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  “How dare you,” Eve gasped. She wriggled off of the bed, keeping the coverlet tight to her chest and wrapping it around her body as she stood.

  Mark had to do something, say something, to stop the train from wrecking.

  “Amelia, you should know that I asked your sister to marry me last night and she said yes,” he said. He took a step closer to Eve, debating whether it would help or hurt to put his arm around her.

  “You what?” Amelia snapped as though the engagement were the train wreck.

  “That’s right.” Eve touched Mark’s arm for a moment before clutching the coverlet tight. “I love him, Amelia. I do. Mark has been so kind to me since—”

  “I can see just how kind to you he’s been!” Amelia looked the two of them up and down.

  Standing in the hotel room, barely dressed, hair tousled from the night before, they painted a guilty picture. Still, the certainty in Mark’s heart that he was ultimately doing the right thing was unmoving.

  “If your anger is for me,” he said, “then I accept it. I am sorry if I’ve tarnished your image of me. All I can say is that I am a man, human, and more than just a pastor. The wrong I’ve done is between me and Eve and God alone. But if you’re angry with your sister, I believe there is more that you have to consider.”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure,” Amelia drawled.

  Mark frowned.

  “How can you stand there and accuse us of some horrible wrong when you and Eric shared a bed before you were married?” Eve railed.

  Amelia flushed. Her arms hung helplessly at her sides, fists clenched. “That… that was not the same.”

  “Why isn’t it the same?” Eve asked, as boiling with impotent anger as Amelia was.

  Amelia swallowed. “Because… because I would certainly have been ruined beyond repair if I hadn’t gone with Eric.”

  “Well I was ruined beyond repair!” Eve burst into tears.

  Mark rested a hand on the small of her back to calm her.

  Amelia quivered, frustration and misery radiating from her. “You seduced a man of God, Eve. An important man. How could you?”

  “I love him,” Eve protested.

  “That’s no excuse for being a harlot.” As soon as the accusation was out, Amelia’s face contorted in pain. She rested a hand on her belly and turned away, shaking her head.

  “Hypocrite.” Eve took a step toward her, face wet with tears. “You can’t bear to see me happy, can you?”

  “I can’t bear to see you at all when you’re like this,” Amelia said, still not looking at her.

  “Like what?” Eve demanded, clutching the bedclothes to her heaving chest. “Human? Broken? Accepting help in whatever form it comes?”

  “I can’t stay here anymore,” Amelia said, voice strained. “I can’t stand to look at you.”

  “Fine,” Eve shouted. “Leave me! Leave me again like you did before! I will not let you judge me for preserving my sanity the best way I know how.”

  She stepped forward with each accusation, but Mark caught her and pulled her back against him. Amelia fled toward the door, face pinched with tears.

  “Where are you going?” Eve gasped when her sister turned the door handle. Her anger subsided and left her rigid with panic.

  “Let her go for now” he murmured against her ear. “We’re in no position to argue at the moment.”

  Amelia flew out into the hall, shutting the door behind her far more carefully than he would have imagined in her agitated state. With the barest of clicks, they were alone again.

  “How could she?” Eve moaned. She turned toward him, dropping her head to his shoulder as he squeezed her tight. “How could she say those things to me?”

  “I’m not sure, darling,” he answered, stroking her hair back from her face. Her shoulders shook and he could feel the tension in her body that told him she was battling not to weep outright. “I suppose she’s just hurt.”

  Eve jerked to look up at him, expression incredulous. “What could she possibly have to be hurt about? She has a handsome husband, a beautiful child, and soon one more. She has the perfect life, while I’ll never—” She snapped her lips closed around her thought and shook her head, pulling away. “I can’t stay here.”

  “What?”

  She dodged around him, sniffling and wiping her face with the back of her hand. When she reached the bureau, she let the bedclothes drop as she searched for clothes.

  “I can’t stay here, not with Amelia haunting my every step with her righteous fury.”

  Mark swallowed the lump that caught in his throat. He strode across the room to her. “I’m sure she won’t stay angry for long,” he said. “Let’s take a deep breath and think about this.”

  Eve shook her head, throwing on a chemise and drawers. “No, Mark, I’m sorry. I love Cold Springs already, and I love you.” Her frantic movements slowed and she turned to face him. “I do love you, I promise.” Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy.

  “But?” he prompted her. The harsh edge in his voice surprised him.

  Eve hesitated, bit her lip, then rushed to the wardrobe to continue dressing. “I love you, but I can’t stay where my own sister hates me,” she said at last.

  She gathered all of the dresses hung in the wardrobe in her arms and dragged them to the bed.

  “No.” Mark marched to the side of the bed and took her dresses away from her. “I won’t let you leave. Not like this.”

  “Please, Mark,” she pleaded with him, tears spilling once more. “Please let me go. It hurts too much to be here.”

  Every muscle in his body ached. It shouldn’t be like this. Love was a gift from God, not a trial to be endured.

  “Stay,” he insisted. “This will pass. Whatever anger Amelia is holding onto, we can all work it out together.”

