From Humbug To Holiday Bride

“Go ahead.”

But she didn’t.

“I don’t know you.” She was frowning now, her eyelids heavy with fatigue.

“That’s changing, though, isn’t it? Even as unpleasant as you are,” he quipped.

“Rude, Preacher. The word is rude,” she corrected, still studying him. “Doesn’t seem to work on you, does it?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he replied, grinning. “If you want me to be impressed that life has been unfair to you, I am. If you want me to pray for your recovery, well, know that I will. If you want to be sure that I know how bitter you are, then rest assured you have persuaded me easily enough.”

She shook her head slightly and almost returned his grin. “You sure you’re a holy man?”

“I don’t think of myself as a holy man and I don’t recall the term in my job description,” he said. “I’m just a man who happens to be employed as a pastor.”

“Where’s your collar?”

“In our church, a pastor isn’t required to wear a collar except during services,” he explained. “They all know who I am, that I serve them, that they hired me and can fire me. There are some in my congregation, in fact, who think I should be replaced.”

She was quiet for several seconds, then asked, “Why?”

“I’m a bargain turned sour,” he said lightly. He certainly hadn’t intended to talk about himself, but he saw that she was interested and thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt to draw attention away from herself for a while.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“They hired my wife and me as a team. Two for the price of one, so to speak. Then we had two children, Emma and Annie, and Maralynn wasn’t able to spend as much time as she originally did on church matters. Soon after, she became ill with a serious heart condition, and we required a housekeeper to help out at an additional expense. Maralynn died two years ago, and now there is only one of us to serve the congregation.” He smiled to encourage the skepticism on her face. “Most of the congregation accepts the circumstances and seems inclined to let things ride, so, you see, I’m not in imminent danger of being discharged.”

“Sorry about your wife,” she said. “But you’re pulling my leg about the rest.”

He laughed without mirth at her directness. “It’s a business proposition, hiring a pastor,” he resumed. “They hired me under advantageous circumstances that are no longer advantageous for them. Why shouldn’t they be concerned that they’re paying for more than they’re getting? They would have a better bargain by replacing me with a married couple.”

“What would you do if that happens?”

“Find another position most likely,” he replied.

“Is that difficult?”

“I don’t know. This is my first position as pastor and I’ve had it for six years. I have no idea what the job market is like.”

“Why aren’t you investigating it? You should prepare for your future.” Her whispery voice was fading.

“If it comes to that, then I will,” he said, shrugging. It wasn’t that he wanted to downplay Maralynn’s tragic death or the vague element of truth in his declaration about his job security. Both were serious issues that affected his and his family’s lives. Still, he had learned to live without Maralynn, and he knew most people in his congregation appreciated him. Hadn’t the board hired him a part-time assistant when Annie was born? And hadn’t they elected to keep Medford Bantz on staff? He could afford to shrug off her concern, although, oddly, it touched him.

“You have one other option,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Get another wife.”

“Marry again? Funny…I’ve been thinking along those same lines.”

“Well, that should be easy for you…what’s your name again?”

Hamish had to remind himself that humility was a virtue. “Hamish Chandler,” he replied.

“Hmm, that’s no name for a pastor.” While he tried to think of how to reply, she continued. “You’re a regular guy, Hamish. You’re the first regular-guy holy man I ever met,” she said, her eyes flickering with what he recognized as fatigue. “But don’t come back, okay? I don’t want any visitors,” she added, barely audible, her eyes closed. “And I don’t tolerate praying.”

Before he realized what he was doing, he had clasped his big hand over her small one and squeezed. “We’ll see,” he said. “Maybe I won’t be able to stay away. I’ve always enjoyed a good time.”

He left his card with his home phone number written in pen and only later asked himself why. Obviously, she would simply discard it.

Hamish was barely out of the car when his two girls came flying across the lawn and threw themselves against him, six-year-old Emma hitting him first because she was older and had longer legs, three-year-old Annie close behind, both of them pressing their faces to his middle and holding on with small arms and dirty hands.

