Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Her Holiday Family\Sugar Plum Season\Her Cowboy Hero\Small-Town Fireman (72 page)

Suddenly all the reasons she'd given herself for keeping a distance from this man and his world made no sense at all. They were all facts, all still true in one sense or another, but this—what she felt here and now—was somehow
more
true.
Not now,
a voice in the back of her head warned, but it was silenced by another voice that said,
Now most of all.
Dylan's arms tightened around her as if he'd tasted the realization in her kiss.

The storm threw something else against the door, startling them out of the embrace to stare wide-eyed into each other's gaze. Nothing had changed: Karl's was still under threat, Dad and Grandpa were still out there somewhere in potential danger, everything that made Dylan an impossible choice was still there. Only it wasn't. She was larger than those things. God was larger and stronger than those things, and what had just transpired in Dylan's arms felt like the best weapon against everything that assailed her.

She wasn't quite sure how his eyes burned brighter, but they had doubled their intensity as he looked at her and pulled in a deep breath. “I'm going to beg you to hold on to that thought for another six hours or so.” How could the wonder in his eyes make her feel like laughing when the world was washing right out from under her? “Because I need to go find your grandfather.”

Chapter Nineteen

S
he'd done something to him. Something deep and instantaneous and important that could never be undone. It vibrated through his whole body, broke his awareness wide-open and made him see things in ways he'd shut his eyes to before.

In the months since he'd bought the
High Tide
, it had come to overtake his life. He told himself that his work at the firehouse balanced out his life, but that was only on the outside. His “to do” list was balanced; his heart was not. Jesse had been right all along. He told himself he was being cautious, healing from the blow Yvonne had dealt, but he wasn't. He was hiding from life, hiding behind a boat because a hunk of wood could not betray him.

Neither could a hunk of wood love him. The
High Tide
, for all its promise and beauty, could not stretch him or heal him or challenge him in any of the ways Karla Kennedy had. The
High Tide
's gorgeous lines would never look him in the eyes as Karla just had and show him what truly mattered.

A boat would never compel him to head out into a driving storm to find two lost men. Dylan realized, as he did the last snap on his storm gear and gave Karla's hand a final squeeze before pushing out into the rain, that he did not regret this choice one bit. A careful man might be heading out into the storm to check on his boats, but Dylan knew—down to the soles of his already-soaked shoes—that he was done being a careful man. He was ready to be a man who cared again.

As he turned into the wind and began to make his way down the street, he saw Karla place her hand on the front window of the shop. For a moment, Dylan placed his palm up to meet her hand, and watched the rain run down over his fingers as they covered the image of her hand on the other side of the glass. He would do this for her.

Water was everywhere, and deep. He didn't need a report from Jesse to guess the town's worst fears had been realized; the floodgates had failed. He couldn't see them from where he stood, but the level of water told him as surely as if he had been standing in front of the green gates as they gaped open. Trees no longer had trunks, the branches instead swaying straight out of the waterline where it had covered lower limbs. Porches now sat level with the muddy, swirling current, their steps and foundations underwater. Even peppered with raindrops as it was, Dylan knew not to trust the flat look of the surface—water that looked calm could pull an unsuspecting man off his feet in seconds.

Karla told him her father was driving a dark green sedan, so Dylan calculated the most likely route from Karl's house to the coffee shop and began to head down that street, leaning into the wind and keeping to the higher ground. For a second, he regretted not having the smaller boat, musing that in ten minutes Tyler Street would be better traveled by the
Low Tide
than by foot. Still, if God was kind, he wouldn't be out here for long. If it came to rescuing Karl and Kurt Kennedy by boat, things would have gone from bad to worse indeed.

Help me, Lord. Show me where the car is or send word that they are safe and sound.

Ten more minutes of looking only showed him that the water had crept above some porches and was now lapping at front doors. In many parts of town, cars would no longer run and would lie stranded and waterlogged wherever they had stopped. As he turned a final corner, telling himself that he was going to need to call in the firehouse for reinforcements if Karl and Kurt were missing for much longer, he spied the orange blink of a car's hazard lights up a side street.

