The Wonder of You (23 page)

It struck Roark that for the first time, they’d invited him to . . . stay. The sense of belonging
 
—or wanting to
 
—to this hovering, loyal, brave clan felt . . . like home. Like something he might have been searching for all his life.

It knocked him a little off-kilter.

“You know, if you really want to impress Amelia, to show her you belong, you could enter the annual lumberjack games,” Darek said quietly.

“Oh, Darek,” Ingrid said. “I don’t think
 
—”

“It’s perfect, Mom.” Grace turned to Roark. “Seth won last year, but Darek won a couple years back and he could teach you all the tricks.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a competition held during the annual Flapjack Festival about three weeks away. The events are based on lumberjack sports
 
—chainsawing, chopping, team broad sawing, and birling.”

“Birling?”

“Logrolling,” Darek said. “It’s not a full-out competition, just smaller events designed to stir up excitement for those competing in official events around the state. Brings out the locals, maybe a few contenders who want to sharpen their skills. But it’s serious enough around here that you need to know what you’re doing.”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Yet,” Darek said, a gleam in his eye. “At the very least, you’d show Amelia that you’re willing to fit into her world.”

He did want to fit into her world. After all, he’d taught her how to belong to his. Maybe it was his turn to join hers.

Who knew? He might even impress himself.

“Okay, you’re on,” he said to Darek. Then he turned to Grace. “How about another plate of spaghetti?”

The puck pinged off the crossbar, the sound reverberating through the arena. Max chased it, scooped it up, and headed to the other goal, slapping the shot wide.

It slammed into the boards.

Jace Jacobsen, his brother-in-law and line coach, former enforcer of the St. Paul Blue Ox, brought the puck down the ice. A good six inches taller than Max, Jace appeared every inch his reputation as a former bruiser. What most people didn’t know was his soft side, the side that despised his reputation and led him to spend hours volunteering in the children’s ward at the university hospital.

He circled around Max, who’d stopped, sweating despite the chilly air of the practice dome at Blue Ox HQ. Max propped his hockey stick on his knees, leaning over, breathing hard.

“Something eating you, Max?” Jace said. Of course, his slap shot landed dead-on in the center of the net.

Max straightened, skated toward Jace. “Grace and I are married.”

“Wow. So you
did
elope. I mean, you hinted at it all season.”

“Three weeks ago, right after our last game.”

“Three
weeks
ago? And my wife doesn’t know yet? Oh, Eden’s going to be livid.”

“Yeah, well, she can get in line. We haven’t told anyone. Not Grace’s parents, no one.”

Jace skated over to the bench. Picked up a towel. “Wait
 
—didn’t you spend last week at their house?”

Max skated with the puck around the boards, behind the goal, tucking it in. Finally.

He skated in to the bench and grabbed another towel. “Yeah.”

Jace regarded him with a smile. “And you didn’t tell anyone? So that means . . .” He dropped into a chuckle. “Fun.”

“No doubt. Grace was afraid to tell her family, so she slept upstairs with Amelia all week long. I hung out in the den.”

Jace’s laughter echoed through the arena. “Dude! What a way to spend your honeymoon.”

“Tell me about it. Grace would sneak down at night sometimes, but let’s just say that I’m ready for the wrath of John Christiansen if I can spend the entire night with my wife.”

“You gotta bite the bullet and confess. John and Ingrid like you
 
—they’ll be thrilled.” Jace picked up his water bottle.

Max didn’t answer.

And right there, hanging in the silence, was the truth.

“I’m not so sure. I mean, yeah, they said they gave us their blessing, but now that it’s done . . . After all, I’m dooming their daughter to grief.”

“I thought we went through this.” Jace grabbed his skate guards, worked them on, then headed off the ice with Max following. “You have to let go of that, let her choose whether to love you or not.”

“I know. But . . . it suddenly got real the day we said, ‘Till death do us part.’ And it’s worse now.” They entered the locker room, empty of the cacophony of his teammates’ voices, a sound Max loved to lose himself inside.

Jace sat on the bench, loosened his skates.

“Grace wants to have kids.”

Jace looked up at him. “I thought you . . . uh, took care of that.”

“She wants to adopt.”

Jace pulled his shirt off. “Makes sense. The second Eden and I got home from the honeymoon, she started talking about kids. Of course Grace wants to be a mom
 
—”

“I don’t want to be a dad.” There, he said it straight out, even as the words seared through him. Someday, if he said it enough, his heart would accept what his brain knew to be right.

Jace tossed his shirt into the hamper, grabbed his bottle of soap. “Never?”

“I can’t bear to leave a family behind, grieving me.”