  “It’s gone beyond that,” Eve said. She stepped around him, heading to the bureau to take her underclothes out of the top drawer. “Too much has happened. The iron has entered my soul. I can’t stay here.” She crossed back to the wardrobe and pulled her large carpetbag from the back.

  “Stop!” Mark snapped, patience at an end. He tossed her dresses on the bed.

  Eve stood straighter, blinking in shock.

  “I can’t let you do this,” he said, fear and frustration rolling over each other so fast he didn’t know which one he was feeling. “I know things have been difficult between you and Amelia, but you don’t have to sacrifice your happiness because of it.”

  “What happiness?” She turned her anger on him. “I lost the ability to be happy the moment my mother twisted me to her own ends.”

  “Then let me untwist you,” he said. He moved to take the carpetbag from her hand. She still held an armful of underclothes, but he grasped her arms and met her eyes anyhow. “I want to marry you, Eve deLaurent. No matter what.”

  Eve’s lips quivered. Misery and hopelessness hung over her like a veil.

  “I want to marry you too, Mark,” she said, voice tiny. “More than anything. But I can’t. I can’t do that to you. It wouldn’t work.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says everyone.” She wriggled away from him and turned to sit on the side of the bed. All of her energy and light was drained.

  He sat beside her. “How can I convince you that I don’t care what they think?”

  She heaved a deep sigh and put her armful of underthings aside. “I know you don’t, but I do.” She met his eyes with mournful determination. “I am being honest when I say I love you. So much. I couldn’t bear to see people laughing at you behind your back, to see them taking sides against you when the feud between Amelia and I becomes town gossip.”

  “I don’t believe it will.”

  “Then you don’t know women,” she insisted. “You don’t know my sister.”

  “Amelia is hurt, but I’ve never known her to be vicious.”

  “She’s not,” Eve agreed. “But never underestimate the ways that pain and tragedy break a person.”

 
; He searched for something to say, a way to argue against her. In all his years of serving God and the people of Cold Springs, he had encountered every kind of sin and pain that he could imagine, but the sorrow painted on Eve’s face opened his eyes to a whole new level of pain he could never have guessed at. It filled him with impotent fury.

  “Please stay,” he whispered. “I can’t imagine my life without you.”

  A bittersweet smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “How I love you,” she choked. “And how sorry I will be to leave you behind.”

  “Then don’t go.” He slid off the bed and dropped to one knee, taking her hands. “I’ve already proposed to you and you’ve already accepted. We can get through this together, build a life together.”

  “We could.”

  Her words sent his heart soaring with hope.

  “We could, but not here,” she went on.

  He frowned, his moment of hope dropping like a rock into his gut. “Are you saying you would still marry me if I left Cold Springs?”

  She swallowed. Guilt joined the sorrow in her eyes. “I… I can’t ask you to leave your home.”

  “But?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I can and will marry you anywhere but here.”

  His stomach twisted in knot after knot. “I’ve lived here my whole life,” he said, that life bubbling up in him, thick with memories. “I’ve always felt that my place was here, my calling was here.”

  “I know,” Eve said. “I can see that in the way you talk to people, the way you help them. This town is a part of you.”

  “You’re a part of me.” He stood, pulling her to her feet and into his arms.

  “Not like this town is.” She shook her head, resting her forehead against his shoulder. “I need to move on. It hurts too much to stay where my past will always haunt me.”

  “But if we talk to Amelia—”

  “I don’t have the strength to talk anymore.”

  She straightened and twisted out of his arms, reaching for a dress to put on.

  “What about the pageant?” he asked. He had to find something, anything to keep her close until he could work out how to fix things.

  His heart skipped a beat when she paused and bit her lip.

  “The pageant,” she repeated.

  Cruel though it made him, he used the only weapon he had at hand to keep her. “Those children adore you. It would break their hearts if you left before the pageant.”

  His arrow hit its mark. Eve glanced up at him, torn with emotion. He felt like the worst kind of cad for hitting her Achilles heel.

  “The pageant is tomorrow evening,” she said. Her breath came in shallow gasps and she held her dress against her chest as she had the bedclothes.

  “Tomorrow,” he repeated, pulse hammering. “Just tomorrow. Stay until then. Help me pull this pageant off. If you still feel as though you can’t stay after tomorrow night….”

  He let his words drop. If she still felt like she had to leave him, he would find something else to make her stay. He took a step closer to her, cradling the side of her hot face and wiping her damp cheek. It killed him to see her like this. If there was ever a favor that God could do for him to repay him for a lifetime of faith, it would be to bring joy and peace into Eve’s life.

  “Stay,” he whispered.

  He leaned into her, closing his arms around her. He pulled her close and kissed her. She sighed and kissed him in return. The salt of her tears tugged at his soul as the heat of her body against his stirred every desire he had. She was his. He would set things right for her.

  “Please stay,” he repeated.

  “I….” She closed her mouth, drew in a deep breath. Stared at the smooth edge of her silk robe, still the only thing he wore. “I will stay until the pageant,” she said at last. “But after that,” she met his eyes, “I have to go.”

  He swallowed. It was the best he was going to get for now. At least it bought him time.

