Yuletide Twins

“You’re welcome. Now let’s go get you settled in.”

This time she followed him through the gallery. He picked up the luggage when they reached the kitchen and then stopped at the foot of the stairs. “You go first, and I’ll follow.”

She gave him a knowing glance. “You afraid I’ll get off balance and fall? I’ll have you know I’ve had to tackle some form of stairs nearly every day of the pregnancy, and they haven’t gotten the best of me yet. And now that I’ll be living here, I’ll navigate these every day.”

“Yeah,” David said, eyeing the steepness of the stairwell. “And I’m not so sure that’s a great thing. Maybe we should keep looking for other rental places, some that are on the first floor.”

She smirked. “Never knew you to be such a worrier. I can still drive—the doctor said so—and I can still climb stairs.” She stepped ahead and started up the first steps. “But if it will make you feel better, I always use the handrails.” She placed a firm palm on the banister to prove her point. “See?”

“Yeah, I see,” he said, but he still wasn’t thrilled at the thought of her climbing all of the stairs every day. What if she did fall? More worries came to mind. What if she went into labor trying to make her way to the apartment? Or what if she went into labor in the apartment and then had to climb down the stairs to get to the hospital? As if he wanted to make certain she knew, he said, “When you go into labor, just call me. I’ll make sure you get to the hospital in time.”

Her smirk moved into a smile. “You’re precious, you know that?”

“Precious, yep, that’s me. That’s what I go for.” And that’s what he’d always been to Laura, and to most every other girl before the relationships eventually ended. Precious. A friend.

She laughed, and even though he wasn’t thrilled with his never-changing “best bud” status, he was glad to have given her that luxury. “You know what I mean,” she said.

“Yeah, I do.” It was the same thing Mia Carter had meant when she told him she’d fallen for Jacob Brantley. And then AnnElise Riley last year, when she’d left town with Gage Sommers. And, the most memorable of all, Laura herself, who’d fallen for his college roommate without even realizing David was captivated, as well.

And although David had experienced one semi-long-term relationship in college with a girl who did, in fact, think he hung the moon, he’d ended the relationship with Cassadee because she hadn’t shared his faith.

And that was what David wanted—the kind of relationship that lasted for life, with God in its center—what he’d witnessed with his grandparents and parents. He’d never felt that toward Cassadee, or Laura, or any of the others, really. But he had no doubt he would, one day, in God’s time. For now, though, he’d be a friend to the cute, very pregnant woman making her way up the stairs.

Laura slowed her progress as she examined several photographs. In the gallery, the only personal photo of Mandy’s was the one Laura had noticed; however, all of the photos lining the stairwell were of Mandy’s family. “Is that Mandy’s husband?” She pointed to a photo of Mandy, Daniel and Kaden amid a group of children in Africa.

“Yes, they lead up a support effort in Malawi that our church funds, and they travel down every other year to check on the kids.”

“That’s so wonderful,” she whispered, then took another couple of steps before she stopped again, her head tilting at the largest photo on the wall. “That’s Kaden, right?” She pointed to the toddler between the couple. “And that’s Mandy’s husband, but that isn’t Mandy, is it?”

David’s chest caught a little when he looked at the image, the way it always did when he remembered his dear friends. “Actually, that isn’t Daniel. It’s his twin, Jacob. And that’s Mandy’s sister, Mia. They’re Kaden’s parents, but...”

Laura audibly inhaled. “I remember now. Mia, that was your friend you were so close to from home, and during your senior year at UT they were killed in a car accident.”

“Hit by a drunk driver,” David said, that painful memory slamming him the way it always did. “Kaden was only three, and Mandy adopted him.”

“And Daniel?” she asked, glancing between the two pictures to see the powerful resemblance between the identical twins.

“He’d been serving as a full-time missionary in Africa, at the place the church supports, but came back to help Mandy raise Kaden.”

“And they fell in love,” Laura said, emotion flowing through her words. “What a sad—and beautiful—story.”

David nodded, his own emotions not allowing him to say more. Then he cleared his throat and forced his attention away from the photos. “You want to head on up? The luggage is getting a little heavy here.” David winced at the lie. He hadn’t intended to tell it, but he hadn’t expected to reminisce over painful memories tonight, either.