Jace stopped at the door of the showers. “Max. You’re going to leave people behind. It’s inevitable. And they don’t have to be family to grieve you.”

“Kids.
My
kids. Leaving them without a father. I’ve been through that. No thanks.” He threw off his own shirt. “I just wish Grace would get that.”

“I think she probably does. But the good thing about Grace is that she’s not alone. You married into a family with a team of overbearing brothers. Do you think they wouldn’t help her?”

Jace had a point. Even now the family’s immediate welcome of Yulia into their midst rose up to confirm his words.

“I think you need to consider what you’re truly afraid of.” Jace stepped into the shower.

“I’m not afraid of anything!” Max said, grabbing his own soap.

Jace said nothing further until after he was dressed and waiting for Max in his office, just off the lobby of the arena.

Max came in, flopped into a chair. “Okay, yes, I can admit not looking forward to getting sick, deteriorating in front of my family. Don’t shoot me for wanting to protect Grace from adding more to the stress of taking care of me.”

Jace closed his laptop. Since moving to the coaching staff, he seemed older, maybe more responsible, and now he looked at Max like a brother. “Dude. Who are you really trying to protect here?”

Max shook his head.

“You’ve cemented a reputation of being the guy who doesn’t get involved. Doesn’t have long-term relationships. Suddenly you find a girl who looks past all your demons and loves you anyway, and you actually let yourself fall in love.”

Max wanted to cringe, but Jace’s smile eked out his own. “Yeah, okay. I got lucky.”

“You scored big. But now you’ve got a chance to love beyond yourself by putting it all out there for a family, and that scares the stuffing out of you.”

Max started to shake his head again, but Jace cut him off.

“I get it, Max. I used to think that I couldn’t let a woman close, because when she got a glimpse of the true me, she’d run. But Eden proved that theory wrong, and she’s got me believing that a baby is a good idea. I can’t help but think that I’ve lost my mind, but another part of me can’t wait to know that we’ve created a life together. To hold our child in my arms, to teach him
 
—or her
 
—how to shoot a puck. It’s crazy, but I want it, man. And you do too, if you let yourself admit it.”

“Grace deserves to have her own child growing inside her. Not be saddled with a guy who’s already stolen that from her.”

“So what? You leave her? Divorce her?”

“I suggested it.”

Jace’s expression had him thinking he should flee at full tilt from the building. Max held up a hand in defense. “I know I’m an idiot.”

“Thank you.”

“But I can’t get past the fact that she won’t have what she desperately longs for.”

“Having a biological child is only one way to be a parent, and if any two people are suited to adopt children and create an amazing family, it’s you and Grace.”

Max managed a slight smile, followed by the sudden, sweet image of Yulia sitting with Grace as she worked a puzzle, or Grace braiding her hair, or the way Yulia had pocketed herself into his embrace at the campfire.

Maybe.

“Stop trying so hard not to be happy, Max,” Jace said, rising. “And start trusting the life God is giving you. It just might knock your socks off.”

S
ATURDAY’S STORM
had littered trees and debris from Hungry Jack Lake all the way down to Deep Haven, overflowing the riverbanks with frothy, murky brown water and stirring the big lake into a turmoil as it threw flotsam upon the shore.

Three days later, the air still hung heavy with mist. Amelia sat in the coffee shop, needing an escape from the lodge. How she hated housekeeping. With a full house booked for Memorial Day weekend, she wanted to summon a cheer, but her summer loomed ahead as an endless cycle of making beds, washing sheets, cleaning bathrooms, and mopping floors. She still nursed her sprained wrist, encased in a brace.

“Where’s Roark?” Ree sat opposite her in an overstuffed chair, holding a blended vanilla mocha. “I thought 007 would be here. I was looking forward to the view.”

Amelia looked up from the screen, where she had been clicking through her photographs of the Boy Scout trip. The shot of Roark, his hand up, grimacing, could made her smile with the memory of his wretched paddling skills. Until, of course, everything faded away and he’d become her hero.

She wouldn’t easily forget the image of him standing onshore, hands on his hips, his shirt wet against his chiseled outline, watching the plane as if she carried his heart with her.

She’d expected him at the hospital, or later, at the resort, but she hadn’t seen him since he’d spoken those words into her ear, the ones that stirred the feeling he’d seeded all those months ago while she stood on a bridge in Prague.
You are more than capable of handling yourself. Do what you know to do.

“He must have gotten off his shift early.” She couldn’t brush the disappointment from her voice.

Ree must have noticed. “No more sending him packing?”

“Not so much,” Amelia said. “He was . . . Well, he probably saved Big Mike’s life. I’m not sure how he talked Jake Goldstein into flying him out.”

