Linda Goodnight - The Wedding Garden

She had blossomed from a pretty girl into a stunner. Seeing her again had made him feel weak and needy.

He despised weakness, particularly in himself. His childhood and the military had taught him that. Be strong. Be tough. Never let them see you sweat.

Encountering Annie had made him sweat.

Over the years the girl he’d been crazy about as a teen had lingered in his mind. A turn of phrase, a song on the radio, a woman with high cheekbones could start the memories flowing fast and painful.

She was none too happy to see him, either, but she had good reason. What she didn’t know was that his reasons for leaving all those years ago were every bit as good as her reasons to despise him. He hadn’t told her then, and he sure wouldn’t tell her now why he’d had to leave Redemption.

He sighed. Protection was his business. He’d loved Annie enough to protect her at eighteen.

He’d protect her now with his silence.

Winner of a RITA ®Award for excellence in inspirational fiction, Linda Goodnight has also won the Booksellers’ Best, ACFW Book of the Year and a Reviewers’ Choice Award from RT Book Reviews. Linda has appeared on the Christian bestseller list and her romance novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Active in orphan ministry, this former nurse and teacher enjoys writing fiction that carries a message of hope and light in a sometimes dark world. She and husband, Gene, live in Oklahoma. Readers can write to her at linda@lindagoodnight.com, or c/o Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

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You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

—John 8:32

To my cousin Kay, for prayers, kind words, and for literally going the extra mile during a very difficult time. Thanks, “Susie.”

Prologue

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Questions for Discussion

There was a man in the house. Again.

Sloan’s stomach got that funny, sick feeling like he was going to vomit. He hated when Mama brought someone home at night. Someone drunk and noisy. He knew what people said about her. Joni Hawkins was no good, like her jailbird husband. They gossiped, said dirty things about her. He was eleven. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what the words meant.

They were all big fat liars.

He tiptoed down the dark hallway to the door, careful not to be heard. Mama would tell him to go back to bed. But he worried when she brought a man home.

He could hear them in there, but he couldn’t make out the words. The man’s voice rumbled, rising at times. Then Mama’s soothing tones would calm him down. She was good at soothing.

A narrow beam of light sliced along the edge of the wooden floor. Breath held, he placed his right eye against the skinny crack and slowly, slowly let the air ease out through his nose.

He couldn’t see much. A flash of Mama’s pink diner shirt. A man’s leg in dark pants. Dress-up pants. Sloan could see a big hand, too, held out toward Mama as though asking for something.

What was that on the man’s wrist? A watch? Sloan squeezed closer until the wood pressed hard into his face and his eyelashes folded back against his eyelid. Not a watch, a fancy bracelet with stones. Sloan held back a laugh, relaxing a little. Only a sissy would wear a bracelet like a girl. Who was in there?

“Mama?” he said before he could stop the word.

The voices inside the room stilled. Footsteps moved toward him. The door cracked open the tiniest bit and Mama’s face appeared.

“What are you doing up, Sloan?”

“Who’s in there with you?”

“Nobody important. Go back to bed. You have school tomorrow.”

More curious now than worried, he made no effort to leave. Mama reached out and smoothed his hair. “On my next day off, we’ll go fishing. Just me and you. Okay?”

When he nodded, his mama smiled. Then she shut the door.

He never saw her again.

Sloan Hawkins killed the purring Harley beneath the cool shade of a swaying willow, lowered the kickstand and stepped on to the leaf-strewn edge of Redemption River Bridge. A breeze sang through the green leaves and whispered around him, tickling like small fingers and bringing the wet scent of the red, muddy river to his nostrils.

Muscles stiff from long hours of riding, Sloan stretched in the May sunlight and listened to the crackle of his neck as he looked around. The river narrowed here, near the ancient bridge, then widened on its restless journey toward the town of Redemption. A knot had formed in his gut the moment the river had come into view. Redemption was a misnomer if he ever heard one. Condemnation was a better term.

Beneath the picturesque bridge, water trickled and gurgled, peaceful this time of year but still corroding the rocks and earth, eating away its foundation—a fitting metaphor for his hometown.

Sloan had never expected to cast another shadow in Redemption, Oklahoma, or to breathe the same air as Police Chief Dooley Crawford—or his daughter, Annie. A dozen years later, here he was.

“Never say never,” he muttered through three days’ growth of whiskers. Traveling cross-country on a motorcycle with nothing but a duffel bag didn’t afford luxury. Not that he couldn’t have them if he wanted, but the good citizens of Redemption didn’t need that information. They believed the worst of their “bad seed” and he hadn’t come back to change their minds.

Only one person and one scenario could have coaxed him back to the place that had both destroyed and made him. Lydia. And she was dying.

The pain of that knowledge was a hot boulder in his belly, a fist around his heart tight enough to choke him to his knees. Sometimes life stunk.

He cast a hard-eyed squint across the riverbank toward the historic little town that despised him. They called him trouble. Like father, like son. With a throaty, humorless laugh, Sloan climbed back on the seat and kick-started the bike.

“Prepare yourself, Redemption, because trouble’s back in town.”

G.I. Jack spotted him first. The grizzled-gray Dumpster diver had just crawled out of the industrial-size receptacle behind Bracketts’ furniture store when he heard the rumble. Any man with salt in his blood recognized the sweet music of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Though G.I. Jack couldn’t recognize the model, he recognized the rider.

He rapped the side of the trash bin with his knuckles and hollered, “Popbottle, get out here this minute. You ain’t gonna believe your eyes.”