The Heart's Journey: Stitches in Time Series #2 (28 page)

“Need some help?”

He jumped. “Naomi! Get out of the rain!”

“I’m fine. I won’t melt.”

He grinned. “I know. You’re sweet but you’re not made of sugar.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I’m made of sterner stuff. I can help.”

“ ‘I am woman; hear me roar,’” he murmured.

“What?”

“Just lyrics to a song,” he said. “An anthem to women. I’ll explain sometime. Get inside and stay dry.”

“I’m already wet,” she pointed out.

He froze.
Don’t look. Keep your eyes straight ahead
, he warned himself. The rain had plastered her dress so closely to her body.

He pulled the jack from the storage compartment, then walked to the rear left-side tire. If you were going to have a flat, it was always good to have it on a rear tire.

Naomi’s skirt brushed his arm. He looked up. “It’s too dangerous out here,” he said, glancing back at the road. “Get back in the van.”

“If it’s dangerous, then I’m going to stay out here and keep an eye out for you.”

“Stubborn,” he muttered.

“Careful.” She watched him and felt a lightness she hadn’t experienced in a long time. “Caring.”

He jerked his head up to stare at her.

“You don’t have to thank me.”

There was a clip-clopping sound. Nick straightened as a buggy approached. Jacob was waving with one hand as he held the reins in the other. He guided the buggy over to the shoulder of the road behind Nick’s van.

“Need some help?”

“I got it,” Nick said. “Just a flat. But if you could give Naomi and Leah a ride home I’d appreciate it.”

“Where’s Anna?” Mary Katherine asked.

“She was staying the night at Jamie’s.”

A rumble of thunder made them look up. The storm was getting worse.

“Go get your grandmother,” Nick told her.

He watched as she returned with Leah, helped her inside, then nodded at Jacob.

“Wait! Naomi!”

She waved at her grandmother. “I’ll be home soon. I’m helping Nick.”

He looked at her. “How much do you know about changing a tire?”

“About as much as you know about driving a buggy,” she said with a grin.

He pulled her closer to the van when a car whizzed by too fast.

“Come on, let’s get this tire changed. I see what you mean about it being dangerous.”

One look at her told him it would do no good to argue with her. Resigned, he warned her to keep an eye on traffic to protect herself, and then set to work changing the tire as quickly as possible.

He frowned when he realized that the ground was still damp from the previous night’s rain. Getting up, he located the two pieces of wood he kept to use under the jack to provide a better base.

He was turning to return to the flat tire when a flash of color and sound caught his eye. A car was traveling too close to the emergency lane and Naomi wasn’t paying attention. She was looking at him, not at the traffic.

“Move!” he said urgently.

She glanced back and he realized that she’d registered the danger but was too shocked to move.

Dropping the wood, he threw himself toward her, knocking her out of the path of the car.

There was a whoosh of air at one side as the car missed them, then he felt himself free-falling with her. He wrapped his arms around her, hoping to cushion her fall, but they fell
and rolled down the grassy slope, coming to rest in a ditch filled with muddy water.

“Naomi? Are you all right?”

Her eyes were open and her mouth was moving. “Can’t breathe.”

He raised up and levered himself off of her. “You probably got the breath knocked out of you.”

Leaning forward, he pressed his lips against hers, breathing in.

“Mmmph.” She thumped her hands against his chest. When he moved away, she struggled to sit. “You’re kissing me at a time like this?”

“I was doing mouth-to-mouth.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t need mouth-to-mouth.”

Incredibly relieved, he wiped mud from her cheek. “Maybe you need a kiss?”

She stared down at her torn and mud-splattered dress and then up into his eyes. “Yeah, just what I need—” she began in a sarcastic tone.

He ignored the tone and went with her words, kissing her until both of them were breathless.

Then he wrapped his arms around her and felt hers encircle him, and they just sat there with the rain falling on them, washing away the mud.

“You folks okay down there?”

Nick looked up to see Kate standing up on the hill, staring down at them with concern.

“Never better!” he called, turning back to Naomi, his eyes taking in everything about her. The rain, the police officer up the hill … everything faded away but Naomi.

“It’s just like Anna said,” she told him. Her voice was a little dreamy and it frightened him, making him wonder if she’d
struck her head on a rock on the way down. “Everything can change in a moment.”

“Are you okay?” the officer asked as she crouched near Naomi.

“Never better,” Naomi told her, smiling at her. “I’m going to marry this man.”

Kate turned to Nick and her eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me you’re down here proposing to her?”

He shook his head. “No. Do you think she has a concussion?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you shouldn’t try to get up, Naomi,” Kate said, pressing Naomi’s shoulder with her hand to keep her seated.

“Don’t be silly. I’m fine.” She struggled to get to her feet.

Kate tried to help her up but they both slipped on the wet grass and landed on their fannies.

Nick got to his feet and assisted them in standing.

“Don’t go trying to get out of it,” Naomi warned as Nick wrapped his arm around her waist and they made it up the slope.

“Can we hold off on making plans for a wedding until we get you safely home?” Kate groused as she pulled a blanket from the trunk of her car and got Naomi settled in the backseat.

But Nick saw her hiding her smile.

“Just happy we had a good ending here,” she told them, casting a steely glance at cars passing them. “People aren’t careful about passing cars on the side of the road. Too busy gawking or not realizing that the force of the air from their vehicle can cause problems.”

