An Honest Life

But he waited too long, and she started moving closer to the church entry, away from him.

She glanced at her watch. “I need to grab this…stuff and get home,” she said. “I have to work tonight.” With a wave, she turned and pulled open one of the double-glass doors.

Rick waved back, wishing he could think of an excuse to stall her. The way she blurred the clear lines around his personal boundaries, he should have been wishing she would disappear until the building dedication instead of hanging around and distracting him.

Climbing back on the ladder, he still couldn’t help observing when her car pulled out of the church lot. And more than that, he couldn’t help wondering when he’d see her next. Or hoping it wasn’t too long.

DANA CORBIT

has been fascinated with words since third grade, when she began stringing together stanzas of rhyme. That interest, and an inherent curiosity, led her to a career as a newspaper reporter and editor. After earning state and national recognition in journalism, she traded her career for stay-at-home motherhood. But the need for creative expression followed her home and, later, through the move from Indiana to Milford, Michigan. Outside the office, Dana discovered the joy of writing fiction. In stolen hours, during naps and between carpooling and church activities, she escapes into her private world, telling stories from her heart.

Dana makes her home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her husband, three young daughters and two cats.

An Honest Life

Dana Corbit

MILLS & BOON

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No man has ever seen God; if we love one another,

God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.

—I John 4:12

To my grandmother, Jane Bowley,

who shares my love of romance and whose own

story of lifetime love inspires me.

A special thanks to the following people

for lending your expertise to this story:

Angela Jacobson, R.N., labor and delivery nurse;

Lisa Cardle, R.N., neonatal intensive care nurse;

Dr. Steven Naum, M.D., hand surgeon;

and Duane Rasch and Jon Tuthill, licensed builders.

Any mistakes contained within are my own.

Dear Reader,

I really enjoyed revisiting the people of Hickory Ridge Community Church in this story. These characters have become so real for me, their ties to each other so powerful, like those in the church of my childhood. Though not perfect, they care for each other and worship together.

Writing Charity Sims’s story was a special joy because Charity has so much to learn about life, matters of the heart and, especially, God’s love. Who better to teach her than the reluctant hero, Rick McKinley? This story is about living An Honest Life before others and in our own hearts. Through God’s love we can finally find peace.

I love hearing from readers. You may write to me at P.O. Box 120044, Grand Rapids, MI, 49512, or contact me through the web site http://www.loveinspiredauthors.com.

Dana Corbit

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

Adrenaline pumped through Charity’s veins in the same rhythm that her soft-soled shoes tapped on the hallway floor. She rushed into her sixth labor-delivery-recovery-postpartum room since the seven-to-seven shift started five hours before. And for the sixth time, she grumbled about the barometric pressure changes that likely had triggered labor for so many women. Thanks to it, Stanton Birthing Center had become a madhouse over Labor Day weekend. And this was just barely Saturday morning.

Sucking in a breath of that familiar disinfectant scent, she knocked and pushed open the door. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs.—” she paused, gazing up from her chart to the woman on the bed and the man next to her “—Westin.” She swallowed hard, her heart racing, her hands damp.

How could she have missed the connection when she’d read the name Westin on the room-status board? Too late. Now she had to face these two people and the most humiliating moment of her life.

Andrew Westin coughed into his hand before he finally could say, “Hello, Charity.” His wife said nothing at all, her eyes wide.

With a nod in his direction, Charity turned back to her patient. Serena Jacobs Westin chewed her lip, appearing pained, though the monitor attached to her belly showed she was between contractions. Charity could relate to that nonphysical agony.

“Mrs. Westin, I’ll be your nurse throughout the night.”

Throughout the night? Could she survive that long in the same room with the man she’d pined over and who had rejected her so soundly? Or with the former divorcée Andrew had chosen over her? Charity itched to run for the door, to take that much needed vacation far away from southeast lower Michigan, or at least to beg another labor and delivery nurse to take her patient. But she resigned herself to the task. Other staff members were already busy with two ongoing cesarean sections and a “mec” delivery—where an infant’s waste, called meconium, was present in its amniotic fluid and signaled possible complications. She needed to buck up and do her job.

