Faithfully Yours

“Oh, I won’t do it right away. I’ll talk to her, give her time to get used to the idea first.” He stared out across Faith’s ramshackle garden with its wild assortment of plants. “Look at her garden,” he muttered, thrusting out one hand. “She’s forgotten all about it.”

“She hasn’t forgotten it,” Gillian denied, glaring at him. “She probably hasn’t had time to get to it. Especially when she’s fixing your meals all the time. That must be quite a burden for her.” Her eyes sparkled angrily at him. “Can’t you learn to cook, Mr. Nivens?”

Jeremy felt his eyes open wide, startled at the anger in her tones.

“Surely you don’t think I come over for dinner just to get a free meal?” he said, furious at her categorization of his motives. “There are any number of restaurants in the town. I can certainly afford to eat regularly at most of them.”

“Then why are you here?” Gillian Langford looked down her nose at him disdainfully, daring him to deny her conclusions.

“To make sure Aunt Faith eats at least one decent meal a day. If she thinks I’m coming, she makes a full meal. And eats it.” He met her stare head-on. “Otherwise she would make do on tea and toast, and that’s not very healthy.”

Jeremy watched the dull flush of red suffuse her pronounced cheekbones, making the light sprinkling of freckles across her nose stand out. The reddish strands in her shining hair glittered. Lord, Gillian Langford was a beautiful woman.

He wondered why she wasn’t married and how she’d come to live in Mossbank. His eyes swept down to the beautiful ring she always wore on her right hand. He’d noticed it before; many times. It looked like an engagement ring, but even he knew they were worn on the left hand. And no young man came by to claim her after school.

Which no doubt meant that the lady wasn’t interested in men. Good! He didn’t want to have to deal with overeager suitors hanging around the school, and he felt fairly certain than any suitor of Gillian Langford would be eager.

He glanced up and found her gaze fixed on him: dark, turbulent shadows clouding the green clarity of her eyes.

“My aunt must be about ready by now,” he murmured. “Perhaps we had better go in.” As he followed her into the house, Jeremy was forced to admit that today her choice of clothing was both suitable for school and extremely attractive.

She wore the long, slim slacks comfortably on her leggy frame, a matching teal silk shirt hanging loosely to her hips. The color was very flattering to her. A short, knitted black vest made the outfit complete and rendered it less casual looking. With her hair on the top of her head, Gillian looked coolly professional, and the picture irked him immeasurably. Why, he wasn’t sure.

“Well, I’d better be getting home to Hope’s,” Gillian told the older woman cheerfully. “She’s sure to have dinner ready.”

“Yes, Hope is a good cook,” Faith enthused. Her forehead pleated in a frown. “Although she does have a tight fist with the butter. Now, dear,” she turned to Jeremy. “You are eating with Gillian tonight, aren’t you? I would have made more if I’d known you were coming, but when I thought there would be just Art and me…” Her voice trailed away as she gestured to the smiling man seated on the other side of the kitchen table.

Jeremy stared at her in perplexity, wondering what was going on now. A sharp jab in the ribs brought him back to reality immediately, and he glared down at Gillian in frustration.

“Well, the truth is, Auntie Fay,” he began, and then swallowed the rest of the sentence as Gillian cut him off.

“Of course he can eat with us. Hope is sure to have plenty. And if he doesn’t like her cooking, I’m sure Jeremy can get something for himself.”

Her eyes opened innocently to stare at him, and Jeremy smiled at the idea of cooking anything in his poorly stocked apartment. “You know me, Auntie Fay,” he murmured, just under his breath. His eyes met Gillian’s startled ones, and he grinned. “I’ll do anything for a free meal.”

He could see that she felt embarrassed at her previous assumptions about his motives for going to his aunt’s, and he would have chortled with delight at the sight of it if the others hadn’t been there.

“I just hope Hope isn’t serving tofu,” Gillian whispered in his ear, her shoulder pressing against his chest for just a moment. “My aunt is really into eating healthy, you know.”

Jeremy felt his stomach lurch strangely. Tofu? As in that curdled white stuff?

“Well, I hope you and your girl have a real nice evening,” Art said, smiling benignly. “Faith was telling me about your engagement. Congratulations to you both.”

“But there is nothing to—” Jeremy gave up trying to explain as the willow wisp of a girl next to him tugged his arm none too gently.

“Thank you very much,” he heard her say with a laugh. “I hope the two of you enjoy your dinner. Come on, honey,” Gillian said, wrapping her arm through his.

