Rainbow's End (6 page)

“Okay. We can eat on the back porch. I'll heat up the pizza and get some drinks.”

“Great. I'll run down to the cottage and put a few perishables away.” After handing over the box, he turned and strode back toward his car.

For a few seconds, Jill stared after him. Then she continued toward the house, still not sure this impromptu lunch was wise. And still not sure how Keith had convinced her to accept. But he did have an engaging grin. And she did find him intriguing. Who was he, really? He didn't strike her as the drifter type by nature. Yet it sounded as if that was what he'd been doing for quite a while. Why? What was the source of the restlessness she sensed in his soul? Those questions had kept her awake late into the night way too often since his arrival. Of course, her curiosity might be nothing more than a reflection of her isolated existence. A long-stifled hunger for simple human interaction.

Yet that didn't ring quite true. There was something about
this man that gave her a sense of…
connectedness
was the word that came to mind. As if they were linked by some common thread she couldn't quite identify.

Now there was a far-fetched, fanciful notion if ever she'd heard one, she chided herself. What could she possibly have in common with this stranger, a refugee from a storm who had appeared on her doorstep by pure chance?

Pushing through the screen door, Jill took the pizza out of the box, set the oven temperature and slid it inside. Pure chance. She mulled over her choice of words, thinking about the verse from Jeremiah. “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you…plans for your welfare not for woe, plans to give you a future full of hope.” Could Keith's unexpected visit be part of God's plan for her, rather than chance? If he hadn't arrived on the Fourth of July weekend, if he hadn't stopped at the market, if the checker hadn't thought of her cottage, he would never have come her way. It was hard to believe that coincidence could account for all those pieces falling into place.

But perhaps she was overanalyzing. Once they shared their lunch, he'd probably settle his bill, pack up his car and leave, closing out this odd chapter in her life.

She'd know soon enough, she supposed. In the meantime, she might as well bake the rest of the cookies for dessert. She had a feeling her temporary tenant would enjoy them just as much as the mysterious little boy.

 

As Keith splashed some water on his face and toweled it dry, the terry cloth scratching against the rough stubble on his chin, he tried to figure out what had prompted him to invite his landlady to share his lunch. He hadn't intended to. The
idea hadn't even occurred to him until he'd driven up the driveway and seen her walking across the field, her face shaded by her ever-present hat. She'd seemed so alone, and once more he'd been struck by her isolation. It didn't feel right for such a young woman to be cut off from the world, even if the isolation was self-imposed. Didn't she yearn for human interaction? If once she had loved, didn't she miss that physical connectedness, as he did? The entwined hands, the comforting hugs, the soft smiles and warm gazes that said “you matter to me”?

But all those things had been stolen from him. As had the calling that had once been the center of his life. Stolen through spite and retribution, leaving him with a legacy of such deep hatred and disillusionment that he'd been barely able to function for months. He'd hoped, in time, that those destructive feelings would dissipate. He wanted his life back. Wanted to rid himself of the debilitating emotions that held him hostage. That was why he'd set off on his cross-country quest. He hadn't made much progress yet, but at least he was still trying.

And that was the difference between him and his landlady, he suspected. She'd stopped trying to get past whatever it was that held her captive in her self-imposed isolation. What he'd first attributed to acceptance, he now recognized more as resignation. And there was a world of difference between the two. Perhaps that's why he'd issued his impromptu lunch invitation. She'd given him new reason to hope; maybe, on some subconscious level, he'd felt obliged to try and return the favor.

Whatever the motive, he found himself looking forward to sharing a meal with her. He'd already seen evidence of her kind, compassionate, caring nature. What other surprises did
his reclusive hostess have to offer, hidden behind the wall she'd built around herself?

Breaching that wall wouldn't be easy, of course. She didn't seem to let anyone through. But difficult as it would be to break through her defenses, he knew that the real challenge today would be getting her to go along with the plan he'd formulated on his way back from town.

J
ill peered out the window as Keith approached across the field, wiped her damp palms on her jeans and reached for her oven mitts. It was ridiculous to be nervous about sharing a meal with someone. So she was a little bit out of practice. Well, maybe more than a little, considering she hadn't broken bread with another living soul since Deb and Dominic had visited the year before. But she'd shared plenty of meals with people in her old life. She and Sam had given some great dinner parties, filled with laughter and spirited conversation that ebbed and flowed with a natural, easy grace. She knew how to make small talk. It would come back to her. Like riding a bicycle. She was sure of it.

Sort of.

As she carried the pizza out to the table, already set with plates, forks and water glasses, Keith came up the stairs. She sat and motioned him to the chair across from her. “I always say grace before meals. I hope you don't mind.” Without waiting for him to respond, she bowed her head, the floppy brim of her hat obscuring her features. Though it felt
awkward, Keith was left with no option but to follow her example as she began to speak. “Lord, we thank You for this meal and for the many blessings You bestow on us. Keep us always in Your care, deepen our faith, and grant us the light of Your hope even on our darkest days. Amen.”