Wrapping the blood pressure cuff around Serena’s arm, she set up the stethoscope to check her heart rate. “I need to get your vital signs and ask you a few questions before the staff obstetrician examines you. The admitting clerk said your water broke. Can you tell me at what time?”

Serena glanced at Andrew and turned back to her nurse. “Okay. Wait…I’m starting another one.” She gripped her rounded abdomen and focused on a spot on the opposite wall, making the quiet hee-hee sound of Lamaze breathing.

“Come on, sweetheart, breathe,” Andrew crooned, holding his wife’s hand and brushing dark hair back from her face. “That’s right. You’re doing great.”

If a hole in the floor could have swallowed her, Charity would have welcomed its suction. Instead, she fussed with the thick band that held her hair away from her face. Watching the loving way Andrew ministered to Serena only reminded Charity of what she didn’t have. But she couldn’t think about that now. Nor would she acknowledge the sharp edge of envy that pressed against her insides.

“He’s right, Mrs. Westin. You’re doing a great job, and your contraction has ended.” Charity surprised herself by sounding in control, though her mind raced in a dozen directions. To maintain that illusion, she returned to her memorized list of questions. “About your water…”

“Nine o’clock,” Serena answered, sounding strained.

That voice, more than her patient’s response, focused Charity’s thoughts immediately. It hinted that the baby might come soon. She bent to check the paper strip spilling from the fetal monitor. At least she saw no signs of early or late heart rate deceleration that might have indicated fetal distress.

“When is your due date?”

“September 8,” she choked out.

Jotting down the gestation and other information the couple provided about Serena’s last OB visit, Charity continued, “When is the last time you ate or drank anything?”

“Dinner…at six.” Serena closed her eyes, another contraction coming on the heels of the former.

A knock came on the door just as Charity glanced at the monitor again, and a petite woman in blue scrubs stepped into the room.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Kristen Walker, the staff OB.”

“Doctor, I’d like you to meet Andrew and Serena Westin.”

Charity stepped next to the doctor, who was pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Mrs. Westin is at thirty-nine weeks three days gestation. When she saw her OB two days ago, she was closed, thick and long. She ruptured at twenty-one hundred and could be precipitous. Her tones look good and her vitals are fine.”

With Dr. Walker’s nod, Charity moved to the wall telephone to contact Serena’s regular obstetrician while the staff physician checked the degree of dilation and effacement.

Just as Charity hung up, Dr. Walker straightened and dropped her gloves into the garbage. “Mrs. Westin, you’re already to eight centimeters and one hundred percent effaced. Your doctor is on her way. Keep up your Lamaze breathing because you’ll be ready to push soon.”

Charity moved into action, opening the cherry-finished cabinetry of the homey LDRP room, to reveal the necessary equipment for the delivery. In the infant care center, she turned on the warmer light, prepared the parent-newborn bracelets and readied the oxygen and suction equipment.

“Is she too far along for an epidural?” Andrew asked the doctor.

“I’m afraid so,” Dr. Walker responded. “Everything will progress quickly now.”

Their voices seemed so far away as Charity focused on her role in preparing for the big arrival. The baby hadn’t even crowned and already she felt that same rush of excitement she experienced every day on the job. No matter how many newborns she cradled in her arms, the miraculous birthing process still amazed her.

But it wasn’t time to be amazed yet. So much could still go wrong.

As soon as Dr. Walker left the room, Charity moved quickly to start Serena’s IV. “We’ll have to answer some of the standard questions after you deliver, but I already know the one about religion,” she said as she secured the tube with medical tape.

