When Simone opened her student mailbox on Tuesday afternoon to find a letter from the provost’s office, her first instinct was to panic. Surely someone had told the provost that she and Morgan were seeing each other, which wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. Her second thought was to take all the blame on herself, for Morgan’s sake. When she read the letter, however, she laughed for sheer joy.
Would she be interested in assuming a position as liaison between the Social Services Department and the community? If so, the department chair would like to speak to her about her duties, specifically coordinating volunteers and interns for various social service organizations in the area. It was perfect, a godsend. Simone ran straight to Morgan’s office with the letter in her hand.
She was met there by a plump, freckle-faced, forty-something redhead who introduced herself as Professor Chatam’s administrative assistant.
“Did you want to see the professor?”
Feeling a little foolish, Simone replied in the affirmative. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“He’s with a student right now, but he’ll be free in a few minutes. Would you like a cup of coffee while you wait?”
Looking around at the curious gazes of everyone else in the surrounding cubicles, she hesitated. “Oh, maybe I should come back or see him in class.”
Just then, the door to the only real office opened and Morgan came out, followed by a dark-skinned young man in baggy clothes and big glasses.
“Thank you, Professor Chatam,” the younger man said in heavily accented English.
“No problem, Burindi. Let me know if that new tutor doesn’t work out for you.”
“I will, sir, and God bless you.”
Morgan smiled at Simone and said, “He already has, my friend. He already has.”
He clapped the young man on the shoulder, sending him off, and waved Simone forward. She couldn’t help feeling that he already knew what she’d come to tell him.
Waving the letter in her hand, she asked, “Did you have something to do with this?”
“If that’s a job offer,” he said, grinning, “I might have had a little something to do with it.” Leaning in, he told her softly, “I had a—how shall I put this?—confessional conversation with the provost yesterday.”
“Morgan!” she gasped unthinkingly, alarmed.
“Not to fear. He was very pleased to help.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“It is, indeed.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders then and turned her to face the room at large, calling out, “Everyone! Everyone!” All the curious faces that had peeped at her earlier now emerged fully from cubicles around the perimeter of the space. “This is Simone Guilland,” Morgan announced. “She’s joining the BCBC faculty as a—” he grabbed her hand and quickly skimmed the letter “—community liaison. Simone, this is my absolutely essential assistant, Vicki Marble, adjunct instructor, Deon Welch...” He went on introducing the various teachers and workers in his department, about half a dozen in all. Then he simply said to his department staff, “Well, we’re cutting out. If you need me, you know how to reach me.”
Ducking into his office, he reemerged with a brown leather bomber jacket, which he folded over one arm. The other he looped about Simone’s waist.
“So, want to go out to dinner?”
“Morgan!” she hissed, torn between laughing and throwing an elbow into his ribs. “They’re all staring at us.”
He bent his head and said right into her ear, “Get used to it, sweetheart. We are, as of this moment, a very public couple.”
She laughed delightedly. All the way across campus.
It was so freeing to be with Morgan without pretense or fear of compromising his position with the college. While he drove to the bistro that was quickly becoming their restaurant, she called the head of the Social Services Department and set up a meeting for the next day.
By the close of business Wednesday, she was officially employed, so when Morgan openly took a seat beside her at prayer meeting that next evening, she linked her arm with his and quietly exulted. Rina had intended to come along again, but halfway down the carriage house stairs, she’d decided that she was just too tired.
“This kid hasn’t let me sleep in days,” Rina had said, holding her belly with both hands. “I think she’s dancing hip-hop in here, and my back is sure feeling it.”
“Things will probably calm down soon,” Simone had told Rina. “She has to be running out of space.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Rina had said. “I sure am.” With that, she’d laboriously turned and headed back up the stairs.
This time when the moderator asked Simone if she had any prayer requests, she mentioned Rina and the baby. Then she said, “And I have a praise. I got a job at BCBC.”
Over the many congratulations that came her way, Brooks, who was sitting in front of the aunties, twisted in his seat and waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Morgan, asking, “Any other good news?”
Morgan draped his arm across the back of Simone’s chair and said, “We’ve been dating all of two days. Give a guy a chance.”
Simone bit her lip at the titters, gasps and happy exclamations.
“Okay, but you’re not getting any younger, you know,” Brooks jabbed playfully. “I’m just saying.”
Morgan put his head back and groaned, to general laughter. “Doesn’t someone somewhere need a doctor? Anyone? Anywhere?”
Someone did, actually, but they didn’t know until nearly an hour later. After the prayer meeting ended, quite a few people stopped to congratulate Simone on her new job and wish her and Morgan well. Several commented how happy they were to see Morgan interested in someone. An older woman named Tansy Burdett asked how Simone and Morgan had met. The question did not seem entirely innocuous.