“How are you? The whole thing made the papers
 
—even in Duluth. Said that the EMS crew hiked in.” Ree gestured to Amelia’s braced arm.

“I’m fine. I fell trying to get help. And yes, Seth and Pastor Dan came in with a crew. Seth wasn’t real thrilled that I’d left them behind when he showed up hours later at the hospital.”

“The papers said he evacuated a troop of Boy Scouts.”

“I think that might trend toward fiction. Roark had it under control. Even had the boys singing camp songs. You should have seen him
 
—he went from being a duck waddling over the lake to . . . I don’t know, a rescuer, I guess. Unflappable. I bet that
comes from his days as a missionary kid. Which makes him, by the way, probably poor and not remotely a European playboy.”

“And mysterious. And exotic. Very James Bond,” Ree said.

“Yet, unlike Bond, he probably doesn’t have two quid to rub together.”

“So you live on love.”

Amelia’s own words at the beach tumbled back to her. But the thought didn’t sound so crazy. Live on love, or maybe run their own resort somewhere around Deep Haven? Didn’t he say he had hotel training?

No. He wouldn’t consider staying here permanently, would he?

Ree ran her thumb down her cup. “Did you meet the folks from Uganda? They stayed at the Mad Moose while scouting out a place to have their daughter’s wedding. By the way, I gave them your name for wedding photos.”

“Thanks. Anything to get away from washing sheets.”

“I don’t think I could ever be brave enough to be a missionary,” Ree said.

“Me either,” Vivie said, approaching from the counter. “Not to mention, that’s what I call overkill. You can serve God without doing it halfway across the world. I promise there are enough unsaved, lost people in Deep Haven.” She sat next to Amelia wearing jeans and a blue blouse tied at her waist, her hair in a high ponytail.

“You’re looking very Betty Rizzo,” Amelia said.

“Perfect. Sal is coming into town today.” Her red lips curled up. “He says he wants his car back, but I think he misses me.”

“I have no doubt,” Amelia said. “But really? You think it’s crazy to be a missionary?”

“I mean, you have to be cut from a special kind of cloth to cross
the world to tell people about Jesus.” Ree stirred her drink. “And Vivie’s right
 
—there are plenty of lost and needy people here.”

“But what if you’re
 
—I don’t know
 
—called to go to Uganda or Rwanda or someplace off the map?”

“I would think that it doesn’t matter if you’re called or not. You have a choice in the matter, right?” Vivie said. “You can say no.”

“Say no to God? Who does that?”

Ree stared at her. “Are you kidding me? We say no to God more often than we say yes. Or at least normal people do. Maybe not Amelia Christiansen.” She winked.

But the words stung as they dropped around Amelia.

“I think my answer would be no. Hello
 
—snakes,” Vivie said, making a face. She turned to Amelia. “Do you have those photos?”

“Yes. I edited a few of them.” She angled the computer toward her. “Tell me which ones you want and I’ll send them to you.”

Ree leaned over, examining the screen. “I love the ones on the farm. And of Colleen in the tractor wheel. They’re beautiful, Amelia. You’re so talented. You should so enter that contest.”

“What contest?” Vivie said, scrolling through the pictures.

“The link someone put on the pictures she uploaded last week. It’s a viewer contest
 
—you vote for your favorite photographer.”

“It was Roark. He posted the link,” Amelia said. “The contest is called Capture America. I post ten pictures of my American life, and then people vote on the ones they like. There are three rounds, each one with a smaller group, and the one with the most votes wins $5,000 and an offer to visit their offices in New York.”

“New York City?” Ree’s voice rose. “Amelia, you have to! Vivie can show you around, right, Viv?”

Vivie wore an odd smile but lifted her shoulder. “Sure.”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s not to know? You could go to a photography school with the money
 
—or back to Prague. You could escape Deep Haven.”

“I’m not sure I want to leave,” Amelia said softly.

A knock on the window made Amelia look up. Seth stood outside, waving, smiling, wearing a red T-shirt with
Turnquist Lumber
stamped on the front. She waved back, wrestling out a smile.

He’d been so attentive, worried. So sweet when he’d practically charged into the hospital, wet, grimy, and every inch her rescuer.

Ree looked at Seth, back to Amelia. “Are you back together?”

“He’s been hovering since the accident.”

“And Roark?”

“I haven’t seen him. He delivered the Boy Scouts to the resort and left.” She’d tried not to feel like he’d reverted to the man she’d known in Prague
 
—taking off without explanation.

“Not a word?”

“I keep wondering if he saw the real me and made a break for it.”

“Ames
 
—that’s not right. He came all the way over here, got a job, is braving your family . . . What was it he said?”

“That
extreme
didn’t begin to describe what he’d do to win me back.”