Fifteen minutes later, Serena’s regular obstetrician whipped through the door, yanking on his gloves. While the physician examined the mother and announced her ready to push, Charity checked to ensure they were prepared for the best…and the worst. Then she held her breath and braced one of her patient’s legs while awaiting the miracle of life.

Charity wondered if she’d ever had a longer twelve-hour shift as she pulled her champagne-colored coupe out of West Oakland Regional Hospital’s parking lot, practically letting her car drive itself back from Commerce Township to the Village of Milford. Her adrenaline boost had disappeared, leaving only her normal void.

A sad smile pulled at her lips when she thought of sweet Seth, who had announced his arrival with a howl that said, “Here I am.” The Westin baby had chubby cheeks and blue eyes that were already threatening to turn brown. But like all the other newborns sleeping in the nursery or rooming with their mothers, he was someone else’s child.

“Get over it, Charity,” she said aloud, shaking her head at the empty road she traveled. Helping with Serena Westin’s delivery had taken a heavier toll than she’d expected.

She hoped it was only her pulse—instead of her biological clock—that pounded in her ears. Whatever it was, it refused to let her favorite contemporary Christian music in the cassette player drown it out. December and her thirtieth birthday loomed before her, and she didn’t have a marriage prospect in sight.

Figuring she wouldn’t get any sleep this morning anyway, she continued up General Motors Road instead of turning on South Milford Road and heading straight home. Mother wouldn’t mind. She wouldn’t be up for breakfast for another hour anyway.

At Hickory Ridge Road, Charity turned right. A few miles up on the left, Hickory Ridge Community Church’s well-tended flower beds—her work, of course—promised the gardening therapy and solace she needed. Focusing her thoughts on the gardening gloves, trowel and pruning shears she always kept in the trunk, she flicked back a seed of misgiving. Church hadn’t offered her much peace lately, often unsettling her nerves. Even at her weekly prayer meetings, she’d felt empty. That wouldn’t happen this time, when she could soak up the silence in the late summer sunshine—alone.

But as soon as she turned into the church drive, she realized how wrong she was. The whir of power saws and the bam-bam-bam of hydraulic nail guns reverberated off the windshield and filtered in the open window, setting her teeth on edge. Can nothing go right today?

R and J Construction had been working several weeks on the new Family Life Center building project, but she wished they’d taken this particular Saturday off. She drove farther until she reached the new asphalt parking lot past the parsonage. As soon as she shut off the engine, blaring rock music from the building site assailed her ears and had her grinding her molars.

Ignore it. She retrieved her gardening equipment and headed over to the farthest point away from that skeleton of a building—the landscaped bed on the side of the church facing the road. But tuning out those worldly sounds proved impossible, even as she dug below the roots of a grass clump that had dared invade the mulch-covered area.

“That’s enough,” she announced, just as a second song started beating its way into her mind.

Righteous indignation straightened her posture as she marched toward the construction site and a man dressed in faded jeans and a white T-shirt. As he straightened from bending over two sawhorses, she recognized him. He’d been at the center’s groundbreaking ceremony.

“Excuse me,” she said in her loudest speaking voice, suddenly uncomfortable to still be wearing her blue hospital scrubs out in public.

He jerked his head up. “May I help you?” he called out, shoving light brown hair out of his eyes.

“If you don’t mind…” She crossed her arms and let her words trail off, figuring them useless under the power saw’s drone and that incessant drumbeat.

The man pointed to his ears and shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t hear you.”

Charity didn’t like the way his cornflower-blue eyes twinkled or the way his mouth turned up slightly at the corners. This was not funny. Stepping closer, she yelled again. “You might be able to if we didn’t have to shout over that…noise.”

The man turned his head to the right and executed a piercing two-finger whistle. Church member Rusty Williams appeared from the other end of the framed structure and, at his boss’s nod, turned off the stereo. Amazingly, the saw stopped at the same time.

“Good to see you, Sister Charity,” Rusty said, pausing beside them. “Did you just get off work? I didn’t realize you two had met.”