Keith's throat tightened at the simple, heartfelt prayer. How had Jill known to ask for the very things he most needed? Or did she need them, too? Raising his head, he looked across at her, his eyes searching, probing. She met his gaze for the briefest second, then lowered her chin and reached for a piece of pizza. Once more, the wide brim hid her face from his view.

“Do you always wear that hat?” he asked, his tone conversational.

For an instant, her hand stilled as she weighed her response to the unexpected question. “I need to protect my skin from the sun.”

Her cautious, just-drop-it inflection wasn't lost on Keith. But something impelled him to press on. “It's not sunny up here.”

A knot formed in Jill's stomach. So much for small talk. While she'd been trying to think of inane, surface things to discuss, like the weather and sightseeing, he was diving right into deep water.

“The pizza's getting cold,” she responded.

Silence greeted her comment. She could feel his scrutiny as she rearranged the pepperoni on top of her slice. She could sense that he wanted to say more, and she held her breath. Only when he helped himself to a piece of pizza did she exhale, assuming he was going to drop the subject.

She was wrong. The breath caught in her throat at his next remark. “I've already seen your face, Jill.”

Startled, she stared at him, unsure how to respond. Most
people danced around the subject of her appearance. He seemed to prefer addressing it head-on, in an easy, straightforward manner. And it rattled her.

Color stole up her neck and she looked down, playing with her checkered napkin. “I always wear the hat around people.”

“Why?”

This was getting way too personal. “Why do you want to know?” She turned his question around on him, her tone wary, stalling as she tried to think of some response that would deflect his inquiry.

“You have lovely hair. And your eyes are the color of autumn. It's a shame to keep all that beauty hidden away.”

Whatever Jill had been expecting him to say, that wasn't it. She could only stare at him, speechless.

If Jill was surprised by his comment, Keith was even more stunned. Where in the world had that come from? He wasn't a smooth talker, not when it came to women. Never had been. And in the past two years he'd gone out of his way to walk a wide circle around females in general, to give no indication that he'd noticed them, let alone found them attractive. Yet he'd paid the woman across from him a direct compliment, going against all the rules he'd written for himself. But Jill seemed so in need of tender care, just like the baby bird she continued to nurture. The words had come out before he'd had a chance to consider their ramification.

As he watched, soft color spilled onto her left cheek, confirming his suspicion that she was unaccustomed to flattery about her physical appearance. He waited, not sure if she would ignore him or reply. A few seconds ticked by, and all at once he saw the sudden sheen of tears in her eyes. His gut tightened, and his immediate instinct was to reach over and wrap her long,
tapering fingers in a comforting grip. Instead, he dropped his hands to his lap and balled his fists around his napkin before he did anything inappropriate.

Just as he prepared to change the subject, she surprised him by answering his question about the hat.

“My scars make people uncomfortable. It's easier if they don't have to look at my face. So I do what I can to camouflage them,” she told him in a subdued voice. His simple, sincere compliment had shattered her defenses and compelled her to respond.

“They don't make me uncomfortable.”

Curious, she studied his features, finding only honesty in his eyes. “Why not?”

“Why should they? What counts is the person inside. And I've seen enough since I've been here to know you're kind, caring and compassionate. Your willingness to take me in during the storm is proof enough of that, let alone everything else you've done to make me feel welcome. And I've seen your concern about that young boy, not to mention the way you rescued the baby bird. All those things tell me you have a good heart. A beautiful heart.”

His words warmed her, but they didn't change the reality. “In a not-so-pretty package.”

“Is that why you hide out here, away from everybody?”

“I'm not hiding.” Her response was swift. Too swift. And to her surprise, defensive. Confused, and suddenly uncertain, she frowned. Why should she be defensive? After all, Keith was dead wrong. She wasn't hiding. People only hid when they were afraid of something, when they felt threatened by imminent danger and were seeking safety. Her reasons for withdrawing from the world had nothing to do with fear or
safety. Absolutely none. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Look, this is just…easier. For a lot of reasons.”

His eyes narrowed in speculation. “Like vanity?”

“No!” Her denial was instant—and vehement. This, at least, she was sure about.

“Then take off the hat.”

Startled by the challenge, she stared at him. Her hat was her security blanket, her protection from the eyes of the world—in a figurative sense, if nothing else. Without it, she'd feel exposed and vulnerable. Only around family and her doctors did she take it off. Yet…she now found herself giving serious consideration to picking up the gauntlet Keith had tossed down. But why?

As she grappled to find that elusive answer, she searched his face. He continued to regard her across the table, his gaze steady, supportive and sure. Matter-of-fact, even. As if her disfigurement, when fully exposed, wouldn't have any effect on the way he looked at her or treated her.

And in fact, she already had evidence to support that. He'd seen her without her hat once, for a brief instant. And later, when her hat was back in place, he'd looked right at her shadowed scars and commented about them. In their subsequent conversations, she'd seen no indication that they made him uncomfortable, nothing to suggest that he was morbidly curious about them. It was as if he'd accepted that her scars were just part of her, the same way her hair and eyes were, a physical feature that had nothing to do with who she was as a person. Removing her hat wouldn't shock him. She suspected he wouldn't even blink. That was why she felt safe enough to consider his challenge.

