Deep Haven [02] Tying the Knot Page 16

  This particular brand of agitation made him want to run.

  All the way to Minneapolis.

  Her eyes filled, recalling their conversation. The wind had smacked out of her when he announced he was headed to Minneapolis. “What?” she’d rasped in a croak.

  The look he gave her felt so raw, so vulnerable that she could barely make out his words. “I’m headed down to the Twin Cities to pick up the campers.” He swallowed and ducked his head, as if somehow dreading the impact those words might have on her.

  And then, with those words, right there before her eyes Noah morphed back into the gangster she’d been dodging. Suddenly the scar on his cheek, the motorcycle, even his swagger screamed drug lord, or worse, murderer. She froze. No. It had to be her fears, her past scrambling her vision. Noah may look dangerous, but over the past week she’d realized it was an act for the benefit of the campers. Identification. A youth-director gimmick.

  But he’d never contradicted her when she accused him of being a convict the night he broke into her cabin . . . but truth be told, she’d been . . . well . . . exaggerating. The Noah that was her friend, the one who taught her how to roast marshmallows and who chopped wood like Paul Bunyan couldn’t be from Minneapolis. Well, maybe the suburbs. But not the inner city. He was simply too nice. Pure hero. Besides, God wouldn’t do that to her. Not after what she’d been through.

  Anne had forced a smile, shaking away her idiocy. “When will you be back?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  Why didn’t he look at her? After he’d nearly carried her home, concern ringing his eyes and tightening his arm around her, she felt sure he . . . she nearly choked on the confusing emotions knotting her throat. He’d shot her a half smile, but it spoke more of chagrin. “Try and get some rest while I’m gone, okay?”

  Then he’d turned, hands balled at his sides, and strode away. Anne watched him go, wanting to call after him, yearning to ask the questions just now forming in her heart. Who were these kids he was picking up and why did Noah Standing Bear look like he’d seen a ghost?

  Anne wiped a pool of disloyal tears, turned onto her side, and smacked her pillow. Well, she wasn’t here for him, was she? She was here to serve the kids in the camp. Even if they were from Minneapolis didn’t mean she had to instantly assume the worst. The picture made perfect sense. City kids, probably from a nice suburban church, needed a wilderness experience, a camping atmosphere outside their manicured lives to test their faith. If living in army tents, battling mosquitoes, and bathing in icy water didn’t push them to the edge, the five-story vault off the ropes course would certainly encourage them to wrap their fingers around their faith.

  Anne battled the recurring image of Noah as drug lord, gangbanger, hustler. Yes, with a nylon hat, a tattoo, and baggy pants, Noah might fit the Phillips profile. But his gentle smile, his patience, even his wisdom belied the truth. She had more street experience in her little finger than he had in his entire muscle-bound body, even if he did look the part.

  That street history told her that Noah Standing Bear harbored secrets behind his grimace. She couldn’t be imagining the feelings budding between them—no, not after the kiss he’d given her last night. Sweet and gentle, and she’d felt a tremble that told her it meant as much to him as it had to her.

  The memory of his touch curled her insides in a swirl of pleasure. She wasn’t imagining the way he looked at her or the stirring of her own feelings. When Noah returned, she was going to look him straight in the eye and ask him what he was hiding.

  Because—she couldn’t deny it any longer—she was here for Noah. And this time she wasn’t going to run from the fears lurking behind the doorway of her heart.

  Noah vise-gripped the steering wheel of the ancient bus, trying not to be unsettled by the potholes and dips in the logging road that ran the final five miles to Wilderness Challenge. Behind him the twenty tired kids had quieted after five hours of sweltering, uncomfortable travel under the relentless commands of Noah’s capable bouncers, Bucko and Ross.

  The kids had been patted down for weapons, had their gang colors confiscated, been deloused, and now, as the birch arms enclosed them, each mile they drew closer to the edge of the world, fear tightened its stranglehold on Noah. These urban warriors were no match for the real jungle wiles.