Emma was the first to pull away, her brown hair a windblown frizz of tangles, her thin, delicate face sweetly marred by smudges, her deep brown eyes wide with excitement. “We caught a frog and we’re keeping him,” she declared. He laughed at the importance of her announcement, for she had been trying all summer to gather the courage to pick one up and bring it to the punctured coffee tin that waited on the back porch.

“I fell off the swing,” Annie said, her straight strawberry blond hair framing a round face and dimpled cheeks, her blue eyes demure and shy, too big for her face, but balanced by a wide mouth. Already she was on her way to becoming a beauty.

“Did it hurt?” he asked.

She nodded in serious warning, then asked, “Where were you?”

“I went to visit a lady in the hospital.”

“Is she going to die?” Emma asked.

“No, she’s getting better, but she’s been badly injured and she may never be able to walk again,” he told them.

Emma’s eyes were wide. “Will she have to stay in bed forever?”

“No,” he said, grinning. “She’ll have a chair with wheels and she can probably walk with crutches. Do you know what crutches are?”

“Jimmy Crowton had crutches. He’s in second grade,” Emma said.

He picked them up, one in each arm, and walked to the house. Annie reached down to open the door, and then he set them down in the big old back porch enclosed by windows, and they walked into the large, square farm kitchen where Mrs. Billings was cooking dinner.

He liked the smell of roasting meat and the slight tang of gas from the old range. He overlooked the worn vinyl on the floor and the chips in the porcelain of the stove, just as he ignored the rusty patterns stained into the bottom of the wall-hung sink and the dulled old faucets that leaked in spite of his efforts to replace worn gaskets and ancient stems.

The kitchen was immaculate and it was home, and he was lucky to have it And Mrs. Billings, who had happily made herself part of his family after her husband died four years ago. “How did it go?” she asked him, and he raised his eyebrows in mock exasperation, wondering how much she actually knew about B. J. Dolliver’s harsh, combative personality.

“I wasn’t welcome,” he said.

Mrs. B pursed her lips and folded her arms defiantly over her ample middle as if he had just threatened one of her own. “Will she be all right?”

“Possibly,” he replied, washing his hands in the sink. “She won’t be able to walk, though.”

“Not ever?” Mrs. Billings blanched and dropped her pot holder on the floor.

“Not ever,” he said as he retrieved the pot holder.

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Her eyes watered, and she patted them with her apron as she sank onto a kitchen chair. He watched her closely, surprised at the extent of her grief over someone she had never known well and hadn’t seen for several years. “She’s such a lovely young woman, and so very kind. I’ve admired her so very much. Such a tragedy, isn’t it? Such a terrible tragedy.”

“Yes, it is,” he murmured, putting a hand on her shoulder, astonished that he should be offering her comfort because of the Dolliver woman who was hard as nails and angry as a cornered bobcat.

She made a quick swipe over her wrinkled cheeks.

“It seems as if you and I are talking about two different people,” he mused.

“Well, I know she can be very tough and outspoken. After all, she had a very bad childhood,” she snapped, then softened again. “No mother. A father who wanted a son and never had time for her.” Mrs. Billings patted her eyes again. “I remember enjoying how spunky she was, and I wanted my own niece to be like that. You know, able to take care of herself and give back as good as she got. B. J. Dolliver is a heroine for a lot of young women, Pastor, in spite of growing up unwanted. I don’t know whatever she’ll do with herself now. What a terrible tragedy. What a terrible thing to happen.”

“Why are you crying, Mrs. Billings?” Emma questioned, her eyes filled with concern.

“The lady I visited today,” Hamish explained. “Mrs. Billings knows her and is sad.”

Emma turned to the housekeeper. “But Daddy said she’s going to get well,” she assured Mrs. Billings, patting her on the knee. “She’s going to have crutches to help her walk around.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Billings said, sniffing. “Crippled for life, that wonderful, vital young woman.”

Emma looked up at her father for an answer, but he had none to give. He hadn’t quite thought of the young woman in the hospital bed as a heroine. Certainly not a role model. In fact, he wasn’t aware that he had ever heard of her before Mrs. B had asked him to visit. He didn’t even know her first name. All he knew was that people called her by her initials, and she apparently had quite a following, which came as a surprise to him because she seemed so alone in her hospital room, refusing visitors and keeping the truth from her own father.