Laura gave him a look that said she knew he wasn’t telling the truth but that she’d also let it go. Evidently she knew he was tired of thinking about Jacob’s and Mia’s deaths. “Sorry,” she said softly, then completed the few steps left to reach the apartment.

She glanced in the first bedroom, a twin bed against one wall and bookshelves lining the remainder of the room. A baseball comforter covered the bed, and a long blue pillow with Kaden embroidered in red centered the headboard made of baseball bats. “Oh, how cute!” she said, taking it all in. “I want to have a neat room for my girls, too. I need to start thinking about that.”

“Well, from what Mandy has told me, Kaden has an identical room to that one at their home. When she and Daniel married, they were going to move all of Kaden’s things to the new place, but then Mandy said she knew he’d be spending a lot of time here with her, especially in the summer when school is out, so she kept his room intact. She also converted one of her studio rooms downstairs into a room for Mia.”

“See, that’s the thing that would be great about being a teacher. I could have my summers off to spend with the girls,” Laura said. “I’ll look at the room she did for Mia later. Maybe I can get some ideas for my girls. I want their room to be special, like this one is for Kaden.”

“I’ve got some magazines at the bookstore that should help you out. I get several home design ones for the moms in town, some specifically for decorating children’s rooms.”

“That’d be great,” she said, but her tone wasn’t overly enthusiastic. Before David could ask why, she added, “Mandy said this apartment has two bedrooms. And I’m sure she won’t want me changing things, since this is obviously Kaden’s room.”

David understood. She wanted a special place for her girls, and she wouldn’t be able to decorate for them here, unless Mandy and Daniel allowed this to be something fairly permanent. David suspected they would offer, but he didn’t know if that’s what Laura wanted. “She has several studio rooms downstairs, and I don’t think she uses them all. She may let you change one of them.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but still, I hope that eventually I’ll have something more like—” she paused, swallowed “—a home.” Then she looked to David and shook her head. “I’m sure that sounded like I’m not grateful Mandy gave me this place to stay, or rather is going to let me rent it. I am going to pay rent.” She frowned. “I didn’t ask what you’d pay me at the bookstore, and anything will be fine—I promise—but you’d know more than I do.... Will I be able to afford the rent here?”

David wished he could pay her what a college graduate deserved, but he wasn’t sure how he was going to pay her at all. “I think Daniel and Mandy will give you a very reasonable rate.” Of that he was certain, and whatever that rate was, David would make sure he gave her enough hours and enough pay for her to live here. Somehow. And he didn’t want to worry about that anymore now. But the look on her face said she was uncertain, and she had enough on her plate without having to be concerned over how to pay her rent. “You’ll be able to pay it.” He smiled, and thankfully, she did, too.

“Well, let’s go see the other rooms.” She left Kaden’s room and continued past a small bathroom and into a larger bedroom. “Oh, this is so nice.”

David followed her into the room and placed the larger piece of luggage on the floor and her makeup bag on the dresser. The bed was an antique, beautifully carved and cloaked in a handmade quilt. Embroidered circular doilies decorated each nightstand with antique lamps in the center. Long, slender embroidered linen covered the dresser. And, looking a bit out of place amid the furnishings, a small flat-screen television topped a highboy chest of drawers. “You like it?”

Laura ran her hand along the bumpy quilt and smiled. “I love it. Granted, it may not be a permanent home for me and the babies, but it’s a beautiful place to start, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

Like the remainder of the apartment, the room had an abundance of photographs on the walls, all of these black-and-white images, some landscapes and additional family photos. Laura spotted a framed photo at one end of the dresser. She picked it up and studied the image of Mandy and Mia, the two girls hugging tightly and smiling from ear to ear. “They were really close, weren’t they?”

David blinked, nodded. “Yeah, they were.”

“I hope my girls are that close, too.” She kept looking at the picture, then glanced up at David, and her voice was barely above a whisper when she asked, “You loved Mia, didn’t you?”