  Three years ago, when Noah had first trekked into these woods with his motley youth group, he’d watched a sixteen-year-old Vice Lord minister reduced to tears at the hoot of an owl and knew he’d found the golden ticket. Noah smiled at the perfection of God’s plan. He never ceased to marvel at the effect the wilderness had on kids—especially street kids. Kids who had never seen the beauty of a loon, never heard the song of the night absent sirens, traffic, and the scream of neighbors. These kids didn’t know the world wasn’t painted entirely in gang symbols, rutted cars, and broken homes. Surrounded by mosquitoes, the sounds of the wind lashing the trees and forest animals lurking about their tents, these junior highers in the back would be hanging on Noah’s every word in less than twenty-four hours.

  “Hey, Noah! Where ya taking us? The dark side of the moon? I mean, man, do you even got electricity up here?” Darrin Marlow hung his arm over the rail separating the bus driver and the passenger seat. “I thought you said we were going to camp. I don’t see nothin’ but trees.”

  “Calm down.” Noah flicked the kid a look in the overhead mirror. “I promise you’ll have a good time.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Darrin flopped back in his seat, arms folded across his chest, in the throes of a deep pout, looking every inch a thirteen-year-old homeboy with a rugged history. His size alone had made him a fine catch for the Vice Lords, and it was only Noah’s shadow standing sentry every night after school that had kept the kid out of the gang’s lasso. For now.

  Darrin’s father, a man who’d loved his kids, had been found facedown in the Mississippi two years ago, a gang-related murder statistic. The man, the owner of an electronics store, had said no too many times. It hadn’t taken Darrin’s mother long to shop other options. Noah didn’t blame her—she needed a father for her kids, but Darrin wasn’t having any part of the replacement, a man from Noah’s church. Tricia had called Noah twice last year to drag Darrin home after he’d shown up drunk at Casey’s, the local pinball/pizza hangout. Noah counted his blessings that the kid wasn’t hanging out in darker playgrounds.

  Darrin slipped on his headphones. His CD player was probably on the last of its juice because he fiddled with the toggle and made a face.

  “You’re gonna lose it in about ten minutes anyway, big D,” Noah said. He didn’t wait for Darrin’s response. He knew the entire assembly would take off his head when he confiscated their electronics. But gangster rap and hip-hop were the last things these kids needed. He wasn’t a great singer, but he had a few new tunes that might catch their interest. These kids weren’t ready for Michael Card, but Christian rap might turn their ears.

  Noah steered over a rut and heard a trio of ten-year-olds in the back give a screech of delight as they bounced. He couldn’t hide a smile. These kids weren’t so hardened that they didn’t break free of their cool-as-ice shells and enjoy childhood. Junior high or even younger was the optimum age for moral and spiritual change. At ten to fourteen, kids were still searching, still available, still fueled by a remnant of hope. High school punks had a firmly gelled worldview and an outer layer so thick it took a sledgehammer to break through.

  Maybe someday, if this summer didn’t crumble, he’d begin to dream bigger, into that demographic also. Right now, just thinking about the next month turned him cold. He had no illusions that this little party could turn into a brawl with one serious dissing between campers. With kids from all over the Phillips neighborhood crammed into this rusty 1974 school bus, he couldn’t count the different gang affiliations on one hand. These kids might be decloaked, disarmed, and displaced, but it would only take a few negative hand gestures for battle lines to be drawn.

  God and
all His heavenly armies had better be in shape because this summer might see a battle to rival the L.A. riots.

  Or it might succeed. He glanced at Darrin, then at his little sister, Latisha, sitting behind him, singing softly to herself, her dark fingers weaving a friendship bracelet. Wilderness Challenge might force these kids to the end of themselves where they’d find nowhere to fall but into the arms of their Savior.

  Noah muscled the bus through an embrace of foliage, brush screeching as it scraped the sides. He could see the sign ahead, rough cut by his own jackknife into a piece of stained oak: “Wilderness Challenge: Psalm 62:8.” The verse came readily to mind: “O my people, trust in Him at all times. Pour out your heart to Him, for God is our refuge.”

