Christian Romance: Heaven on Earth... [4 Beautiful Christian Romance Stories] (7 page)

For Lucy Bright and Charles Ambrose,
two people of deep religious faith, this feeling that struck them
upon meeting as teenagers was not something to fear and try to
forget, but something to marvel at and explore. But they’d both
been young and inexperienced then, and though they would have been
willing to hold on to this chance and even fight for it if they had
to, neither of them knew how.

And so they parted ways, and for five
long years, they didn’t see each other again. Until the day when,
unlooked for, they crossed each other’s paths.

Seeing this for what it was: God’s
gift to them, a second chance to grab at what they could have
together and make things right, the young pair would let nothing
hinder them this time… even if the obstacle happened to be their
own families...

Lucy and her family were preparing to
sit on their table when another party entered the dining hall.
Almost every one of Lucy’s company that were facing the door
glanced in that direction, but none of them were arrested by any
sight that met their eyes.

None of them recognized anybody. None
received a jolt of electricity when a pair of eyes from that other
party met their own. And none saw a similar instant of recognition
bloom on that other person’s face. None, that is, except Lucy, who
remained half-standing, half-crouching over her seat while everyone
else around her got comfortable.

“Anything wrong, Lucinda?” said her
mother, seeing her state. The question caused whatever it was that
had been tying Lucy’s attention in a tight hold to snap. She looked
around at her table.

“I…” she began. “I thought I
saw…”

“Helena?” someone
interrupted. All of them, including Lucy, turned their heads
towards a middle-aged woman walking slowly toward them, body bent
forward
just so
,
to give the illusion that she was a floor down and staring up at
them, as if looking at people from below could actually help one
recognize them any better when all you’ll see are their chins.
“Heavens me—
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 to see you.”

“Oh, this young man turned out fine,
didn’t he?” said Rick, shaking Charleston’s hand.

“Charlie, is it?” Helena
asked.

The young man smiled courteously.
“It’s Charles, ma’am.”

“Ah—and is this sweet little Lucy
now?” Margaret chimed. Everyone turned to look at the older woman
and Lucy, who were sharing an embrace. Over his mother’s shoulder,
Lucy met Charles’ eyes and blushed slightly.

“And Adrian, our son,”
said Helena, not quite
pointing
but graciously trailing her fingers towards
Lucy’s brother, who stood a bit nervously and nodded.

“Ma’am. Sirs.”

“And these are our extended family,”
Helena continued, indicating the rest of Lucy’s party consisting of
two pairs of aunts and uncles and three cousins, all younger than
her, who all gave well-mannered nods, even the youngest, a girl of
only six. “We’re here to celebrate Lucy’s birthday—she turns
twenty-one today, can you believe it? Everyone, this is the Ambrose
family.”

“Happy birthday, my dear,” said Noah
warmly before giving his regards to the rest of the
table.

“Oh—happy birthday, Lucy!” Margaret
rejoined, touching her palms gently to Lucy’s cheeks, “Hmm—what a
special age, twenty-one…” she mused, then she too turned her
attention to everyone else.

As the rest of their assemblage
continued to exchange pleasantries, Charles and Lucy were forgotten
on the outskirts.

Charles didn’t step closer or
otherwise move, but the space between them felt like it was
shrinking. It was as if an invisible cone had manifested around
them, and beyond this barrier nothing else existed.

There was only a young man and a young
woman, gazing into one another’s eyes in fathomless
recognition.

Charles said, “Lucy.”

Lucy swallowed and replied, “Charles,”
her voice barely a whisper.

He smiled and finally approached. When
he was only a foot away, he leaned down. Lucy saw what he was
meaning to do and she had had time enough to dodge it, if she’d
wished. She didn’t. She wished the exact opposite. She wished this.
Charles kissed her on the cheek.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

It was only a brief kiss. A chaste
kiss. Just his lips brushing against Lucy’s skin in the merest
instant, but for its effect, he might as well kissed her on the
mouth.

