Joy in His Heart (17 page)

This is what Brian needs in a wife. This kind of woman. The dinner party kind. The committee kind. The kind of woman I not only can’t be, but won’t be.

The differences between her and Brian were about more than children and day care. It was about living in two different worlds. Brian deserved the right woman at his side. One who liked his world. If Joy let him, she
knew by the look she’d seen leap to Brian’s eyes when she’d walked in earlier that he’d settle for her. Joy couldn’t do that to him or herself. Because settling and being settled for would destroy them both eventually.

So as Linda and Brian finalized plans for some bachelor-auction fund-raiser, Joy, tears glistening in her eyes, slipped from the room and from Brian’s life. And she’d never felt so alone in her life.

Brian glanced toward Joy to share a private smile while categorically refusing to take part in Linda’s fund-raiser. The grin froze on his lips and the words lodged in his throat. Joy was gone.

Linda followed his gaze to the empty place where Joy had been perched. “Why do I get the feeling I couldn’t have picked a worse time to come in here?”

“It’s par for the course with Joy and me. We were out in the middle of nowhere for six days and didn’t manage to get things settled between us.”

“Things. What things? Come on. Tell Mama Linda what this is all about.”

“It’s nothing. Really. Listen, I’m really tired.”

“In other words, ‘go away, I’d rather sulk on my own.’”

He winced but nodded.

Linda made an entirely female sound of disapproval. “I hate it when men go all silent and broody. You saved my son’s life two years ago and I won’t let you be miserable. I’m not leaving, so you may as well cooperate, and let me help you understand her sudden disappearance. Answer a question for me. Am I right in assuming she is the reason you won’t do the auction this year?”

Brian nodded absently, trying to figure out what had sent Joy fleeing from his room.

“Do you think she was jealous because I asked you to be in the auction?”

“I said I wouldn’t—besides Joy isn’t the jealous type,” he responded immediately. “She’s the most self-assured woman I’ve ever met.”

He felt a helpless grin tug at his lips remembering her near tirade in the cave.
I fly over this. I rescue people from this. I don’t sleep in it. And I sure don’t eat cute little bunnies for dinner. I just want to go home.
That hadn’t been all of it but it was a good cross section. So, okay. She had her fears just like they all did. He knew she was even more afraid of being hurt again. But she’d come to see him and he’d thought she’d settled down to talk things out. “She’d come to talk. So what changed?” Brian wondered aloud.

“I did,” Linda put in. “So what about me would spook a tall, gorgeous blonde with her own million-dollar business? I’m married, so that couldn’t be it. Not my looks. As I said, she’s gorgeous and it didn’t take an expert makeup job to make her look like that.”

Brian frowned. He thought about Joy’s expression when Linda had walked in. It wasn’t that. She’d only looked bemused and a bit annoyed to have been interrupted. “No. She never cared about that sort of thing. We were stuck out there for six days and she didn’t once complain about her hair, her dirty clothes or anything. Except for wishing for a shower, which even the kids and I wanted.”

The next time he’d glanced at Joy, Linda was into her
sales pitch and Joy was gone. He was stumped. “Do me a favor. Find Lee. Or Rick. I want out of here.”

“Ah, you’re going after her.” Linda smiled. “The direct approach. I like that, so I’ll help you. ‘Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.’ I’ll have you sprung in an hour.”

A
gape Air buzzed with activity. All around Brian as he walked toward the office, men and women rushed hither and yon on missions of what looked like great importance. The last time he’d been there his whole attention had been on his young patient. He’d obviously missed a lot.

Brian stopped and looked around, wanting to get a feel for Joy’s world. A mechanic and a pilot, both dressed in the blue and khaki uniform he was used to seeing Joy wear, conferred over an engine. A small sky-blue-and-white jet sporting the Agape Air logo took off. A business man who carried himself like a corporate tiger paced and checked his watch. Then a young woman approached him and pointed him toward a sparkling commuter jet that looked as if it had just rolled off the assembly line. It too sported the Agape cloud and wings. Mr. Businessman’s scowl changed to a look of delight.

There was so much going on that Brian wondered if
coming here had been a mistake. He’d hate to have yet another important talk cut short. Feeling a little unsure of himself, Brian looked back at Linda Haversham where she sat waiting for him in her car. She made a shooing motion urging him inside the office and mouthed, “Go.”

He knew she was right, and went.

The walls were the colors of the planes, light blue with bold slashes of white, a wide counter separated a large office area from an empty waiting lounge. George Brady sat at a stainless steel desk in the area behind the counter, growling at someone on the phone.

