Nantucket Romance 3-in-1 Bundle (67 page)
1. Lucas’s love for Kate is an allegory for Christ’s love for us. In what ways are the timing and qualities of Lucas’s love symbolic of Christ’s love?
2. What are some of the ways Lucas saved Kate in the story? What was Kate’s reaction to his saving her? How has Christ saved you? Have you ever responded in some of the ways that Kate did?
3. One thing Kate was apt to do is fix things on her own. In our culture, that’s a popular reaction. Do you respond to crises in a similar way? Is that the best way to deal with problems?
4. One of the hardest things to do when trouble comes is wait. Kate had difficulty waiting when her publisher was trying to find a solution to the problem. Is it hard for you to wait on God? Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” How can that be applied to trying times? Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” What can we learn about patience from this verse?
5. When Kate made the choice to leave Lucas, he knew it was a decision Kate had to make for herself. How has God been patient in waiting for you to come to Him?
6. When Kate left Lucas, he said that a thousand miles couldn’t separate her from his love. How is Christ’s love like that?
7. Lucas laid it all on the line when he faced his biggest fear and publicly proclaimed his love for Kate. How has Christ proclaimed His love for you?
8. Even though Kate broke Lucas’s heart by leaving and by fighting her relationship with him, he gladly welcomed her back. Have you ever pushed Christ away or run from His love? What does it feel like to know that no matter what you do, He will always welcome you home?
AN EXCERPT FROM
Surrender Bay
PROLOGUE
“Why’d you wait so long to turn on the flashlight last night?” Landon asked.
Even though evening shadows crawled over Landon’s backyard, Samantha Owens could see his eyes searching hers. He hadn’t said anything about her delay before now, but she could tell he’d been bothered all day because he didn’t once tug her ponytail.
She lifted her body out of the waist-deep Nantucket water, flipping over to land on the pier with a sodden plop. The outdoor lamp lashed to the last post spotlighted her. Her bathing suit clung to her stomach, and she pulled at the fabric just to hear the sucking sound as it left her skin.
She looked over her shoulder and saw Landon’s mom through the lit kitchen window, washing supper dishes. Mr. Reed appeared just then and pulled her against his chest. She laughed at something he said, then turned in his arms. Sam looked away.
Landon splashed through the water and hoisted himself onto the pier beside her. His arms had filled out over the summer, and he’d shot up a good two inches. Sam wasn’t sure she liked him changing so much.
“Did you hear me?”
Landon bumped Sam’s foot under the water, and she felt him watching her. She shrugged as casually as she could. “I went to bed late. I got a book on the Red Sox. Did you know they used to be called the Boston Americans?” A breeze drifted over her wet skin, tightening it into gooseflesh.
“Your light wasn’t on.” Skepticism coated his words.
Changing the subject never worked with Landon. When would she learn? “I snuck in the bathroom to read. You know how Emmett is.” Landon didn’t know the half of it, but some things she’d never tell anyone. Not even Landon.
Sam lay back, resting her spine against the wooden planks. She closed her eyes and wished she could stay just like this all night, listening to the sound of crickets and the splash of water kissing the shoreline.
“I was worried.”
His voice sounded older, deeper than she remembered. “You worry too much.”
He shifted, and Sam opened her eyes. He was lying beside her, his body a plank-width away, his head turned toward her. The moonlight glimmered on his hair, and shadows settled between his drawn eye-brows. “Don’t forget the flashlight again.”
Sam didn’t much like being told what to do, but something in the tone of his voice touched the deepest place in her as no one ever had. “I won’t.”
He held Sam’s gaze as if testing her sincerity. After a moment, she crossed her eyes at him, watching his face blur into a double image.
“Weirdo,” he said.
“Freak.”
“Slime bucket.”
“Geek.”
A mosquito stung her neck, and she slapped at it. Her skin was already speckled with half a dozen bites, but they didn’t bother her much. She was surprised Mrs. Reed hadn’t come out yet with the can of Off!, but maybe she and Mr. Reed were too busy smooching in the kitchen.
Sam imagined the inside of her own house, just two doors down, and felt a shadow press its way into her soul. Her mom would be calling her in soon.
She turned to Landon, glad to see his face had softened. “Wanna have a sleepover at your house? We can decide what we want to put in our time capsule.”
Landon glanced away, and Sam didn’t recognize the look that passed over his face.
“We’re getting too old for that.”
Well, la-di-da
. Maybe Landon thought turning thirteen had made him all grown up. Sam suddenly felt every day of their seven-month age gap. “Time capsules aren’t just for kids, you know.”
One corner of his mouth slid upward, but not quite enough to bunch up his cheek. He pulled himself upright and splashed back into the murky water. “I wasn’t talking about the capsule.”
She wanted to ask what he meant, but she could tell he didn’t want her to by the way his head dipped low.
“Samantha!” Her mom’s voice had an edge that said she’d been calling awhile.
“Coming!” Though Sam knew she should get up and go, her body lay against the boards as heavy as a ship anchor. She should have gotten out of the water hours ago so she wouldn’t drip water across the kitchen floor. Too late now. At least Emmett wasn’t home.
“I should go in too,” Landon said, wading alongside the pier.
“The mosquitoes are bad tonight.” He smacked at his arm.
Why couldn’t she just stay at Landon’s house? If he was so worried, why didn’t he invite her over? He stopped at the shoreline, where the water licked at his feet.
