize how amazing you are.”

I swallowed. There had to be something I could say, but I had no idea what it was. I waited, half expecting him to add a punch line about what an amazing specimen of a neurotic I was or something. But he didn't. I didn't do it, either, though I would have given almost anything for some comic relief at that moment.

“Are you hungry?” Luke stood so quickly that the boat rocked. “I don't know about you, but I'm starving.”

As usual, Luke was protecting me, even from the discomfort caused by his own words. I liked to think of myself as tough and independent, but I sensed that I could get used to always knowing someone—no one in particular, of course—was there to catch me.

“Swimming will do that to you.”

“Hungry, too?”

“I could eat.”

Our early dinner was another round of bologna sandwiches and cheese puffs from the cooler, but Luke made it well-rounded this time by adding baby carrots.

“Almost a whole meal in orange. Is that lucky or what?” I said once we'd settled back into our seats and were floating and eating casually.

“If we had some food coloring, we could have transformed the sandwiches, too.”

“Orange bologna, yum.”

He pulled his cap low over his eyes to shade them from the sun. Its MSU insignia caught my interest and renewed some of my lingering questions over Luke's past.

“Tell me about Michigan State.”

My question must have surprised him because he stopped with his sandwich only a few inches from his mouth and then lowered it back on the plate without taking a bite. “I told you it was Nicole's alma mater. I just passed through there.”

I pointed to his T-shirt he'd put back on and then to the hat. “You wear MSU stuff all the time.”

He stared down at his T-shirt before looking up again. “Why do you care? You're not a U of M fan, are you?”

His look of horror made both of us laugh. The arch rivalry between the two universities was legendary.

Finally, he lifted his hands in surrender.

“Okay. Okay. Nearly every Christmas, birthday, Valetine's Day and anniversary, Nicole bought me Michigan State stuff, so about half my wardrobe would work well at any fraternity house on campus. I guess she wanted to remind me of our shared past.”

My guess was that his wife had wanted to remind him of something else entirely: his lack of a college diploma. My unflattering thoughts of the dead must have shown
in my expression because Luke hurried on with his story.

“I'm a guy. What can I say? If it's clean and it doesn't have any major holes, then I'm still wearing it.”

“You never told me what you studied. Or why you didn't finish.”

Luke shrugged but straightened in his seat, setting his plate aside. “I tried on college for a few years, but it just never fit right. I studied business, but I hated talking about problems when I could be using my own two hands to fix them. That's why things work so well between Clyde and me. He trusts me to take care of the problems
and
get my hands dirty. Clyde knows I can handle it.”

Luke's last comment punctuated everything else he'd said.
Clyde knows I can handle it.
Luke might as well have said, “Clyde believes in me.” I could understand why his boss would. What I couldn't understand was that there ever had been someone who didn't believe in him.

“How did Nicole feel about you taking a different path instead of higher education?” I knew it was a loaded question, and yet I couldn't keep myself from asking it.

“I told you I was always a disappointment.” He flicked a glance my way and then looked away when he saw my stark reaction. “Now don't blame Nicole. It wasn't what she'd signed on for. When I dropped out, she thought I was only taking a break. That I would go back and finish what I started. She thought I was a failure for not doing it.”

“How could she even think that? You are not, have never been and could never be—”

He held up his hand for me to stop before I could get out the words
a failure.
I might not have said them anyway. Luke and those words didn't belong in the same sentence.

“Did I ever tell you how she died?”

“A car accident.”

“Did I tell you what happened right before?” His voice sounded strange.

I shook my head, dread pulling on my heart like icy fingers. I had the feeling I wouldn't want to hear whatever he was about to say.

“We were arguing. I don't even remember about what. We bickered about everything by that time. She decided to take a drive, just to cool off. She ended up dead instead.”

“Oh Luke…” So much made sense right then—the many little things Luke had said, so much of his pain. “It wasn't your fault.”

“I let her get in the car.”

Years of his guilt could be summed up in that sentence. It was simple and yet complicated, tied in an intricate web of half-truths that were more painful than lies.

“It was an accident, Luke. The police said she ran a stop sign, and a car hit her broadside.”

He looked up at me from the deck, his confusion apparent.

“My aunt told me.”

“Oh.” He appeared to think for a moment, and then his jaw tightened. “Did she also tell you the police said after I admitted that we'd been arguing that I shouldn't have allowed her to drive so upset?”

“No, but it wouldn't have changed my opinion.” I said it as if he should have cared what I thought when his opinion was the only one that mattered. And his was killing him.

There had to be some way for me to help him see the truth, to help him see what I saw when I looked at him. Someone good. Someone strong. And someone who would never intentionally hurt anyone. But I sensed I needed to start from a neutral place—a place we'd once walked together—if I wanted him to hear me at all.

“I can't get over what a funny pair we are,” I said, waiting for him to look up at me again before I continued. “Just a regular cheesy poster advertising weddings and happily ever after. You in your tiny tux and me in scratchy periwinkle.”

“Is that what they called that ugly purpleish-blue?” he asked, his hard expression softening.

“That's it.”

“Are you saying we missed our calling to write greeting card poetry?”