Small-Town Dreams (17 page)

Josh shrugged. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Will talked me into leaving. I was staying there out of guilt.” He sighed. “I just can’t be what they want. I can’t be David. I’m me—Joshua Daniels.”

“Well, good for Will,” Henry said. “But weren’t your parents upset with you for leaving so suddenly?”

“Actually, one of the problems between us is that I can’t seem to see them as my parents. They’re strangers. I thought they’d be upset, but I think they realized that we had nothing left to say to each other. I promised to keep in touch and that seemed to satisfy them. In fact, I think they were a little relieved. Things started out strained between Ronald and me, and stayed that way.”

Henry clapped Josh on the shoulder. “We missed you, son. How’d you get from the airport?”

“I was so close to home when I arrived that I decided to surprise you, so I called Larry Tully and asked him to come get me.”

Irma frowned. “Larry? What’d he have to say?”

Josh wondered if the Tullys were having problems again, but he was sure Larry would have said something. He’d thought it fair to give the Chernaks a fair shot at being his family by not staying in touch with Irma and Henry while he was in Florida, but now he wondered if that had been a mistake.

“Larry didn’t say much of anything. Mostly he asked me questions about how Florida was, and we talked about the addition. Why? Is something wrong that I should know about?”

Irma blinked as if his question surprised her. “Wrong?” she asked. “What could be wrong? Our son’s come home and all’s right with the world! Did they feed you on the plane?”

“We had a snack but I’m not very hungry. Actually, I’d like to talk. About the Chernaks and Regina.” He smiled ruefully. “I guess you noticed I arrived alone.”

“Noticed that right off,” Henry quipped. “Let’s all get settled, and you can tell us everything.”

And he did. It felt good to unburden himself. Josh talked for what felt like hours, reliving his last few weeks, explaining the past as it had been told to him and revealing his confusion about his future because of his brother’s marriage to Regina.

“Well, son, I don’t see the problem,” Henry said. “Right in Corinthians, Paul lays out the only allowable reason for divorce. Adultery. It’s an ugly word and an even uglier deed. I believe as you do that your brother and ex-wife are forgiven, but that doesn’t change the facts. She was an adulteress who divorced you. You’re free.”

“I want so desperately to believe that,” Josh admitted. “But I keep thinking that maybe I want it too desperately. Maybe I love Cassie so much that I’m willing to sacrifice my principles for the chance of a life with her.”

“Hmm,” Henry said, stroking his chin and pursing his lips. “That’s one theory. But here’s another. Would you agree that God is our Father?”

Josh nodded.

“Now, I know I’m not your father but I’d like to think I’ve filled that role for you these last years.”

“You know you have,” Josh said immediately.

“Well, I’m pleased you think so. Would I tell you to do anything I thought would hurt you?”

“Of course not,” he answered without hesitation.

“Hmm. Okay. Suppose you came to me wanting something that would make you happy, and it was within my power to grant whatever it was you asked of me, would I tell you no?”

“I doubt it.”

“Well, I doubt it, too!” Henry exclaimed, and shook his head. “It never ceases to amaze me why folks think our heavenly Father is up there trying to find ways to make us miserable. Would you tell me why you think He is less apt to want you to be happy than I am?”

Josh blinked and had no answer, having never thought in those terms before. Henry certainly had a point.

“Well, now.” The old pastor sighed and stood. “It’s late and we all need a good night’s rest. You pray on that question and then you sleep on it. I’ll see you in the morning.” He left, his steps slower these days, even though his mind was obviously as quick as ever.

Irma smiled and stood to leave. “He’s a sneaky one, that Henry. Has you thinking, doesn’t he.”

Josh nodded.

Irma bent over and kissed his cheek. “What you need is to take time to reflect and pray. Why not go to the cabin tomorrow morning and think things over up there? Just you and God and plenty of peace and quiet.”

“That’s a good idea. I think I’ll do just that. By the way, where’s Bear? I ought to take him with me.”

