His Mountain Miss (Smoky Mountain Matches) by Karen Kirst Read Free Book Online Page B

it through prayer.”
    He’d prayed before, on occasion, but it had been brief requests for help. Nothing like what Megan was talking about. “You speak as if God cares about the details of your life. I don’t see Him that way. While I believe He exists and that He created this world for our use and pleasure, I find it difficult to imagine He’d bother Himself with our problems.”
    “David wrote in Psalms, ‘O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.’ Does that sound like a God who can’t be bothered with us?”
    The gentle curve of her smile, the utter lack of judgment in her eyes, compelled him to be truthful. “It sounds like you’re much better acquainted with the Scriptures than I am. In fact, I can’t recall the last time I opened a Bible.” He thought of his mother’s black Bible tucked safely in his trunk, a tentative link that eased somewhat the ache of her absence.
    “It’s not too late to start,” she said encouragingly.
    His gaze fell on a small portrait on the side table, one he hadn’t noticed before. Standing, he stepped around her and picked it up, fingers tight on the gilt frame. His grandparents, Charles and Beatrice, in the prime of their lives. And his mother, who looked to be about eight years old, dressed in a simple dress and her dark hair in pigtails. She wasn’t smiling. No one really did for portraits. But her eyes were clear of the familiar shadows, and curiosity marked her rounded face. How might her life have been different—better, freer, happier—if Charles had handled the whole situation differently?
    “Tell me something,” he said quietly, still staring at the images. “Did my grandfather believe as you do?”
    “Charles loved the Lord,” she answered, matching her tone to his, perhaps sensing the turn of his mood. “He tried to model his life after His teachings, a life pleasing to Him.”
    Replacing the frame with a bit more force than necessary, he pivoted to glower down at her, unable to mask the cold fury surging through his veins. “Then surely God wasn’t pleased with his coldhearted treatment of his own daughter. And what of his only grandchild? He didn’t even acknowledge my existence! Isn’t there something in there about loving your neighbor as yourself?”
    Surging to her feet, Megan adopted a fighting stance—shoulders back, chin up, hands fisted. A not-so-friendly pirate. “And what of your mother’s behavior? She refused Charles’s numerous pleas to return. He desperately wanted to meet you, Lucian. How could she deny him that? How could you?”
    He snorted. Sliced the air with his hand. “What are you talking about? What pleas? The night before she married my father, Charles warned her that if she went through with it, not to bother coming back. Ever.”
    “Charles apologized more than once for his past behavior. He sent letters begging her to come and visit. To bring you so that he could spend time with you. Show you around town, introduce you to all the townspeople, take you fishing. She flat-out refused. Charles didn’t tell me why.”
    Lucian turned away, shoved a frustrated hand through his hair. No. No, this couldn’t possibly be true. His mother wouldn’t have hidden such a thing from him.
    “I don’t know anything about any letters,” he ground out.
    He startled when her fingers curled around his biceps, a slight pressure. “Lucian—”
    The chime of the doorbell derailed her train of thought. “Would you like me to get that for you?”
    “No.” He straightened, and her hand fell away. “I’ll get it.”
    He didn’t recognize the brown-haired, green-eyed man on the other side of the door. “Good evening. May I help you?”
    He looked to be about the same age as himself, maybe a year or so younger, and was dressed like the local men in casual pants,