waved a hand. “Aw, that’s Stephen’s girlfriend-of-the-moment.”
“Aaron,” Stephen scolded, glaring a warning that his agent completely missed.
“The female du jour,” the social lummox blathered on, “flavor of the month. Matter of fact, unlike you, she’s a not-so-natural red—”
“Aaron!” Stephen shouted forcefully enough that Aaron actually closed his mouth. Finally. Stephen muttered, “Cherie’s just a team secretary.” A team secretary who liked to style herself as his girlfriend whenever it seemed convenient for her.
A shop-made redhead, with a store-bought figure and trendy “bee-stung” lips, the only things real about Cherie were her hands and feet. Even her fingernails and eyelashes were fake, not to mention her cheekbones and chin. That penchant for plastic surgery and high-end beauty salons hadn’t seemed like any big deal to Stephen; now it suddenly seemed a little…tawdry, and he didn’t want her anywhere near the Chatams. Truth to tell, he didn’t want her near, period. He just didn’t have the energy to play her game right now.
“Ah. Well, someone’s going to have to bring him his supper. We’ve already imposed on Hilda enough for one Sunday,” Kaylie was saying to Aaron. “After he’s eaten, if you just make him comfortable, he should sleep through until morning.”
“But what about the night?” Aaron began. “Someone has to be here in case he hurts himself again.”
“If she doesn’t want to help us, she doesn’t want to help us!” Stephen barked.
“I didn’t say that,” Kaylie insisted. “It’s just not a decision I can make instantly.”
Aaron sighed, shoulders slumping. “Okay, okay. I’ll sack out in the other room.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Stephen muttered, picking up a heavy silver fork and attacking his eggs with his right hand.
“Stevie,” Aaron said placatingly, “it’s not me. It’s Dora.”
Aaron’s bride of some three months was given to pouting if Aaron neglected her, which, Stephen admitted silently, happened too often. Still, what was he supposed to do without help? Didn’t the small fortune that he paid Aaron count for something?
Kaylie stepped backward. “Well, I’ll leave you to your meal.”
“But you’ll let us know about the job soon, right?” Aaron pressed.
“I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
She whirled and hurried away. Stephen dropped his fork and fixed his agent—and, in truth, his friend—with a glare.
“Now what?” he demanded, suddenly weary again. For once, Aaron had no glib response. “That’s what I thought,” Stephen muttered morosely.
Hurrying down the gracefully curving marble staircase, her hand skimming the gleaming dark wood of the banister, Kaylie pondered the situation. Stephen Gallow was unlike any man she’d ever encountered. She wasn’t at all sure, frankly, that she liked him, but her like or dislike was not the issue. Part brute and part little boy, he presented a problem: she didn’t quite know how to deal with him. How could she? The men in her life were calm, solid, accomplished, erudite, polite…in short, gentlemanly.
Her father, Hubner Chandler Chatam, Jr., was a retired minister. Bayard, her eldest brother by more than three decades, was a banker, and Morgan, at forty-two, a history professor. Even her third brother, Hubner Chandler Chatam III—known as Chandler or Chan and twenty-nine to her twenty-four—had a degree in agricultural engineering, though to her father’s disgust, he made his living mainly in pro rodeo competition. Of all the men she knew, Kaylie supposed that Chandler had most in common with Stephen Gallow, but he never snarled, lost his temper, behaved rudely or, God forbid, cursed. At least, not as far as she knew. And Chandler was a believer, a Christian. Stephen Gallow was obviously not.
Moreover, Gallow was a little crude, or as her father would put it, rough as a cob, though not lacking in all sensibility. He had moderated his language, with some difficulty, on her behalf. None of that, however, changed the fact that he had been gravely injured. He needed help. He needed a nurse. He needed her—far more than her father did, certainly, which made her wonder if this was God’s way of showing Hubner Chatam that his life was not over.
It was not time for Hub to stop living, and so, in her opinion, it was not time for him to stop ministering. The man whose spiritual strength had for so long guided countless others had somehow gotten lost in his own physical and emotional pain, and though her heart went out to him, Kaylie knew that she had to somehow help him find his way again. Was that God’s purpose in bringing Stephen Gallow into their lives? Would Gallow’s condition and her attention to him help Hub realize that he should and could reclaim his own life?
She paused in the grand foyer at the foot of the stairs to gaze through the window at the side of the bright yellow door with its formal black trim to the boxy little red convertible that was her one extravagance in life. It was the only thing she had not given up when she’d quit her job and moved from her apartment into her father’s house to care for him after his heart attack. She’d sold every stick of furniture that she’d accumulated in her twenty-four years, such as it was, and even gotten rid of the contents of her kitchen because the one in her father’s small, two-bedroom frame house did not have room for her things. At the time, she’d told herself that it was necessary. Now, with Hub constantly comparing her to her aunts, who had cared for their own widowed father until his death at the age of ninety-two, she feared that she had made a big mistake.
Lately, as if sensing her dissatisfaction with the situation, Hub had taken to regularly remarking that not all of God’s children were called to marriage, implying that she had been called to follow in the footsteps of her maiden aunts. He even quoted Paul on the subject, choosing selected verses from I Corinthians 7. Kaylie had heard them so often that she could recite them from memory.
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried…. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit…
But hadn’t Paul also said that every man should have his own wife and every wife her own husband, that man should leave his parents and cleave unto his wife?
Kaylie shook her head. She knew that Scripture did not contradict itself, that it only appeared to when certain verses were taken out of context, but that did not help her determine what God intended for her specifically. She had dated little, too caught up in school and the demands of her family, faith and career to pay much attention to anything else, but she’d always assumed that one day she would marry and have children. Then two years ago, her mother had died at the age of fifty-six after a brief bout with cancer, and six months ago her twice-widowed father had suffered a massive heart attack. Kaylie’s father and three older brothers had all assumed that Kaylie would drop everything and take over Hubner’s care. So she had.
Now, she feared that had been a mistake for both her and her father. Perhaps God’s answer to that dilemma occupied the half tester bed upstairs. Unless presented very carefully, however, her father would see this job as her abandoning him. She did not wish to deceive or disrespect him, of course. He was her father, after all. She certainly did not want to go against his express wishes, but if God willed that she take this job, then she must. The question was, what did God will in this matter?
Kaylie heard
