Meeting Mr. Right

I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’m looking for—to be where people need me. I can’t imagine anything better than to minister to others during their hardest struggles, and I know you share the dream. I’m sure your skills in the medical field will be highly valued.

I’m anxious to hear your thoughts—school wise, mission wise, and anything else you care to add.

Faithfully waiting,

Veronica Jayne

Ben snapped his laptop closed and grinned. He could always count on an email from Veronica Jayne to have him smiling from ear to ear. Beautiful Veronica Jayne, his refined, gracious flower girl, his very own My Fair Lady. Even her name was feminine and graceful. He didn’t have to see a picture of her to know she was exquisite. Her elegance shined through every word she wrote. In a word, she simply charmed him.

He’d finished his morning workout early in his rush to get home and see if Veronica Jayne had replied to his email, so he decided to use his extra time to walk over to his folks’ house to see how they were faring. He’d missed the previous weekend’s Sunday dinner because of an emergency call. Though his parents were in perfect health, they were getting up in years and Ben still worried, despite their protests. He wanted to make sure everything was going well—and maybe catch a bite to eat, if he timed it just right.

As he strode the short distance to his parents’ residence, he mused about last night, when he’d been kicking back with Vee Bishop at the firehouse. He was surprised at how much she’d had to say to him—usually she went out of her way to keep her distance. But last night, she’d opened up—just a little. Her cryptic response to his question about what secrets she wasn’t revealing intrigued him, even knowing it was none of his business whatsoever.

Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t told him so herself.

When he’d started mindlessly carrying on about the theme of secrets, he’d half expected her to blow him off completely. That or blow up at him. He was fairly certain she didn’t particularly like him, although exactly why that was he couldn’t say. She’d been short with him on more than one occasion in the past.

But in this instance, she hadn’t blown him off, nor had she become angry. Instead, she’d gracefully sidestepped the whole subject, which intrigued him far more than if she’d become annoyed. What she did or did not care to share with him was none of his business. They might have lived in the same town all their lives, but in truth they didn’t even know each other particularly well.

While he was fairly certain he’d rattled her with his tactless digging, for once he seemed to have avoided making her angry. He wished he knew how he’d dodged the bullet this time—usually it seemed like everything he did upset or offended her, even if she rarely vented her feelings out loud.

He increased his pace as a shiver ran through him. He’d be the first to admit he had trouble speaking to women. They were a complete enigma to him in every way, and he put his boot in his mouth more often than not. His appalling trail of failures with the list of women he’d dated proved that point in a major way.

The only consolation was that his very cluelessness usually convinced his ex-girlfriends that he hadn’t meant any harm. In most cases, he’d been able to charm his way back into being friends. But any attempt to charm Vee only seemed to make her angrier.

Vee was a tough nut to crack. She intimidated him with the way she pulled her hair back into a stark bun that defined her cheekbones into sharp lines, not to mention the incessant way she was always scowling at him with a permanent frown etched into her features whenever he was around. That he’d gotten her to laugh once or twice during their exchange the night before was definitely the exception to the rule. Maybe he was making some progress.

“Progress” just made him think of the other projects in his life—like his plans for mission work, for example, and the online Spanish class he was taking to prepare.

But most of all, he thought about the plans to meet and hopefully date his beautiful Veronica Jayne.

No one in Serendipity knew of the developing relationship with his internet classmate. Not his paramedic partner Zach Bowden. Not his friends. Not even his parents. He supposed that deep down he just wasn’t ready to share her yet.

What a sweet secret to have.

Ben grinned to himself as he reached the one and only intersection off of Main Street, glanced both ways and crossed over to the other side. Serendipity, with its population of less than a thousand, didn’t even merit a stoplight and just barely bothered with three-way stop signs. There was seldom traffic to watch out for, and today was no exception.

In fact, it was an unremarkably quiet day in Serendipity, with most folks going about their business as usual. Even the three retired men in their matching bib overalls who usually congregated in front of Emerson’s Hardware in their wooden rocking chairs were nowhere to be seen.