Nick located the boards and the lug wrench and set about changing the tire.

Once he climbed into the van and Naomi was in the passenger seat, Kate leaned in the open window on Nick’s side.

“Sometimes adrenaline carries people through but they wake up the next day and realize they’re hurt. If that happens, you get yourself to a doctor, hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nick thrust out his hand. “Thanks so much.”

A car sped by going considerably faster than the speed limit. Nick watched Kate brighten.

“Gotta go,” she said, sounding almost gleeful. “Gonna go catch me a speeder.”

“You’re sure you didn’t hit your head against a rock?”

“You’ve asked me that twice,” Naomi complained.

She looked into the mirror and winced. One cheek was bruised, her
kapp
had gone missing, and her dress looked so tattered she was certain it would end up as cleaning rags.

Nick hadn’t fared much better. His tie had been ripped as well as his shirt and pants. Some green, slimy substance matted his hair. She didn’t have the heart to tell him to look in his own mirror. It didn’t matter. He had never looked dearer to her and she didn’t want to let him go.

“I need my hands to drive,” he said, but he didn’t pull them away. “If we’re not out of here soon, Kate is going to come back and give us a ticket for loitering.”

“She’s not going to do that.”

“Well, let’s not take any chances. Besides, we’ve already seen it’s not safe to be on the side of the road.”

She looked at the green goo in his hair. “You’re safe from my advances.”

“You’re not from mine,” he warned.

With a sigh, she let go of his hands with some reluctance and gathered her blanket around her.

“We need to talk,” she said as he started the engine.

“
Ich liebe dich
.”

She stared at him. “I love you too.”

He laughed. “Why are you so surprised? I’ve been studying German and Pennsylvania
Dietsch
for the past few years. Your grandmother and a few of my clients have helped me.”

He checked for traffic and accelerated out onto the road. They rode in silence. Pulling into Leah’s driveway, he stopped the van and shut off the engine.

“Let’s get you inside and cleaned up, then I’ll run home and do the same. Then we’ll talk to Leah.”

Naomi bit her lip, tasted mud, and made a face.

“I know. She’s not going to be happy—”

“She’s very fond of you,” Naomi rushed to say. “She—”

“But she wasn’t encouraging about my having a relationship with you. I don’t blame her. Becoming Amish and marrying someone—well, it’s not done very often. We’re going to have some opposition, if not from her, then from the bishop.”

He tilted his head and studied her. “What? Did you think I’d ask you to give up your church? Your family and your friends?”

She pressed her fingers against her temples. “Be sure this is what you want,” she whispered. “It’s a big decision.”

He took her hands and started to press them to his lips but she wouldn’t let him. “Who knows what you’ll catch if you do that!” she laughed.

Then, as he continued to gaze intently at her, she sobered.

“It’s the easiest decision ever, loving you,” he told her slowly. “The easiest decision ever.”

“Watching the clock never made time move faster.”

Naomi tried to smile at her grandmother. “I know.”

“Maybe Nick got called out for an emergency.”

“He’d have phoned. I just checked the machine in the shanty.”

“Yes, he would have,” Leah agreed.

“Maybe he had an accident—”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” Leah soothed. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions. Something probably just happened. Not anything bad,” she said quickly. “Just something that held him up. He’ll be here. You know how much Nick likes my cooking.”

Naomi went to peer out the front window again. She’d wanted Nick with her when she told her grandmother they were getting married, so she hadn’t told her yet—just said that Nick was coming back for supper after he cleaned up.

Her grandmother had been upset when Naomi walked in bedraggled and filthy. She’d run a hot bath and helped her shed her clothes and then carried them out with two fingers, tsk-tsking and saying they were going straight to the trash—forget washing them and using them as cleaning rags.

So Naomi had soaked and scrubbed and showered to make sure she was squeaky clean, then scrubbed the tub before she dressed. Then she went downstairs and set the table and even made a pan of biscuits to go along with the stew her grandmother had made. Nick always complimented her biscuits.

And still he wasn’t here.

Maybe he’d changed his mind.

Her heart raced and her hands became clammy. He’d said the decision was easy because he loved her, but maybe he’d started thinking how much his life would change.

A lot of outsiders were intrigued by the idea of becoming Amish. In the last few years people had started looking to the Amish as if they had a solution to the problem of being
over-stressed and consumed by materialism—like they had a magic answer.

But when those outsiders came here they saw that the life was simple but very hard and full of sacrifice, that it meant obeying the
Ordnung
—the rules that guided the life—which were strict and so different from their unstructured life, and that there was a closeness and interdependence they weren’t always comfortable with.

But Nick wasn’t like that, she reminded herself. He’d lived here for years and years and he knew the life, knew the hardships as well as the joys. He’d even revealed recently that he was studying German, and he already knew much Pennsylvania
Dietsch
from driving his clients around. She’d never seen his home—a small apartment, he’d said once—but he dressed simply and didn’t seem the type to think about material things much. He was known for quietly helping out those who had to stretch their pennies each month.

He’d been kind and generous and thoughtful to her—so concerned when he found that John had been hurting her. Her thoughts skidded to a stop. That was it. Once he’d thought it over, maybe he’d decided she was flawed, that she had made John hurt her. Or that she would be too needy.