Annie Jones - Marrying Minister Right

Michael watched Heather flinch. He’d said those words to her before, and on the steps of this very church. He’d gotten a face full of flowers—her wedding bouquet—the last time. This time he got much worse.

Heather turned and looked him straight in the eye. In that moment he saw unmasked all the hurt and disappointment she had carried with her all these years.

“Please, Heather.” He came down one step, and then another, his hand extended. “Please stay. And then we can—”

What? Take up their lives where they left off? With her looking to the wrong people and places for happiness? And him, wishing she’d just once look at him, really look at him and see how much he loved her?

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

Winner of the Holt Medallion for Southern Themed Fiction and the Houston Chronicle’s Best Christian Fiction Author of 1999, Annie Jones grew up in a family that loved to laugh, eat and talk—often all at the same time. They instilled in her the gift of sharing through words and humor, and the confidence to go after her heart’s desire (and to act fast if she wanted the last chicken leg). A former social worker, she feels called to be a “voice for the voiceless” and has carried that calling into her writing by creating characters often overlooked in our fast-paced culture—from seventy-somethings who still have a zest for life to women over thirty with big mouths and hearts to match. Having moved thirteen times during her marriage, she is currently living in rural Kentucky with her husband and two children.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Annie Jones for her contribution to the After the Storm miniseries

Therefore put on the full armor of God,

so that when the day of evil comes, you may

be able to stand your ground, and after you have

done everything, to stand.

—Ephesians 6:13

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

Questions for Discussion

July 10

10:00 p.m.

Wichita, Kansas

“That’s it! I am officially changing my name.”

The old door to the main office of Helping Hands Christian Charity slammed, echoing through the darkened hallway. The charity’s founder and long-time director pushed her straight light brown hair off her shoulders and stared at her name printed in gold on the frosted glass. “I am no longer Heather Waters.”

Mary Kate Madison, her assistant, marched onward flicking off lights as she headed down the hallway. She raised her voice to be heard over the drone of the TV in the lobby, calling back, “Not this again.”

“From this point on, I am going by what everybody and their dog seems to know me as.” The thin soles of Heather’s three-year-old, faux-leather bargain pumps kept a quick rhythm on the scuffed linoleum floor. “Heather Willya!”

“Did you say Heather Will You?” Mary Kate asked as she charged on ahead of her boss.

“Will ya,” she corrected above the hum of the TV in the lobby. “As in Heather, will ya sign these forms? Heather, will ya see if you can find a few more dollars for this cause or that? Heather, will ya juggle your schedule to host an important meeting of the Interfaith Community Needs Assessment Council?”

“You love being counted on and we all know it.” Mary Kate, who at twenty-three was five years younger than Heather but still tended to play mother hen, clucked her tongue as she reached the well-lit and finally vacant lobby. In the doorway she pivoted and held up her hand. “Oh, wait. Check the doors to make sure they’re locked as you come down the hallway, if you don’t mind, will you?”

“That’s Ms. Willya to you!” Heather called back. She rattled a doorknob, found it secure and moved on. “All is as it should be. Everything is safe and secure and we can trust—”

“Hey, didn’t you come from High Plains?” Mary Kate cut her off.

“High Plains?” Heather stopped in her tracks. “Why do you ask?”

Mary Kate pointed to the TV hung high in the lobby.

“An F3-level tornado devastated the small community of High Plains, Kansas, yesterday evening,” the TV announcer was saying.

“What?” Heather stepped forward. She’d been so busy with work that she hadn’t heard any news all day.

“The destruction is widespread,” the announcer went on. “Emergency crews are on the scene. We are still waiting to see if there are any deaths or serious injuries.”

Dead or injured? In High Plains? Heather staggered forward toward the small, flickering screen. A knot tightened in her stomach.

“You grew up there, right?” Her assistant looked from the broadcast to Heather then back to the broadcast.

“Yes, it’s…” A place she had not visited or even so much as driven through since she had left it behind a decade ago. Heather couldn’t imagine rubble where once had stood homes and businesses.

To her surprise, an aching sense of the familiar washed over her. The threat of tears blurred her vision. “It’s home.”

All her life that was all she had wanted. A real home. Her mother tried so hard to make one for their family. But no amount of love and kindness on her part had made it happen. Nothing either of them did could make Heather’s father love her.

“At present the town is using High Plains Christian Church, which escaped virtually unscathed in the storm, as a base of operations.”

The image of the simple old white church flashed on the screen and the world seemed to spin backward through time. Her cheeks flashed hot. Her knees wobbled for only a moment before she took a deep breath and shut her eyes to steady herself.

The day she left High Plains for good, never looking back, she was supposed to have been married in that very church. As long as she lived she would never forget opening the envelope in the sanctuary where she had spent so many joyous days of her life. In that envelope, delivered by a private investigator hired by her fiancé’s family, she found a truth her mother had taken to her grave. Edward Waters was not her biological father.

And John Parker, son of the wealthiest family to ever live in High Plains, wanted nothing more to do with her. There would be no marriage. For only a moment Heather had blamed the private investigator’s report. But young as she was, she wasn’t foolish enough to think that in this day and age someone would refuse to marry a person because of her lineage. No, Heather now understood why Edward Waters never would love her and that, despite his many youthful professions, John Parker had never really loved her.

Her world had fallen apart that day and she had crumbled with it. She had come so far since that wretched day. Yet this awful reminder of her hometown proved to her that she may have moved away, but she had not wholly moved on.

“Built in 1859, the church remains much as it did then, a beacon to those in need.” The reporter spoke with a cultivated calm that belied the tragedy of the situation. “We interviewed the minister from the church earlier today and here’s what he had to say.”