“She isn’t going to die, is she, Daddy?” Emma quizzed, wanting reassurance, obviously stricken with the sense of doom she heard in Mrs. Billings’s voice.

But Mrs. Billings answered for him. “She might not like living anymore,” she said, returning to the stove.

“Why?” Emma looked to her father, and he put his hand gently on the top of her head.

He dropped to his haunches to explain, although he was having a little trouble with it himself. “This woman, B. J. Dolliver, was very active and traveled around the world taking photographs, running after big stories to be printed in newspapers and magazines. An now, well, she won’t be able to do any of those things when she has to walk with crutches, and Mrs. Billings means that, for B. J. Dolliver, not being able to do all the things she loves to do is very sad. Maybe.”

“But there’s lots of things she can still do, isn’t there?” Emma questioned. “She can still see and hear, can’t she? And read books? And watch television and walk around with crutches? And she could swing on a swing if she wanted to, couldn’t she? And go down a slide and ride on a merry-go-round? If she wanted to?”

“Yes, she could, if she wanted to. But maybe she isn’t interested in those things.”

“But maybe if she tried them, she might like them, and then she would be happy, wouldn’t she?”

He ruffled her hair. “You’re very wise, Emma, and I’m proud of you. Maybe someday you’ll get to meet B. J. Dolliver and you can tell her how great it is to be alive.”

It was a casual statement to appease the curiosity of a child, and he couldn’t begin to think that what he said was in any way applicable to the reality of the situation. It was obvious B. J. Dolliver wasn’t even thinking of dying. She was going to tangle aggressively with fate and challenge providence. She had sounded determined to battle with her own body to force it to do what the medical profession said it would never again be able to do.

Obviously, she was not making it easy for the hospital staff, including her own physician. She had locked herself into a self-imposed capsule, holding everyone else away and struggling with desperate ineffectiveness to make liars of her doctors.

He wondered what B. J. Dolliver was going to do when she discovered that the medical profession knew better than she did, and that she would never walk again without crutches, and that she damned well would never run again or wield a tennis racket or chase down a combat soldier to get his picture. He wondered how she was going to take that, accept defeat and the hopelessness of her future as she envisioned it.

Alone. Facing it alone.

As he sat down to dinner, B. J. Dolliver filled his thoughts, and he discovered with just a minimum of soul-searching that he wanted to be there when she finally fell. He wanted to be there to catch her and hold her and tell her there were still things to live for.

Chapter Two

The telephone awakened him late in the night.

Hamish answered the ring quickly, before he was entirely awake. There was a telephone next to his bed and getting late-night calls wasn’t uncommon in his line of work.

“Hi, Hamish,” she said, and he dropped back on his pillow and groaned. He hadn’t seen B. J. Dolliver for three days.

He glanced at his clock. “It’s nearly 3:00 a.m.,” he said, his voice still hoarse from sleep. “Where did you get my number?” He vaguely remembered giving her his card, but he believed she’d thrown it away.

“It’s in the yellow pages under righteous,” she quipped.

“What’s wrong, B.J.? Why are you calling me so late?”

“I’m moving out of this place,” she said. According to his fuzzy calculations, he had been visiting her every few days for nearly four weeks.

“Well, that’s great. They’re letting you go. You must be making good progress. How’s the arm?” Although she’d never appeared to accept his offer of friendship, she’d never followed through on her threat to have the hospital staff remove him.

“Arm’s getting better all the time.”

“Where are you going?”

“I get to pick the place.” He sensed a warning in the way her voice lilted up slightly on the last word, and he tried to shake off the fog of deep sleep that clouded his thoughts.

“So, have you made a decision?” he asked, wishing he could think clearly.

“I thought maybe you’d drop by and help me with that.”

“When?”

“In about an hour, preferably.”

