Suddenly Married. Loree Lough

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       Chapter One

      The moment she got home from her meeting with Noah Lucas, Dara phoned the pastor’s office. “If no one has volunteered to take over Naomi King’s Sunday-school class,” she said, “I’ll be happy to do it.”

      “Wonderful!” the preacher thundered into her ear. “Stop by the church this evening, and I’ll see that you get the materials you’ll need.”

      A little of Scarlett O’Hara’s mind-set, she thought, driving to the church, would go a long way in keeping her mind off her problems. She’d worry about the accusations against her father tomorrow. Meanwhile, in the battered cardboard box the pastor had handed her, Dara found keys that would unlock the church basement, the office and the classrooms. The student roster and Naomi’s lesson plans were inside, as well, along with a teacher’s manual that complemented the workbooks each student had been issued.

      She’d taught Sunday school before, but not since her father’s death. Dara’s last class had been a spirited group of junior-high kids whose pointed questions and heartfelt opinions had left her exhausted yet exhilarated at the end of every class.

      Teaching this class of first and second graders would be especially challenging, for Dara would, in effect, be setting down a foundation upon which they would hopefully build a lifetime of spiritual beliefs. In her mind, it was the answer to two prayers: the work involved with preparing for class would keep her from thinking about Noah Lucas’s investigation and the teaching itself would fulfill her personal belief that every parishioner should do his or her share to help the church.

      She arrived half an hour earlier than necessary and organized the materials she’d use for today’s lesson. Then, sitting at the small wooden desk near the windows, Dara prayed: Father, be with me as I help these youngsters learn about Your will and Your way. Open my mind and my heart to Your word and keep me alert so I’ll not miss even one opportunity to glorify You in their eyes. Amen.

      Her intent had been to review her lesson plan until the children arrived. To the casual observer, it would appear she was doing exactly that. But church and Sunday school were the furthest things from her mind as she paged through the teacher’s manual on her desk. Rather, Noah Lucas occupied her thoughts. Know Thine Enemy hadn’t become a cliché because it was bad advice, she’d told herself. And during the past week, she’d made it her business to learn as much as possible about the man who had seemed determined to prove her father had been a thief. Dara had asked anyone who might have come into contact with Noah why he’d come to Baltimore, if he was married, whether he had children—surely a good-looking man like that was married.

      Dara lurched with surprise when the fresh-faced sixand seven-year-olds, dressed in their Sunday finest, filed into the room, giggling and chattering as they found places to sit. The moment she saw the wide-eyed innocent faces she knew volunteering to teach this class had been the right thing to do.

      There was Pete Chapman and little Tina Nelson; Donny Murphy and Marie Latrell. She’d gone to school with Sammy O’Dell’s father, played softball with Lisa Johnston’s mother. She knew every child in the room…

      Except for two.

      Angie and Bobby Lucas.

      Alice, the pastor’s secretary, escorted the children in and in a discreet tone filled Dara in on their background. The Lucas children had come to town a year or so ago when their widowed father decided to make Columbia, Maryland, the headquarters for his CPA and financial services firm. When he’d registered as a parishioner, Noah Lucas had told Alice he hoped being based in the Baltimore-Washington corridor would triple his clientele within two years. Dara knew enough about the area to believe he could accomplish his goal if he attacked everything the way he’d sunk his teeth into that nasty matter at Pinnacle.

      She watched his children carefully. The boy, blond, blue eyed, was the spitting image of his father. Would he be tall and muscular someday? With a thick burnished mustache and a barrel chest?

      Dara turned her attention to Noah Lucas’s daughter. His wife must have been a dark-haired, dark-eyed, delicate beauty, if her little girl was any indicator.

      What must it be like, Dara wondered, growing up without a mother? She’d been twenty-seven when her own mother had died two years ago, and still Dara missed the maternal love that had flowed steadily and easily from parent to child. But to be so small, so young and vulnerable, when death stole a beloved parent…Dara’s heart ached for these two motherless children.

      They СКАЧАТЬ