“Exactly. That doesn’t sound like a man who’s going to easily throw in the towel and head for higher ground,” Ree said.

“But I’m not the same person he met in Prague. I’m . . . I’m a hometown girl.”

“Whatever,” Vivie said, adding a roll of her eyes. “You went over to Prague and came back with your tail cut off. So what? The Amelia I grew up with, dreaming of an epic life, is still inside there. It’s the same girl who’s probably clicked on the Capture America link, won’t let it leave her brain.”

She
had
clicked on it, looked at the other photographers’ work, been debating which pictures she’d enter, and that truth probably showed on her face.

“I knew it,” Vivie said. “Just like I know that you are destined for bigger things. Beyond Deep Haven. Maybe Roark is here to save you from a life you would too easily embrace. Seth is a full-blooded alpha male, and I certainly wouldn’t run away from him on a dark, starry night, but Seth is safe. And, Ames, I’m sorry, but deep down, you don’t want safe. Roark is just exotic enough to bring back the Amelia we knew nine months ago, boarding an airplane.”

“You don’t understand, Vivie. I thought I wanted that, but once I got there, I was . . . I was a wreck. Terrified. Without Roark, I might have hopped a plane home that first week.”

“Maybe,” Ree said. “But everybody gets in over their head. Eventually we would have turned you around and shoved you back on the plane until you stayed. Until your outside matched the Amelia we know is inside.”

It’s not about how you feel. It’s about what you do.

Amelia stared at Vivie, who was trying so hard to become the movie star on the outside she believed she could be on the inside. At Ree, launching out to grab ahold of her journalism dreams.

“One failure does not a lifetime make,” Ree said. “That’s the best Yoda I’ve got.”

Amelia had a crazy urge to hug both of them. She turned the computer. Clicked on the Capture America link.

“The deadline to enter is today,” Ree said, reading over her shoulder.

“It’s a sign,” Vivie said.

“No, it’s not,” Ree said. “It’s Providence. God is in this. Enter, Amelia.”

“I won’t win.”

“You could win.” Vivie wiggled her eyebrows. “You could win, and suddenly you get to see the world. You’d have opportunity and choices. A doorway to your future.”

Amelia glanced at Ree. At Vivie. They nodded, her own personal cheering squad. Plus, she had more
 
—an entire family of fans. And Roark.

Do what you know to do.

Yes, maybe, for the first time in months, she did know.

Even before Darek’s crazy suggestion that Roark become a lumberjack, the idea of staying, of starting over here in Deep Haven, building a life with Amelia, had begun to seem . . . maybe not so crazy.

And the longer he spent with Darek, training for a contest he didn’t have a prayer of winning, the more the life of the Christiansens drew him in. Took root, settled deep, became sane. He saw himself belonging, taking kids out on the trail with Amelia, or toasting s’mores by the fire.

He could even help with the lodge, teach them how to manage rates and revenue. Maybe they could expand. Open another resort.

“So you’re saying that you used to change the rate every day?” Darek was saying. They stood in the gravel pit a few miles from the Evergreen property where Darek had decided they should train. Just in case Amelia should happen home, unexpected.

Roark tried not to let the word
lying
into his head.

“Yeah, depending on how many rooms we had, the occupancy of local competition, the time of year, the day of the week, and how much we needed for our projected ROI. It’s easy once you plug all the values into a formula. Then you change your rates on
your reservation software system, and it changes them globally across all your online and off-line platforms.”

As Roark talked, Darek affixed a skinned log vertically between two clamps, raising it to knee height. He wore steel-toed boots, had given Roark a pair of Casper’s boots, and fitted them both with shin guards.

To think Roark believed yesterday’s lesson on hot sawing had been challenging. He could still feel his hands buzzing from the chain saw.

Darek had picked up an ax, now set it down. “We don’t have a reservation software system. We issue rate cards at the beginning of the year, then record the reservations in a guest book, designated by nights.”

Roark stared at him, trying to imagine a system that required someone to flip pages, to manually record all the information without the convenience of a computer. But lodges like Evergreen Resort had managed exactly that way for centuries. Still . . . “We need to get you an RDP system. It’ll change your life.”

“And this will change yours. Have you ever chopped down a tree with an ax?”

“I hardly think that learning how to swing an ax
 
—”

“It’s called the standing block chop, and it’s the first of the four competitions in the lumberjack games,” Darek said and handed Roark the ax. “By the way, I know I’m all gung ho, but you should know that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in Texas of winning the logrolling, although I’ll do my best. I think our strategy is to hone the block chop, the hot saw, and the double buck. Let’s be thankful that there’s no pole climb, because I am not a fan of the ninety-foot height.”