A dark green sedan lay angled across a dip in the road where water now collected up to the fenders. There, in the entryway of a bank, huddled two figures Dylan immediately recognized as Karl and Kurt. They were all of two blocks from the coffee shop, but a second glance registered that the older of the men was slumped against the wall and stooped in pain.

“Karl!” Dylan yelled, breaking into as fast a run as he dared on the slick cobblestone side street, “Kurt!”

“Over here!” Kurt yelled back, waving his arms. “Dad fell getting out of the car when it stuck.”

Dylan peeled off his rain slicker to wrap it around the older man. “Can you walk?”

“Not well enough.” Karl winced.

“I couldn't hold him up by myself. My cell phone slid out of my pocket and into the water as I tried to get him up the first time.”

“Get his one arm—I'll take the other.” Together, they pulled Karl upright between the two of them, taking all his weight so that he could hobble a few steps at a time. It was laborious and slow, soaking each man to the skin as they made their way to the coffee shop's front steps, but they made it just as the water began lapping over the high Tyler Street curb outside the shop. Dylan had seen photos of Gordon Falls underwater, but he'd hoped never to take in the sorry sight with his own eyes.

“Grandpa!” Karla shouted as the three-man tangle of limbs pushed their way into the shop. “Dad! Thank goodness you're safe. What on earth happened?”

Karl looked up. “Your father hit a pothole.”

Kurt Kennedy rolled his eyes. “The way the car sank, I think the tire rolled into a sewer drain with the manhole cover washed off. We must have dropped a full foot and I heard the undercarriage hit the pavement.”

Together, the men eased Karl into a chair. Violet was instantly beside Karl, her hand on the old man's shoulder and her eyes shiny with thankful tears.

“I'm okay, I'm okay,” he grumbled, “I just missed the curb getting out of the dumb car.”

Dylan watched Kurt Kennedy catch his daughter's eyes over the old man's head as if to say “it's a bit more serious than that.”

Karla sank down onto her knees in front of her grandfather. “You're here now,” she said as she mopped his soaked pants with a towel. “You're safe. And Karl's is open, Grandpa, just like it needs to be.”

All the grumpiness left Karl's eyes, and he touched his granddaughter's cheek with such a tender gesture that Dylan felt his heart cinch. “That's my girl.”

“You hurt your hip,” Karla said in such a loving but fierce “don't you dare lie to me” tone that Dylan could only smile.

“Maybe just a little.”

“Thank goodness you're here and safe now,” Violet said, pressing a small kiss to the top of Karl's head. Dylan blinked. Those two really were sweet on each other. How had he gotten to a place where he forgot such wonderful things happened?

Kurt extended a hand to Dylan. “Thank you. I don't think I could have gotten him here without help.”

“I'm glad I was able to find you. Karla needed to know you both were safe. We all did.”

With that, Karla stood up and turned to him. “Thank you so much.” She stood on her tiptoes and left an exquisitely tender kiss on his cheek. It sent such warmth through Dylan's body that he completely forgot he was soaking wet. “You're my hero.”

“See!” Violet declared a little louder than Dylan would have liked, “I told you they were a pair!”

* * *

She'd never seen such a thing. Karla watched the water slowly swallow Tyler Street, watched the firemen and policemen pile sandbags up against the coffee shop door and every other shop along the street. She wiped away a tear from her eye with the back of her hand, struck again by how much she'd come to care for the place. The bored-stiff-can't-wait-to-leave attitude she'd harbored a little over a month ago seemed so misguided. Now, watching the town slowly surrender to the muddy churning water, she didn't see how she could leave it like this. Yes, Gordon Falls would come back from the disaster, but its healing would be as slow and laborious as Grandpa's.

It was late, although it had been hard to distinguish the daytime from the evening in all the dark, cold rain. Folks had settled themselves into corners and booths with the blankets brought over from the firehouse. The generator had given up hours ago, and Karl's had an oddly homey glow from the dozens of utility candles propped up in bowls and saucers on tables around the room.

