Still a block away from the church, she watched the man in front pause and look up toward the steeple. Sunlight tipped his dark brown hair in golden highlights. He lifted his hand, the one not holding two cans of soda, to shade his face. He stood there a moment as if gathering strength. But for what?
Heather needed only to glance around her to have her answer. Michael Garrison loved High Plains. He loved his family, who had built so much of the town. She did not doubt that he loved his congregation. Right now, all the people Michael loved were trying to come to terms with the agony and confusion in the aftermath of this catastrophe. Of course the man needed strength.
What a blessing that he knew he could find it—from the Lord, first, but also from the town, from his family, from his congregation and from…
“Me.” Heather could all but see how Mary Kate would give her best “What am I going to do with you?” head shake at that. She didn’t care. She had come to High Plains to see if she could help, if there was anyone in need.
And she saw a need in Michael.
She directed the heavy SUV up the street. The sound of small rocks, twigs and debris crunching under the tires must have alerted Michael, because he turned and squinted in her direction. He did not seem to recognize her.
Butterflies dipped and dove in her stomach. She bit her lower lip to contain her smile at having the upper hand on her old friend. Her ex-friend, she corrected herself.
She took a deep breath and considered stepping on the gas and not slowing down, much less stopping. But when she got close enough to see his face, so warm and ready to greet whoever had come into his town, she let down her guard…and rolled down the window.
“Need a lift or you plan on staying true to your old nickname, Take-A-Hike Mike?”
“Take-A…” He squinted, stepped toward the SUV, then broke into a broad grin. “Heather? Heather Duster? Is that you?”
“I told you I’d be here when the dust settled.” She hit the electric door lock and it popped up. “Hop in.”
“I’m just going over to the church. Just about to grab a sandwich for lunch.” He gestured with the soda cans clasped in his strong grasp. “Hey, you should join us.”
“Us?” The single-syllable word hit Heather like a slap in the face. It had never dawned on Heather that Michael might be a part of an us now.
“My niece has been staying with me this summer. Avery? You remember Avery, don’t you?”
“Remember her?” Heather relaxed, though for the life of her she couldn’t imagine why thinking that Michael Garrison had a significant other in his life would make her tense. She laughed and scooted toward the passenger side to better talk to him. “I helped you babysit her when she was little. In fact, I drove you to your sister’s to do it because you didn’t have a car.”
“I was saving money for college. Besides, who needed a car when one of your best friends got the latest model for her sixteenth birthday?”
Heather ran her hand along the leather dashboard of the new SUV that had come to her as part of her inheritance and said softly, “A car was always easier to give than affection.”
Michael folded his arms on the open window and leaned in, all concern and kindness. “How is your father?”
“He died two weeks ago.” She hung her head for only a moment before looking at Michael again. “That’s why I couldn’t get to High Plains until now.”
“Heather, I am so sorry.” He reached out to her.
“It’s not…” She looked down at where his tanned and rugged hand grasped the pale, soft skin of her arm. His calluses and scars bore evidence of the kind of work he had been doing, that he had put his time, his effort, his very body out there to serve others. It humbled her, knowing she had spent most of the last year fund-raising, doing paperwork and dealing with her father’s last days as if it were just another item on her already crowded to-do list. The contrast struck her in more ways than one. “I appreciate your sympathy but I’m all right.”
“That’s good to know. Now tell me, are we all right?”
“We?” She looked up into his eyes. They were still blue. So very blue. In them shone depths of hope and faith and gentleness that Heather had never seen before.
She flexed her fingers and pursed her lips. Tell him you forgive him, her mind urged. But her mouth could not seem to form the words. She had trusted him more than she had ever trusted anyone in her whole life. “Michael, I think you should know I’m only here for—”
“I just can’t work in this—” a man interjected, wiping his nose “—environment.”
“Hey, Mr. Paisley!” Michael stepped back and held his hand out to indicate Heather. “This is the lady you were looking for.”
“Good! I…I…I quit!” He coughed, then gave a wave to Heather through the window. “I’m sorry, Ms. Waters, but I have allergies and that…that…that young lady…”
“Avery?” Michael frowned. “Avery did something to you?”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but…” Paisley coughed then kept moving past them, calling after himself. “But I think that before you turn that young lady loose in your church with a vacuum again, you probably should instruct her that the dust is supposed to go into the bag, not spew out of it.”
“She was probably trying to help,” Michael said to Heather through slightly clenched teeth.
“But you can’t quit…if you run off I’ll have to…” Heather pushed open the passenger door and leaned out to call after the man, who was already fumbling to get into a small car parked at an odd angle along the devastated remnants of the street.
He got in and slammed the door. The engine started.
“Stay myself,” she murmured even as the man waved again and pulled away.
“Sorry about that.” Michael peered at her through the lowered window of the opened passenger door. He scratched his scalp, his head lowered just enough to hide his full expression, then his gaze flicked upward, finding her. His lips twitched. He did not look one bit sorry at all. “I’d have offered to run him down and tackle him. Get him in a hammerlock or…uh…throw a monkey wrench at him or…uh, give him a proper Bible thumping, but I don’t think it would have mattered.”
Heather sighed. She could make a joke about his poor athletic prowess but she just didn’t feel like laughing right now. She felt like…
She met Michael’s gaze.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat. Despite the August heat, her skin drew into a million tiny tingle bumps. She had no idea what that feeling winding around inside her was. Fear? Anger? Frustration? Joy?
Heather put her chilled fingertips against her collarbone and pressed her lips together. She could not identify her own reaction, but she did know that she was in a bind. Her temp worker had flaked out and it would take at least a couple of days to get a new one in.
“It’s good to see you, Heather. I really didn’t think you’d come back.”
She hadn’t. Not to stay.
“I have reservations at a hotel that…” She just could not finish that sentence. She could not look at the devastation in High Plains or face the dedication in Michael’s eyes and announce her intentions to go shopping on the Plaza.
Good and bad, this town and its people had given her her start. Couldn’t she give them twenty-four hours of her long-overdue time off?
The church’s bells rang out, making Michael jump. She supposed if he’d been another kind of man he’d have cussed a blue streak. Instead, he winced and ducked his head, his eyes scrunched shut.