Stranded in Paradise (18 page)

“It's really kicking up out there,” Carter said when he and Tess came into the living room, after going to their separate quarters to dry off
.
With the storm's approach, Stella had insisted he take one of the other guest rooms inside the main house so he wouldn't get doused every time he had to pop into his room. They found Stella sitting peacefully in a chair, feeding Henry pieces of dry Eukanuba.

Tess shook her head in amazement. Neighbors and business owners had battened down hatches and headed for Up Country days ago. Yet Stella calmly fed her cat tiny pieces of food, indifferent to Nature's mugging.

She followed Carter into the kitchen, where he switched on the radio and scanned the range of the dial, looking for up-to-the-minute weather advisories. She bent to listen over his shoulder.

He frowned. “Will you stop that—you're putting gray hairs on my head.”

Stella smiled gently when Tess paced back into the living room. “Rest, Child. Have faith that God is in His kingdom and all is right with the world. ”

She came to sit down on the sofa. The wind had become a shrieking woman bent on murderous revenge. “Did you have faith?” she asked, trying to take her mind off the storm. “When your husband was accused of being a communist and couldn't work?”

Stella smiled. “Not at first. I remembered nights that he was gone to meetings. I assumed they were about scripts. They could have been something else. I never asked. I was selfishly involved in my own career.” She gently lowered Henry to the floor. “You see, I never really completely believed Edgar. Some bit of gossip, a thoughtless word, speculative innuendo always made me think that perhaps he'd fallen in with someone, attended some sort of meeting, maybe had done something innocently that had somehow connected him to the Communist Party. I felt there had to be a ‘reason' for Jack Warner fingering him as a communist sympathizer.

“So, I waffled between my husband's guilt and innocence. But then, I realized there was nothing I could do about any of it, if Edgar were guilty. What was happening was out of my hands. When my husband lost his job, we began to lose possessions—things that had meant much to us. We lost our home in Los Angeles. Friends. I began to lose opportunities. Scripts stopped coming. Worse, the rejection was a cancer on Edgar's soul.”

Tess reached for a throw pillow and held it on her lap. “Go on.”

A smile lit the old woman's eyes. “God knew what we needed. This house—” Stella's gaze swept the room, “was my mother's. When she died, she left it to me. By then Edgar and I had nothing, so you can imagine how much we appreciated getting it.”

“You'd lost everything?”

“We lost possessions. But possessions are only things. We lost nothing of value. We still had each another and eventually mother's house came to us. We both still believed in God.”

“Was faith enough when Edgar died?”

“Nothing is enough when you lose the one you love most in the world—not at first,” Stella said gently. “But without my strong conviction that ours was only a temporary parting, I would have died with Edgar.” Stella's gaze drifted away and she quietly excused herself to go to her room.

Tess heard Carter switch off the kitchen radio. She got up to rejoin him.

“This thing is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better,” he said grimly.

15

“. . . moving offshore now. Dangerous storm . . . tuned for updates . . .”

Wind shrieked as Stella serenely adjusted Henry more comfortably around her neck. “I've never left this house in a storm, and I don't plan to start now. But if you kids would feel more secure, go. Drive to Kula. I have a friend there who would be willing to let you sit out the storm with her.”

“I think we
all
need to move to a public shelter,” Carter said.

Tess could hear a television commentator's sober voice repeating evacuation instructions. Stella couldn't stay here—not alone.

The old woman shook her head. Tess brushed by her and entered the living room. “What's that pounding sound?”

Carter inclined his head, and then proceeded to the front door, calling back to her, “Someone's here.” Air pressure pushed the door in the moment Carter turned the knob. Rain came in gusting blasts. Stella appeared in the hallway, eyes curious. “Fredrick?” Her smile widened when she spotted the rain-drenched couple huddled together on the porch. Both man and woman were stoop-shouldered with wet gray hair peeking out from beneath yellow rain slickers. “Ben! Esther!” she called out. “Come in! Come in! It's a wonder you didn't blow away out there!”

The elderly couple stepped inside the foyer, greeting Stella warmly. The man extended an arthritic hand as rain made muddy puddles on the marble entryway. Stella made the introductions. “Ben and Esther Grantham, this is Tess Nelson and Carter McConnell, my houseguests.”

Carter shook the white-haired gentleman's hand. “Tess was just asking Stella if we shouldn't move to higher ground.”

The man's wizened features creased. “It could be more dangerous getting to shelter now than staying put. Esther and I have been through some pretty rough ones. We'd stay at our own place except we're so close to the shore. The wind took out a big tree in our yard. It crashed into our dining room. We didn't figure it was a good idea to just let it pummel us.” His gaze roamed the darkened living room. “Looks like you got this place buttoned up tight. Do you mind if we keep you company until the storm blows over?”

“Of course, you're welcome to stay, Ben.” Stella led the couple into the kitchen, motioning for them to sit at the table. “Carter got all the windows covered, so we're nice and cozy in our little cocoon. When the fury worsens we'll have to move to an inside wall of the bathroom.”

Tess's stomach hit the floor.
Worsens?
Crashing noises—like a garbage truck dumping a load of glass— thudded outside the windows. Then the noise switched to one of a freight train running through the beach house.

“Thank you, Stella.” The old gentleman reached out and ruffled Henry's belly, then seated his wife in a chair adjacent to Stella's. Worry hovered on Esther's matronly face.

“Goodness—it is getting bad.” Esther's eyes darted to the window when the sound of a limb snapping and hitting the side of the house crashed.