Dylan had gone over to the firehouse to help with the rescue effort. Her lips still tingled from the kiss he left there before heading out the door, a lasting promise that he would return. Karla wondered again if the
High Tide
would survive the night, and what Dylan would do if his beloved boats were demolished. How does a man find the strength to start a third time?

“Pie for your thoughts,” Dad said, holding a small plate with a squashed helping of blueberry pie. One of the few blessings of the evening was that with power out and the generator gone, everyone had an excuse to eat all the refrigerated and frozen desserts Karl's had before they spoiled. A girl could do worse than pie for dinner. Especially after ice cream for lunch.

Karla accepted the slice and cast her eyes beyond Dad to where Grandpa and Violet sat huddled and napping in a corner booth. “I'm wondering if it can all come back.”

Dad's sigh was deep and weary. “The town? Sure it will. Gordon Falls has flooded before. People here know how to get back up and keep going.”

“Why stay and do it all over again?” Karla wanted to understand the urge in her own heart. It seemed so illogical, so precious and pointless all at the same time.

“Actually, I think you can't have one without the other. The town is close-knit because of what it endures. Folks have been though a lot together.” He scooped up another forkful of pie and nodded at Karl and Violet. “Did you know?”

“I suspected,” Karla answered, staring at the sweet couple asleep against each other. “But I was still pretty shocked when Violet told me.”

Dad shifted his weight. “I had no idea. I suppose you can't really see that kind of thing in your own father. I'm happy he's happy, though. They seem good for each other.”

“He can't run Karl's anymore, can he?”

Dad blew out a long breath before he said, “No.”

Karla looked at her father, his face cast in moving shadows by the rain streaming down the window. “I can.”

“Well, you've certainly proven that, today especially.”

Karla put down her plate. “No, I mean I can take over Karl's. I want to take over Karl's.”

Dad put down his own pie. “Karla, you don't have to put your life on hold to keep Karl's open. It's had a good run. Maybe now it's time for it to be over.”

She looked around the room at the knots of people gathered together while the storm raged outside. With all the candles, it really was a sanctuary. If she sought to run a place where important things happened, Karla couldn't think of anything more important than what Karl's had done today. “No, Dad, Karl's isn't ready to close. Not on my watch.”

Dad smiled. “So I guess that means it's safe to ask about Dylan? Your mom told me not to bring it up, but I think maybe the rules are different now.”

She looked up at her father. “In answer to your question...yes, Dylan's part of the reason I think I want to stay.”

“I suppose you can't really see that kind of thing in your own daughter,” her father laughed, echoing his earlier statement. Then his eyes grew serious. “Don't make your life about what other people want from you, Karla. God calls each of us to our own lives, not by someone else's needs.”

She hadn't even discussed it with Dylan yet. She'd come to the conclusion all on her own, sitting listening to the rain, listening to the quiet prayers and comforting talk of the people around her. She knew now, down to the deepest part of her soul, why Karl's stayed open in a storm. Why it had to stay open for the next storm and the one after that. Bebe would just have to hold up the Clifton without her. “No, Dad, this is all me. Well, God and me.”

Her father pulled her into a long hug. She felt him turn his head toward Grandpa. “When will you tell him?”

“When the rain stops. Or we run out of pie. Whichever comes first.”

Dad laughed softly. “And Dylan?”

Karla shrugged. “That's a bit harder to guess. Maybe after he finds out how his boats fared. Maybe right before. I figure God will hand me the right time.”

“I'm proud of you, Karla.”

Karla felt her smile spread all the way under her ribs. “I'm proud of me, too, Dad. Turns out ‘Kennedys can do' after all.”

Dad touched her cheek. “I never doubted it for a moment.”

Chapter Twenty

“I
t's everywhere,” Dylan said in a tired voice. It was true; mud covered every surface as Karla and Dylan walked through town surveying the damage the following morning. No matter where she looked, gray-brown muck seemed to coat every crack and crevice. Smears and clumps of grass and leaves seemed to be deposited in every corner. Even sadder still, they'd found bits and pieces of several boat decorations littered about town like discarded trash.

