Where Grace Abides by BJ Hoff Page A

on—it might be good to have a watchdog on hand. A big one.”
    To his surprise her lips again curved in a faint smile. “I think it might take him a while to grow into his father’s reputation, though, don’t you?”
    Gant relaxed a little and returned her smile. “Aye. From the looks of him, he does have a bit of growing to do.”
    They stood looking at each other in silence for a few seconds more. But when thunder again rumbled in the distance, she said, “You should go before the storm settles in.”
    He nodded. “I expect so. So—it was good to see you again, Rachel.”
    She turned her face slightly away. “And you,” she said softly.
    He didn’t want to leave her. He wanted more than anything else to stay. He wanted to drink in the sight of her, to touch her. “Rachel—”
    Still not looking at him, she lifted a hand as if to stop him from saying anything more. “I—should get inside.”
    Gant drew a long breath. “Aye,” he said. “I’ll just be going, then.”

    Rachel stood just inside the door and watched him go, her heart aching to go with him. She pressed the palm of her hand against the screen, as if she could touch him and call him back.
    Would it be easier to keep her heart from tripping over itself, to keep separate from him, if he were a different kind of man? Hisgentleness, the kindness that flowed through him like a steadily flowing current only made it that much more difficult not to care about him. It was the very thing that never failed to warm her to him, that called to the deepest part of her and drew her to him.
    If only he were a different kind of man…
    But then he wouldn’t be Jeremiah. And she might not have come to love him.
    No, she wouldn’t want him to be anything other than what he was, even though it meant that the knife in her heart was permanently embedded there. She would rather live with the pain of a love that could never be anything more than a careful friendship than to have him be less than the man he was.
    But she must be always careful—very careful—to keep her feelings for him tightly capped and unseen by those piercing, intense eyes of his. If he should ever recognize how treacherously weak she was, how fragile her emotions really were where he was concerned, he might again attempt to convince her that there was hope for them—hope for a future together.
    When in truth the only hope she dared to hold was that she could survive the future without him.

  13  
M ORE T HAN O NE S URPRISE
    God’s own arm hath need of thine.
    A RTHUR C LEVELAND C OXE
    O nce Gant got back to Riverhaven, he had no time to savor Fannie’s excited reaction to the pup. Fortunately there was also no time for the melancholy that had been brewing in him since his brief encounter with Rachel.
    To his surprise Gideon showed up for supper. He’d invited the lad to eat with them a number of times, but he seldom accepted. This evening, though, he turned up, looking scrubbed and polished and in seeming high spirits.
    The boy could be good company when he had a mind to, although of late that hadn’t been the case. This evening, however, he seemed more himself, given to joining in the conversation as well as soaking up Gant’s and Asa’s tales of their travels.
    â€œDon’t you miss it, Captain?” he said now, having wolfed down the last bite of Asa’s beef stew and biscuits. “Your life on the river?”
    â€œSometimes,” Gant said honestly. “It hasn’t been my way to stay in one place for any length of time. But like most anything else, you get used to what you have to do, and eventually it becomes as natural as everything that went before.”
    â€œI think it would be a swell life, living like that,” said Gideon, a faraway look in his eyes.
    â€œNo kind of life is without its problems,” Gant pointed out.