Susan Kirby - Love Sign

Shelby told Jake, wounded.

“I am. On you,” he admitted.

“Oh, Jake!” she murmured, defensiveness melting as she saw it from his point of view. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re the one with the hole in your heart.” Hunkered down beside her chair, Jake tucked a curl behind her ear, traced the tear track and then her bottom lip with the flat of his thumb.

Shelby trapped his hand with both of hers. But it was a poor defense mechanism, for he let her keep it, leaned in and stole a kiss. It sparked heat lightning across the stormy expanse of her heart. Fiercely, she blinked tear-shine, crowded out rational thought and kissed him back.

has written numerous novels for children, teens and adults. She is a recipient of the Child Study Children’s Book Committee Award, and has received honors from The Friends of American Writers. Her Main Street Series for children, a collection of books that follow one family through four generations of living along the famed highway Route 66, has enjoyed popularity with children and adults alike. With a number of historical novels to her credit, Susan enjoys intermingling writing and research travels with visits to classrooms across the country.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For in Him we live and move and have our being.

—Acts 17:28

To Levi

You’re a patient sounding board

a storehouse of ideas

and a constant source of joy.

What more could a mother ask?

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

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Shelby Taylor awoke ahead of her alarm. She slipped out of bed and onto her knees. Words were slow to come, but time spent with God quieted her hurting heart. She rose to turn off her alarm and open the drapes. The bedroom window of her third-story Lake Shore Drive apartment overlooked Lake Michigan. A kiss-me red sunrise splashed rosy hues over whitecaps, gulls and bobbing sailboats. Shelby dawdled, combing her fingers through short red-gold tangles and admiring God’s artistry as if it were an ordinary Saturday and as if time were a luxury she could afford. But her calendar told a different story. She flipped the page to July, covering the unnecessary reminder of what was not going to happen this last weekend in June.

Shelby plugged in the coffeemaker, showered, then swung her closet door wide. White satin and lace spilled out and tickled her in the ribs. She stood clutching a damp towel, waiting for the aftershocks to subside. She should do something with the dress. But what? Shelby retreated to the kitchen, braced herself with coffee and returned to the closet. She skimmed past the wedding gown and retrieved a streamlined skirt and silk blouse.

Patrick Delaney, a corporate attorney, had been a part of her life for three years. Shelby had come to appreciate him as a realist who knew his limitations. Until he called off their wedding with only a week left on the clock.

Shelby didn’t plead or storm or try to bury him in guilt. An only child with busy parents who were intent on not spoiling her, she had been conditioned at any early age to hold back the little actress within. “Scenes” belonged in childhood plays and daydreams and storybooks.

It was a lesson that served her well as an editor, as a writer and even as a jilted bride. While juggling wedding cancellations and a nightmarish problem with an author who was threatening a lawsuit because she didn’t like her book cover, Shelby had hugged the small consolation that someday, this week of horror would provide grist for the mill. That, God’s grace and the promise of the only thing she hadn’t canceled—weekend reservations at Wildwood—had kept her going.

Chosen initially as a honeymoon getaway, Wildwood was a downstate bed-and-breakfast with cozy cottages off in the pines. She prayed it would prove the perfect hideaway to the plot her new novel, which hereto was not stewing so well.

Shelby lifted her eyes to the shelf on the wall facing her computer. Her Bible was there, and five teen novels with her own name on the binding. If not for the meat-and-potato necessities of the real world, she would be writing full-time.

Shelby packed light and pulled her game face from her cosmetic bag, beginning with sunblock. Hazel eyed and fair skinned, she burned easily if she spent much time outdoors. While that hadn’t been a problem in some time, her new laptop computer gave her options, sunshine among them. Feeling more composed, more focused and better equipped to cope, she donned a pair of trendy platform sandals and pearl earrings. Shelby finished her coffee standing up before stuffing projects from work into an oversize book bag. Anesthesia, should her own fiction fail her.

A fresh breeze whisked through Jackson Signs South. It diluted the blended odor of dust, engine grease, sweeping compound and banner ink. Jake Jackson hit the remote. The overhead chain-driven door shuddered up the track. Jake shifted the fifty-foot ladder truck into gear, then braked for his twelve-year-old niece, Joy, who blocked his way with her skinny arms outstretched.

He cranked down the window. “You trying to get run over, blondie?”

Straw-haired and freckled, Joy wrinkled her nose at the outgrown nickname. “Just checking your brakes. Is Mom around?”

Jake jerked his thumb toward the back room where his oldest sister, Paula, was bending neon. “Thought you’d be in the field.”

“Mr. Wiseman never showed up. We waited an hour.”

“Something must have kept him.” Jake anchored the stack of service orders on the seat beside him with a phone book. “Move it or lose it, kiddo. I have a bank job waiting.”

“How about a ride home?” Joy asked.

“Okay,” Jake agreed. “Update your mom first, and let’s go.”

Joy flung her hoe on the back of the flatbed crane truck, trotted into the neon room and was back in short order. “Can we swing by the sign first?”

“What sign?” Jake played dumb.

“Dad’s sign.”

Jake was concerned over Joy’s johnny-come-lately fascination with her absentee father, Colton Blake. Fifteen years ago Colton’s image had gone up on the billboard on the outskirts of Liberty Flats after Wind, Water and Sky Outdoor Gear chose him for their advertising campaign. Clad in jeans, flannel, leather boots and a distinguishing red voyager cap, the Voyager, as Colton was dubbed, had become a North American icon in the intervening years—all due to that one billboard image of him paddling a canoe along a wilderness stream.

“Satisfied?” Jake asked as they cruised past.

“Thanks,” Joy said, attention riveted on the bigger-than-life portrait of the father she had never met. “Uncle Jake?” she began. “Dad has a right to know about me, don’t you think?”

“It’s not my call,” replied Jake.

Joy flopped against the seat. “You’re a big help.”

Jake took her mood shift in stride. She had been underfoot since she could crawl. But then with Colton gone and her mother sharing the sign company partnership, where else would she be?

The interstate highway gave way to a fair-size city 150 miles south of Chicago. Shelby spotted a bank from the off-ramp. A lighted message board spelled out generous savings rates—the decimal point was missing.