With nothing interesting to view on the horizon, Ben’s mind shifted to Veronica Jayne and the unlikely development of their cyber relationship. It had started innocently enough, emailing each other back and forth about their combined class project. After a while the conversation had drifted to chattering about weekly assignments, and before he knew it, they were talking personal issues—sometimes very personal issues, especially when they’d discovered they had the same plans for stateside mission work.

He’d been praying for his future wife for some time now, and if he was being honest with himself, the thought that Veronica Jayne might be that woman had crossed his mind more than once, even if they’d agreed they wouldn’t pursue anything romantic until—and if—they met in person.

Frankly, it was easier keeping Veronica Jayne at a distance, on the other end of cyberspace, where he wasn’t as apt to screw things up. He didn’t exactly have a stellar track record where women were concerned.

He’d been a skinny, awkward teenager who was often embarrassed and humiliated by school bullies, a boy who hid in his uncle’s auto garage to avoid having to deal with his callous peers, never mind girls his age, who would either ridicule or ignore him. Girls simply weren’t interested in boys like him. His mother had told him not to worry, that his day would come, but he hadn’t believed her.

Then, in a desperate attempt to get away from everything and everyone he knew, he’d enlisted in the Army National Guard Reserves. He’d bulked up and put on a uniform, and that had changed everything. He’d returned to Serendipity to find the women—those same girls who’d thumbed their noses at him in his youth—all grown up and fawning over him.

He was the first to admit he hadn’t handled it very well. What could he say? He was a guy, and the attention of pretty ladies went straight to his head. Being as inexperienced as he was in the world of women, he knew he’d made quite a few mistakes along the way.

How was he supposed to know that after two or three dates, a girl would assume that they were dating exclusively and that he wasn’t seeing anyone else? He hadn’t even been looking for a serious relationship—not then, anyway—despite the impression he’d apparently given. He’d quickly learned that women had certain ideas in their heads, and they weren’t very forgiving when he didn’t catch their unspoken implications.

Which he rarely did. He didn’t know how to guess how a woman thought. He hadn’t known then, and he certainly didn’t know now.

No, he’d had enough of all that, thank you very much. Perhaps that was why the idea of finding someone outside Serendipity sounded so appealing to him. Someone who didn’t know what he’d been like as a kid. Someone unaware of his recent screw-ups in the love department.

If he left Serendipity, he could reinvent himself into anything he wanted to be. A tough guy or a dashing charmer. Sensitive or daring. It was a heady notion. But there was more to it than that. He truly felt called to make a difference on a scale he could never achieve in his small hometown. He wanted to get involved in difficult and often perilous stateside mission work, perfect for an adrenaline junkie like him who wanted to be part of an organization that ministered to people, body and soul.

At times he even dared to imagine the possibility of having a classy, incredible woman working at his side—a strong, independent, caring, Christian woman ready and able to both handle the worst and pray for the best.

It wasn’t completely beyond the realm of possibility that this woman was Veronica Jayne. In their emails, her dreams and future plans and goals matched his, and their personalities melded perfectly, each playing off the other’s strengths.

But that was online.

Reality? Well, that was probably nothing more than empty space. Would he even know her if he passed by her on the street? Would they connect on that kind of level?

He was almost certainly grasping at straws. If anything ever did happen between them, and that was a big if, Veronica Jayne eventually would learn everything about him—including his past, which he was still ashamed to think about. Then there was the fact that he had perpetual grease under his nails from working as a mechanic. And the fact that he lived in a miniscule Texas town—he had the impression, though she’d never stated outright, that she lived in a big city.

If he took her home, his mother would no doubt bring out his baby pictures and his yearbook, which would only serve to further humiliate him. One look and Veronica Jayne would discover what a gawky, pimple-covered youth he’d been. Too tall for his skinny physique and all elbows and knees.

He wasn’t sure he was ready for that. Anyway, he was getting way ahead of himself. They’d never met in person. Who knew if they’d even like each other when that time came, much less in any kind of romantic capacity? He must be getting soft in the head.

