He looked keenly at her. In some ways she looked as he’d remembered her. Curly auburn shoulder-length hair always falling carelessly over her brow. Keen, azure eyes on a level with his. Above-medium height that matched his own. These physical characteristics hadn’t changed. What was missing?
Enthusiasm that had marked her youth had been replaced by resignation. Once he could detect what Autumn was thinking by looking at her, but her steady gaze was unfathomable now. There was a new maturity about her. Dark circles under her eyes indicated a strain that was more than skin deep and her smooth pinkish complexion was marred by slight worry creases across her forehead. When she relaxed, she looked tired.
Autumn squirmed under his intense scrutiny and he said, “You’re too thin. Have you had a rough time?”
“I guess you could say that. Working my way through three years of college and four years of vet school wasn’t easy.”
The food was tasty, and they ceased conversation until their appetites were sated. Nathan replenished their coffee cups and leaned back in his chair.
“I didn’t know you’d left Greensboro until I came back after my uncle’s death.”
Autumn looked out the window where early-morning sunlight revealed a verdant meadow. A herd of about thirty Angus cattle grazed contentedly. A meadowlark softly greeted the morning from a fence post. She wondered if it was too soon to stir up the past, to speak of incidents best forgotten.
“I left Ohio the day after you did, and I haven’t been back since. I’m not sure I should have come home now.”
“Why? Because I’m here?”
“That has nothing to do with it,” she declared, thinking if she’d known he was at Woodbeck Farm, she might have returned sooner. “What did you do before you inherited the farm?”
“After the things that happened between—” he paused “—between us, I wanted to put as much space between me and Ohio as possible. I got a job in the Middle East oil fields. I’d probably still be there if Uncle Matt hadn’t died and willed me this property.”
He paused momentarily, remembering the lonely years he’d worked hard, long hours trying to force his fascination for Autumn from his heart. He’d thought he’d succeeded, but now that he’d seen her again, he knew his efforts had been wasted. The affection he’d thought was gone had only been buried, for it had surfaced the minute he’d seen her tonight.
“But I made a lot of money,” he continued. “I sent some to help my mother and banked the rest, so I had some capital to get started. Uncle Matt hadn’t been in good health for a few years, and the place was really run-down. It will take a long time, and lots of work and money, to get the farm the way I want it to be.”
Autumn remembered his dream of becoming a farmer, and she was happy that he’d reached his goal. She toyed with the coffee cup, refusing when he wanted to refill it.
“I’d better go. There’s probably lots of calls to make, and I don’t want to put the whole burden on Trina.”
“Who?”
“Trina Jackson. She’s my friend, and we went through school together. She’ll be helping out until Ray gets back.” She thanked him for breakfast and stood up.
“Sit down, Autumn. You can spare a few more minutes. I’ve told you what I’ve been doing. I’m curious about you.”
Reluctant to talk about the past, but even more reluctant to leave him, she settled back into the chair.
Without meeting his eyes, she said, “When I confessed to Daddy that I—” she hesitated, and chose different words “—was interested in you, he was so angry, he threatened to cut off all my funds until I came to my senses. My mother wanted me to marry Harrison Lowe. She was ambitious for her daughters, and when Harrison showed some interest in me, she decided I’d make a good doctor’s wife.”
“But you wanted to be a veterinarian.”
“That’s true. I’d wanted to be a vet since I was a child and had seen Doc Wheeler save one of our colts. I wasn’t surprised that Mother would disagree, but I was sure Daddy would be on my side. He always had been before.”
Autumn paused, recalling the year she’d been spent in an expensive boarding school in the East. Her parents’ plans to prepare her for a social life had ebbed when she came home for the Christmas holidays and met Nathan. By the end of the first year, she’d made up her mind that she wouldn’t return to the boarding school—a decision that had intensified when she reached the farm and found Nathan working for her father.
Wondering what Autumn was thinking that had caused sadness to overspread her face, Nathan recalled that his uncle had told him how disappointed the Weavers had been when their oldest daughter, Spring, had married a missionary and moved to Bolivia. The second daughter, Summer, was a shy girl, and Clara Weaver was determined that Autumn would be trained to carry on the aristocratic Weaver tradition. Had his appearance in her life caused Autumn to rebel against her parents? Nathan wondered how much he was responsible for changing the vivacious, laughing girl he’d known into this serious woman with a resigned look on her face.
“Harrison was all right, but I didn’t want to marry him, and I wasn’t going to fight with Mother about it. When I learned you’d gone without even saying goodbye, I left, too. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know what I was going to do when I drove away from Greensboro.”
She paused, and the bleak expression in her eyes deepened as she remembered vividly the lost, hopeless feeling she’d experienced that day.
“So what did you do?”
She laughed slightly and the sparkle in her blue eyes dissolved some of the fatigue lines on her face. “I decided to travel. Trina is a cousin of Bert Brown, who’s married to my sister, Spring. Trina and I met at their wedding, and we kept in touch by letter after that. She’d invited me to visit her, and when I had no other place to go, I went to see her in Nashville. I took all the money from my savings account that I’d been accumulating since I was a child, and when I got to Columbus I sold my sports car. I had enough money to last me for a while.”
“I remember that sports car! Wasn’t it hard to give up?”
“Not really. Daddy bought it for me when I graduated from high school. I wanted a pickup truck instead, but Mother objected that it wasn’t a suitable vehicle for me, so they gave me an expensive car. When I needed money, I was glad I had it. Trina was getting ready to go to a Christian youth conference in London, and since I had nothing else to do, I tagged along.”
Autumn paused, thinking about the conference that had introduced her to a whole new way of life. Trina had jokingly called her a heathen, because she knew nothing about what it meant to be a Christian. Except for a few weddings and funerals, Autumn had never attended a church service, but after she spent two weeks at that conference, she’d become a student of the Bible, trying to span her gulf of ignorance about spiritual matters. She’d come to believe the Gospel message, but even yet, she couldn’t submit wholly to Christ’s lordship. Looking at Nathan’s interested eyes across the table, she knew she couldn’t expect God to forgive her own sins until she’d received forgiveness from Nathan and her parents for the past.
“And then what?” Nathan prompted.
“After the conference, with a group of youths and a couple of adult advisors, we backpacked several months on the continent of Europe. We’d travel until we ran out of money, then we’d find work, usually on farms. Trina was a city girl, but she became interested in animals, and we decided to go to vet school. I had $5.25 in my pocket when I got off the plane in Milwaukee.”
“How did you manage to go to college? Did your father help you?”
“I’ve