He honestly couldn’t remember how much he’d shared with Laura that night at UT when he’d gotten the call that informed him Mia was gone. Maybe she already knew the answer. But even so, he wouldn’t lie to her about it. “I was pretty sure I loved her in high school, you know, young love and all of that. I thought I’d marry her,” he admitted. “But she was two years behind me in school, and when I left, she kept hanging around with all of our friends, and she and Jacob fell in love.” David thought it was important to add, “And I was happy for them. Maybe not at first, but after I saw how much they meant to each other, and how happy Mia was, I was happy for them.”

Laura’s head moved subtly, as though she were putting the pieces together. “So those first years at UT, when I met you and you were dating so much and partying so much, you were trying to get over her.”

It wasn’t a question, so David didn’t answer. There was no need. It was the truth. Except he wouldn’t add that he would’ve dated Laura if she’d have looked at him the way she looked at Jared.

“And then, when she died, that’s when you changed.” Her head nodded more certainly now, as though she had no doubt whatsoever in the truth of her statement. “You turned to your faith after you lost your friends. I remember that. No more partying, no more dating everyone on campus.”

David fought the impulse to tell her that the only girl he’d ever really wanted to date at UT was the one standing in this room. Instead, he said, “I realized I hadn’t had any peace without my faith. And when I needed something to hold on to, something real, that’s where I turned.”

“I remember that,” she said, placing the photo back on the dresser and turning toward David. “You found God, about the same time that I lost Him.”

Her mouth flattened, and David sensed the sadness in her admission. Back in college, every now and then, particularly when she was upset, he’d had intense conversations with Laura, the kind where you wonder if you said too much, opened up too much, showed your pain too much. Then he would hold her until she was okay. He moved toward her with the intention of holding her again, but she stepped back and shook her head.

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “It’s like that saying, if you find yourself farther from God, who moved?” She waited a beat and then whispered, “I did.”

In spite of all the tough conversations David had with Laura before, he’d never said anything about faith, or God. At the time, that wasn’t at the top of his priorities. Now, though, it was. “Laura, we have an amazing church here, full of people who understand God’s love and His grace. Why don’t you come with me Wednesday night for the midweek worship?”

The look she gave David resembled shock. Then she glanced down at her stomach and shook her head. “Trust me, I have no business in church right now.”

“Laura—” he began, but she cleared her throat.

“Please, David. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to get my things unpacked and relax awhile. It’s been a long day.”

David knew when a conversation had been ended, and this one was done, in spite of how important he felt it was for her to find her faith again, for her to find the peace that he’d found again. “Sure,” he said and turned to go, but he wasn’t giving up. He’d already determined several ways he hoped to help Laura. He wanted to help her support her babies until she was able to get a teaching job, and he’d do that—somehow—at the bookstore. And he wanted to help her find her faith and the peace he’d experienced again since he’d turned his life back over to God. In other words, David wanted to help her have the two things she needed most—a friend and a Savior.

Chapter Four

“What’s that you’re working on?” Zeb Shackleford peered over Laura’s shoulder at her pitiful sketch.

“We’re starting a book club for kids,” she said. “The first series we’re reading is The Boxcar Children. I thought it’d be nice to decorate the children’s area to look like a boxcar.” She frowned at the plain red rectangle on the page. “I was going to do a sketch and then go to the craft store to see what materials I could use to create a big prop.” She shook her head again at the image on the paper. “But my artistic skills are rather lacking.”

He set the two books he’d been holding on a table nearby and gingerly lowered himself into the seat next to hers. “You know, my sweet Dolly used to say I had quite a knack with a pencil and paper. I used to draw all of the scenes for her classroom bulletin boards. You want me to give it a go for you?”

“Would you mind?” Laura gladly relinquished the sketch pad and colored pencils to the kind man.

“I’d be honored.” He turned the page to a clean sheet, opened the box of pencils and selected the charcoal one. Laura had propped The Boxcar Children book on the table to use as a go-by, and he squinted at it for a few seconds then began to draw. It didn’t take but a minute of watching him move the pencil around the page for Laura to see that he really did have a talent.

“Dolly,” she said as he drew, “is she your wife?”