“No more games, B.J. It’s nearly three in the morning. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, there is no problem!” she cried. “It’s all cut-and-dried, all decided! The medical profession is turning me loose. They’ve given me all these wonderful places to choose from for the next phase of my life. Beautiful places. One of them even has a swimming pool.”

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, pinching his eyes closed, wanting to know what was causing her distress.

“You wouldn’t. I don’t even know why I called you. See you around, Hamish.”

“Wait!” He was afraid she would hang up and he couldn’t allow that. He forced his mind to work, threw the covers back and turned to sit with his legs over the side of his old four-poster bed. “Give me time to dress. It’ll take me half an hour to drive—”

“No…that won’t be necessary,” she said, but her voice was suddenly soft and hoarse.

“What?”

“Forget I called.” He thought he heard a slight warble, but he couldn’t be sure. “Go back to sleep,” she said, clearing her throat. He closed his eyes again and stood on the cool hardwood floor, rotating his shoulders to stretch his muscles as he dressed. “Hamish?” she questioned when he didn’t answer.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“No. I didn’t mean it. Really, 1 didn’t mean it. I was just…it was stupid…I’ll never forgive you if you embarrass me by coming down here in the middle of the night. Besides, they just gave me a sleeping pill, and I won’t even know you’re here.”

“You wouldn’t have called if you weren’t in trouble,” he replied.

“Trouble?” she chided, but he detected a lack of force in her words. “You know me better than that. Now, go back to sleep. I’m going there myself.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t be so damned…serious. I swear I’ll never forgive you if you come down here at this time of night. I swear it.”

He was torn with indecision, and then she hung up, saying, “I’m getting very sleepy,” slurring her words slightly. “Very…sleepy.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the cool draft on his feet. He was now wide-awake, agitated because once again she had tied him in knots, and wondered what he should do. He knew in his heart that she had been desperate to call him. She had never called him before.

He dressed quickly and slipped out of the house into the pre-dawn night. As he drove to the hospital, he blamed her stubborn, prickly pride for how she had reached out in despair with one hand while insulting him and pushing him away with the other. Then he thought about her early life, the. trauma of her mother’s death, being neglected by an insensitive father. He remembered the fear he had seen in her eyes and suspected there were probably very few people she had learned to trust in her life. And yet she had become a strong, accomplished woman. He understood why she had wrapped her pride around herself like insulation from a hurtful world.

He fought a sense of foreboding while he drove to the hospital. He had a sickening feeling in his gut. She needed him. She must, he realized, to have called him like this.

He prayed for serenity and guidance while he hastened to her room. When he strode through the door, he found her sitting on the side of her bed, dangling her feet over the edge. She was beautiful, her hair tousled from sleep, the scar on her face fading to pink.

She wore one of those ugly, thin hospital gowns pulled off one shoulder, her legs bare to midthigh. Her muddy green eyes looked up at him. “You came,” she whispered, and then her eyes closed, and he knew he was in trouble. He wanted to touch her. He wanted very badly to touch her. “There,” she rasped, pointing to a messy array of colored pamphlets.

He reached out and picked up several, then glanced quickly through them. They were promotional brochures, glossy and brightly colored, featuring modern buildings, Victorian mansions, sterile bedrooms and lots of people in residence—people in wheelchairs, most of them with white hair, wrinkled skin and empty eyes.

He looked questioningly at her, fanning the brochures out in front of him. She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “Nursing homes,” she confirmed. “I get to choose one.”

“Oh, my God,” he gasped, dropping them onto the bed. He picked her up impulsively, as if she were a child, and when he felt her good arm go around his neck, he held her against him, her legs dangling free over his thighs, her face nestled in his neck. He turned in a slow circle, burying his face in her hair, and he let his heart ache while his body reveled in holding her. Absently, he pulled her gown closed over her back and held it there with his arms clasped around her. She felt frail and soft. Helpless. Warm. “Am I hurting you?” he whispered into her tangled hair. She shook her head a little wildly, and he felt wetness on his neck. “They can’t send you away. You’re going to get well,” he whispered. “I won’t let them do this to you. I won’t let it happen.”

Lost in comforting her and not wanting to let her go, he failed to notice how much time had passed until his arms felt the strain, and he finally returned her to the bed.