  “I love you,” he said. “I always will.”

  “I love you too,” she echoed.

  The ‘but’ in her statement hung in the air between them. She backed away from him and resumed dressing.

  He needed to get dressed himself and figure out how to set things right. Convincing her to stay for one more day was only the beginning of his fight.

  Chapter Eight

  If it weren’t for the Cold Springs Christmas pageant, Eve doubted she would have made it through the day. After Mark had gone home to wash and dress in clean clothes, she had packed her bags, weeping the whole time. Every fiber of her body wanted to stay in Cold Springs, to become the preacher’s wife and live happily ever after. But as long as Amelia hated her and held her past over her head, that happily ever after was a fairy story. She couldn’t bear it.

  She knew Mark was watching her now across the expanse of the chancel of his church. She fluttered about, steering children in the right direction and giving them instructions for playing their parts. Their smiling, eager faces were as hard to endure as Mark’s wistful, determined stare.

  Almost.

  Mark was going to try to stop her from leaving. It was written on every line in his face, every movement he made as they worked to get the pageant just right. He leaned toward her when they stood close, touched her whenever he could, and followed her with those beautiful, knowing eyes. It would have been so much easier for them both if he would let her go.

  “Yes, that’s perfect, Isabella,” she said with a practiced smile to the charming young lady who was portraying the Virgin Mary. “And Grover, stand just behind her, like this, with your hand on her shoulder.”

  She swept across the chancel and moved to mimic the position she wanted the frowning boy to take behind Isabella.

  “Do I have to actually touch her?” Grover mumbled when Eve gestured for him to take her place.

  She paused, inadvertently grinning over the boy’s grouchiness. “Believe me, you’ll thank me for it later.” She managed to give the boy her trademark wink, which he greeted with a reluctant smile. He stood behind Isabella the way she’d shown him.

  “Now, let’s run through this scene one more time so that we can all go home,” she said. Or in her case, lock herself in her hotel room and steel herself to move on with her life.

  “Yes, it’s time we all went home,” Mark echoed her.

  Eve’s chest constricted with longing. He looked right at her as he spoke, regardless of how many other people were in the church, waiting to pounce at what they saw as inappropriate. Anyone with a little bit of sense could see something had happened between them. Something beautiful and amazing. Something that couldn’t ever happen again.

  “Miss deLaurent, are we going to have a real baby for the Baby Jesus?” Isabella asked.

  Eve shook herself out of her fluttering thoughts and put on a smile for the girl. “We’ll have a real baby, I’m sure. Mark—that is, Rev. Andrews—has asked a few new mothers in town if they would be willing to bring their darling little ones in for the part.”

  “Good.” Isabella nodded. Her grin turned mischievous. “Miss deLaurent,” she asked in a whisper, “are you sweet on Rev. Andrews?”

  Eve blushed dark pink, looking at Mark. She had no chance of acting her way out of the answer. Her stomach roiled and her skin prickled with heat. She pressed a shaking hand to it and whispered, “Yes, I am.”

  “I think he’s sweet on you too,” Isabella whispered back.

  Eve blinked, focusing on Isabella. She was a pretty girl, and innocent. There wasn’t a hint of censure in her bright blue eyes. A giggle bubbled up from Eve’s gut. Isabella matched it as if they were peers sharing a secret. They were, in a way. There she was, with all of her sins and scars and misery, giggling over a boy with a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

  A girl who was the same age she had been when her mother turned her life upside-down.

  Eve cleared her throat and stood straighter. “We should get started,” she said. She patted Isabell
a’s shoulder, then skipped down to the center aisle between the first rows of pews.

  Lord help her, but she wanted to stay in Cold Springs. It was a fool’s wish, but she couldn’t deny it. All the more reason to run as soon as she could.

  “‘And it came to pass,’” Mark read, “‘as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.’”

  The shepherds, who had been waiting at the back of the church for their cue, began to shuffle along the aisle to the front.

  As Eve turned to them, Amelia stepped into the church, one hand on her round stomach. Eve’s studied smile dropped. Amelia was pale and radiated anger, even hours after their argument.

  The shepherds herded past Eve as Mark read, “‘And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.’”

  Eve faced the front of the church, pulse racing. She forced her shoulders square and put her most encouraging smile on as the children playing the shepherds took their spots around Mary and Joseph and the manger. One of the boys tripped over his long costume while another accidentally smacked his friend with his shepherd’s crook.

  “Ow! Watch that,” the offended shepherd growled.

  “Watch it yourself,” the boy with the crook replied.

  “Make me.”

  The two shepherds faced off as a few of the other children backed away.

  “Now, now,” Eve jumped into action, feigning a laugh. “No one is bleeding or bruised.”

  She rushed to stand between the two boys, maneuvering them back into position. They may have only been nine or ten, but both dropped their grievances and flushed with either embarrassment or joy—or perhaps both—as she smiled and touched their shoulders.

  “There you go. Now at this point the angels will begin their song from the back.”

  She glided away from the nativity and crossed the chancel to stand looking down the aisle. Amelia stood at the far end, her face pinched with disapproval. Eve’s heart faltered.