The Reluctant Bride (11 page)

“Oh, Rob, why did I agree to this? I'm so nervous—”

But it was too late to back out then, as Rob pulled into the driveway of the home where he had grown up. It was an average-looking split-level home, large enough for three, maybe four, bedrooms, with an attached two-car garage. The Granston house was nice, but nothing like the huge house of Micah's childhood. Nothing like it in more ways than appearance, too, Micah suspected. Unpleasant thoughts creased her forehead with a frown.

Rob leaned over and kissed her on the temple. “You will have a good time. Trust me.”

And she did trust him. More than anyone else she'd known in all her life. They exited the car and she took his hand as they headed up the walkway.

Rob's parents opened the front door before Rob and Micah had reached the top step. It reminded Micah, for an instant, of the prodigal son's father, waiting and watching for his boy to return.

“We're so glad you could come, dear,” stated Rob's mom as she went to Micah, not Rob, for the
first hug. Micah smiled nervously and thanked her for the invitation.

“As you've already figured out, this is Micah.” Rob made the needless introductions. “And, Micah, these are my parents, Ed and Grace Granston.”

“Well, we know who we all are,” Grace Granston said with a laugh before hugging her son. Tall and slim, Grace had a warm friendly face framed by short brown hair touched with silver. “Now, let's go inside to get acquainted.”

Micah inwardly cringed. The hardest part was coming up, and she glanced at Rob for some sign of encouragement

“It'll be okay.” He mouthed the words to her without saying them while he held her hand warmly in his. They followed the older couple into the house.

“This way, dear,” Grace said. “I was hoping Micah would help me with the salad. It will give us a chance to talk before everyone else arrives. Rob, go visit with your dad for a while. We have work to do in the kitchen.”

Rob turned to Micah, giving her a questioning look, and she knew he would stay with her if she preferred not to be alone with his mother so soon. But she nodded her head, letting him know it was okay. This could go better than she'd expected, she hoped.

Rob helped Micah out of her lightweight jacket and added it to his own, placing them both over his
arm. “I'm going to put these upstairs in the guest room. Do you want to go with me?” he asked quietly, offering her a brief escape.

“I think I'll stay here,” she said, suddenly feeling a little braver than she had since she'd agreed to this meeting. And her answer obviously pleased Rob, if the warmth in his eyes was any indication. He lightly kissed the soft hair at her temple before leaving the two alone.

“What can I do to help, Mrs. Granston?” Micah asked as she followed the older woman into the kitchen.

“Please, call me Grace. ‘Mrs. Granston’ sounds so formal.” She motioned toward a counter. “Want to slice some tomatoes and cucumbers for me?”

“Sure,” Micah responded. “Do you have a cutting board?”

“It's right here, dear, and the knives are in that drawer to the left,” the older woman said with a smile. “Rob tells us you're a wonderful artist.”

“Your son is a very kind man, Grace,” she said as she washed her hands at the sink.

“Yes, he is. But he is also very honest and, sometimes, blunt. So, if he says you're talented, it isn't just because you're beautiful—which, by the way, he also mentioned.” Grace's hand moved to the stern of the pewter frames of her glasses to adjust them. “And I wouldn't even need these bifocals to see that.”

“Thank you,” Micah replied quietly, feeling
awkward as she focused on the job at hand. Rinsing and cutting vegetables.

“We have more in common than Rob, you know,” Grace told her. “I used to teach school when all three of my kids were young.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Rob probably didn't think to mention it since it was such a long time ago. I only taught for a couple of years before I decided to stay home with the kids. Ed started making more money by then in his realestate business, and we didn't really need my income. I helped Ed with the business some from then on, but that was back when women weren't so focused on developing their own careers. It seemed like staying home to raise kids was more respectable then. And being at home seemed logical to me since my kids were so close in age, two years between Rob and Angela, and one year between Angela and Eric. Baby-sitters were never easy to find, so I had my hands full with those three.”

Micah tried to imagine Rob and Angela as children together. She hadn't met Eric, the younger brother, yet, so he did not appear in her mental image. “Was Rob the one who made things difficult?” Micah asked with a smile. She could picture him doing exactly that.