Before his wits returned, Jeremy found himself standing on the sidewalk in front of his aunt’s house next to the beautiful woman who taught first grade in his school. She had removed her arm and he was thankful for that. It wouldn’t do for the rest of the town to hear of their bogus engagement. Anyway, even that slight touch bothered him. A lot.

He felt the poke in his side and chanced a look down. She stood there, grinning from ear to ear.

“Well,” she charged. “Aren’t you going to offer me a ride to Hope’s?”

Without conscious thought he opened the passenger side door and waited for her to slip inside his shiny black Mustang convertible. Her hand slid longingly over the leather-covered dashboard as he watched her snuggle into the fawn-colored bucket seat.

“Is that why you wanted to be engaged to me?” he asked solemnly, shifting gears before pulling away from the curb. “So you could ride in my new car?” He glanced at her and surprised a calculating look in her green eyes.

“Oh, that’s just one of the many reasons,” she murmured softly, sliding her shoes off and squishing her toes in the plush beige carpeting. “I’ll tell you the rest of them over dinner.”

As he negotiated the streets to her aunt’s house, Jeremy frowned. Gillian Langford had arranged this, this misunderstanding, he felt sure. And it was because she had some ulterior motive.

Why then did he feel anticipation instead of fear at finding out just what the gorgeous redhead had in mind? he asked himself.

Chapter Four (#ulink_cf97de85-05a7-590c-921b-28b49e3cfbca)

“Where did you get this car?” Gillian demanded, breaking the tense silence that hung between them. She brushed her hand over the cool, smooth leather. “It’s fabulous. And it doesn’t seem like the type of car you’d drive at all,” she blurted out. “I mean…” Her voice trailed away in dismay.

Jeremy chuckled. “What did you think I’d drive? Some staid, old family sedan, I’d wager.” He laughed out loud at the abashed look on her expressive face. “Don’t ever lie,” he advised. “You can’t hide your true feelings worth a plugged nickel.”

She bristled immediately, which was exactly what Jeremy had expected.

“I make it a habit never to lie about anything,” she told him pertly. “I learned that in the Sunday school right there.” Gillian pointed to the old church as they passed it.

“Did you grow up here?” he asked, suddenly curious about her childhood.

“No.” She shook her head. “But I came to visit Hope quite a lot when my parents wanted their own holiday. It was great fun for me, coming from Boston to the freedom of this little town.” Gillian pointed to the lovely park with its huge trees and carragana hedge. “We used to pretend there were little caves in that hedge,” she told him. “We could hide or have tea parties or lunch and never worry anybody.”

“It sounds like you had a happy childhood,” he murmured softly.

“Oh, I did,” she enthused, grinning as the memories surfaced from long ago. “Whenever I visited Hope’s, I was the queen of the castle. She’d let me stay up as long as I wanted. Or at least as long as I could without nodding off.” Her thoughts drifted to the times she and Hope had slept outside under the stars.

“I believe children need a regular bedtime.” Jeremy’s quiet voice interrupted her musings. “It’s important for their health and their growth that a regular schedule is maintained.”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Gillian snapped, glaring at him angrily. “There you go again with those silly rules. Why do you always do that?” She watched him blink in confusion.

“Do what?” he asked, frowning. “I never did anything. I merely said…”

“I know what you said. It’s what you always say. For every situation in life you need a rule.” She scowled at him with disgust. “Don’t you ever just relax and enjoy the world around you without worrying if it’s the right thing to do?”

“It’s not a matter of relaxing,” he muttered at last, gliding to a stop in front of Hope’s compact two-story. “It’s a matter of planning things out to get the optimal benefit out of life.”

“But I did get the optimal benefit,” she argued, sliding out of the seat as his hand went under her elbow. “If I’d been sleeping in my bed, Hope and I wouldn’t have been able to discuss the constellations or where God lives, or how the angels come to earth. Those things were just as important to me as a few extra minutes of sleep.”

She stared into his handsome face seriously. “My mom always told us that life is made up of little shining moments like stones in a necklace. They’re what make the everyday routine things bearable, because we can take out those stones and remember them with pleasure during the bad times.” She beckoned him up the stairs. “Come on in. Hope will have started something.”

But unfortunately Hope hadn’t. There was a note tacked to the phone informing Gillian that her aunt had gone shopping with Charity Flowerday.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, frowning up at Jeremy, who towered over her, now that she had removed her shoes. “I guess we’ll have to find something for ourselves. Do you like tacos?”