Marta Perry - A Father's Place

Kristie clasped her hands together. “Remember the Bible story yesterday about how God picked out Rebecca for Isaac, to be his wife? Well, I was helping God’s plan by letting you be together without me. So maybe you’d kiss Ms. Ellie.”

Ellie couldn’t look at Quinn—not until the memory faded of that moment in the meadow when she’d thought he was going to kiss her.

“Kristie, none of us knows what God intends,” she finally said.

Kristie grabbed her hand. “But don’t you like my daddy, Ms. Ellie?”

She willed her voice to be steady. “Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean I’d be the right wife for him. That’s something you have to let your daddy decide.” But in spite of her words, she prayed Quinn would. Because she’d begun to fall in love with him.

began writing children’s stories for Sunday school take-home papers while she was a church educational director. From that beginning she branched into writing magazine fiction and then book-length fiction. She’s grateful for the opportunity to write the kind of books she loves to read.

Marta lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband of thirty-seven years, and they enjoy visiting their three grown children scattered around the globe. In addition to writing and travel, Marta loves hearing from readers and enjoys responding to their letters. She can be reached c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Many waters cannot quench love;

rivers cannot wash it away.

—Song of Songs 8:7

This story is dedicated with love and gratitude

to my friends in Christ at First Church.

And, as always, to Brian.

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

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Prayers from Bedford Creek, Pennsylvania

Father, please remember my son, Quinn. He’s so bitter now, and if only he’d come home, maybe I could help him….

Please, Lord, bless my brother, Quinn, and help him to see that he has to forgive….

And God bless my daddy, and bring him back home to stay. Please don’t forget that I’d like a new mommy, and if it’s okay with You, I think my Sunday school teacher, Ms. Ellie, would be just perfect….

He’d come home to the town where he no longer belonged, to break up his mother’s romance. Put like that, Quinn Forrester decided it didn’t sound like a creditable goal. It wouldn’t impress the woman he was about to see, and he needed Ellie Wayne’s cooperation. Either that, or he needed her surrender.

The tension that had driven him for days cranked up a notch. His natural instinct was to explode, demanding explanations, but that wouldn’t work. He’d have to exercise diplomacy to get what he wanted from Ellie Wayne, and his talent for that had grown rusty over years of fighting nature’s rampages in places considerably wilder than this one.

He glanced along the narrow street. Bedford Creek, Pennsylvania, spread up a narrow cleft in the mountains from the river. Its frame houses climbed the hillside in steps, as if they’d been planted there.

Ellie Wayne’s craft shop was on the lowest street, along with the police station, a few other small shops and a scattering of houses. Opposite it, the park spread along the flood-prone land by the river. His practiced engineer’s eye automatically noted the water level, higher now from the frequent rain than was usual for August.

The craft shop, the lower floor of a frame house, had been a newsstand when he was a boy, when Bedford Creek was a sleepy backwater where nothing ever happened. Then some energetic citizens had decided to capitalize on turn-of-the-century architecture and wooded mountain scenery.

Since then, like much of the town, the shop had been transformed into a quaint attraction for the tourists who deluged the village during the summer and fall. He stepped around a man with a camera, dodged two women laden with shopping bags and stopped.

Ellie Wayne had an eye for display—he’d give her that. An artfully draped quilt brightened the shop window, surrounded by handwoven baskets and dried-flower wreaths in colors that picked up the quilt’s faded earth tones. A yellow stuffed cat snuggled into a needlework cushion.

He’d planned his visit for closing time on this busy summer Saturday, hoping to catch her alone after the last of the shoppers left. He didn’t want any eavesdroppers on the conversation he was about to have.

He took a breath, tried to curb his impatience and reached for the door. A bell jangled, and the cool, dim interior invited him in. The woman behind the worn oak counter glanced up, her brown eyes registering his presence. But she wasn’t alone yet. Two last-minute customers fingered a quilt that was spread across the counter, peppering her with questions.

He moved behind a display table heaped with woven tablecloths and inhaled the faint, spicy aroma of dried flowers. Every inch of the tiny shop displayed something—his first impression was clutter; his second, coziness.

He intercepted a questioning glance from Ellie Wayne and pretended interest in a stack of handmade baskets, tamping down his irritation.

“I’ll be with you in just a moment.” Her voice was as welcoming as the shop.

“No hurry.” He forced cordiality into his tone. “I can wait.” He could wait. When he talked to her, he wanted the woman’s undivided attention.

Undivided attention—that was also what his mother and his six-year-old daughter wanted from him. They’d been reluctant to let him out of their sight since he arrived home yesterday, as if fearing he’d disappear back to the Corps of Engineers project that had occupied him for so long.

Too long, he realized now, far too long. It had been too tempting to bury himself in work after Julie’s death, too easy to convince himself that Kristie was better off living with his mother in this comforting, safe place where nothing ever changed.

He gripped the oblong basket he’d picked up. Things had changed, and if he’d been a better father, a better son, he’d have realized that. Bedford Creek wasn’t a safe little backwater any longer. The tourism boom had brought strangers to town—strangers like Ellie Wayne and her father.

He glanced toward the woman. Maybe it wasn’t entirely fair to describe her as a stranger. She’d opened her shop four or five years ago, and he must have seen her playing the organ in church on his few visits home. But it was only in the last few months that Kristie had begun talking about Ms. Ellie so much, and even more recently that her innocent chatter had paired Grandma with Charles Wayne. And then his sister Rebecca had called, concerned about their mother’s infatuation for a man she’d just met, and he’d known it was time to come home.