Charity nodded at the question and forcibly dropped her hands to her sides, trying not to smile at Rusty’s habit of calling church members “brother” or “sister.” Hardly anyone else at church—especially anyone as young as Rusty—referred to other members that way. Finally, she responded to his second comment. “We haven’t really.”

Rusty grinned and stood between them. “Charity Sims, I’d like you to meet R.J.—I mean Rick McKinley, owner of R and J Construction, the general contractor on the project.” He turned to his boss. “Rick, I’d like you to meet Sister Charity, another fine member of Hickory Ridge Church. Now if you two will excuse me…” He started to walk away but turned back. “Oh, tell your mother hello for me, okay?”

Nodding, she turned back to Rick. He shoved his hair out of his eyes again. In need of a good cut, his hair was sun streaked from outdoor work.

“Now, you were saying…” he prompted, interrupting her observation.

“I was trying to say you could help me by turning off that awful music.”

He shrugged, that infuriating grin returning, as he indicated with his head toward the boom box that was indeed already turned off. “So?” he challenged.

Charity stiffened again, the power of her conviction making it impossible to relax. “You must know that music like that is inappropriate for work at a church setting.”

He nodded slowly, tucking thumbs through his tool belt in a casual pose, but his chiseled jaw tensed. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Miss Sims, but music makes work easier for my crew. Especially on a holiday weekend when every other Michigander is fishing at a cabin up north or cruising the big lake.”

Her arms folded again over her chest. How obtuse could this man be? “Mr. McKinley, it’s not music I’m opposed to. It’s the type you chose. Secular? Here at our church? What would people think if they drove up to meet with Reverend Bob Woods, our youth minister Andrew Westin or the deacons?”

His gaze hardened, and he seemed to have tightened all over. Sturdy muscles in his arms strained against his shirt. “They’d probably think my construction crew was playing some music. It’s not even offensive music. Just run-of-the-mill pop.”

“Whatever it is—” she paused, nodding toward the despised radio “—it doesn’t belong here at Hickory Ridge. I can’t believe you would defend it after I’ve made that clear to you.”

“Oh, you’ve made something clear, all right.” He jutted his chin forward. “You’ve proved a point, but it has nothing to do with music.”

Charity gritted her teeth, her face becoming hot. Why did she have to put up with this impossible man? “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I insist that you keep that music turned off.”

He stared at her a few seconds, his gaze furious enough to make her step back if she weren’t so determined to hold her ground. The mission of the righteous was never easy. When she was certain she couldn’t stay in that position a second longer facing his challenging stare, he jerked his hand sharply and startled her.

That hand ended up in an exaggerated salute at Rick’s forehead. “Yes, ma’am.” With that, he stalked over to the boom box, flipped the power switch and cranked the volume full blast.

“I said turn it off,” she shouted.

Rick glanced back at her and pointed to his ears, indicating he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Her hands tightened at her sides as she marched toward him. Rick McKinley would get a piece of her mind if she had to jam it right into his smug face. But when she got close enough to do just that, he didn’t even give her the satisfaction of meeting her gaze. Something behind her seemed to have all of his attention.

Unable to resist seeing what was more important than listening to her, she glanced over her shoulder. Andrew Westin’s car pulled farther up the drive, past the aging farmhouse that served as a parsonage, right toward them.

Her anger evaporated as embarrassment covered her like a sunbath. Charity shot a glance back at Rick before she turned to watch Andrew park and climb out of his car.

Why did she continually make a fool of herself in front of men? Why had she blown her top over something as trivial as a radio station? Antagonism from an infuriating man wasn’t excuse enough. No matter what her reasons for rebuking the builder—or for that other unpleasant showdown in her past—she didn’t plan to wait around to face both of these guys together.

