The Doctor's Unexpected Family: (Inspirational Romance) (Port Provident: Hurricane Hope) (12 page)

She didn’t say anything in reply.

“Come here,” Pete said, gently tugging on her hand.

She stood up as he did. He let go of Angela’s hand, feeling a whisper of night air come between them. Instead of falling to his side, his hand stopped halfway and settled at the curve of her lower back. He let instinct take over and told himself to just be, not to question it.

Just as when he took her hand, she didn’t flinch. Pete pointed at the sky with his other hand. “Look at those stars.”

She nodded as he gestured from one side of the horizon to the other. “Mmm-hmm?”

“Well, they’re all stars. They’re all bright enough to bring light to a planet, like our sun does. But none of them can brighten this whole sky on their own. But when they all work together…this is what you get.”

She turned toward him. “I get what you’re saying. I just don’t want to let anyone down. Remember what I told you about David, how that promotion was his chance to do what he had always wanted to do? I guess in some strange way, I feel like this is mine. I’ve always wanted to be here, to make a difference here. As bad as it is right now, we’ve been given an opportunity to re-imagine Port Provident and do some things we’ve been talking about for a while because there’s virtually nothing untouched, nothing that doesn’t need something to be done.”

“Well, what does your heart tell you to do?”

“My heart?” Angela looked up into Pete’s eyes. He questioned his focus again, and tried to remind himself not to get lost in the brown, sugary swirl around her wide, dark pupils.

“When I was talking to Pastor Ruiz the other day, he quoted a verse to me. At the time, I blew it off, but since then, it’s been stuck in my head.”

“What was it?”

“A verse from Jeremiah. It went something like ‘Seek the welfare of the city and in its welfare, you’ll find yours’. I’ve been thinking about it with regard to The Grace Space.”

“How so?”

“Well, I guess if I do the right thing for the people who need help, even though I have plenty of other things on my plate, I’ll still be taken care of.”

She nodded, then shook her head. “But you’re planning on leaving in just a few weeks.”

“I can still get things set up and do some good in the meantime. And so can you. One step at a time.”

“I don’t know if I even know how to do that anymore. I’m so used to running in ten directions at once. I’m a mom, I’m a city council member, I’ve got responsibilities at our family business. I guess I wouldn’t even know how to focus on one thing.”

Angela tilted her head and looked up at the sky. Pete followed the direction of her gaze. He looked at the moon, hanging low and yellow out over the water. Then, that pull of instinct took over again as he touched his finger to Angela’s chin and gently urged it back down.

“What’s the welfare of the city you need to seek?” Pete looked right in her eyes. He wanted to make sure she thought this one through, that she really understood she couldn’t be all things to all people, no matter how much she wanted to be. “Your heart. What’s it telling you to do?”

She leaned forward, bringing her face and her body close enough that a gulf breeze wouldn’t be able to flutter between them. At the tentative touch of her hand on his chest, Pete felt his fingers press automatically a little more firmly at the small of her back.

He waited, unsure of what to do. If her hand slid up to his shoulder, if she tilted her head just so, if she gave him the slightest encouragement in any one of a hundred different ways, he knew what his heart would tell him to do.

Or at least what he’d be encouraged to do by a powerful mix of adrenaline, a dash of hormones…and a shooting star overhead.

Pete caught a fleeting burst of movement out of the corner of his eye. “Did you see that?”

She shook her head and from her lips came a slightly breathless “No, what?”

“A shooting star. The meteor shower must be getting started.” Pete didn’t move his hand, didn’t take a step. “Make a wish.”

He knew what he was wishing for right now.

Angela took a deep breath in through her nose, then closed her eyes as she let it out. She smiled and her cheeks rounded. Her brown eyelashes laid like a whisper along the curve of her skin. Pete couldn’t have looked around for another careening star if he’d wanted to. Blood shot through his veins like the fastest meteor above them.

Angela wasn’t the first woman he’d ever wanted to kiss, and the stars overhead were not the first ones he’d ever wished on. But together, what they combined to make him feel—that was a first.