Besides, she didn't want him to think she wore the hat out
of vanity. For some reason, it was important to her to set the record straight on that.

With trembling fingers, she reached up and slowly pulled the hat off, letting her hair tumble around her shoulders in soft waves. As she did so, she found strength in a familiar Bible verse that had often replayed in her mind, like a mantra, during difficult encounters. She spoke it now in a quiet, not-quite-steady voice. “‘Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.'”

“Samuel.”

A flicker of surprise scuttled across her face. She wouldn't have expected her guest to be well versed in scripture. “Most people have a hard time seeing past the scars.”

“That's their loss.”

He rested his elbows on the table and linked his fingers. She managed to endure his scrutiny without flinching, but it was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Her whole body was quivering, like it had been the day she'd left home for college. Although eager to step into the larger world, she'd also been anxious about the unknown that lay ahead. And certain that things would never be quite the same again. She felt like that now.

As Keith looked at the woman across from him, he did his best to maintain a passive expression. But it was difficult. Now he better understood what she meant about the way people looked at her. His brief glimpse of her scars that first morning when he'd repaired the siding hadn't prepared him for the extent of her injury, fully exposed now in the midday light. And it was a hard thing to get past. A good portion of the right side of her face was discolored, a mottled red intermixed with shiny, taut skin that wasn't
quite normal in texture or color, parts of the surface uneven and ridged. Nothing less than a severe burn could produce a scar like that.

The edge of the scar touched the outside of Jill's eye, and he focused there, trying to regulate his breathing as he grappled with the severity of her injury. “Is your eye okay?” It was all he could do to maintain a conversational tone.

“Yes. I was lucky. I could have lost my sight.”

“It's a burn, right?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“Three and a half years.”

He took another few seconds to examine her face, his perusal unhurried. She expected his next question to be, “What happened?” and she tried to prepare for it. To figure out how she could deflect it. She wasn't ready for that discussion. Taking off the hat had been traumatic enough for one day.

But he surprised her. Instead of probing further, he just repeated a comment he'd made that first day. “I'm sorry, Jill. I can't even begin to imagine the horror of a burn like that. But it doesn't change my impression of you. Now let's eat our pizza before it gets cold.”

Although he took a hearty bite of his slice, Jill didn't think she'd be able to swallow anything. Her emotions were too chaotic. But somehow Keith managed to calm her down. He told her about his trip into Eastsound, asked about the climate on the island, spoke of her mysterious young visitor, inquired about the baby bird. In other words, he made small talk.

Odd. That was how Jill had expected to
start
the meal. Instead, he'd reversed things. But it worked. By getting the awkwardness out of the way at the beginning, he'd made it possible for her to
relax for the rest of the meal instead of worrying about if or when he'd broach the subject of her appearance.

On top of that, he paid no special attention to her scar. When he spoke to her, he looked into her eyes, not at her disfigured face. By the end of the meal, she was more at ease than she would ever have imagined possible. For a brief few minutes, she even forgot about the scars.

When they were done, she collected their plates, then went to retrieve the plate of still-warm chocolate chip cookies. Keith's face lit up when she carried them through the door, and she couldn't help smiling.

“I think these had the same effect on my young visitor this morning. It must be a male thing.” She deposited the plate on the table, along with a mug of coffee, strong and black, the way he'd taken it that first morning at breakfast.

An appreciative smile curved his lips as he picked it up, and he gave her a mock toast. “Just the way I like it. Thanks for remembering.”

His compliment brought a warm glow to her heart, and she took her place across from him, reaching for a cookie. “When you got back earlier, you said you wanted to talk about your plans.” They'd had a nice meal, and she'd enjoyed the brief interlude very much, but if he was going to leave tomorrow there was no sense putting off that discussion. Even if raising the subject did cause that odd, empty feeling to reappear in the pit of her stomach. Instead of eating her cookie she broke it into pieces as she waited for him to respond.

To buy himself a little time, Keith took a long, slow sip of his coffee. All the plans he'd formulated on the drive back from town rested on one big contingency: whether or not he could stay on at Rainbow's End. The peace and serenity he'd
found here was the real attraction of this island. Without that, there was no reason to linger. So the first trick was convincing her to let him remain. If he succeeded at that, his next challenge would be to find a way to fund an extended visit. And he hoped she could help him with that, too.

Withdrawing an envelope from his pocket, he laid it on the table next to her plate. “This should settle up my bill through tonight.”

The knot in Jill's stomach tightened, and she clenched her hands in her lap, fixing her attention on the plate in front of her.

“I've enjoyed my visit here. In fact, I'd like to stay on for a while, if you'll let me,” he continued. Her chin jerked up, and Keith didn't quite know how to interpret the look in her eyes. He'd almost call it relief, but that didn't make any sense.

“You want to stay?” Jill was having a hard time digesting that, since she'd already reconciled herself to his imminent departure.

“Yes. I do.”

An almost euphoric feeling welled up inside her. “Okay.”

Now it was his turn to stare. “Okay?”

A warning light flashed in her heart, telling her to proceed with caution, but she ignored it. “Yeah. Okay.”