Carole Page - A Bungalow For Two

His brows furrowed. “No, Frannie. I can’t. I’m not ready for that.”

“Not ready for what? Mingling with the rest of humanity? What’s wrong with you, Scott? Why do you avoid people? Who are you hiding from?”

Scott pushed back his chair, sprang to his feet and strode over to the window. “You don’t understand, Frannie.”

“Then explain it. We’re friends, Scott, and yet I feel like you’re a stranger.”

He gazed out the window, then back at her. “Someday I’ll tell you everything. But until then, you have to trust me. That’s all I can say right now.”

writes from the heart about issues facing women today. A prolific author of over 40 books and 800 stories and articles, she has published both fiction and nonfiction with a dozen major Christian publishers, including Thomas Nelson, Moody Press, Crossway Books, Bethany House, Tyndale House and Harvest House. An award-winning novelist, Carole has received the C.S. Lewis Honor Book Award and been a finalist several times for the prestigious Gold Medallion Award and the Campus Life Book of the Year Award.

A frequent speaker at churches, conferences, conventions, schools and retreats around the country, Carole shares her testimony (based on her inspiring new book, Becoming a Woman of Passion) and encourages women everywhere to discover and share their deepest passions, to keep passion alive on the home front and to unleash their passion for Christ.

Born and raised in Jackson, Michigan, Carole taught creative writing at Biola University in La Mirada, California, and serves on the advisory board of the American Christian Writers. She and her husband, Bill, live in Southern California and have three children (besides Misty in heaven) and three beautiful grandchildren.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

No soldier in active service entangles himself

in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may

please the One who enlisted him as a soldier.

—2 Timothy 2:4

In loving memory of Jason Michael Williams.

February 13, 1981–April 11, 2001

With a heart for God, a passion for life,

great devotion to his family and friends

and an insatiable appetite for adventure,

Jason touched countless lives in countless ways.

All who knew him loved him.

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

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Andrew Rowlands was dreaming. An odd dream really. He was about to be married to the lovely Juliana Pagliarulo, but he couldn’t find his darling daughters. Surely the wedding couldn’t begin without them. He darted among his smiling, well-attired guests, inquiring, “Have you seen my daughters?”

No one had.

And then amid the cacophony of voices and laughter swirling around him, he heard a familiar voice.

“Daddy?”

It was his oldest daughter, Cassandra, in a mauve bridesmaid dress. She came slipping through the crowd with her handsome husband, Antonio, Juliana’s son. In her arms Cassie carried a precious bundle, Andrew’s first grandson. “Be happy, Daddy,” she said, giving him a hug, and squeezing one-month-old Daniel between them.

“I couldn’t be happier than I am today, Cassie. I’ve got all my family around me.”

He spotted his second daughter in the throng. His dear Brianna with Eric Wingate, her dashing groom. Beside them stood their soon-to-be-adopted daughter, Charity, looking like an angel in pink chiffon. Andrew strode over and swung the precocious two-year-old up in his arms. “How’s my beautiful little Blue Eyes?”

The child tossed back her blond ringlets and laughed. “I not little, Gampaw. I big girl!”

Matching her laughter, Andrew kissed her shiny hair, then set her down. “Yes, you certainly are Grandpa’s big girl!”

“Oh, Daddy, isn’t she the prettiest flower girl you ever saw?” Brianna said in her lyrical voice.

Andrew winked at his daughter. “No prettier than the bride who’s going to be her mother.”

Brianna swept into Andrew’s arms with a tender embrace, her ivory-white wedding gown swishing around her.

“I love you, Daddy,” she whispered, stepping back and blowing Andrew a kiss. “Isn’t this a glorious day…the four of us having a double wedding?”

“Wonderful!” Andrew crooned. “Nothing better than standing at the altar with my ravishing bride and my precious daughter and her intended.”

“We’re all going to live happily ever after, Daddy. Happily ever after…”

The dream darkened after that. The festive crowd in the wedding chapel receded behind a mist of swirling shadows. A storm was gathering, with voluminous clouds rolling over a shrouded earth. The noise was deafening, drowning out the sounds of celebration rising from the chapel.

“Where’s Frannie?” Andrew shouted through the gloom. “Who’s seen my youngest daughter?”

The murky darkness cleared, as if someone had pulled back a curtain, and Andrew saw her, his beloved Frannie, who had cared for him like a mother hen. She was dressed in black and kneeling at her mother’s grave, the grave of his cherished Mandy, gone seven years now.

Andrew held out a hand to his daughter. “Frannie, come! The wedding’s about to begin. Your sisters and I are waiting for you.”

She stared back with tears in her eyes. “No, Daddy. I can’t! I won’t!”

“Honey, please! It won’t be the same without you.”

“How can you do this, Daddy? How can you forsake Mom and marry a stranger? I’ll never forgive you, Daddy!”

“No, Frannie, it’s not like that.” Andrew reached out, but the shadows closed around his daughter, and she was gone.

“Come back, Frannie! I don’t want to lose you, sweetheart…!”

Andrew woke in a cold sweat, his heart pounding. Thank goodness, it was just a dream. A silly dream. Everything was okay. Normal as an old shoe. The double wedding had gone off without a hitch nearly two weeks ago, the first of July. And just last night he and Juliana had returned, happy and exhilarated, from their Caribbean honeymoon.

Now he was here in his own home again, surrounded by everything familiar, waking as he always did to the summer sun streaming in his bedroom window. But this time, there was one major exception. Lying in bed next to him was his sleeping bride, the sun casting gold ribbons across her ivory face and bare shoulder.

The warm sunlight reminded him that all was well in his life. Better than it had been in years. He had so much for which to be grateful…a devoted wife and two daughters happily married with families of their own.

He had kept his promise to Mandy. “Find our girls good husbands,” she had told him during their last hours together. It had been her dying wish. “And find a good woman for yourself, Andrew. You’ll need someone to look after you.”

Yes, he had done that too. God had given him his exquisite Juliana.

And now, with his two oldest daughters married, that left just one daughter. Frannie, his youngest. A chill rippled though him as he recalled his unsettling dream. Those shadowy, nightmarish images had captured his underlying concern for Frannie. She had taken Mandy’s death the hardest. With everyone else in the family married, she seemed so alone, at loose ends, drifting. Surely one of these days the right man would come along for her. It was one of Andrew’s most fervent prayers.