Brian looked at the scheduling board and took it in, feeling a faint shock. He’d known Joy had expanded the company but he’d had no idea Agape’s fleet of small planes was so large or that she employed so many people. His head spun. How could he compete with Agape Air and Joy’s central position in the company? He’d been a fool to have ever thought she should or could give this up. This was what made Joy who she was.

The woman he loved.

Brady looked up when the bell over the door tinkled. The old man shot a killing glance Brian’s way. “Just you stay available for the return flight or Joy’s going to want to know why,” he said to the person on the other end of the line. Then he listened for a moment. “I know but that bigwig from LaFleur was mighty angry till she placated him with this solution.” Again he waited for a response. “Yeah, he’ll be aboard any minute.” George chuckled. “No, I wouldn’t want to cross Joy today, either. She’s like a bear with a sore paw.”

“And here’s the thorn,” he grumbled, glaring at Brian as he set down the phone.

Brian sighed. This whole idea was starting to feel like a bad idea. His legs were shaky and the sling holding his casted arm hung around his neck like a millstone. His wrist ached really badly, too. “What I’d like to know is why I’m the problem and not the solution,” he replied.

George’s gaze sharpened even though he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms lazily. “You should’ve been. Do you really want to know why you’re the problem instead?”

“I checked myself out of rehab to come here. My doctors were still screaming when I got in the car. What do you think? I don’t have a clue what happened. Joy and I had just started talking when a friend stopped by. Before we knew it, Joy was gone.”

“Humph. She came back here. Been crying. All red-eyed.” George shook his head jerkily. “Never saw her like that.” Again he glared at Brian.

At a loss, Brian felt his heart squeeze. Joy never cried. But then those fuzzy memories after the cliff collapsed on him came back flooding back. She’d cried then. Over him. “What did she say when she came back?” he insisted on knowing.

“That she was going to save you from yourself. We talked some, then she went in her office and cried some more. Then she got down to business clearin’ her desk like a tornado cuttin’ through a trailer park. She’s on the phone right now with the FAA about something she didn’t like in Pittsburgh yesterday to do with airport security. They just got back to her on it.”

Brian glanced at the only lit phone line, anxious to talk to Joy. But then something occurred to him. George Brady might be able to unravel this quicker than he could. “What exactly is Joy saving me from?”

“Appears your visitor is perfect for you.”

Brian blinked in surprise and laid his throbbing wrist on the counter. “Joy knows Linda is only a friend. Linda even introduced herself as my partner’s wife,” he explained.

Joy’s Uncle George shook his head. “She means you need her
kind
of woman. Joy has it in her head that she can’t deal with most women like your friend. I think it’s more that she doesn’t want to deal with them and so she’s afraid she’d mess it up. Accidentally on purpose if you get my drift. She thinks she’d make you miserable, you’d lose your friends and your professional connections. I had her talked around all this and a few other things earlier in the morning so she went to see you but then seeing…” George screwed up his face in an exaggerated grimace. “‘Snow White,’ she called her, convinced Joy otherwise.”

Brian thought back. They’d been talking about the ladies auxiliary. “I never said I expect Joy to join charity committees.”

“Ya did years ago,” George reminded him.

Yes, he had. He’d had Joy’s role in his life well-defined. He’d acted like an arrogant child instead of the adult he saw himself as. This was starting to make sense. “And I never told her otherwise. Just the way Joy told me she didn’t want kids—years ago. Now she says she does.”

George shook his head. “I think she meant later. She never said never all those years ago.”

Brian nodded and shifted to lean on the counter with his good arm, thinking he wasn’t as ready to be out and about as he’d thought. “She’d only just straightened that out when my friend came in. We never got into how she planned to have kids and run this place but—”

Brady lost his relaxed posture and shuffled over to the counter. “There’s a small office connected to hers. When I didn’t want it, she said if the Lord sent the right man her way, maybe she’d get to use it as a playroom and nursery. But I don’t see you talking Joy around to you being that man. She thinks you’ll settle for her and resent her and your life later on. She’s on a crusade to save you from yourself. Nothing’s harder to get by than Joy on a crusade.”

Brian nearly groaned. Instead he glanced down at the phone, wanting desperately to see Joy. The line was still lit and he was feeling past tired all the way to exhausted. Maybe the Lord was telling him something—like that he ought to take the time to think before he saw her. The thought gave him pause. He needed to think this time before he acted. He’d talked to George and got a lot of questions answered so he had to wonder what kind of insight talking to her brother and his wife and Anna Lovell would give him. Something flowered to life in him and he recognized it as hope.

“Do me a favor, George. Don’t tell her I was here. I’m going to fix this. I don’t know how yet, but I’ll do it. I have to.”