Lucy’s heart began pumping so wildly
she could hear its pounding echoing all throughout her ribcage.
Blood heated up her face, her chest. It heated up her everything.
She thanked the Lord that most of her body was turned and hidden
away from her family’s view. She could only guess what anyone might
read in her carriage alone.

The kiss itself was brief, but Charles
didn’t immediately draw his face away. He leaned several
centimeters further to whisper in Lucy’s ear, “If it had been my
birthday and I saw you, I’d think it was God’s Own gift to
me.”

This was the first real exchange they
were having, and it was as if they were both making up for all
those times they might have spoken to each other but didn’t—Lucy
too went straight to the heart of all that needed to be
said.

“It
is
my birthday. And it
is
God’s gift. To both
of us.”

Charles stepped back and established
proper distance again, but he didn’t take his eyes off Lucy’s
flushed face. He roamed his gaze around it, drinking her in.
Drinking all of her in.

Lucy did the same. As God was her
witness, she could do nothing less...

The very young and very innocent
Lucinda Bright met Charleston Ambrose back when they were sixteen
and seventeen respectively, at a camp in Iowa where both their
families went to for a summer camping trip.

It had been instant
attraction between them. Their gazes landed on each other across a
whole stretch of clearing, and a link was forged that proved itself
to be nigh unbreakable. Lucy had had some crushes before that—and
perhaps it had only been the novelty of the place or the mystique
of the idea—but she had never felt anything quite like
this
for
anyone.

Her heart would jump at her throat at
a mere glimpse of a tall, lanky form, neatly trimmed brown hair
that fell to thick brows, eyes the color of moss. And when Charles
was near or was looking at her from afar, her body heats up in
places—starting from her chest, up to her shoulders and arms—while
another heat, quite separate, would begin pooling deep in her
belly.

Once, during a rare time when many
separate groups decided to have a meal together on the big camp’s
widest clearing, Charles had had occasion to lean past her in order
to reach for something, and part of his broad chest was barely a
centimeter away from Lucy’s torso. The heat was so instantaneous
that when she drew breath for the shock of it, she found she
couldn't let it out again.

Lucy had always thought it was an
exaggeration when people describe something as having affected them
so intensely, it stopped their breathing. But there, at that
moment, when the hot air coming out of Charles’ very skin and past
his shirt was mingling with the warmth her own body was also giving
off, she found out that it actually does happen…

A feeling envelopes you, so quick and
powerful you didn’t know what was coming until it was happening,
and the next thing was you forget how to breathe. If this was what
charged but otherwise empty air did to her, what would happen if
they touched skin to skin?

As she thought that, Lucy got herself
to look up. Charles had leaned away, but for a full second the side
of his face drew so near to Lucy’s eyes that she was able to
see—the expression on his face was one of relaxed nonchalance, he
didn't even glance at her—but there, on the lobe of his ear, a sign
that she was not alone in feeling this: it was hopelessly red, more
red than any ear had any right to be without tomatoes rising up to
have a say about it.

Lucy didn’t know what to do with this
discovery. The two of them had never even talked to each other
beyond a polite nod or hello. Mostly they’d been too shy to even
look into each other’s eyes without a real reason.

It would probably have been easier if
they’d been friends. If they’d become more than strangers before
they found out what close proximity does to both of their bodies,
then… then what would have stop them from finding out just how far
its influence extended?

There was only one place
it could possibly have led, though Lucy didn’t know much
about
that
beyond
the basics. She’d never felt desire before. She had no real idea
about what would happen if she and Charles had been close enough to
want to find out what this was… together.

That summer trip ended on a very sad
note. Lucy and Charles had never quite gotten past the
stealing-glances phase, and during the last night, after Charles
had gathered enough courage to sit beside her in front of the
camp’s bonfire with the obvious intention of talking to her, Lucy
froze up so terribly that she couldn’t even get herself to turn to
him as a signal that she was only waiting for him to
begin.