Love Is Patient and A Heart's Refuge (12 page)

Lisa closed her eyes.
Dear Lord, this wasn’t supposed to be the outcome.

What was she going to do now?

S
he couldn’t sleep anymore. What she had done last night flipped and spun through her mind, keeping her awake.

She should have shown Dylan the memo right away before her emotions for this family interfered with her plans. But if she gave Dylan the memo now, he would wonder why she had kept it from him.

With an exasperated sigh she tossed off the blankets, wrapped her robe around her. She pulled the offending piece of paper from a drawer in her room and left.

She drifted down the stairs, making her way to the study.

The door was half-open and she quietly slipped through it. The early-morning light was already creeping in. She hesitated a moment, glancing over her shoulder, then strode to Dylan’s desk, opened the file folder on the top and laid the memo inside, letting part of it show above the file folder’s edge.

As she closed the folder she felt a tick of relief. Maybe it would make the difference. And maybe it would incriminate her.

Either way, time was winding down. She couldn’t help Gabe anymore. Her fantasy with Dylan was coming to an end in spite of his whispered promises.

Dylan would return to Toronto, and then he would leave Matheson Telecom for his new job.

Pain, hard and sharp, surged through her at the thought of him leaving. She couldn’t stop it and she couldn’t change it. And she couldn’t go back to Toronto with him.

She looked around and saw the shelf that held the Bible. With a cry of sorrow she stumbled toward it like a lost person seeking home.

She snatched it off the shelf and held it close.

What do you hope to find here?

Panic clutched at her as the conversation she and Dylan had had with Ted spun up once more. Dylan was going to stop looking. Gabe was still seen as guilty. What was going to happen to him if she quit now? She knew from experience that if things didn’t get resolved she didn’t know what Gabe would do.

But how could she convince Dylan to keep digging without letting him know who she was?

She couldn’t tell him. Not yet.

With a tired sigh she dropped into the large leather sofa facing the fireplace. She tucked her feet under her and snapped on the light, creating an intimate cone of luminance in the darkened study.

She paged through the Bible, her previous question
nagging at her. Did she want answers to her dilemma? A solution to the problems she had taken on?

Was she hoping to recapture the connection she’d felt so strongly in church?

She paged past the prophets to the New Testament, the Bible opening to the book of Peter. Her eyes skimmed the words, then stopped.

“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under God’s mighty hand that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

Lisa read the words again. And again. They pressed against her, exposing her even as they gave her comfort. She knew that she had to let go of her plans, yet if she did what would happen to Gabe? To her?

For the past few days she had allowed herself a fantasy. That Dylan really was her boyfriend and she was a part of this family. That together they would prove Gabe innocent.

But it wasn’t going to happen once Dylan and his family heard the truth from her. And even if she didn’t tell them, Dylan was leaving the company. Would she go back to Toronto and pursue the faint hope Dylan had held out to her in his whispered promises last night? Would those promises still hold once he found out she had lied to him?

Please, Lord. Just a little while longer,
she prayed as the loneliness of the past few years and the sacrifices she had made for Gabe in her personal life nagged at her resolve.
Let me hold on to this dream just a little more?

But even as the prayer formulated in her mind, she knew God wouldn’t answer it. She knew what she had
to do. She closed the Bible and set it aside.
Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.

Lisa pressed her hands against her face, her emotions warring with truth.
Help me, Lord. Help me find the right time.

The door to the study creaked open and Lisa whirled around, her hand on her chest.

It was Dylan. His hair was still tousled from sleep and whiskers darkened his cheeks. He wore a loose T-shirt and blue jeans. And he looked even better than he had last night in a suit and tie.

“Hey, there,” he said, his voice still sleep roughened. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

Lisa shook her head, her heart throbbing in her chest in a confused combination of fear and anticipation.

Dylan walked into the study and stopped by the end table beside Lisa’s chair. “When I saw the light under the door, I thought you were my mother. She sometimes comes in here early in the morning and has her devotions.”