Irma’s eyes widened. “Bear? Oh…Bear…uh, didn’t Larry tell you? He took him along with him about a week ago. He got to be too much for us. I’ll call and see if Larry could bring him back tomorrow when he has time. But in the meantime, you get that good night’s sleep Henry ordered up, so you can start fresh in the morning.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Going up to the cabin is a good idea, Ma.”

“Glad you think so. Pleasant dreams,” she said, and left.

As she was walking out, Josh thought he heard her mutter something that sounded like
I hope you still think so tomorrow night.

Why would she think he’d change his mind? he wondered, as he turned off the lights and headed for his room.

“O
kay. One last time!” Cassidy said as she opened the cabin door for Bear. He’d been restless all morning, wanting in, then out. She’d been able to contend with that, but the sound of his raucous barking bounced off the cabin walls and straight through her head. “Go find a nice safe rabbit to chase. No skunks. There’s no more tomato juice left after the last one you cornered. Oh, no, now I’m talking to the dog as if he’s a person.”

“Would it be impertinent of me to add that you’re also talking to yourself?”

There was a slight Southern drawl that hadn’t been there before, but she knew the sound of Josh’s voice. And it tipped Cassie’s world off its axis.

She stepped onto the porch and found him at the foot of the porch steps, fending off Bear, who barked and jumped excitedly about him. Josh went down on one knee and looped an arm over Bear’s shoulders to calm him. He smiled as he looked up, and her heart tripped.

“I guess he missed me,” he said, and laughed when Bear gave him a sloppy doggy kiss.

She wanted to tell him that the dog wasn’t the only one who’d missed him—who wanted to kiss his beloved face. And even though Irma had promised not to let this happen, Cassie couldn’t regret seeing him again. He looked so much better than he had the last time she’d seen him, pale and weak in a hospital bed.

He looked wonderful. Tall, tanned and terrific.

And tough to resist.

But she had to. There was no choice. He belonged to another woman now. She’d long since accepted that there wasn’t a chance Regina Chernak would reject someone as wonderful as Josh. What woman in her right mind would be so foolish?

Now all she had to do was hide her joy and stick to her story. “I—I, uh…” She cleared her suddenly tight throat. “I’m surprised to see you.”

“And I’m surprised to see you, too. Ma didn’t tell me you were in town.” He frowned. “In fact, no one did.” He looked wounded, and she couldn’t blame him. Didn’t Irma and Henry understand that this was as hard for him as it was for her?

“I’m sorry. I’ll pack up and be out of your hair in no time,” she told him.

“I’d never toss a woman out in the cold.” Josh looked around and took in the beautiful spring day. He shrugged. “Of course, it isn’t very cold, but I was only coming up here to think. I can do that anywhere on a day like this.”

He smiled that sweet, open smile of his, and Cassie’s resolve almost melted. She stiffened. “But you should be able to do that here. Just the way you planned,” she replied in her most no-nonsense corporate tone. “As I said, I can be gone in no time. I’d already decided to head back soon, anyway. I was only here to paint and I’ve accomplished what I came to do.”

“Getting back to the wilds of nature for the sake of your art?”

Cassie nodded. She didn’t like the edge of sarcasm that had crept into his tone, but she understood it. After all, she’d disparaged what he had come to see as his birthplace. Only she knew it had only been an excuse to bow out of his life gracefully. Josh didn’t know that.

“I’ve been back to nature for as long as I can stand. And I have to admit, this place has a certain rustic charm,” she added, and gestured toward the cabin, “but it does wear thin after a while.”

When his eyes narrowed in obvious annoyance, Cassie fought to remember that she’d already set him free and that maintaining the pretense she’d used that evening in the hospital was of prime importance. She didn’t want him feeling so guilty that he might subconsciously sabotage any hope for happiness with Regina. Josh deserved a happy life.

