Redemption (38 page)

Ashley carried the pizza to the table and returned to the living room. Ever since they’d walked through the door, there had been a change between them. As she watched Ryan make his way around the room, admiring her paintings, she knew what it was.

The casual air between them was gone. And in its place was something they hadn’t had time to consider.

He turned from her work, his eyes full of admiration. “Are these yours?”

“Yes.” She could feel the smile playing on her lips. “All of them.”

“Ashley—they’re amazing.” Ryan shifted his attention to one of her pieces. Her heart soared. It was her favorite—a landscape at sunset with tall grass blowing in the wind and a faded barn in the background. Ryan cast her a glance over his shoulder. “These should be in a museum.”

She had always been private about her artwork. Her parents had never really approved of her pursuing a career as an artist. Usually it seemed simpler to keep her work to herself. When her parents came to visit, they generally breezed through the room with little more than a casual comment. Something like, “Nice, Ashley” or “I see you’ve been busy.”

Cole was the only one who actually admired her paintings.

Until now.

Ryan nodded toward the sunset painting. “What’s the story behind it?”

It was the first time anyone had ever asked her to explain a piece, and she was flattered almost beyond words. “It reminds me of home.” Her voice was soft. “The way I saw it as a child.”

She spent the next twenty minutes giving him details about her canvases.
He thinks I talk about this to everyone
, she thought. But the stories behind her paintings were glimpses of her soul, places that had never been exposed before.

Not here in Bloomington, anyway.

Ryan and Ashley worked their way to the kitchen for pizza, and after dinner he stretched. “I better get going.”

She grinned. “Aunt Edith?” The night had flown by, and Ashley wished there was a way to buy a few more hours.

“Yep. Plane comes in at nine.”

Ashley tried to keep a straight face. “She’ll like the candy. But the mannequin head—now that would have been an amazing gift.”

They both laughed as they walked toward the front door, and Ryan looped his arm around her neck, drawing her close for a familiar embrace. But when the hug ended, his arm stayed. He drew back just enough to see her face. “I had fun today, Ash.”

She felt shy again, something that had happened only a handful of times in her entire life—but twice today. “Me too.”

The moment changed and suddenly the air was charged with an attraction so strong it took Ashley’s breath away. Ryan’s smile faded as he kept his hold on her. His eyes burned with intensity and unspoken questions, and before they could say another word the space between them vanished. Slowly, tenderly, Ryan brought his face to hers and kissed her.

It was not the passionate kiss of a man desiring to take advantage of her. Instead, it was a kiss that knocked on the door of possibility. He kissed her a second time, and then Ashley felt his body tense.

He pulled back, breathless, and took hold of her shoulders. “Ashley—” he shook his head—“I shouldn’t have done that.”

She felt as if she were being dragged underwater. Ryan’s words made no sense. Hadn’t he suggested having lunch together? Hadn’t he spent the day elbowing her and tickling her and putting his arm around her?

A chill ran down her spine, and she took a step back. No matter what Ryan might say, he couldn’t deny his attraction to her, not after the time they’d spent together today. “It’s not a crime to kiss me, Ryan.” She did not waver in her gaze, challenging him to admit his feelings. “I’m not twelve anymore.”

Ryan groaned and stared at the tiled floor. When he looked up, she saw a world of pain in his eyes. “You’re wonderful, Ashley. You make me laugh, and whenever I’m around you, I feel better about life.” He dropped his head again and rubbed the back of his neck.

She took a step closer. If he needed to be convinced, she was up to the task. “We’ve known each other forever.” She rested her hand on his shoulder. “Whatever happened today, we’re both feeling it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Am I right?”

Ryan looked up, and his expression was coated in anguish. “If you mean, am I attracted to you . . . ? Yes. I am.” He took her hand from his shoulder and held it. “But it wasn’t fair for me to kiss you, to make you think I could go out with you that way.”

The sting of his rejection was more painful than anything she’d felt since coming home from Paris. Tears nipped at her eyes, and she removed her hand from his grip. Her tone was quietly angry when she finally found her voice. “It’s Kari, isn’t it? You’re afraid of falling for me because of her, right?”

“No. I’m not afraid.” He leaned back against the doorframe. “Kari loves her husband, and that’s how it should be. My time with her is over.”

Ashley worked a hand through her hair. “I don’t get it, Ryan. What?”

He said nothing, and suddenly Ashley understood. Though he might never see Kari again, Ryan’s heart was still not free.

She took two steps back and crossed her arms firmly in front of her. It was the only way she knew to ward off the cold that had crept into the room. “It’s too soon, isn’t it?” She bit her lip to keep it from quivering, and a sad, slow sigh made its way through her teeth. “How long will you love her?”

She couldn’t breathe as she waited for his answer. Ryan reached for his keys, his eyes watery. Then he stepped back toward the door and said just one word.

“Forever.”

As he drove away from Ashley’s house, Ryan gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. What had he been thinking? He shook his head, reached to turn the radio off, and knew the answer. He hadn’t been thinking at all, not from the moment he asked Ashley to lunch. What had happened at the gas station to make him act so crazy?

He knew that answer too. There she was, laughing, teasing him, flattering him, and looking so much like Kari that his heart hurt. How could he resist? Why not spend a day with a beautiful single woman he’d known most of his life? Certainly Kari wouldn’t have a problem if the two of them hung out for the afternoon.

As the hours passed, Ryan had enjoyed himself more than he’d imagined. At times the whole experience at the mall reminded him of another shopping trip. The one he and Kari had taken after his father died. The day he had first admitted his feelings for her.