Tess watched with something like envy as Ben patted his wife's shoulder.

The small group sat in the candlelit room, waiting. Inside Tess, an emotional storm built—a hurricane of circumstances. Nine days ago her biggest worry had been Len Connor; now she was afraid for her life. When asked a week ago what she valued most she would have answered justice. Right now, what she wanted most was another few years—another sunrise. An opportunity to make something of her life, something lasting and worthwhile. She could find another job; she could blot Len and
Connor.com
out of her mind and put them where they belonged in her priorities. What mattered were the people in her life, her family. And as much as she had tried to deny it, had let the bitterness of her childhood blot it out, the truth was she loved her family. She had chosen to remember only the bad times, but there had been good times too. Sunday afternoons reading the paper together, laughing at the funnies. She had been so preoccupied with finding someone to blame for the downward spiral in her life, she'd forgotten to look for the good. Sure, the bad times had been just as real, but it hadn't all been bad. As she sat here with the wind threatening to blow their house in, it became crystal clear to her. It was Mona she had to contend with— Mona she had to tackle head-on before she could ever resolve the real tempest in her life.

16

Around midnight Ben and Esther started to nod off. Stella and Henry dozed in a nearby chair.

Carter nudged Tess's leg with his foot. “Hanging in there?”

The wind shrieked loudly in the eaves. She looked nervously toward the roof and placed a hand on her stomach.

Carter rested his head against the rim of the sofa and listened as flying objects struck the shuttered windows. Something hard thumped the side of the house, and in the distance storm sirens wailed. He envisioned himself in a war zone, his face white as he ducked reflexively every time a foreign object slammed into the house. Trash receptacles weren't SCUD missiles, but at the moment Carter couldn't distinguish the difference.

He smiled, studying Tess's worried features. She was a pretty woman, who had a lot to offer a man if she would only release the bitterness in her heart. Carter wasn't usually impulsive; it took him six months to get to know the average woman and even then he moved with caution, but there was something different about this woman.

A nonbeliever.

Was God testing his resolve to follow Him all the way?

Tess shifted and moved closer to the sofa. She seemed almost like a fragile kitten who would look up at him with those doleful eyes, something he could drape around his neck for the rest of his life. Carter shook his head at the thought.

He'd known this woman nine days . . . nine mind-boggling, problematic days, and something was happening inside of him, something bothersome. She was intelligent and goal oriented; and she couldn't trust anyone if her life depended on it. God, man—the recipient didn't seem to matter. She was incapable of placing her trust in anyone.

Therein lay a major problem; Carter believed that eternal life, and his personal security, hinged on nothing less than the ability to trust.

Trust wasn't concrete—an object that he could hold in his hand and claim ownership of. He had to work at trust as hard as manning his command station, but willingness— the desire to believe—made faith possible.

Oh, Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in You.

He absently stroked his hand across the top of Tess's hair. The fragrant mass felt soft and smelled of wind and rain.

Her sleepy voice drifted up. “When this is over . . . will you call me?”

Carter smiled, burying his face into the floral silk. “Sure. What shall I call you?”

He could feel her laughing. “Beautiful would be nice.” She twisted to look up at him. “No commitment, you understand. But I'd like it if you could call to say hello once in a while, let me know how you are—if those new runways point toward Denver.”

“I'd like that. And if you think about it, you can give me a ring every now and then.”

She didn't miss a beat. “What sort of ring do you want?”

A smile caught the corners of his mouth. Flirting. They were flirting, and it felt good. “Is this where I'm supposed to say ‘a wedding ring'?”

She twisted her body to meet his eyes. “Of course not—”

His tone sobered. “I won't forget this vacation.”

Her gaze softened. “Nor will I.”

The moment stretched. Finally, she eased free of his embrace, as if she knew that the moment and the relationship was fleeting. “I'm hungry.”

Was he glad she'd broken the mood? Maybe. Relieved?

Yes.

The only thing he knew for certain was that the relationship wasn't going anywhere—she wasn't a Christian—and the thought stung.

“Nelson? When this is over I'll buy you a sixteen-ounce steak at Moose McGillicuddy's.”

“Deal.” They shook hands on it.

According to Carter, she didn't have faith because she'd never asked for it.

Just ask for it. Desire it.

Right.

She buttered a piece of bread. Two A.M. approached; the eye of the storm was near.

She was a businesswoman. If a customer didn't place an order, then according to Carter's theory, the customer didn't know they wanted something.

Salvation couldn't be compared to ordering floor wax, but she knew the difference.

Did faith work that way? It sounded too pat—too easy—and in her world, when something sounded “too good to be true” it generally was.

She was savvy enough to know that those professing faith did not live trouble-free lives. If that were the case, then Carter would have had a perfect vacation. He wouldn't be sitting in a stranger's kitchen, eating cold bread and jelly while Maui was getting blown away—or sounded like it.

“Suppose,” she mused, setting the bread sack in front of Carter. “Suppose I buy into your theory. My grandmother had faith, but Mona turned out awful. Why would God allow my mother to not inherit her mother's faith?”

“God isn't Santa Claus. Mona had her own choices to make.” He offered the spoon, and she licked the remains of the sticky sweetness.

She took a bite of her meal. “Is that what you really think?”

“I think someone you loved very deeply disappointed you,” Carter said, taking a bite of his bread also. “I think they broke a trust, and now you find it hard to believe in anyone or anything.”

Her jaw dropped. Then she clamped it shut. Tightness formed around her eyes. “You can't know that.”