“I can’t ask what you wished for, can I?” Pete questioned.

The smile lingered on her face and her eyes slowly opened like the dawn of the sun over the horizon. “It’s like blowing out birthday candles. You can’t share, or it won’t come true.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?”

Pete wasn’t about to share the thoughts in his head, either. He didn’t understand them all himself—he certainly didn’t expect Angela to, either.

And he didn’t want to scare her off. She and Celina needed a good place to stay, and there weren’t many options in Port Provident right now. That downstairs apartment was perfect for their needs. It had been hard enough to convince Angela to stay in the first place. He couldn’t give her any reasons to leave.

“No, no we can’t.” She slowly slid her hand off Pete’s chest and as she moved, the night breeze stirred and flowed in the new gap between them.

The moment disappeared like the trail behind a quick-moving star overhead.

“Did you wish for anything, Pete?”

He just couldn’t tell her how he’d studied her eyes, her smile, and the way his heart beat a little faster when her palm laid over it. “Not really. But I probably should have wished for a smooth opening for The Grace Space.”

“Two more days. You’ll be there for the opening, right?”

“Absolutely. I have a feeling your generosity and hard work is going to make a real difference in the welfare of this city in the weeks to come, Pete. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for jumping in and taking a few trucks of donated goods and some women who needed a medical checkup and out of those things, creating something that I think will be amazing.”

Pete turned and leaned on the rail of the deck, looking out toward the place where the ocean met the sand, only a few streets away. “Amazing might be too strong of a word.”

“I don’t think so. It’s exactly what the community needs right now. A place to come together, to see to basic needs and to feel safe. That to me is amazing. Meeting the needs of the people, right where they are. It’s why I love being on City Council, even though I feel like everything’s over my head right now.”

“Seeking the welfare of the city, huh?” A sense of peace filled Pete’s soul. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it felt good to know the hours he’d spent would really make a difference.

Maybe he had dismissed Pastor Ruiz’s verse and observations too easily the other day.

Maybe Pete wasn’t as numb as he’d long thought.

Chapter Six

Angela had to squint to keep the sun out of her eyes. She was actually holding her sunglasses in her hand, but Jennifer Parker was a very direct reporter. Angela knew if put her shades on, Jennifer’s next line of questioning would probably be to ask what Angela had to hide.

And that answer was definitely nothing. In just a few minutes, her nephew Marco—pastor of
La Iglesia de la Luz del Mundo
—would join her, Pete and Mayor Blankenship to cut the ribbon on The Grace Space. She’d been very excited when Jennifer Parker had been able to take a break from some of her other reporting duties to come and cover this event for the
Port Provident Herald
. The more people that knew about The Grace Space, the more people that could be helped by the resources provided here.

“So, how does The Grace Space integrate into everything that’s being sent to the island from other national non-profits?” Jennifer tapped the record button on her cell phone to capture Angela’s answer.

“Well, Jennifer, this is a completely local initiative. It’s separate from things that those larger, national names are here doing. We’re grateful for everyone’s contribution to the support and recovery of Port Provident from Hurricane Hope. But The Grace Space is unique. It gives us an opportunity to distribute household goods and food that have been donated to area churches like
La Iglesiade la Luz del Mundo
from concerned groups all across the state. Plus, with the opening of the clinic area, we’re utilizing the human capital we have with our world-class medical center and medical school. There are students and residents, nurses and doctors who are in limbo with the current closure of Provident Medical, and this gives them the opportunity to use their unique skills to serve the community while the leadership at Provident Medical charts a plan toward reopening. Finally, we’ve tapped into more community resources with social services workers and lawyers to staff a Q&A area where our citizens can come and ask questions and get answers as they navigate the paperwork and such that comes with the recovery process.”

“But why is this being run by
La Iglesia
, instead of being coordinated by a national organization or a government agency?” Jennifer moved the microphone end of her phone a little closer to Angela.