“And my agent likes the work I did while I was staying at Irma and Henry’s,” she continued, congratulating herself on her acting ability. “I thought I’d provide him with the ultimate in rustic charm by hiking up here and immersing myself in all this bucolic splendor. And I have to admit that I’ve been able to produce exactly what he’s been begging for.”

Josh grabbed the stick Bear had proudly brought to him, and stood. He tossed it high into the air and far from the porch. Bear took off after it gleefully. “I hear you have another show coming up,” he said, his tone stiff. “Jim said you did so well at that first small one that the gallery opted for a major event this time. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she answered, and then, at a loss for words, added, “Would you like to come in while I pack up?”

Josh nodded and started toward the steps. “I’d love to see what you’ve painted since you came up here.”

Cassie had turned to walk inside, but froze in the doorway as the full import of her invitation hit her. The oil she’d almost finished of him still sat on the easel by the far window. And two other watercolors of him were in with the landscapes.

How was she going to keep him from seeing those? The landscapes, painted with all the love she felt for the lush spring countryside, were perfectly within the realm of her excuse for being there, but she’d never pass off the portraits as studies of rustic charm.

“Something wrong?” he all but purred into her ear from just behind her.

She whirled to face him, barring the door with a hand on each doorjamb. “I don’t like to show anyone my work before it’s matted and framed,” she blurted out, then nearly winced.

She just wasn’t a good liar. That’s all there was to it. Never before had a virtue felt more like a vice. They’d lived in the same house. Chatted while he watched her paint. He’d never swallow that!

Josh confirmed her fear with a chuckle. “Since when? You always let me see what you were working on while it was in progress.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, and her knees turned to water.

“Is that agent of yours making you shy about your work—or are you getting uppity again?”

His grin set a match to her well-laid fire. “I am not being uppity! I’ve never been uppity.”

Outraged and unsettled by his nearness, she stepped back, needing the distance, then realized her error. Josh followed and was inside the cabin in a heartbeat—pretty quick moving, considering the speed at which her heart was pounding. She needed a diversion, and anger would do just fine!

“How dare you call me uppity?” she charged, hoping to keep his attention focused on her. She stalked over to the easel that was thankfully turned so the painting wasn’t visible, and, as casually as she could, flipped the cover over it. “And what kind of stupid word is
uppity,
anyway? You sound like a hillbilly, and I know Irma taught you to speak better than that.”

He just grinned again, and she knew she was doomed to failure. He was not about to be deterred. There was something about the way he sauntered across the room to the stack of paintings. Something new about the way he leafed through them, tilting his head this way and that, setting one then another in front to step back and study them. That something new was arrogance. A trait she’d never seen in him before. What did he have to be arrogant about? He hadn’t yet gotten to the portraits.

“You’re very talented,” he said after looking at several landscapes. “But then, I’m sure you believe that by now.”

“Thank you,” she replied through gritted teeth, wanting to slap that insolent smirk right off his face.

He turned away again and kept going through them, one after another. Slowly. As if he knew what he was about to find but wanted to prolong her torture. There was no way he could know about her paintings of him, and he had no reason to want to make her squirm. He’d called off their marriage. He’d called her in to his hospital room to say goodbye to her. He’d been determined to go to Florida to find Regina.

Could she have made him so angry with her story of hating the area that he wanted to see her hurt in some way? That just didn’t fit the Joshua Daniels she knew.

The sound of yet another painting being moved to the back of the pile dragged her from her thoughts. There was only one more landscape in the stack, then the two pictures she’d done of him. If her memory served her right, the first one he’d come to was of him laughing as Bear licked his face in Irma’s garden. It was her favorite. Sometimes she’d close her eyes and see him that morning, trying to control that huge frightened dog, all the while laughing so hard tears rolled down his face.

The other was an opposite study. It was the way she remembered him in her little makeshift studio at Irma’s as he explained that first time why any relationship between them was impossible. It was a portrait of heartbreak, his big, nearly black eyes so anguished that they transmitted every emotion he’d laid bare to her that night.