The moment he rounded the corner onto his parents’ cul-de-sac, he noticed the black truck parked in his parents’ driveway. The back end was loaded with red bricks and multi-colored rocks of various shapes and sizes and bags upon bags of soil and fertilizer. It wasn’t an old truck, but it wasn’t a new one either. It had some wear—definitely a sensible working vehicle. And though it looked vaguely familiar, he couldn’t immediately put a name to the owner. He was fairly certain he hadn’t serviced it at the auto shop recently, yet he could picture the vehicle in his mind, sans contents. So where did he know it from?

One way to find out.

He heard someone singing before he even reached the front porch. More telling, it was a female singing, or humming rather, and it definitely wasn’t his good, old-fashioned country mother, unless she’d developed a sudden propensity for something that sounded suspiciously like classical music to Ben’s untrained ears.

Instead of approaching the front door, his curiosity led him around the side of the house to see whose pretty, richly husky alto laced the air with Beethoven, or Bach or whatever it was.

When he got his first glance of her, he nearly stumbled with surprise.

Vee Bishop.

What was she doing here? She hadn’t mentioned visiting his parents when they’d been talking the prior evening.

She had her back to him, her slender figure accentuated as she stood on tiptoe on the top rung of a stepladder, precariously reaching for a flowerpot that dangled just out of her reach on a hook next to the patio door. She thought she was alone, as evidenced by the fact that she was humming aloud to the tune of the small mp3 player she had clipped to her belt.

“Beethoven?” he called. With his mind busy creating and discarding reasons why Vee might be in his parents’ backyard, he realized only after he’d spoken that she couldn’t have seen him approach and that the sound of his voice might startle her. She’d managed to unhook the basket with the tips of her fingers, but she didn’t have the basket firmly in her grasp and she overreached her mark at the sound of his voice. Wavering in a futile attempt to balance herself, she put one hand out to grasp for the wall, but nothing was there to stop her from falling backward. She squeaked in dismay, and her arms flailed wildly as she attempted to right herself against the ladder.

Ben acted instinctively, darting forward to sweep Vee into his arms before she hit the pavement. He barely felt the weight of her frame as he protectively flexed his biceps to curl her into the safety of his embrace, but he was intensely aware of the moment she wrapped her arm around his neck. The hook of the hanging basket she’d managed to hold on to dug deeply into his shoulder. The sensation didn’t register as pain, maybe because his adrenaline was so high. Her free palm rested against his chest, directly over his rapidly beating heart. He wondered if she could feel the pounding staccato rhythm of his pulse.

Crazy woman. What had she been thinking? It was a good thing for her that he’d arrived when he did. He hoped she realized that he had barely averted a disaster.

She could have had broken bones. Been knocked unconscious. Suffered a concussion. He could easily tick a dozen frightening scenarios off on his fingers.

He didn’t immediately release her, giving them both time to get their bearings. For a moment she just stared up at him, her cheeks flushed a pretty crimson. Her dark eyes first flared with surprise and then simply sparkled with what Ben suspected was mirth, though he couldn’t imagine what she considered to be funny in this situation.

“Mozart,” she informed him, wriggling out of his grasp as if she only now realized that he was still holding her up. She stood to her full height, but even so, the top of her head didn’t reach Ben’s shoulder. “And you should be ashamed of yourself, sneaking up on a person that way. You nearly scared the life out of me. I could have really been hurt there!”

“I didn’t sneak,” he responded, trying to keep his jaw from dropping. Why was she chewing him out? She should be eternally grateful for his efforts on her behalf. “What I did was save you from a major catastrophe just now. You should be thanking me, not railing on me. And you should know better than to stand on the top rung of a ladder. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s just a step stool,” she rejoined with a scowl. Now that was a familiar expression from her, especially combined with her backing away from where his outreached hand tried to offer her some support. Although she’d landed in his arms and had not—thanks to him—taken a digger on the ground, she brushed off her jeans as if she’d hit the dirt on both knees.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “But you’re still begging for an accident by name. In case you’re not aware of the rules, you’re not supposed to stand on the very top rung of a ladder, step stool or otherwise. You can’t balance that way. Didn’t anyone ever teach you better?” He kept his tone light and hoped his words sounded like banter and not a reprimand.