“Well, because everyone has a role to play in Port Provident’s recovery.” Angela searched for a better way to explain it than just a typical politician’s sound bite. “When you look at the stars, none of them individually illuminate the night sky. But when they all work together to shine in their individual areas, the effect is a wonderful thing. This project is like that. We’re all just trying to brighten the areas where we can best serve.”

As she said the words, Angela’s mind rewound forty-eight hours to when she stood on Pete’s deck under a thousand shooting stars. She’d replayed everything about that hour in her mind a hundred times.

Pete’s words made total sense as she gave more thought to them. She couldn’t do everything, but with some focus, she’d be able to make what she could do the best and most effective it could be. That wasn’t
not
serving her constituents. Instead, it ensured that she best-served her constituents so that what she did bring to them was a full effort, not a halfway job.

What made less sense to her was the jumble of feelings that thinking about Pete—not his words, but Pete himself—elicited in her when her thoughts strayed back to the deck and the stars and the feel of her hand in his and his hand on her waist, keeping her close.

“Angela?” Jennifer looked straight at her, with a stern look on her face. “Any updates?”

Great. She’d been caught. She could focus on one project at a time. But that project could not be Dr. Pete Shipley. The island needed her to do her best work for them. Not to fantasize about her new landlord and his gunmetal gray eyes.

“I’m sorry, Jennifer. What was that again?”

“The temporary housing. Do we have any updates on that?”

Good. She knew exactly where she stood on this subject. No confusion. No shooting stars. “We’ve made great progress. I hope that we will be able to make an announcement to the citizens of Port Provident by the end of this week. With ninety percent of homes in the city limits receiving some kind of damage, there is nothing that means more to me than getting our citizens out of shelters and hotels and into more stable housing situations. Then they can focus less on day-to-day survival and begin to move forward and recover.”

Jennifer used her thumb to tap the red button on the screen of her phone. “Thanks, Angela. Cara Perkins came with me today, too. I think she’s inside the building getting some photos. We’ll run this tomorrow.”

“Great. Do you have any plans to put it on the wire? I’d love to see Houston and even Dallas or Austin pick the story up and see that we’re grateful for the help, and that we’re moving forward.”

“Sure. We’ve been putting everything we write that’s hurricane related out there. There’s a lot on the wire these days, so I don’t know if you’ll see this particular story picked up, but it’s worth a shot.”

Angela nodded. “All we can do is keep trying to spread the word. There are still good stories to tell here. It’s not all doom and gloom.”

Jennifer walked off to interview some of the attendees from the community, and Angela decided it was time to make her way to the front door of the sanctuary of
La Iglesia
, which had been transformed into The Grace Space for the time being. It would remain that way until the church got the insurance paperwork straightened out and had the money to begin replacing furniture and equipment and rebuilding—or until The Grace Space outlasted donations and the community’s need.

A hand-painted sandwich board-style sign stood next to the door and read “Welcome to The Grace Space” in bright red letters, trimmed with a stripe of bold black around each individual letter. Someone had moved a few potted plants near the sign, as well. Angela had no idea where they’d found them, but the whole effect was cheery and it made her smile.

Hopefully it would bring a smile to the faces of those who needed what The Grace Space had to offer.

She walked through the door and stopped. The door swung shut and tapped her in the back. And still, she didn’t move.

More hand-painted signs had been hung from the ceiling, declaring what types of items could be found where: kitchen, bedroom, toys, clothes, food. To the right, curtains had been erected to separate the small clinic from the rest of the space. The pews and tables that had once been inside of
La Iglesia
were no longer able to be used for adequate seating for church members, but they had enough usefulness left in them to make displays for all the goods that had been donated.

The Grace Space looked better than Angela could have ever dreamed. It looked almost like a real store, with aisles and departments. Pete and his volunteers had created a space where people would not be embarrassed to shop—where they could feel like they were getting a hand up, not a hand out, and could feel the care and concern from those who had donated the goods and the time to help the residents of Port Provident rebuild their homes and their lives.