California's Calling (Hunt Family Book 3) (2 page)

BOOK: California's Calling (Hunt Family Book 3)
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Chapter 2

 

 

Mia and I stayed awake having a long, whispered conversation on the first leg of our trip. I had let the guilt and shame of the affair eat away at me for so long, that it was hard for me to adjust to the idea that I could maybe get past it one day. She tried to get me to see the positive in it, which was a foreign concept since it had been hanging over my head like a dark cloud for so long. She told me to learn from my mistakes and put them behind me. It sounded simple coming out of her mouth, but I wondered if I'd be able to put her words into action. Forgetting about Lance and forgiving myself for my transgressions, intentional or not, would be easier said than done.

I figured I could just take it one step at a time, and telling Mia about it made me feel like I was, at least, headed in the right direction.

I didn't get much sleep before we made it to London, but my heart was somehow lighter, so I was all right with being tired. We were in route to Rachel's parents' center. It was a destination wedding mixed with a mission trip.

Years ago, Rachel's parents started a rescue center for kids in Nairobi, Kenya. They'd been there for years, and had no plans to move back to the states. Rachel had moved to California for college and dental school, and she now considered Los Angeles her home. Her intention was to live in the states and make regular visits to help out her parents and brother. It was something she had done and would continue to do twice a year.

This particular trip would be the first of many that she and my brother, Logan, would make as a couple. She had told our family about her travel plans while we were in Myrtle Beach during our yearly family get-together at my grandma's beach house, and one-by-one we agreed to come with her. Logan was the first to volunteer, of course. He was hopelessly in love, and couldn't bear the thought of letting Rachel out of his sight for the extended period of time.

The more she shared about her parents and their work in Africa, the more we all wanted to go with her. So many of us signed up for the trip that they decided to go ahead and get married while we were there. Rachel's family would have traveled to the states for their wedding, but she and Logan both liked the idea of an African wedding, so the plans were in place. They were to be married at the end of the week, and Logan flew us all over there to pitch in at the center beforehand and be a part of the festivities.

How did Logan pay for twenty-something plane tickets to Africa
, you ask. My brother has been in show business since he was a child, and was now one of the most sought-after leading men in Hollywood. He had no problem covering the travel expenses.

Logan, being the hotshot actor that he was, had been to Africa several times. I, on the other hand had never been this far from home. It was an odd feeling, being on a plane headed to the other side of the world. I had a peculiar sensation in my chest from it—excitement mixed with fear. Maybe it wasn't the traveling that was doing it, though. Maybe it was the conversation I had with Mia about Lance. I was still getting used to the idea that someone besides God and me knew about the thing I'd been holding onto for so long.

I sat between my cousin, Evan, and my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Rachel, on the next flight from London to Nairobi. We were on a row in the center of the plane that was five seats wide, and we were situated as follows: Evan, myself, Rachel, Logan, then Logan's friend, Nico. It was another eight-hour flight, so we had plenty of time to talk and goof off.

We were about six hours into our flight when Evan leaned over me to look at Rachel. "What's this I hear about your brother being raised by lions?" he asked with a smile.

I glanced at her to see that she was smiling at him. "He
was
," she said, raising her eyebrows as if she wanted him to be intrigued by her story.

I glanced at Evan to see how he'd respond. Rachel had told me a little about her brother, but this wasn't one of the stories I'd heard.

"Like Mowgli?" he asked.

She laughed. "Sort of like Mowgli, yes—at least in some of the stories. Which one do you want to hear?"

"The one where he was raised by wolves and got the name Cub."

"Lions," she said, correcting him.

"That's what I said."

"You said wolves."

Evan glanced at me for confirmation, and I nodded. He focused on her again.

"Lions, then," he said. "That's what I meant to say. What's the story about him getting raised by lions?"

"There are a lot of them," she said.

He continued to stare curiously at her until she explained, "My brother's quite the storyteller. He has endless versions of how he got his nickname. Some of them are as outlandish as the child version of him fighting lions with his bare hands. All the stories involve lions—thus his nickname."

"So, how did he really get it? One of the stories must be true."

"One of them
is
true," she said. "It just might not be the most exciting one."

"Was your dad just a Chicago baseball fan or something?" Evan asked.

She shook her head. "It really does have to do with lions."

Evan gestured with his hands for her to continue. "Let's have it," he said.

"Cub and I are only a year apart. We were both really little when my parents came to Africa to start the center."

She hesitated and made a face like she was considering what to say next. I just sat quietly, the same as I'd been doing during the first part of the conversation. Rachel smiled regretfully as if the words she was about to say weren't adequate to what she was feeling.

"I don't mean this to sound ungrateful or anything, because I love my parents, you'll see when you meet them how wonderful they are. But when your mother is a mother to many children, there isn't a whole lot of time for individual attention. She used to say her favorite child was the one that needed her the most right then, and she had a lot of kids coming to the center who needed her desperately. That being said, Cub, who was called William at the time, took up with an older, African man named Martin. Martin had been around since the beginning. My parents had met him on their first trip over there, and he was a part of things since the start. He sort of just took to my brother. He ended up teaching Cub a lot of cool stuff. Anyway, that's where Cub met Lisa—at Martin's house."

"And Lisa is…" Evan trailed off, waiting for more explanation.

"Lisa's the lioness who fell in love with Cub. She's the reason for his nickname."

"So your brother's off playing with lions," Evan said, "and your parents are okay with it since they have their hands full."