“Sometimes. But Eric always played that role more than either of the other two. Although Rob had his moments. Like when he was about five and decided to surprise his dad by painting the garage door
for him. The idea was good, he'd heard his father talk about needing to take care of that job, but Rob used model paint. Green, purple, orange. He painted circles, squares and triangles all over the door and spilled paint everywhere.”

Micah laughed and said, “I probably shouldn't laugh. I doubt that it seemed funny when it happened.”

But Grace was laughing, too, as she took some carrots from a plastic container and dropped them into the grater. “I don't remember being amused by any of it that day, but Rob's mess didn't upset me as much as Ed's helpful commentary on the incident when he returned home. ‘If you'd watch the kids closer, you would not have problems like this to contend with.’ Trying to explain to him the daily anguish of raising three preschool children was an impossibility. Kind of like trying to explain the daily joys of it, too, I suppose. You just have to be there to appreciate it.”

Micah added the tomatoes and cucumbers she'd sliced to the salad and tried to picture herself dealing with the joys and challenges of motherhood. Children. Of her own? She didn't think she would ever try that challenge. Or she hadn't thought so. Until recently.

“It sounds like Rob showed some interest in art at an early age by decorating your garage,” Micah remarked, rinsing the cutting board.

“That and cooking. Once, I found him in the middle
of the kitchen floor stirring together a dozen cracked eggs—shells and all—in a skillet. He was preparing dinner for us, or so he claimed. Eggs were all over him, all over the kitchen…”

“Sounds like quite a mess.”

“Hmm….you'll be surprised by how difficult it all is when you're going through it, and yet, at the same time, you'll know it's some of the best years of your life. No one can tell you how it will be. You have to feel it for yourself.”

“Hi, Micah! Hi, Mom! Turn on the oven. I brought the biscuits you asked for,” Angela called out as she and her family burst into the kitchen. Grace shooed Heather away from the plate of freshly baked oatmeal cookies and gave each of her grand-children a big hug. Then Eric and his wife and daughter joined the group for the day.

At that moment two cats came running out of the hallway and into the middle of the kitchen. A black, long-haired feline with eerie blue eyes, and a short-haired calico.

“Herbie! Hattie!” shrieked Heather, who immediately went in pursuit of the pets with determination. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

“Now, Heather, be nice to Grandma's cats,” Grace said. “They just woke up from their nap.”

“Another nap, Mother?” Angela said. “Really, that's all those animals do. Where's Ashley, anyway? Still snoozing?”

“Open the basement door, Angela. She's downstairs
in the family room. I was afraid she'd get stepped on up here, but if you all promise to be careful—”

“We're not going to kill your kitten, Mom. Relax,” said the young man who had stepped in the door behind Angela. His voice sounded so like Rob's, Micah knew it had to be his brother.

“I guess I should make some introductions,” Angela began while opening the door to the basement. “Micah, this is Eric and his wife, Hope, with their baby daughter, Cassie.” Eric resembled Rob, though his eyes were brown. Hope was a pretty, blue-eyed blonde with a warm smile. Their baby Cassie had her mother's fair coloring and soft blonde curls. “And this is my husband, Dan. And, everyone, this is Micah Shepherd, Rob's girlfriend.”

Micah got through the rather uncomfortable moment all right, although the idea of being called a girlfriend when she was nearing her thirties almost amused her. She hadn't really thought of herself as Rob's “anything” in particular. She only knew that, deep in her heart, she felt certain she belonged with him, and she didn't think there had been a word invented to define those feelings.

Just then, a tiny long-haired calico kitten with blue eyes scampered across the kitchen floor.

“Oh, she's beautiful!” Micah exclaimed when the little ball of fluff rubbed around her ankles. The kitten couldn't have been more than eight weeks old and its calico fur and bright baby-blue eyes were an
obvious mixture of Herbie and Hattie. “She must belong to them,” she thought aloud when the fluffy feline met up with the two older cats, all the while continuing to purr loudly.