She had to get him out of here before he got that far or moved to the oil. That would unravel her story completely. Because anyone could see the oil for what it was. A portrait of her love. Every brush stroke exposed her feelings for her subject. For him.

But Josh didn’t go on. He turned, and she almost gasped at the hurt in his eyes. “It wasn’t really the snow that sent you running. Do you really expect me to look at these and believe you hate it up here? It was one of two other things. Either you realized that I have nothing to offer you, or you were hoping to ease my guilt for the way I treated you.”

Oh, she just couldn’t let him go on thinking he wasn’t good enough for her. Cassie forced herself to smile past her pain. She looked him square in the eye, as difficult as that was for her, and said, “You have plenty to offer the right woman, Josh. I just don’t happen to be that woman. Regina is a lucky lady. As for the paintings, you said it yourself, I’m talented.”

“But you make it all come alive. You have feeling for this place. It seems to me that you could live here the way Maria does and still have an incredible career.”

“You should see the one I did of a bum sleeping in a park. He wasn’t a particularly attractive subject, but my agent says he nearly breathes. Not that I like that aspect of city life. No one likes to be faced with the plight of the homeless in American cities. But being back in Philly really expanded my range and opened incredible career opportunities for me.”

“Oh.” He turned back to the stack, and Cassie panicked.

“Look, Joshua, I’m in a hurry here.” She charged over. She just couldn’t let him see those watercolors of him. He was too close to the truth. “Come to the show if you want to admire my work. They’ll be matted and framed by then and look even better.” She scooped up the pile of paintings and hurried back across the room to shove them into her portfolio.

Josh watched Cassie hurry away clutching the watercolors. She was such a bad liar, it was laughable. And something about those paintings made her nervous; he just couldn’t figure out what. Then he remembered her not so casually stalking over to cover the oil on the easel by the window, and the way her hands shook when she did it. Cassie’s hands were always a dead giveaway that she was upset. Maybe that painting would reveal her secrets.

As soundlessly as he could, Josh moved to the easel and uncovered the painting. A second later he prayed that he was staring at his future. She’d never convince him that she loved a pile of brick and stone, albeit a huge city-size pile, more than she loved the man she’d painted.

He let the cover fall and grinned. Let her keep her secret a little while longer. She really shouldn’t have lied to him. If Irma hadn’t tricked him into coming up to the cabin, they could have lost each other forever.

“So you really hate it here?” he called across the cabin to her as he moved away from the easel.

“The silence drives me crazy.”

“And the stars at night?” he asked as he stepped behind her. Her beautiful, capable, paint-smeared hands started to shake, and her breath whispered out unevenly. He grinned, then fought to put on a neutral expression.

“They…uh, make me feel too insignificant.”

“It
is
a big universe. Funny how we found each other in it,” he said, his lips inches from her ear.

She whirled to face him and pushed him back a step with surprising strength. “Will you just leave me alone—!” she shouted, her voice cracking on the last word.

“Nope.” He stood looking down at her and wanted to scoop her into his embrace so badly that he had to fight his own body.

She stepped back and retreated several steps. “Nope? You aren’t acting at all like yourself! What on earth did they do to you down there?”

“Helped open my eyes, for one thing. And by the way, there is no Mrs. David Chernak. Not anymore.”

Cassie’s eyes widened. “She divorced you? Is she willing to try again?”

Josh heard the hope in her voice. “Yeah. Apparently she is.”

“Well, I hope you two will be very happy,” she replied, her voice betraying what her expression didn’t. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she snapped, “I’ll just go pack my clothes and be out of your hair.”

“Nope,” he said again, but this time he couldn’t fight the grin. But that was okay because it made Cassie even more angry. He loved it when she got mad like this. She dropped all that society pretense that had been hammered into her all her life and acted like his Cassie. Feisty but unable to hide her emotions.

And that was why he was baiting her. He had to get at the truth.

“Stop saying ‘nope’!” she shouted.

“Why?”

She clenched her jaw. “Because as with
uppity,
it’s not good speech.”