“For fifty-seven years before the Lord called her home.” He paused, looked at Laura and said, “I’m looking forward to seeing her again.”

Touched by the affection in his tone, Laura didn’t know what to say. She’d met Zeb Monday, only four days ago, but already she’d grown very attached to the kindhearted man who visited the store each day.

“She was a teacher, too,” Zeb said, then turned his attention back to sketching.

“I’m not a teacher yet.” She’d talked to Zeb about her dream to become a teacher, as well as how she’d had to put that plan on hold until she had her babies and until schools were willing to hire her.

Zeb completed the boxcar—which looked amazing—and began to draw the children from the book cover. Laura didn’t really need the children drawn, since she was only planning to design a big boxcar prop, but he was doing such an incredible job that she didn’t want to stop him. “You know,” he said, “the way I see it, teaching doesn’t have to occur inside school walls.” He pointed to the book. “Sounds like you’re already working toward encouraging some of the kids around here to increase their joy of reading. That’s teaching, any way you look at it.”

Laura smiled. She had felt good about the responses they’d already received for the book club. “I guess it is.” Several of Kaden’s friends had signed up, and she anticipated adding more tonight if she got this display done and could advertise it properly for the First Friday event. “I’ve decided to hold the Boxcar Book Club gathering each Monday after school. I thought that’d be a good way to start each child’s week, and I’m planning to bring in some of the activities from the book to make it more interactive.”

“Dolly did the same thing, tried to give the kids more hands-on activities when they were learning. She said it helped them retain what they learned if they had an action associated with it.” He put down the pencil and turned the page toward Laura. “I think she’d have liked this. Do you?”

The detail of the boxcar, as well as the four children, was astounding. “It’s incredible.”

“Okay, so to create this to scale, I believe you’ll need six pieces of craft board, the thickest kind they sell. You’ll also need to fix this door so it opens, because they’ll probably want to go inside of it, don’t you think?”

Laura nodded. “That’s what I wanted.”

He ran tiny dashes around the drawing to show how he believed the boards should be assembled. “Then all you’ll need is some wood stands to hold it in place. I’m pretty sure David can get wood for you out of some of those crates that are always stacked behind the stores.”

He handed her the sketch pad. “Take it over to Scraps and Crafts. It’s straight across the square—you can’t miss it. Diane Marsh owns the place and will be able to tell you exactly what you need to build a boxcar prop for the kids.” He lifted a finger. “Her grandson is about Kaden’s age. Have you got an Andy Marsh on your list of kids signed up?”

Laura remembered the name. “Yes, I do.”

“Chances are, Diane will donate the materials if she knows it’ll help Andy enjoy his reading. She’s talked to me about that before, wanting him to learn to like books.”

“I’m pretty sure it was his grandmother who called and signed him up,” she said.

Zeb grinned. “Sounds like Diane. She loves those grandchildren. The other ones are older, teens I think. If you start something for teens, she’ll probably sign them up, too.”

Laura had been thinking the same thing, that if this book club was a success, she could start more. “I hope to do just that.”

He pushed up from the chair and picked up the two books. Glancing at his watch, he said, “I’d go with you to see Diane, but I’m supposed to be at the hospital in a half hour so I’d better go.”

“The hospital?”

“I read to the kids on the children’s floor a couple of days each week during their lunch.” He turned the books so Laura could see the titles, Daniel and the Lion’s Den and The Story of Moses. “Picked a couple of Bible stories for today.”

Laura’s heart moved the way it did every time she heard about one of Zeb’s regular activities. She’d never met anyone like him. “That’s wonderful, Zeb. I’m sure they love having you read to them.”

He leaned one of the books toward Laura and said, “You should go with me sometime, and David, too. I’ve got to tell you, they do way more for me than I do for them. Makes you really understand what Christ meant when He said it’s more blessed to give than to receive, you know?”

Laura nodded. She did know, and yet that made her current situation all the more painful. David had asked her to go to his midweek Bible study on Wednesday at the Claremont Community Church, and she’d declined. And Mandy had invited her to a ladies’ Bible study that she was hosting last night, and again, she’d declined. Now Zeb was reminding her subtly that...she missed church. But she’d so blatantly turned her back on God that she wasn’t certain He’d want her. And she didn’t know whether she could handle the guilt of entering a church and being surrounded by all of the people who “got it right.”