“She's the runt of their last litter. And I do mean
last
litter. After having to find homes for twenty kittens over the past couple of years, I decided to have Hattie taken out of the kitty-producing business. Our vet saw to that a few days ago,” Grace explained as she tossed the various components of the salad together in a beautifully designed glass bowl. “I love cats dearly, but we've got to stop somewhere. Ashley is the only kitten of theirs I've kept, and she is simply too cute to let go.”

“I can see that. She's adorable,” Micah said and joined Heather on the floor to pet the animals. Micah scratched the kitten under its chin.

Angela steered her boys out of the kitchen, saying, “Dinner will be ready soon. Now, everybody out so we can finish up in here.”

It wasn't long before they were all seated around a large rectangular table, ready to eat. But not before the father, Ed Granston, head of this clan, offered a prayer. When he concluded, Micah looked up and gave a sideways glance with a smile to Rob, who was seated next to her. He winked and leaned near to whisper in her ear, “Relax, you're doing fine.”

“All right, you two,” the younger brother, Eric, stated. “No whispering at the table. Hope and I
weren't allowed to do that when we were dating, and you're not entitled to any special privileges.”

“Shut up, Eric, and pass the potatoes,” Rob responded casually, bringing a laugh from their parents.

“It's always good to have everyone squabbling under one roof again, isn't it, dear?” Ed remarked to his wife.

Then the potatoes were passed, along with the roast beef, carrots, gravy, tossed salad and biscuits. Micah couldn't recall the last time she had enjoyed such a meal or a group of people more than the Granstons. After chocolate cake and oatmeal cookies, Angela, Hope and Micah helped Grace in the kitchen, putting away leftovers and filling the dishwasher.

They talked about teaching, which they all had done at one time or another. The topic of church came up, too, from which Micah determined that most of this family had been Christians for some time. No one commented about Rob's view on the subject except Grace, who said rather wistfully that maybe Micah could get her older son back to church someday. If anyone could, she seemed to believe it would be Micah.

The smile Grace gave to Micah as she made her remarks was one of such warmth and acceptance, Micah wished she could somehow fix it in her mind for days when she needed such gentleness. There seemed to be a chemistry between them. Something
in Micah's heart somehow connected her to the older woman. It was a feeling she wanted to remember.

After the kitchen work was finished, Micah held baby Cassie, who was barely six months old, for a while, then played on the living-room floor with Heather, David and Nathan. Ashley, little bit of fluff that she was, stayed around Micah all day, while Herbie and Hattie snoozed away the hours, reclining on the back of the sofa. Ashley interrupted the board game so frequently that, finally, Micah held on to her each time the dice were rolled so she wouldn't go chasing them across the properties, knocking the playing pieces over. Rob was never far from Micah throughout the afternoon and early evening, which bolstered her confidence more than he knew.

When it neared time to go, the goodbyes were made much more easily than the nerve-racking hellos at their arrival. Rob went upstairs to retrieve their jackets from the guest bedroom where everyone had left their coats.

Micah waited at the bottom landing of the staircase until he returned. Rob held the brown jacket up as she turned around, slipping her arms in. He caught her cascade of auburn curls in one hand, pulling it free from the garment and lifting it away from her neck. And in the moment of solitude and darkness on the landing, Rob leaned forward and his mouth seared a path down the delicate cord of Micah's throat and onto the back of her neck, causing
a sharp intake of breath from her at the deliciously unexpected contact. But the intimate warmth of his lips against her skin ended abruptly when Angela and Heather came around the corner without warning.

“Bad timing, Liz,” Rob remarked with a sheepish smile.

“Looks like I've arrived just in time to save a damsel in distress.”

“I'm not so sure I'm in distress,” Micah quietly responded. Rob's smile widened in approval of her reply as he placed an arm around Micah's waist.

“All the more reason for my timely arrival,” Angela commented, shaking her head in mock disapproval. “I should talk to this young woman before her thinking is any more deluded—”

“Angela,” Rob said sharply and then stopped.

Micah, surprised to hear Rob call his sister by any name other than Liz, caught her lower lip between her teeth and didn't utter a sound. An angry word between these two people was something Micah had never expected to hear, and she regretted that her quick remark had played a part in this tense exchange.

Angela immediately patted Heather on the back. “Go on upstairs and get our jackets.”