Valerie Hansen - Healing the Boss's Heart

“You’d do that? For me?” she asked him.

Greg wanted to tell her how impresssed he’d been with her fortitude and unswerving courage in the face of disaster, but he decided it was best to keep his offer simple. “Of course. We’re all going to need to work together to get High Plains back on its feet. I intend to volunteer to help with whatever is necessary.”

“I believe you really mean that,” she said.

Greg nodded. “I’ve never meant anything more.”

After the Storm:

A Kansas community unites to rebuild

Healing the Boss’s Heart—Valerie Hansen

July 2009

Marrying Minister Right—Annie Jones

August 2009

Rekindled Hearts—Brenda Minton

September 2009

The Matchmaking Pact—Carolyne Aarsen

October 2009

A Family for Thanksgiving—Patricia Davids

November 2009

Jingle Bell Babies—Kathryn Springer

December 2009

was thirty when she awoke to the presence of the Lord in her life and turned to Jesus. In the years that followed she worked with young children, both in church and secular environments. She also raised a family of her own and played foster mother to a wide assortment of furred and feathered critters.

Married to her high school sweetheart since age seventeen, she now lives in an old farmhouse she and her husband renovated with their own hands. She loves to hike the wooded hills behind the house and reflect on the marvelous turn her life has taken. Not only is she privileged to reside among the loving, accepting folks in the breathtakingly beautiful Ozark mountains of Arkansas, she also gets to share her personal faith by telling the stories of her heart for all of Steeple Hill’s Love Inspired lines.

Life doesn’t get much better than that!

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Special thanks and acknowledgment to Valerie Hansen for her contribution to the After the Storm miniseries.

The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble.

He cares for those who trust in Him.

—Nahum 1:7

Special thanks to the other authors who participated with me in this series, After the Storm: Annie Jones, Brenda Minton, Carolyne Aarsen, Patricia Davids and Kathryn Springer.

Some of us actually live in Tornado Alley, so all those brave folks who have pitched in to restore our neighborhoods after similar disasters are especially dear to our hearts.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him.”

—Nahum 1:7

July 10, 3:54 p.m.

“Unbelievable,” Gregory Garrison muttered under his breath, his mood mirroring the prairie storm that was developing outside his Main Street office.

If there had been an award for Grumpiest Boss of the Month, Maya Logan would have known exactly who to nominate. Accepting the position as Mr. Garrison’s executive assistant had been a step up in her secretarial career but she was beginning to question her decision to start working for his investment firm, no matter how wonderful the wages. The man was obsessive. And when things didn’t go exactly as he’d envisioned, he could be a real bear. Like now.

Turning away to hide her amusement, she busied herself at her desk while her employer paced and continued to mumble to himself.

Tall and broad-shouldered, with hazel eyes and chestnut-brown hair, Gregory Garrison was not only good-looking, as many single women in High Plains had noticed since his recent return, he had the kind of forceful personality that competitors and allies alike admired. It was that same unbending, always-right attitude that was so off-putting to Maya. She’d had her fill of that kind of unreasonable man when…

“Now look what he’s doing,” Gregory said, interrupting her thoughts. He gestured out the plate-glass window at a young boy riding a bicycle in tight, skidding circles.

She looked up. “Oh, that. I thought you were upset over the glitches in the Atkinson merger.”

“I was. I am,” he said. “But that ill-mannered little troublemaker is driving me crazy. Look, he’s trying to splash mud all over my windows.”

Her brown eyes twinkled with repressed mirth. “Sure looks like it. Sorry about that.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“Me? Do?”

“Yes. There wouldn’t be any mud on the sidewalk in the first place if you hadn’t insisted on bringing in those planters along the walkway.”

“I didn’t realize they’d overflow if we got too much rain,” Maya said. “Relax. Tommy’s not hurting anything. He’s just a kid.”

Gregory was adamant. “He has no business riding that bike all over town, let alone being out in this kind of weather by himself. Why don’t his parents look after him?”

She joined her boss in the center of the compact office before answering, “Tommy’s parents are dead. He’s in foster care with Beth and Brandon Otis.”

“Aren’t they responsible for him?”

“Yes, but as far as I know, that’s already his third placement and he can’t be more than six years old. The poor kid must feel pretty lost. My brothers and I really foundered after our parents were killed, and we weren’t children. I was eighteen at the time and my brothers were even older.”

“That’s still no excuse for allowing him to run loose. If he’s this unruly now, what will he be like in his teens?”

Mentally contrasting her wandering brother, Clay, with their other, more stable sibling, Jesse, she said, “Tommy’ll be fine. He just needs to sow a few wild oats, or in this case, run through a few puddles. It’s hot and muggy out there, so he won’t get chilled. And the storm seems to be slacking up. It’s no big deal.”

“It will be when he throws mud on my building or loses his balance and crashes into the window or a parked car,” Gregory insisted.

Just as he finished speaking, thunder boomed in the distance and made Maya jump. “Or gets hit by lightning. Okay. I’ll go shoo him away.” She raked her slim fingers through her feathery, light brown hair and let it fall back into place naturally.

“Will I have to listen to you moaning about your ruined hairdo if you get rained on?”

“You might.” She wanted to add that her short cut was easy enough to dry and style in minutes, but she wanted to make a point. She was a professional business assistant, not Gregory Garrison’s servant or gofer.

“Never mind,” he said flatly. “I’ll send the little pest packing myself.” He slipped off his expensively tailored suit jacket and handed it to her without another word.