When a knock sounded at her door, Joy looked around her living room—a reflex for someone prone to leaving things a bit undone. But the place was neat, though she couldn’t say when she’d straightened things. Life, she realized, could be lived on autopilot but it was about as much of a challenge as flying that way.

She’d agreed to a visit from her brother Jim’s mother-in-law. Joy didn’t know exactly what kind of family relationship she had to her brother’s mother-in-law but it was a bond of family that Joy felt to Meg Taggert Alton nonetheless. Meg was still considered a local icon even though she only lived half the year at Laurel Glen, the horse farm where she’d been raised and had lived many of her adult years. The farm shared a border with Joy’s much smaller property. Curious about the purpose of the visit, Joy went down to let her elegant, fiftysomething neighbor in, then served them both tea at the dinette table.

In her typical no-nonsense style, Meg got down to the purpose of her visit as soon as she’d sweetened her tea. “I’m hoping you’ll agree to help us with something,” she said, her platinum hair gleaming in the sunlight that streamed in Joy’s fairy-tale windows. “I’ve gotten interested in Angel Flight. Your brother mentioned you fly for them quite a bit as do most of your pilots. I’ve decided to host a benefit for the organization at Laurel Glen. I’m hoping you’ll help out.”

It wasn’t really Joy’s thing, but Angel Flight was her pet charity. “What can I do?”

“We’re going to host a dinner party and silent auction at Laurel Glen next Saturday evening. With all the
stories following the crash I started thinking what a big asset you could be to the night.”

Now Joy understood. Meg wanted to be able to publicize a donation from Agape for the auction. “How about we kick in a round-trip flight on our newest corporate jet to a vacation destination?”

Meg was clearly taken aback for a moment. Her sapphire eyes widened, then she tilted her head, giving Joy a long assessing look. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, although it would certainly help. I thought you might come to the dinner.”

“Next Saturday?”

“I am sorry this is so last-minute but Jim mentioned you’d gone back to work. He was sure you were up to an evening out. I’d hoped you would consider using your recent celebrity to Angel Flight’s advantage now that you’re feeling better.”

Joy set her cup down just a bit too hard. This wasn’t what she’d expected. “I don’t understand.”

“We hoped you would circulate among the guests and let them ask you questions about your Angel Flight experiences. Perhaps about the rescue. And, of course, chat up donations. That sort of thing.”

The idea made Joy uncomfortable and she was so drained emotionally over Brian that she just didn’t have the energy to tackle something so out of her usual range. “I’ve never done anything like that. I’m not even sure I could.”

“Well, of course you could.” Meg looked at her, surprise written on her youthful features. “You deal with corporate executives all the time. You told me that your
self. What’s the difference? You’re just getting money out of the guests for a worthy charity instead of out of a business associate for a service. And they’d still be getting something for their money. We’ve put together some interesting packages for them to bid on. Lavender Hill donated riding lessons. My brother, Ross, offered a child’s birthday party at Laurel Glen complete with pony rides, and his wife Amelia offered to take pictures of all the little ones. A local gym offered a year’s membership. There are more, of course. I’ll familiarize you with what’s being offered later in the week but you get the idea. Oh, say you will. You won’t be the only one circulating, but your being involved would be such a boost.”

Jim had often said no one could say no to his mother-in-law and now Joy understood. She sighed. “Oh, okay. I don’t have anything better to do with my Saturday night.”

Meg smiled and left not long after. Joy wished she understood why the woman looked so relieved and excited. It wasn’t as if Laurel Glen didn’t host charity functions all the time. She couldn’t imagine them thinking they needed her presence to make it a success.

Brian picked up the phone on the first ring. He’d been waiting to hear from Meg Alton. He was more than a little nervous putting such an important plan in the hands of a virtual stranger, even if that stranger was Jim Lovell’s mother-in-law. “It’s all set,” a voice on the other end called out in answer to his greeting.

“Mrs. Alton?”

She laughed gleefully. “Sorry, I’m just so excited at
how this is all coming together.” Brian heard the motor start. “I’ve just left her. She’s completely on board though I think she’s a bit overwhelmed by the idea. Now all you have to do is deliver a good portion of the guests to this last-minute fund-raiser. Leave the rest up to Crystal and me. I have plenty of local arms to twist for contributions. I’ve got to go, dear. I hate to drive and talk on the phone. I’ll be in touch about timing. Take care now, dear, and do those exercises Jim says you need to do.”

Brian stared at the suddenly dead phone. When he’d asked Jim for help, he hadn’t realized Jim’s mother-in-law was a gleefully unrepentant matchmaker. He grinned. Thanks to her it looked as if this plan just might come together better than he’d dared hope.