  Gratefulness welled up inside him. Without a doubt, God had been his refuge, and only pure trust in God’s goodness had brought Noah to this moment. He had so many people to thank, starting with God and going down through supporting churches, his own staff at the Christian Fellowship Center, and finally Ross, Bucko, Melinda, Granny D., Katie, the rest of the counselors, and not in the least Anne. Without her, he wouldn’t even have the gas money to yank these kids off the streets for the summer. God had certainly surprised him with Anne. A lady who laughed at his stupid jokes, who was as tenacious as a badger, and who had more guts in that petite body than he’d first given her credit for.

  Being near her sent his heart into overdrive and turned his legs weak. It didn’t help that she’d let him kiss her. Surrendering, tender, offering him a piece of herself he knew, deep in his gut, he didn’t deserve. But he’d held her soft face in his work-weary hands and touched those beautiful lips, and he’d never be the same for it. He had begun to cultivate serious hopes that Anne would consider joining the Wilderness Challenge team for the long haul—as in a partnership of the permanent kind.

  He winced at that thought. He wanted to deny it, but the anticipation churning in his chest told him he was halfway too far in love with Anne to pull back now. His heart-ripping fear as he’d watched her fall hadn’t escaped his notice. In ten seconds of utter agony he’d realized that Anne was embedded in the fabric of his heart, and the delirious feeling had him singing one second and poised to bolt the next.

  Bolt was exactly what he’d done, struck nearly dumb by the fact that he’d met her a year ago. It had taken him ten-plus hours in the driver’s seat of this rattletrap bus to really shake his brain free of the shock. He’d spent most of the trip wincing as he thought of the way he’d scared the life out of her—more than once. No wonder she looked at him as if he’d sprouted horns the first time she saw him and nearly fainted when she’d caught him in her house acting like a stalker.

  Or a drug-high killer.

  That night came back to him in shuddering clarity. Her fear, her tears, her whispered voice when she told him she hadn’t seen God’s grace, couldn’t fathom His love for her. He cringed, remembering how he’d challenged her not to run from her fears. His words felt even more hollow as he grasped the depth of her wounds now. Her scars went faith deep.

  She didn’t need a hoodlum reminding her of the split second of terror that had nearly ended her life and shattered her belief in a good and present God.

  His chest tightened, that moment searing his brain. What did she remember? He recalled everything in unadulterated, agonizing detail, down to the odor of Anthony’s fear on his sweaty face and Anne’s calm, precise courage, to the way she’d clung to Noah’s hand while bleeding into the threadbare carpet. Sweat beaded the back of his neck as he drove. Perhaps she didn’t remember him at all—amnesia in trauma victims wasn’t rare. Or, and he guessed this from the permanent etching of fear in her eyes, she too relived every horrific second in surround sound and Technicolor.

  If so, did she remember him? Noah licked his dry lips. Would she remember him as friend . . . or foe?

  Suddenly the idea of her spending the summer with him, a man who represented the darkest moment of her life, made him hurt, bone deep. He scanned the campers in the rearview mirror—their pierced faces, the defiant slump of their bodies, the emotional baggage they wore like tattoos—and cringed.

  Anne had run from her pain, her past.

  And Noah had brought it right back to her front door.

  He felt like a weasel.

  No, worse.

  He felt like he’d assaulted her himself.

  Anne stood on the porch of the lodge, watching the bus bounce along the road. Noah manned the wheel, and she instantly ached at the exhaustion written on his face. It couldn’t be easy to travel ten hours in two days, hauling a bus full of rowdy kids. His nerves must be nearly in shreds.

  She tugged at her T-shirt and smoothed her hands over her jeans. So she’d put on makeup and a touch of perfume. It didn’t mean he would notice.

  Katie and Melinda lined up beside her. Katie had cornrowed Melinda’s hair into tight, functional braids, and both girls had moved out of the cook shack and into the army tents. Excitement lined their faces, complete with beaming smiles that had sprouted after their prayer time this morning. Noah had chosen his staff well—these girls were already praying for their campers by name.

  The bus wheezed to a stop and Anne braced herself. She’d be spending the next six weeks looking after these kids, and they needed to see her as disciplinarian as well as housemother if she expected them to obey her. The door opened, and Bucko emerged with more energy than she thought she possessed in her entire body. Well, she supposed that might be apropos for a guy the size of Texas. He waved to the group on the porch, his white teeth gleaming. So the ladies weren’t the only ones oozing excitement.