It partially worked. Her frown eased a little, though it didn’t go away. She rolled her eyes and took another step back. “Are you kidding? With an overprotective dad and two big brothers, I’ve had every lecture in the book and then some.”

“Any reason why this lesson didn’t stick?”

She tilted her head thoughtfully and shrugged. “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. I’m pretty independent. I’ve been told I’m stubborn, too, if my brothers have an opinion about it.”

Her response seemed serious, and she was still frowning at him. Ben wasn’t sure what to say or why the woman was so determined to be angry with him when he’d just saved her from breaking her neck.

He shifted from foot to foot, measuring his words before speaking to the overly testy woman. Speaking suddenly felt like a new and difficult skill, one of which he was nearly incapable. He hadn’t yet sorted out words in his brain, much less found the faculties necessary to utter them from his lips, before she spoke again.

“Climbing to the top rungs of ladders is just one of many of the perils of being short,” Vee explained. She waved the hanging basket in front of him. “At least I got the basket, thank you very much.”

“Right,” he agreed, but he was shaking his head. “We wouldn’t want you to have to climb back up on that ladder and risk putting life and limb in danger again.” He paused and cocked his head, staring at her speculatively. “So tell me why, exactly, are you stealing flowerpots from my parents’ backyard?”

Her frown deepened, and for a moment he worried that she’d taken his teasing seriously. She was always pretty quick to think the worst of him. To his relief, she relaxed after a moment instead. “Of course I’m not trying to steal anything. Your folks asked me to come here to do a little spring landscaping for them.”

“Why would they do that? If they want some work done, I can do it for them.”

That, and the fact that of all the people on the planet they’d chosen to work on their yard, it had to be the one woman he had trouble working with at all. And he would be working here, now that he’d discovered his parents’ plan. But there was no reason why Vee had to stay. All he had to do was to talk his parents out of this decision, which shouldn’t be that difficult, right? Then Vee could go on her merry way.

Her eyes widened and she stared at him like he was slow on the uptake. Could she really blame him? He was still reeling from the nearly averted disaster of catching a plunging-to-the-pavement woman. His heart was still pounding heavily in his chest, stoked by adrenaline. He couldn’t set it aside as easily as she appeared to have done.

“It’s my job, remember?” she pointed out in a pithy tone of voice. “I work at Emerson’s Hardware. Lawn and garden. Ring a bell? I know I’ve waited on you at least a few times over the years.”

“No, of course I know you work at Emerson’s,” he said, quickly backtracking. Was she making fun of him? “What I meant was, why are you here, in my parents’ backyard, trying to release flowerpots from their hooks? They didn’t mention any gardening projects. I’m surprised they didn’t consult me first.”

“Why would they?”

Ouch. She had a point, and she hadn’t made it softly, either.

His parents didn’t need his permission to landscape their yard, but it disturbed him just the same that they hadn’t asked for his help. He was more than willing to lend a hand. And seriously, what could Vee do for them that he couldn’t do himself?

“I can dig in the dirt as well as anyone. For free,” he added with extra emphasis. His parents were paying good money when they didn’t need to be.

Her dark eyebrows rose in perfect curves. “I’m a landscaping specialist, you know. There’s a lot more to it than just digging in the dirt. Apparently your parents seem to think I’m needed here.”

“Apparently,” he repeated, absently rubbing a spot on his temple that was beginning to throb incessantly. He didn’t get many headaches, but he had a feeling that today might be the exception.

“You don’t believe me?” She gestured toward the sliding glass door that led to the dining room of the Atwoods’ house. “Be my guest. Ask your mom why she hired me.”