Zeb had turned his attention to the two children’s books in his hand and didn’t notice Laura’s discomposure. Instead, he flipped through the pages and smiled. “These illustrations are beautiful. The kids will love them.” He moved toward the counter. “I’ll leave the money over here so you don’t have to get up.”

“Don’t leave any money, Mr. Zeb. David doesn’t want you to pay, and neither do I. And I’m getting up anyway.” She maneuvered her way out of the chair, then winced when one of the babies apparently kicked her for disturbing her sleep. “Whoa.”

He quickly turned from the counter. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she said, gritting her teeth as another kick matched the first, then exhaling when the twins finally settled down. “I’m fine. One of them is apparently attempting to teach the other one karate,” she said with a laugh. “But I’m not taking your money.”

He frowned. “I told you not to get up.”

“I’m going to the craft store as soon as David gets back from the post office, so I needed to get up anyway. And I want to walk you to the door.” She gently steered him farther away from the checkout counter and toward the door.

“You’re just trying to keep me from paying.”

“And I’m doing a pretty good job of it, too, aren’t I?” She smiled, gave him a hug and then opened the door for him to leave.

“One of these days I’m going to repay you,” he said.

“You can repay me by letting me go with you to visit those kids one day. That sounds like a teacher’s dream.”

He smiled. “It is. You have a blessed day, Miss Laura.”

“You, too.”

Zeb exited, leaving Laura alone in the bookstore. That was something she’d noticed this week more than anything else; it was almost always empty. In the four days she’d been working, Laura had learned how to collect used books and log the credits in the computer, how to shelve the titles according to genre and author, how to select which books would appeal to readers in the various reading nooks and how to guide customers in their purchases. All of that could be considered part of her job description, but it wasn’t the most important thing she learned during her first week on the job.

She learned David wasn’t making any money.

Throughout the week, they’d received several bags of used books from customers who typically swapped out for other books during the same shopping trip. Then they had a few who came in and visited, browsed titles and perhaps even sat in a reading nook to peruse a book for a while before they placed it back on the shelf. Hence, no revenue. And while David did offer a few new books for purchase, the majority of the store was composed of trade-ins, and most of his sales were for credit. Or, in the case of Zeb Shackleford, free.

Laura didn’t mind David giving so many books to the precious older man, but she didn’t understand how he could continue running this business with virtually no income. And then this morning he’d given her a paycheck for her first week of employment, and he’d paid her well. Nothing excessive, but more than she’d expected considering the fact that he let her rest whenever she needed, let her go to her doctor’s appointment yesterday and told her she could arrive late and leave early if she felt weary from the pregnancy.

But with the lack of customers and income that Laura had seen this week, she had no doubt David wasn’t making enough money to support the store, much less to pay Laura as though everything were a-okay, hunky-dory.

And something else that wasn’t a-okay or hunky-dory was the fact that her good-looking and nice guy of a boss was undeniably single. She’d paid attention throughout the week; he never texted, didn’t phone anyone for quiet conversations, and even though several pretty ladies had stopped by the store over the past few days, he’d offered nothing more than a friendly smile. No flirting. No invitations for dinner or even coffee. And Laura got the impression that at least a couple of the twentysomething females had stopped by specifically to see the dashing owner and maybe even find themselves on the receiving end of his attention.

But David didn’t appear to even notice he had a following. Then again, Laura had never actually realized how cute he was until this week. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones kicking in. Or maybe he’d always been attractive, and she’d been too absorbed in Jared to notice. But in any case, he hadn’t seemed the least bit interested in any of the single ladies of Claremont, which was a problem. A big one. Because Laura needed him to be interested in someone else. That would control this ridiculous notion that he might be interested in the very pregnant friend working in his shop. And it would also control her bizarre impulse to return the interest. Ever since their heart-to-heart Monday night, when he talked to her about loving and losing Mia, she’d felt even closer to David. And she wasn’t ready for a relationship, at all.