“Obviously, I’m not going to get through to you, so I’m leaving,” she shouted, hiding behind a facade of anger. With that, she about-faced and stalked to the parking lot, passing Andrew without a wave. She wished she didn’t wonder about the looks focused on her back or why nothing made sense anymore.

Chased by feelings that had everything—and nothing—to do with the two men behind her, she rushed to the car and her escape. Only after she’d shot up some gravel in the church drive and had reached Hickory Ridge Road could she finally let go of the breath she’d held. Her relief was short-lived, though, as it was followed by hot and humiliating tears.

Chapter Two

Andrew Westin’s lips moved, but Rick couldn’t hear a word over the blaring radio. Feeling sheepish for letting that self-righteous so-and-so push his hot button, Rick jogged over to the boom box and shut off the power. Great, now you’re going to lose the contract. What will you do next, spit at Reverend Bob?

“Hey, Andrew, sorry about that.”

But the youth minister only waved away the apology, his focus on Charity’s retreating car. A smile lit his face when he finally turned back to Rick. “Did you hear me, man? It’s a boy.” It didn’t seem to matter to Andrew that he looked like he hadn’t slept since the Fourth of July and his hair had hat head, minus the hat.

“Oh, that’s great.” Rick stepped forward and gripped the other man’s hand. “Congratulations.” Andrew’s laughter was so contagious that Rick couldn’t help joining in, despite his sour mood.

“It all happened so fast. He’s so tiny. It was exciting and scary. You just wouldn’t believe—”

“Is the baby okay?” Rick interrupted, trying to decipher the cryptic dialogue. “Is your wife okay?”

Andrew beamed as he breathed deeply and started again. “He’s great. Serena’s great. Eight pounds, twelve ounces. Him, not her. A head full of dark hair. That’s the both of them.” He stopped to chuckle at his joke. “Seth Michael Westin. Our boy.” He stepped away long enough to pass blue bubblegum cigars out to several crew members before handing one to Rick.

What did that kind of joy feel like? Rick couldn’t begin to guess, and he refused to let himself wonder and risk wishing. “What good news,” he said when he could think of nothing else to say.

Rusty saved him from further platitudes by hurrying through the framed area where they would eventually hang glass double doors. Never one to worry about his manly-man image, Rusty wrapped Andrew in a bear hug that had to hurt.

“Brother Andrew, don’t tell me you got yourself a boy.” He slapped the youth minister’s back when he finally released him.

“Sure did.” Andrew stuffed a plastic-wrapped gum cigar into the other man’s mouth. “He’s a keeper, too.”

Rusty pulled the candy out of his mouth and twirled it in his fingers. “What does your sweet step-daughter think of her baby brother?”

“Tessa hasn’t met him yet. I’m going to shower and then pick her up from Robert and Diana Lidstrom’s, so we can go visit Mommy and Seth.”

“Did the delivery go okay?” Rusty asked the question casually, leaning against the sawhorse in the relaxed pose of a seasoned father of three. “Any complications?”

“No, it was real easy—at least for me.” Andrew laughed again. “But it was strange having Charity as the labor and delivery nurse.” He glanced back to the drive Charity had just exited.

“Isn’t she great?” Rusty must have missed the way Rick tensed and Andrew startled when he said that. “She was in there when Tricia had Max two years ago. Didn’t even break a sweat when Max came breech and ended up in an emergency C-section.”

As the two sang more of Charity’s praises, Rick stepped away from both the conversation and comments he couldn’t reconcile with the scrubs-wearing shrew, who had made his acquaintance with a sledgehammer. At least he’d moved far enough away that they wouldn’t expect him to comment when Andrew wondered aloud why the object of their discussion had just raced from the church lot.

“Probably some woman thing,” one of them said, with the other buying that easy explanation.

Rick didn’t believe there was anything easy about understanding what made Charity Sims tick—double time. But then why was he wasting precious seconds thinking about that irrational woman? Just who did she think she was, anyway, being the censor and church police, all rolled up into one?