Christian Romance: Heaven on Earth... [4 Beautiful Christian Romance Stories] by Joanne Sawyer

Helena! ”
    “Margaret…” Lucy’s mother,
whom the woman had been addressing, muttered uncertainly. Then her
eyes widened a bit and she rose from her chair saying,
“ Margaret .
Goodness—I almost didn’t recognize you—you look
fabulous!”
    “I know! That’s what I’d
been thinking about you too!” Margaret replied as she circled to
where Lucy’s mother stood to give her a kiss and a hug, belying the
dubiously insulting ring to both their words. She looked down at
Lucy’s father. “And Rick of course ! Well? Any time now, old
fellow!” she said with a good-natured laugh.
    “Rick, the camp!” Helena hissed at her
husband, beyond mortified at his lapse, but everyone heard her
anyway. Lucy saw her fourteen year old brother bend his head and
bite his lips between his knuckles. A quiet chuckle escaped his
throat and that of a cousin his age when Rick’s eyes widened as he
too pushed himself off the table, the movement so abrupt his chair
grated loudly against the stone floor.
    “I’m sorry!” he said,
frantic. “Of course. Oh, how could I forget. Oh, this is
embarrassing. Margaret .”
    But Margaret only gave a
trilling laugh. “Well, the last time we saw each other,” she said,
“we all had stringy hair and haven’t bathed properly for two
weeks. Of course you wouldn’t recognize me at once—I almost didn’t, I really almost didn’t.
Excuse me, please—Noah!” Margaret called, looking over her shoulder
and making her voice carry to the other end of the large room where
her own party was now seated. “Come, come!” She gave a wide,
swiping gesture with her arm. “It’s them—I told you it’s them. Come greet them.”
    The man in his fifties that she was
talking to looked at his companion, a much younger man, and then
the two of them glanced at Margaret. Her husband, Noah, sighed as
he stood. The young man who could only be his son followed suit,
though much more quietly. He seemed subdued, and there was
something in the way he moved that told of a great reluctance… or a
great and terribly contained anticipation.
    No. To anyone else it would seem like
the former. Only Lucy recognized the message in that young man’s
body for what it was. It was also coursing through her veins as she
remained standing, facing the newcomers, never taking her eyes off
the face of the young man as he drew nearer and nearer, all the
while keeping his gaze politely over everyone’s
shoulders.
    But then, as he and his father drew so
near there was only a yard left to traverse, the young man’s gaze
flicked sideways, quickly—there and gone again—to meet Lucy’s
stare. She flinched and barely managed not to look away by reflex.
Seeing this from the corner of his eyes, the man shifted his gaze
nonchalantly, as if that was the most natural thing for him to do,
to meet Lucy’s stare again—fully this time. When he’d stopped
walking a step beside his mother and Lucy was still staring
resolutely back at him, he smiled and was the first to look
away.
    He smiled.
    He smiled . That was already more than
everything they’ve ever shared before. Smiling now too, Lucy
finally lifted her gaze from the man’s face.
    “I told them,” Margaret
had been saying, “as soon as we stepped through the door, ‘Why,
don’t I know that woman? Oh, but from where?’ And then I saw your
husband and then it hit me, and I told Noah, but he was like you,
couldn’t even recall what I was talking about, but I was sure , and so I came to
you and—ah, here they are now. Noah! It’s Helena and Rick from that
camp in Iowa—do you remember? Oh—how many years ago was
it?”
    “Yes, of course. It’s five years ago
now, hon,” Noah said, stepping forward to shake the said people’s
hands. “You remember our son, Charleston?” he told the other
couple, gesturing at the young man.
    Charleston smiled again, but it was
all politeness now, nothing more of what Lucy had glimpsed there
earlier. “Mr. and Mrs. Bright, it’s good