  Anne heard Noah on the bus, his words muffled but his voice strong as he no doubt laid down the camp rules. The tone of his voice shocked her. Not gentle. Not quiet. Mr. Grizzly possessed exactly the stern voice required to keep these kids in line. So why did he need the mercenary biker getup?

  When the first kid thumped out of the bus, Anne’s heart stalled in her chest. Wearing a long, red Chicago Bulls T-shirt, he had his pants hitched below his backside, and one pant leg had been neatly rolled up higher than the other. Gang signals were hard to spot unless you’d grown up in the hood and knew what to look for. This kid couldn’t be any older than fifteen, but he was pushing six feet, and from the body piercing, his swagger, and his arranged attire, she knew in the pit of her stomach he was a gangbanger.

  She watched in horrified silence as a string of gang wanna-bes, or, as in her nightmares, full-fledged homeboys and girls lined up outside the bus, doing their best to broadcast to the critters peering at them from the forest that they were taking this turf. Backs stiff, arms folded, twenty street-hardened kids—no, criminals—glared at the small assembly on the porch and dared them to change their lives.

  Anne wanted to flee, but fear held her body rigid. Her throat tightened, nearly cutting off her air supply. God couldn’t be this cruel. Not after all she’d been through, not after the scars speared into her body. She crossed her arms and held in a scream.

  Beside her, Melinda and Katie dashed off the porch to greet the newcomers.

  Obviously, she was the only one without a clue as to the biographies of their campers. She had been left in the dark, deceived, betrayed. Anger spiraled through every vein, every muscle until she felt she could take out Mr. Standing Bear with a death-ray glare.

  Then Noah emerged. Before he plastered that ever-present, melt-her-heart-in-an-instant smile on his face, he glanced at her. In his face she saw the guilt that told her he knew exactly how he’d trapped her.

  No wonder he’d slunk away from her like a rat.

  16

  Anne! Please talk to me!” For a woman with short legs, she could hustle. Of course, he’d seen the glares she’d been sending him the past hour, and he had no doubt that fury coursed through her veins that could fuel the space shuttle for a few thousand millennia. As if to prove it, she’d taken off like a rocket the second he’d dismissed the campers to their tents.

>   There might not be steam spiraling from her ears, but the wake she stirred up made him want to duck.

  He’d seen the way she’d turned ashen and he felt heartsick. Why hadn’t he talked to her about the kids before they arrived? or at least warned her?

  Because, until last night, he hadn’t realized it mattered. Kids were kids, regardless of their economics or race, and each one needed God as much as the next. God didn’t choose demographics. Just sinners. And the platoon of street soldiers unpacking their gear in the army tents certainly qualified. Noah lengthened his stride. “Anne! C’mon, talk to me!”

  She whirled, and he shuddered at the red outlining her eyes. Her mouth opened. Closed. She trembled as if fighting emotions so deep she couldn’t churn them out of her chest to be vocalized. Then she buried her face in her hands and shook her head again and again, her body starting to rack.

  Noah felt a groan deep inside his body. He stepped toward her—how could he not take her into his arms? Her hair flung over her face; her shoulders trembled. Every fiber of his body longed to hold her. He reached out, touched her shoulder—

  She flinched. “Stay away from me.”

  Noah froze. No, Anne, please. Don’t do this. He swallowed his hurt and strengthened his voice. “Anne, what’s wrong?” He couldn’t tell her what he knew. The last thing she needed right now was a phantom from the past. “Is it the kids?”

  She raised her head, and a wild look entered her beautiful face. She shivered so hard he thought she might shatter right there before his eyes. But her voice emerged steady. “I know this sounds so incredibly prejudiced, Noah. But, yes. Yes! Excuse me, but don’t you think you might have informed me that you were dragging up a bunch of street punks for the summer? that you planned on infecting the wilderness—and my life—with kids who don’t care a whit about what you might say to them as long as they can trash this camp? These kids have hearts of stone, and they’d just as soon throw them at you than let you soften them.” Her eyes sizzled with achingly raw pain.