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“Ranger is here?”
North nodded. “Says he’ll stop in tonight.” He turned back to Tia. “I came to tell you that we’ve finished installing the cameras around the perimeter and are working on the door sensors. If anyone enters the clinic or the compound, an alarm will sound.”
“Thank you, North,” she said, her gaze on his gun, back on him.
He crossed his hands in front of him. Looked at Declan. “I’d like to bring some grub up to Skeet and West if that’s okay.”
“Absolutely. We’re about ready to eat,” Declan said. “I think that’s what Rosa’s wild gesturing is all about.”
Tia turned and spotted Rosa, indeed calling everyone in. She dropped the last of the lemons into the water and capped the container. Then she headed over to the group.
Declan stepped forward. “I want to thank you all for coming to Mariposa for this amazing event. And thank you for your generosity to Hope House. I know the children as well as the staff and I join you in our gratitude and appreciation. I’d like to say a prayer for the dinner.”
He bowed his head, and his prayer seemed genuine and heartfelt.
“It’ll all work out.”
Yes, Doyle.I believe you.
The kids filled their plates and sat down between the adults at the long table. Most of them used their manners, although Tia did have to give a couple of the younger kids a long look for eating with their fingers. As she sat at the table, the sun sent a golden trail over the water, its last wink before darkness.
After dinner, Taj got out his guitar and started to sing, the kids hunkering down around a beach fire, the stars blinking as if in audience. Doyle slipped up behind Tia. “Care to walk?”
She turned and he looked perfectly dangerous, with the wind tousling his hair, his eyes shiny against the flames, smelling of the surf and the night.
“Mm-hmm,” she said and walked after him, barefoot on the smooth, wave-swept sand.
“I think it’s only fair that I tell you about Juliet.”
She nearly stopped. But she took a breath. “Juliet?”
“My fiancée.”
Right.“You don’t have to, Doyle. It’s none of my business.”
He’d folded his arms and now bumped against her, maybe intentionally, as he said softly, “I want to. I think it’s... important for you to know.”
Huh.
Their feet indented the soft, cool sand as the ocean waves brushed the shoreline.
“We were high-school sweethearts. Met in the sixth grade. Her family were missionaries in the Philippines, and they decided to move home so their daughter could attend the upper grades in the States. We had an instant... something. I don’t know—she was pretty and laughed easily. I used to draw pictures—funny ones of the kids in our class—and she said they were brilliant.” His voice softened then. “Doesn’t hurt for a pretty girl to call you brilliant as a twelve-year-old. I lost my heart then. We wrote notes to each other and sometimes waited for each other in the lunchroom, but her parents—and mine—wouldn’t let us date until we were sixteen. Even that might have been too young, because I wanted to propose on our second date. We managed to make it to eighteen without getting in over our heads, and I proposed the day after graduation. With a ring.”
“Wow.”
“She turned me down.”
Tia glanced at him. “No.”
“She cried the entire time. Her father had somehow convinced her that she should wait until she went to college, to date other men. I wanted to murder him. We broke up for the summer, and I was angry. I went to college ready to forget her.”
“But you can’t forget your true love.”
“Not a chance.” He’d loosed his arms and now walked easily. The waves curled over their feet, foamy and cool. “She started dating a guy, however, and I nearly lost my mind. Good thing we were at different schools. I doubled up my classes, and with the extra credits I got in high school, I graduated in two years. Immediately took my MCATs and got into the University of Minnesota’s school of medicine.”
“So you could be a doctor.”
“No. So I could win her back. See, I knew she wanted to be a missionary, and she said that she wanted to go back as a nurse, and I thought...”