Her mouth was open slightly in obvious bewilderment, and he noticed how very kissable it looked. She had felt good pressed against him. She had felt damned good in his arms. He might have intended to give her comfort, but there was something deeper going on, and he recognized it all too well.

Quickly, he went to the closet and got her robe. He helped her get her injured arm into it. She kept her face lowered, obviously unwilling to let him see the tears she had likely fought not to shed in the first place.

“I have money,” she said finally in her husky voice. “But I have nowhere to go. I can’t take care of myself yet.”

“Your father? Another relative? A friend?”

“No. No, I can’t Nobody would want me. I can’t.”

“We’ll think of something, dear lady,” he said, sitting alongside her on the bed. “We’ll think of something.”

“There’s a convalescent center nearby, but it’s all old people. They’re all old. And I’m young, damn it. I’ve never needed anyone to take care of me. Never. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

“We’ll find somewhere else,” he reassured her.

“They’ve given up on me because I haven’t made any progress lately. They think this is as good as I’m going to get. They’re wrong. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get much, much better.”

“I believe you.”

“You’re the only one who does.”

“Well, you called me,” he sighed. “I didn’t think you had kept the number.”

She reached over with her left hand and used it to raise her limp right hand. There, written across her palm was his telephone number in ballpoint pen, smudged but legible, as if she had traced over it many times. “It’s been there for weeks. Every day after my bath, I go over it again so it won’t fade, so I’ll always know where it is,” she said.

Something lurched in his chest when he looked at her palm and thought of her outlining his phone number in her flesh every day and only calling him in the middle of the night when she was desperate. He raised her chin and looked into her glistening eyes. He saw that something in her had been defeated, and even though she had consistently rejected his efforts to help, he was now apparently her last resort.

He remembered the day Maralynn had died. He’d stayed with her all night long, sitting beside her bed. At the time he’d felt there was something bleak and desperate about a hospital in the middle of the night when sounds echoed only occasionally through the halls, amplified by the absence of people talking and moving about. He’d thought then that it was best to be asleep. It had seemed to him that if you didn’t get to sleep before darkness descended on the hospital, you would not get to sleep at all.

He tried to imagine what B. J. Dolliver had gone through, and he decided she had agonized for a long time before she’d called him. He suspected her pride would not have let her call unless she was overwhelmed with fear.

“I can’t stay here,” she said.

“When did you get the pamphlets?”

“Two days ago. They expected me to make a decision by now. I think I’m supposed to be gone. I told them I could pay for the room if my insurance doesn’t cover it.”

“Why did you wait so long to call me?” he asked.

He watched her raise her chin in a weak reflection of defiance. “I vowed I would not call you at all.”

“But what about that?” He gestured toward her limp hand with his telephone number written on her skin.

“I never intended to use it,” she said after a long silence.

He sighed. “Your destructive pride driving you to the wall.” He looked at her. “How do you expect me to arrange something in less than twenty-four hours?”

“You believe in miracles. I know you do. I don’t know anybody else who believes in miracles,” she said in a tearful, jerky voice.

Deep in thought, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and ambled to the windows. There was only one place he wanted to take her, and it was probably the last place she ought to be. He could let her sleep on the daybed in his office, and probably Mrs. Billings and the children could help. He didn’t think some people in his congregation would like the idea, but then he didn’t like the idea much himself. And although Mrs. Billings would be thrilled at first to have her heroine under their roof, he was sure B.J.’s rough edges would wear her welcome thin in quick order.

It was an idea bordering on insanity, he realized. She wasn’t his responsibility. She was dangerous to him, in fact, a threat to the orderliness of his full, rich life. How could he even think of taking her home, now that he found himself attracted to her?

Still, there seemed nowhere else for her to go. She was terrified of a nursing home, so terrified that she had finally swallowed her pride and called him. What he feared most was her feeling defeated and helpless and taking an easy exit to avoid a fate worse than death. He remembered Mrs. B repeating Deborah’s fears, although until now he had assumed they were both mistaken. He had to know.