Page 50 of I'll Be There
Conner glanced at Micah. “I have five hours to figure out what part Blankenship plays in this.” He gave a wry smile. “This is the part where you say, ‘Don’t do it, Conner. You could go to jail.’”
Micah just gave him a grim smile. “I showed up just in time for the fun. Now this is what I call a bachelor party.”
“We should have just eloped.” Liza sat on the deck of the Christiansen family resort lodge, holding a bowl of homemade ice cream.
“What? And miss all this fun?” Grace was paging through a catalog of hairstyles, holding up pictures now and again. “You don’t want to elope—think of all those people waiting to see you walk down the aisle.”
“With nowhere to go afterward!”
“We’ll find a place.” Mona got up, looking over Grace’s shoulder. “Yeah, that one.”
Grace held up the picture of a woman with her long hair fashioned into two disks atop her head. “The Princess Leia look?”
“Funny. How about I just keep my hair as it is? Long. Down. Normal.”
“Because it’s not a normal day,” Ivy said. She’d arrived earlier with their wedding license, filed, and ready to be signed on Monday. “You want it to be special.”
Conner, coming through when she needed him. So why was she so unsettled by Pete and Reuben’s appearance this afternoon? It wasn’t like Conner was in any danger. He probably just wanted to spend more time with Jim Micah.
“Trust me, it’ll be special when the guests have to eat hot dogs in the parking lot of the church,” Liza said.
“Really, it’s that bad?” Ingrid Christiansen had come out on the deck carrying cookies to accentuate the ice cream.
Overhead the heavens dished out brilliance in millions of diamonds, sparkling against the black vault of night. A slight breeze whispered through the pines, and in the darkness a loon called, lilting above the darkened water.
She would have liked to spend tonight walking on the beach with Conner, remembering that time he’d escaped the fire line to find her painting onshore. She’d been drawn there early with the urge to pray for him.
When he’d found her, he appeared drawn, wrung out. He’d told her later that he’d nearly been killed in a flashover.
Her first real peek into his world.
That day he’d told her about his parents’ death, and right then her heart had begun to soften—dangerously soften—toward this man who had turned to her and said, “You bring me out of my darkness.”
Those words found soft soil, dug deep.
She couldn’t escape it, the sense that something might not be right.
Please, let him not be in darkness tonight, Lord.
She heard Grace answer her mother, listing all the locations they’d tried—and failed—to secure. The churches in town, the fire station, the school—
“And the ice arena won’t work?” Ingrid said, passing the plate of cookies. Liza took one. Chewy, filled with sweet nuts.
“No,” Grace said, not looking at Liza. “It’s too dark for a wedding reception.”
Oh, bless her.
“We talked to the folks at the ski hill today. They said we could use the chalet—it’s off season, so that might work, but...”
“That’s at the top of the mountain.” Ingrid put the plate down. “And expensive.”
Grace nodded.
Liza wanted to just put her head in her hands. “Again, to my point—we should just elope. In fact, Conner suggested it, more than once.”
Grace gave her a look. “I mentioned that Max and I eloped, right?” She glanced at her mother, who shook her head. “I was afraid to tell my parents—I knew how disappointed they’d be. So...we hid it.”
“And sneaked around like naughty teenagers,” Ingrid said. “John was getting ready to hold Max at gunpoint.” But she winked at Grace. “By the way, I tucked Yulia in bed with a story. But she wants her mama to kiss her goodnight.”