Rachel chuckled. "Basically," she said. "But Martin's a good man. He loves the Lord, and he loves our family. He'd never let Cub get hurt."

I pictured her brother. In my mind, he was wearing khaki cargo pants and a button-down shirt (also khaki) with pockets and straps and other official park ranger looking things all over his clothes. I could see him walking into the wedding chapel with a lion on a leash. I smiled. "I'm picturing your brother driving a jeep with a lion sitting in the passenger's seat," I said.

Rachel smiled at the thought. "Lisa died, though."

"Aww, really?" I asked, feeling bad.

She nodded. "It was a while back. Martin tried to release her into the wild a couple of times when he first got her, but she had been injured and was dependent on him taking care of her. She lived a pretty long life, considering." Rachel paused and smiled at Evan and then at me. "Cub's not a lion guy in general. He's a carpenter who happened to love one single lion."

That part I knew. She had already told me her brother was into construction.

"A carpenter, huh?" Evan asked.

She nodded. "Martin was a carpenter. He passed away last year, too. That one was hard on Cub. Martin had been a father figure to him and taught him so much. Martin was a great carpenter. He built the house where I grew up. He and Cub built most, if not all of the structures on the property. Cub's business has branched off now, but he still helps my parents when they need it."

"Did he ever think about moving to the states?" Evan asked.

I was wondering the same thing, so I was glad he mentioned it.

"Cub? Not really," she said, shaking her head.

"He built himself a beautiful little house. He has a dog and gets to work with his hands. He's pretty content.

"His dog's name is T.S. Eliot," Logan added, leaning over Rachel to look at us

"She's a girl, though, so he calls her Tess," Rachel said.

"But her official name is T.S. Eliot," Logan said.

She laughed. "Cub only calls her that when she's in trouble."

"What kind of name is T.S. Eliot for a girl dog?" Evan asked.

Rachel shook her head, smiling as if she was thinking fondly of her brother. "You'll know when you meet Cub," she said. "He's wonderful. He's got all these muscles, and facial hair, but he's also a gentleman—a poet and a musician—an artist and a lover of animals."

My heart lurched when Rachel called him poet. I was pretty sure she had used other words to describe him as well, but that was the one I got stuck on. I thought of one person in particular as a poet, and hearing that word made my thoughts turn to Lance.

I was daydreaming about the word poet and all the feelings it brought up when I felt a finger come between the cracks of the seats and begin poking at me. It only took me a few seconds to figure out that it was Mia's finger, and it was coming through the cracks in the seat. I knew she was sitting behind me, but more than that, I could tell simply by the way she poked me that it was her doing it. I slipped my hand down by my side and grabbed her finger and giving it a wiggle before she pulled away.

I didn't think anything about it until a few hours later when she and I were in the back of a large SUV being transported from the airport in Nairobi to our final destination at Rachel's parent's place. Mia, who was sitting next to me in the very back, shoved a notebook onto my lap.

Scribbled in one corner of the first page was,
"Did you hear Rachel talking about her brother on the plane? That's why I was poking you."

I glanced at her curiously and was about to ask what in the world she meant, but she just smiled and motioned to the notebook like she wanted me to respond on paper.

I picked it up and began writing back in my best cursive.
"I hear stuff about Rachel's brother all the time. She thinks he hung the moon."
I added a smiley face with its tongue sticking out before flashing it at her so she could take a look.

She sighed and her shoulders slumped as she rolled her eyes, taking the notebook from me. She scribbled some words near the middle of the page.

"Maybe he's the poet you've been looking for!"

My eyes widened as I read it, and I used the pen to scratch out what she had written before replying.

"Thanks, but no thanks."

I held the notebook between us so she could read it.

"Why not?"
she wrote, stealing the pen from me to write while I was still holding the notebook.

"Too many reasons to list. Even if he was perfect, which he's not, I couldn't do it yet. I'm not ready."

"Not ready?"
She underlined the phrase three times.
"You haven't dated anyone in two years!"
She underlined that one twice.

I scribbled out everything we'd written before responding.

I wrote,
"Yeah, but I'm new to getting over it."

"What's that even mean?" she asked. She didn't write it, she asked with her voice, which made me narrow my eyes at her, telling her to be quiet. Her face changed to an expression that said she thought I was being silly. I decided to just break down and have a verbal conversation with her. The road was noisy, and no one could really hear us as long as we kept our voices down.

"It means I'm not jumping right in to checking guys out," I whispered. "And even if I was, I wouldn't be checking out my brother-in-law, you sick-o."

"He's not your brother-in-law," she said. "Rachel's your sister-in-law, and he's her brother."

"Yeah," I said, smiling at her. "My
brother-in-law
."

She knew I was being dense on purpose, and she narrowed her eyes at me.

"Seriously," I said. "I'm not trying to let you go around hooking me up with the first available guy because of what I told you."

"I'm not trying to hook you up because of that," she said. "I'm trying to hook you up because you love poetry and so does he. You would totally name a dog something weird like that."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Yes, you would," she said without looking at me.

"It is sort of a cute name for a dog," I said, after I sat there and thought about it for a few seconds. "And it's extra funny that she's a girl."

I glanced at Mia, and she smiled, still looking straight ahead.

"Summer camp romance," she whispered.

"What'd you say?" I asked leaning closer.

BOOK: California's Calling (Hunt Family Book 3)
11.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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