“I’m…I’m…sorry. I’ll leave.” Lisa struggled to untangle her feet from her long robe to stand, but Dylan caught her by the shoulder and eased her down.

“It’s okay. She doesn’t do it every morning.” Dylan came around the couch and hunkered down in front of her. He caught her by the hands, toying gently with her fingers as he smiled up at her. “I was thinking about you this morning.”

In spite of her resolve, a soft yearning grew within her at his touch, at the intimacy of his lowered voice. Giving in to an impulse, she reached out and feathered
his hair back from his forehead, letting her fingers trail down the rough stubble of his cheek.

“I was thinking about you, too.” The words slipped past her defenses. She fought back the reality of their situation, deferring the moment when she was going to tell him the truth.

“So why couldn’t you sleep?” Dylan lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them lightly, his eyes on hers.

His soft question coupled with the touch of his mouth roused an agitation of feelings within her.

Tell him. Tell him now.

No. Not yet. This is too precious.

Lisa held his eyes as she swallowed hard against the shame she could feel pushing its way up her throat.

You promised you would at the right moment.

But she couldn’t. Not with Dylan so close. So dear.

She knew what was happening. Somehow, in the process of trying to save her brother, she had lost her heart. And when Dylan leaned closer and touched his lips to her cheek, she knew she was going to wait.

“I didn’t think I’d ever find anyone like you,” he said quietly, pushing her aside so he could sit beside her. “It sounds corny, but you make me feel whole.”

He sighed, still holding her hand as he angled his chin toward the Bible. “Were you reading it?”

“I was. I feel like I need to connect. To find peace.” Her words trailed off as the contradiction of what she had been reading and what she should do warred within her.

Dylan reached past her and pulled the Bible off the table. “What were you reading?”

“First Peter. ‘Cast all your anxieties on him.’” Lisa
laughed lightly, trying to dispel the heaviness that had crept over them. “Easier to read about than do.”

“Do you have a favorite passage?” Dylan leafed through the Bible, angling her a smile as he did so.

“First Corinthians 13.”

“Ah. The love passage.” Dylan flipped through the Bible and found it. “’If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal,’” he read, his voice growing quiet. Reverent. “’Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.’” Dylan paused there, his finger resting on the passage. “That covers quite a lot of territory, doesn’t it?”

“It also makes love so much more than a simple word.”

“Loving someone can be the hardest thing to do,” Dylan said, setting the Bible aside. “It’s not always a soft, mushy emotion.”

Lisa leaned back against the buttery leather of the couch, her eyes on Dylan as a surprising peace drifted over her. She kept quiet as she thought about what he had read. About love.

God’s love.

Her love.

She let the word slip through her mind, drifting, incomplete. She loved her brother. She loved her parents.

But what she felt for Dylan was something completely different. And she felt the stirring of a newer, even more frightening emotion. She glanced at Dylan quietly leafing through the Bible. He looked up at her.

Like ice water flowing through her veins the realization dawned. She loved him.

She couldn’t. It was too soon. Too sudden.

Yet even as her thoughts negated it, her heart told her it was true. Dylan was exactly the kind of man she had been looking for.

Why had she found him now? And under these circumstances?

The door behind them swept open and light poured out of the ceiling fixture.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Stephanie said, standing in the doorway. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I’m just leaving…right now,” Lisa said softly. “I need to have a shower.” She gave Dylan a sad smile, then left, wishing she could outrun what she had just discovered.

“Dylan, I’m sorry. Was I interrupting something?”

Dylan smiled. “Believe it or not, I was reading to her out of the Bible.”

“The Bible?” Stephanie’s voice betrayed her confusion. She tightened the sash on her red silk robe, glancing over her shoulder as if seeking confirmation.

“Yes. First Corinthians 13, if you must know.”

“Dylan. That’s…” Dylan felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder. Heard the wonder in her voice. A wonder that echoed his own. “You don’t know how I’ve prayed that you would find someone who would share…” She stopped again, emotion stopping her.