It wasn’t that he thought she was lying when she’d stated that his parents had hired her. He just didn’t want to accept it. The real problem here, as he was well aware, was that his pride was wounded. He knew it shouldn’t matter that they’d hired, of all people, Vee to do their yard work, but that knowledge scraped across every self-righteous nerve in his body.

Did his parents think he wasn’t up to a simple landscaping job? Did they think Vee could do it better?

Honestly. How hard could it be to plant a few flowers and trim a few shrubs? They could have at least asked him if he wanted to do it before they called on outside help. He was certain he could do at least as good a job as Vee.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back in a moment,” he said, gesturing to the back door. “I want to speak with my mom for a second.”

“Sure,” she agreed. “I’ll be here, planting my flowers and humming my Mozart.”

“You do that. And try not to fall off any step stools while I’m gone.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

As Ben entered the house through the sliding glass door, familiar sights and smells enveloped him. He breathed deeply and released the tension corded through his neck and shoulders. It was amazing how comforting it was simply to step into the house where he’d spent his youth. Entering his home was like being wrapped in a cozy blanket, not only for warmth but for reassurance.

“Mom?” he called as he wiped his feet on the welcome mat by the door. “It’s Ben. Where are you?”

“In the kitchen, honey.”

He should have known that’s where she would be. His mother was always in the kitchen, baking things from scratch. Cooking was her hobby, and she was excellent at it. She spent hours every week poring over cookbooks and magazines trying to find new dishes to try or new twists on old favorites. It wasn’t until Ben was an adult that he’d really learned to appreciate the work she did.

He inhaled deeply and groaned with pleasure. The whole house smelled like cinnamon and fresh bread. If he was lucky, she was baking his favorite rolls. His mouth was watering already.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as he entered and before he’d said so much as a single word. His mother was like that—naturally intuitive where her children were concerned. So why hadn’t she realized he’d be bothered by her landscaping plans?

“I saw Vee outside,” he said, trying for a conversational tone, though he doubted he succeeded.

“Oh, yes. Isn’t she a dear, willing to work on our yard even when it’s nippy outside? She said she likes being outside, whatever the weather. I really like her. Smart and sensible. And she’s a cute little thing, too, don’t you think?”

Ben’s gaze widened. Whatever else he thought of Vee, he’d never categorize her as a cute little thing. Fearless, maybe. Spirited, definitely. But cute?

Not only that, but if he wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like his mother was hinting at something beyond simply drawing his attention to the fine work Vee was doing. His mother had been trying to set him up with women since the day he turned twenty. Apparently she wanted grandchildren, and the sooner the better.

But Vee? That was definitely pushing the limits, even for his mother. Vee had never made any secret of the fact that she didn’t care for him, and someone as perceptive as his mother had to have noticed.

As if to make it up to him for the suggestion, she pushed a dessert plate loaded with freshly baked cinnamon rolls in his direction. He poured himself a tall glass of milk and settled down with his favorite treat. At least he had timed that right.

“Are you having trouble with your yard?” he queried before popping a large chunk of cinnamon roll in his mouth. “Why didn’t you come to me for help? I would have been happy to have done your project for you.”

His mother’s gaze widened in surprise at the change of subject and then narrowed on Ben. “I see,” she murmured, not taking her eyes off of him.

He sunk a little lower in his chair at the maternal look she was giving him. It was the look, the one that brought down many a child. Ben might be a full-grown man, but it still affected him.

“I’m just asking.”

His mother nodded thoughtfully. “Do you have training in landscape architecture?” She paused for less than one second. “No? I didn’t think so. That’s why I hired Vee,” she explained smoothly, wiping her hands on the frilly green apron tied at her waist.

“Did you see the pretty tulips and daffodils already blooming out front next to the dogwood tree?” she continued. “That’s Vee’s work. She planted a few bulbs for us last fall. It made such a difference in the front that when spring arrived, we decided to hire her to rework our backyard, too. I’m very excited to make more changes in our yard. Your father and I have been talking about doing it for years, but it never seemed like quite the right time. I’m finally going to have the garden I’ve always wanted.”