Dylan pointed to the building where he had told her he found Dad and Grandpa. “Look how high the water came up over there.” It was frightening to consider what might have happened if Dad and Grandpa hadn't been able to move from the spot. An orange cone warned motorists of the open sewer that had swallowed Dad's tire—the manhole cover had indeed been swept away. For the hundredth time since then, Karla sent up a silent prayer of thanksgiving that everyone she loved was safe and sound. Lots of damage had been done, but no one had been seriously injured.

“And over there.” Each building along Tyler Street boasted a horizontal line of silt and debris that signified the flood's high-water mark, as if the structures now boasted scars. It had turned out to be the worst flood Gordon Falls had seen in fifty years.

“They'll be able to fix that,” Dylan said, pointing to the side window of Halverson's grocery store, “but I don't know about over there.” He pointed to a home with a front porch that now sagged dangerously off one corner. Every intersection showed some washed-out foundation or cracked beam.

The sights pained her. She felt the town's wounds as if they were her own. Her heart had become linked to Gordon Falls. It had always been a part of her past—a pleasant memory, a welcome day trip out to see Grandpa—but something shifted the night the waters rose. Something as deep and powerful as the cascade of water that pushed through the floodgates. And, like the floodwaters, it had deposited some things while washing others away.

Dylan walked by a sorry pile of waterlogged books sitting out in front of the library where the basement had flooded. A pile of oversize papier-mâché books—float decorations, according to Violet—sat slumped and soggy beside their real-life counterparts. The sun couldn't quite make its way through the lingering clouds, giving the whole town a washed-out, low-tide kind of aura. Given how water had risen through town and then subsided, it wasn't an inaccurate description.

They'd come from the docks. Dylan had talked of the other damage they had seen in town, but had remained silent as to the fate of his boats. She'd sensed a need for space and simply stood in silent witness as he crawled over the battered boat and what was left of the dock. She didn't know if repairs were possible, couldn't guess what the state of the craft meant for Dylan, but only prayed for wisdom and comfort as he surveyed the scrapes and gashes in the
High Tide.
His beloved charter boat now listed unnaturally to one side in the water, much like the porch they had just passed.

Then, somehow gathering whatever information he needed, he had quietly turned away, taken Karla's hand, and they had walked back toward town without speaking of the
High Tide
and her future.

“What will you do?” Karla finally dared to ask.

“I don't know yet. I have insurance, but it's tough to know how this will all pan out.” His voice was flat, a bit lifeless compared to his usual energy. “Fishing's out of the question for a month, maybe more.”

It was hard to imagine a landlocked Dylan; the river seemed so much a part of him. “I'm so sorry.”

“I am, too,” he said, “and then again, not so much.”

Karla looked at him, startled by the words.

“The
High Tide
had become everything to me. I used to think of that as a good thing—I was my own boss, I finally had the life I'd always denied myself, all that stuff. Only now I think she'd become too much.” There was a long pause. “Here everyone thought I was taking such a huge risk with the boat, but I was actually playing it safe. It was easier to be out on the river—even with charter customers—than to be back in town with people.” He turned to look at Karla. “I hid on that boat. That wasn't a river for me—it was a moat to keep everyone out.”

Dylan? Charming, personable Dylan? It just went to show how cleverly a person can mask themselves and camouflage their true feelings. “You'd been hurt,” she offered, squeezing his hand. “You needed something that couldn't hurt you again.”

“True, but only for a while. A boat is just a boat. It's not a life. You can care for her but she can't care back, ever.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, squinting up at the bleak sunlight. “I thought I'd feel awful looking over the damage. She's a pretty bad wreck at the moment. I ought to be a wreck myself.”

“But...”

He stopped walking. “But I'm not. I mean, I'm sad and worried, but I'm not...devastated. I never thought I'd say this, but it's just a boat. One that either can be fixed or not. It's a thing, you know?” He pulled her just the slightest bit closer. “It's not a person or a life.”

She reached up to pick a wayward strand of grass off the back of his shirt. She wanted to say a dozen things, but couldn't find a way to start any of the speeches whirring around in her head. So much of what she thought was important had shifted in the past day. Maybe it had to seep out slowly, like the way the water slowly receded, revealing what was left inches at a time.