“You’d better go.”
He’d stand there until she left, he was just that stubborn.
Sam pulled her feet from the water and walked down the pier. They crossed paths in front of his parents’ Adirondack chairs.
Landon turned and lifted his fingers. “Don’t forget the flashlight.”
“I won’t.” Her feet carried her across the Reeds’ yard, then across Miss Biddle’s. She knew by feel the moment she stepped into her own backyard. Emmett kept the grass clipped so short their lawn had turned wheat brown. It drove her mom crazy.
Sam entered the cottage through the back door, hoping she could sneak into her room and change into dry clothes before her mom saw how wet she was, but the squeak of the screen door gave her away.
“Samantha.” Her mom’s lips pinched together as she looked Sam over.
“Sorry, I forgot.” Ribbons of water dripped from the edges of her swimsuit, carving rivers between goose bumps. They trickled over her ankles as she made a mad dash past her mom to her bedroom.
“I’ll clean it up,” she called.
“You bet you’ll clean it up. I don’t know why I bother cleaning around here.”
Sam rummaged through her drawers, pushing aside the night-gowns her mom had bought, and pulled out her favorite long T-shirt and a stretchy pair of shorts.
A few minutes later, Sam entered the kitchen and took a towel from the drawer, then wiped up the mini puddles. The bones of her knees knocked against the wood floor as she crept along, swiping in wide arcs.
“Why do you wear that ratty old thing? You look like a boy, Samantha.”
“It’s comfortable.” Sam slung her wet ponytail across her shoulder.
“You missed a spot.” Her mom pointed toward the door.
Sam backtracked and dried the area. By the time she finished, her mom had left the kitchen, so Sam tossed the towel in the washer and returned to her room, shutting the door. The doorknob was the old-fashioned kind, cut glass with clear angles. She’d thought it beautiful when she was little. When the sunlight flooded the room and hit the glass, it splayed prisms of light across the wall.
Now she wished for a plain old metal doorknob, the kind with a lock.
Sam turned out the light and slipped under the quilt. Before she lay against the pillow, she reached into her bedside drawer and with-drew the flashlight. The switch flipped on with ease, and she set it on the wooden sill of the window. She turned on her side and tucked the covers under her chin.
She lay that way for a long time, hearing the sounds of her mom getting ready for bed. She knew it would be a while before Emmett came home, but still she listened for the sound of his car, for the crunch of gravel under his work boots. She listened until her ears were so full of silence it seemed they would burst.
Sometime later she startled awake to the sound of the front door opening. She heard her mom talking; then Emmett’s voice rumbled through her closed door. “She didn’t pull the weeds like I told her to.” He cursed.
“Well, she can do it tomorrow.” Her mom’s voice was fading.
“How much did you lose tonight?”
The sound of their bedroom door clicking shut resonated in her ears.
“Get up.”
Sam’s arm stung with the sharp slap, and she shot up in bed. Dawn’s light filtered through the window, gray and dim.
Emmett was already walking away. “Go pull the weeds like I told you yesterday. No breakfast until you’re done.”
“I already did.” In her fog of sleep, the words slipped out.
He turned and hauled her out of bed, and her knees buckled as her feet hit the floor. Fully awake now, she realized it was Saturday and her mom was at work. “I’ll do better.”
He straightened, and she noticed tiny red veins lining the whites of his eyes. She looked at the rug beneath her feet. He released her burning arm.
When he left, she traded her long T-shirt for an old, faded one and set to work in the flower beds, pulling the weeds she’d missed the day before. The sun was nowhere to be seen, hiding behind a thick curtain of angry clouds. She’d emptied two bucketfuls and was back on her knees when Emmett opened the back door. The squawk of the hinges made her jump.
“Since you didn’t do what you were told the first time, you can pull the dead blooms and trim the hedges too.” With that, he disappeared into the house.
She sat back on her haunches and brushed the hair from her face with dirty fingers. She scanned the rows of lilies, and she pictured all the rose blooms in the front yard and the hedges lining the yard. With a sigh, she leaned forward and grabbed a dandelion, wrapping it around her hand and yanking hard. She tossed it, roots and all, in the bucket.
The rain started then, first a drop on her hand, then one on her cheek. Within a minute, a steady shower fell. She planted her knees in the dirt and began pulling wilted blooms from the lily plants. By the time she’d finished the first one, the dirt under her knees was mud, and her empty stomach twisted. She scooted toward the next plant and went back to work.
Sam didn’t see Landon until he fell to his knees beside her. Wordlessly, he plucked a bloom and then another, tossing them in the bucket. When he finally looked at her, his hair hung in wet, dark strands over his eyes and a clump of dirt smudged his cheek, and Sam knew she looked no better.
His lips turned up on one side, and she couldn’t stop her own smile.
They worked until the beds and hedges were done and their clothes were soaked clean through. Landon reheated the pancakes his dad had made that morning, then they watched TV with his younger brother, Bailey, until lunchtime. By then, the sun had come out again, and the threesome played all afternoon, passing a football and fishing off the end of the Reeds’ pier.
At supper time, Landon headed inside, and Sam said she had to go in too. But when she got home, her mom and Emmett were gone, so she had a bowl of Lucky Charms and a handful of peanuts. When she saw Landon in his backyard again, she joined him, and they tossed his football until it was too dark to see.