But not until he kissed Ashley in the doorway of her home had he fully understood his motives.

As awful as it was, being with Ashley today had been a way to trick his heart, a way to lessen the pain of losing Kari again. Ashley and Kari looked so much alike that he could almost convince himself she
was
Kari.

But while Ashley was practically a mirror image of her older sister, that’s where the resemblance made an abrupt stop.

Kari was kind and compassionate, devoted almost to a fault. Ashley was a free spirit—artistic, stubbornly independent, and wary of anything conventional. And also, he had discovered, surprisingly vulnerable and hungry for attention. It had been unfair of him to kiss her, wrong to make her think he had serious intentions when he honestly didn’t. He was attracted to Ashley, and yes, he’d had a good time with her. But she would never be the right woman for him. Not when every time he looked at her he couldn’t help but think of Kari.

His guilty thoughts ate at him all the way home. He pulled in the driveway, parked, locked the truck, and walked into his kitchen and sat at the table. There in front of him, where he’d left it for the past few days, was the contract. The one that offered him the coaching chance of a lifetime.

He had hesitated about the commitment for only one reason. Although he and Kari would never be together, Ryan still loved living here: the sweet smell of wild grass around his cabin in Clear Creek; the way the Bloomington community pulsed with both family values and academic excitement; his familiarity with every intersection and business establishment; the memories of his father.

Ryan stared at the contract and released a pent-up sigh.

But now, in light of his evening with Ashley—and the kiss that had done nothing but confuse her—there seemed no point in staying. Every time he passed the university, he’d wonder if Tim was being faithful to Kari. Every time he went to church, he’d wonder if he would see the two of them. And after the baby was born, he’d have to live with the reality that if things had turned out differently, the child might have been his.

And when he ran into Ashley, things would never be the same around her either.

He ran his eyes over the front page of the coaching offer, and suddenly he knew it was the right thing to do. Hadn’t it always been his dream to coach a pro team once his playing days were over? Wasn’t this contract the exact thing he’d been hoping for when he ran into Kari again that first Sunday?

He grabbed a pen and slid the document closer. In the time it took him to sign his name, he committed himself to a future that would change his life and send him to the East Coast for what could be years.

He had always told himself that if the opportunity to coach professionally came up, he’d hang on to his house and his property. But now, in light of his situation and the decision he had just made, the place didn’t seem so important. Ryan decided he’d call the real estate agent after the holiday. Then he’d meet with his coaching staff at Clear Creek High School and tell them the news.

In a few short weeks, he’d pack his bags and start life over again in New York City.

As far away from Kari Baxter Jacobs as he could get.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Friends had always told Kari the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy were the best, and by the time February rolled around, Kari had to agree. Her parents were having a dinner party for Brooke’s birthday tonight, and Kari was glad to be rid of the morning sickness and the padding that seemed to appear on her hips that first trimester.

Now the extra weight she carried was nothing but baby, and her sisters were unanimous in their predictions that she would have a boy.

“You look just like I did,” Ashley said nearly every time she looked at Kari. “A thin-hipped balloon-belly girl.”

Kari knew she would get bigger in the weeks that followed, but she had no idea how that was possible. Her skin seemed stretched to the limits already, and her ability to eat a big meal had ceased a month ago. She thought of the child she’d miscarried and thanked God that this baby lived.

The counseling sessions with Tim were going better than she dreamed possible. Though he’d been tempted, he hadn’t had a drink since before Christmas. And they were going out one night a week, sometimes just to talk about how far they’d come and how much they had to look forward to.

Her bedside table was stacked with books about what to expect during pregnancy, and in the evenings she and Tim pored over them, studying the line drawings of unborn babies and trying to imagine what their baby might look like—whether the infant’s eyes had developed and whether he or she already had hair.

“You’d think we’d have this thing memorized by now.” Tim slipped his arm around her as they sat together in their den one evening. Their physical relationship had taken time to rebuild, but every week her affection came more easily.

“I can’t get enough of it. It seems like my due date will never get here.”

“It’s probably like that every time. Whether you have one child or five.”

Kari believed it.

The baby continued to turn and move within her, and despite her sisters’ predictions, she was certain the child was a girl. She and Tim talked about names and decided on Jessie Renée, after her great-grandmother, a faithful woman Kari had heard about but never known. For a boy they decided on Timothy Joseph—T. J. for short. But in Kari’s mind the boy’s name was little more than a technicality.

She and Tim decided to wait until the baby was born to find out if she was right, and at the ultrasound she had to remind her doctor not to give away the secret.

Tim had stood beside her while the doctor slid the tool over her abdomen at one of her visits, his eyes trained on a small monitor. “Well, Kari, it’s a healthy baby—”

“Don’t tell me!” She raised a hand, and Tim and the doctor smiled.

“Just kidding. You couldn’t get the truth out of me now if you paid me.”

“We
are
paying you,” Kari teased. “But don’t tell me, okay?”

Each passing week, each stage of development, made Kari more keenly aware of all she and Tim were sharing because of their hard work and God’s gift of healing in their marriage. The feelings of joy and gratitude would sometimes catch her unaware, swelling her heart with joy and stinging her eyes with tears. And though at times she still thought about Ryan, she no longer ached at the thought of what they had missed.

He’d moved on, too, which was a good thing—taken a job coaching for the New York Giants. He had called her parents and told them good-bye before he left, asking them to pass on the news to her. She was glad for him, sure this position was another example of God’s goodness in their lives. It was the kind of job he had always wanted.