They kept walking back toward Karl's, saying hello to people hauling debris out to the curb, stopping to help or gather updates. Time after time, folks went out of their way to thank Karla for keeping the shop open, or Dylan for rescuing Karl. More than one person lamented how sorry they were that the firehouse's anniversary celebration had been ruined—a boat parade seemed not only impossible, but silly in the face of everything else the town was facing.

Karla was hugging Jeannie Owens, whose candy shop had been flooded but thankfully not ruined, when she heard Dylan make a strange, gasping sound and then grab her by the shoulder.

She turned in the direction he tugged, and then gasped, too. Someone had taken a paintbrush to the sign in front of the coffee shop window, the one that now hung off-kilter because the bracket had been bent in the storm. Karl's Koffee had been modified—a crude addition sprawled over the original letters.

The sign now read,
Karla's Koffee
.

Karla's hand went to her chest, needing to somehow hold in the surge of emotion she now felt. “Grandpa...”

Dylan turned to look at her. “Karla?”

“I'm staying. I mean, I talked to Grandpa last night and told him I was staying, but you know Grandpa...”

His eyes took on the most amazing glow—the spark that had been missing all morning. “You're staying? You were even thinking about staying?”

“After the storm, after all that, I realized how much this place means to me. How much it means to all the people here. I can't let just anyone take over for Karl, and he needs to stop. Or at least slow down.”

“Why didn't you say anything before?”

“You looked so lost down on the docks. I didn't think it was fair with all that was going through your head.”

Dylan slid an arm around her waist. “Do you want to know what was going through my head? I was praying for guidance because I felt so hollow about what happened to the boats. I was wondering if God was telling me it was time to stop hiding and go back to Chicago because the only thing I hated the thought of losing—” his other hand moved up to brush against her cheek “—was you.”

“Dylan...”

“I was using the river to keep people out. Or at least at a distance. You changed that. But what changed your mind?”

Karla reached up and ran her fingers through Dylan's hair. “You.” When he smiled, she added, “Well, not just you. I thought my purpose in life was to create a launching pad of sorts, a power breakfast spot where big things happened.”

“Rooster's,” he offered.

“I still think that, in a way. Only the storm showed me that what I really am meant to do is to create a haven. That's different than Rooster's, you know?”

Dylan looked at her. “But Rooster's was your big thing.”

“The shop here is a place where a
different
kind of big thing happens. Grandpa's been doing something important, and that's why Karl's has to stay open. I know now that I'm the one to do that.” She turned her head toward the edited sign. “Although I didn't ask for a name change at all—that's all Grandpa's doing.”

Dylan pulled her tighter. “Maybe he knew that was just the hint you needed.”

Karla planted her hands on her hips. “Well, nothing like a public announcement without asking permission, is there?”

Dylan turned her back toward him. “He's not alone. This morning I was telling God I was ready to move back to Chicago to see if we had a shot at something because I would never ask you to stay here just for me.” His hand cupped her chin. “But I think we have a real shot at something. I'm in love with you, Karla-with-a-
K
, and I am asking you to stay. I'm glad you're staying.”

Everything that was missing from his spirit had returned. They belonged together; it was so easy to see. He could do more with her beside him just as she knew everything she wanted in Chicago could be right here in Gordon Falls if he was beside her. She'd spent so much time planning the perfect future when God had the best future of all right here waiting for her. “Oh, we've got a shot at something all right. That's the best announcement I've heard all day.”

He ducked his face closer to hers. “Better than that sign over there?”

“How about this sign right here?” And with that she kissed him. “I love you, too. I'm staying for a hundred, reasons, but you're the best one.”

Dylan leaned her back in a tango-worthy dip in reply, and gave her the sweetest, best, longest kiss the town had ever seen.

Karla knew she'd found her place in the world. She knew Dylan would find a way to rebuild. And everyone could rest assured that “Karla's” stayed open in a storm.

Forget the enormous fish she'd landed earlier—Karla Kennedy had just landed Gordon Falls' best catch ever.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from SECOND CHANCE REUNION by Merrillee Whren.