Dylan stood, turning to Stephanie, and saw the glisten of tears in her eyes. He gave his mother a gentle smile.

“She’s a wonderful girl, Dylan. I sense that she’s seeking the Lord.”

Dylan looked past his mother at the open door of the
study. In spite of the tender moment they had shared, he still felt as if a part of Lisa was evading him. As if there were things about her he didn’t know. “I wish I knew exactly what she was seeking.”

Stephanie took him by the arm and pulled him onto the couch Lisa had just left so suddenly. “You just have to be patient, Dylan. Something you’re not very good at as a rule.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom,” Dylan said, suppressing a sigh.

“In all other respects you are an amazing, wonderful person and any girl would be lucky to have you.” Stephanie gave his captured arm a shake as if to get his full attention.

“So why do I get the feeling I don’t know her very well?”

“You’ve only been together a short while,” Stephanie said quietly.

“Yet I really care about her,” he reluctantly admitted, knowing what chain of events his confession would create. His mother would tell the girls and they would be all over him like a bad suit giving advice on dating and the best place to go looking for engagement rings.

“Dylan, I’m so happy. Your father and I have prayed so long that you would find someone to care about. Someone who could share your faith.”

Dylan held his mother’s longing gaze, his own doubts coming to the fore. “I don’t know if we share that, Mother. A faith.”

“She came to church with you. You were just reading out of the Bible together.”

Dylan leaned back, sinking into the cool leather of the couch, feeling inadequate in the face of his mother’s conviction. “Don’t give me too much credit, Mom. I haven’t done either for a long time.”

“But you’re doing it now.” Stephanie stroked Dylan’s hair back from his face much as she had when he was younger. “And God acknowledges each small step you make. ‘A bruised reed He will not break, a smouldering wick He will not quench.’”

Dylan laid his head back, suddenly tired. “That’s exactly how I feel. Like a bruised reed. Not enough life to stand, but not completely bent over yet.”

“In your faith life?”

“And my personal life. And my professional life.” Except with Lisa. With her he felt fully alive. Strong.

“You’re still angry with your father about Ted, aren’t you?” Stephanie’s voice was quiet, but her pain and sorrow poured through her words. “I was hoping this week together would remove some of that. I was hoping you would change your mind about leaving and stay with the company.”

“It’s too late for that, Mom.” Dylan sighed, pressing his forefinger to his temple. The holiday had appeared endless before they left, but it had flown on wings. Now, as the end neared, he wished for more time. “As for Dad, I’m not as angry as I was. Especially not after listening to poor Ted last night.” Dylan tilted his head toward his mother, the couch sighing with the movement. “He’s far unhappier with Dad’s decision than I ever was, Mom.”

“I know.”

The simple admission caught him unawares.

“So does your father,” Stephanie continued, slipping the silky ends of her robe’s sash through her fingers.

Dylan glanced out the window of the study. From where he sat he could just see the early-morning sunlight glinting gold off the office buildings of downtown. Morning in the city.

He used to love coming early to his office and watching the sun come up, wondering what the new day was going to bring.

But for the past few years all that morning had brought was a sense that he was simply marking time. His work in Toronto didn’t challenge him and didn’t give him enough control to make any decisions that would take the company in dramatic new directions. Though he had done well in the branch office, the real authority still came from Vancouver.

“So why does he allow Ted to simply flounder on?” Dylan asked.

“You’re not the only proud person in this family, Dylan. It’s hard for your father to admit he’s made a mistake. Just as it’s hard for Ted to admit he can’t do the job. Just as it’s hard for you to simply tell your father that you should be in charge of the company, not Ted. And now that you’re quitting the company…”

“I’m not going to wait anymore.”

Stephanie swung around to face him, leaning close to him, her eyes flashing, her jaw set. “No. Instead you’re going to run away. And you’re wrong about your father. He’s not as driven as you. And he’s much softer.
I love him for it, but when it comes to the business, Matheson Telecom needs someone like you.”