Simone opened her mouth to admit that they had met at the college, but then she remembered. “We met at Chatam House, actually.”
“That’s right, we did,” Morgan said, “and it so happens that Simone is the sister of my cousin Phillip’s wife.” Again, it was entirely true.
Simone nodded enthusiastically. The woman thawed considerably.
“Is that so? My own granddaughter is married to one of Morgan’s cousins.”
“Reeves Leland,” Morgan supplied. “You remember, the cousin that Brooks and I share in common.”
“Oh,” Simone said, “the one whose wife is—”
“Anna Miranda,” Morgan said.
Simone wisely swallowed the words trying to have a baby and said instead, “Ah.”
“Mrs. Burdett is a college regent,” Morgan told her with a stiff smile. “As, of course, is my aunt Hypatia.”
“Of course,” Simone murmured, smiling. She offered a hand to the older woman. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
They escaped several minutes later. Once they were safely alone inside his car, Simone having let the aunties know earlier that she wouldn’t be riding back to the house with them, she gave him an apologetic smile.
“Oops. I guess I still have to watch what I say.”
“No, it’s okay,” he told her. “Tansy is a stickler, but we haven’t really done anything wrong. Besides, Provost Haward would back me, as would many others, or so I have reason to believe. I just don’t see the point in roiling the waters unnecessarily.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
They drove up to Chatam House a few minutes later to find an ambulance there, its lights throwing macabre images against the white brick in the dark night.
“It can’t be the aunties,” Morgan said. “They’re standing on the lawn.”
“Chester and Hilda, too,” Simone noted.
“And there’s Carol,” Morgan pointed out, identifying the housemaid, Hilda’s sister. That just left...
“Rina!” Simone gasped, jumping out of the car.
She slogged through the thick gravel of the driveway. Morgan caught her easily, taking her arm.
“You don’t think he found her, the baby’s father?” Simone worried aloud.
“I don’t know.”
They made it to the ambulance just as the emergency medical technician was about to close the doors. Rina spotted her and held out her hands, crying, “Simone!”
Without even thinking, Simone climbed into the back of the ambulance, asking, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Premature labor,” the EMT answered. “We’ll do our best to stop it.”
“Oh, Simone, I’m so sorry,” Rina said. “I—I just didn’t realize.”
“It’s not your fault,” Simone assured the girl, smoothing hair out of her eyes. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Will you stay with me?”
“Of course.”
“Tell him I’m sorry.”
“Who?”
“Professor.”
Simone shot a puzzled, anguished look at Morgan. “I’ll follow behind,” he said. Then he called out to the girl, “Rina, I’m praying for you. We’re all praying for you and the baby.”
The girl nodded, swiped at her tears, then grimaced and gritted her teeth. The EMT spoke into the radio clipped to his shoulder, pulled the door closed and waved Simone down onto a narrow padded ledge next to the gurney. The ambulance eased into motion, rocking slightly side to side. Simone began to pray silently, but despite all efforts and all prayers, Rina’s baby girl was born prematurely at four-forty Thursday morning. She weighed all of four pounds and three ounces.
“Could have been worse,” the pediatrician announced when he came out to the waiting room, explaining that the baby was probably less than two months premature. “She’s scrawny, but she seems well developed. All the same, given the lack of prenatal care, we’ll want to take every precaution.”
They would be transferring her to a neonatal unit in Dallas, but the doctor had no problem with Simone snapping cell phone photos and recording a short video of her in her incubator first.
“You can go on into the nursery,” he said. When Morgan hesitated, the doctor nodded at him, too, saying, “Just be quick.”
Surprised but pleased, they both donned the necessary garb and went in. She was a spunky little thing, pushing at her pink sock cap with both fists and kicking her tiny feet. Simone wished desperately to hold her, but that was not to be, of course. Morgan seemed to sense the need in her and wrapped his arms around her as the nurse whisked the baby away.
“Simone,” he whispered, “I want to give you your every heart’s desire, but I’m so very afraid that—”
She stopped him, reaching up to press her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t,” she said. “Someone recently told me that we have to ask for what we want, and we asked to be together, didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.”
He put his head to hers, and they both closed their eyes. “Lord,” Morgan said, “somehow I know You’ll make a way for us. I must believe it.”
“I must, too,” Simone whispered.
They shed the nursery gear and walked arm in arm to Rina’s room. She was sitting up in bed, eating pudding and sipping a soft drink.
“Have you seen her?” she asked anxiously, pushing away the bed tray.
Simone nodded. “The doctor says her lungs need some development, and she must put on some weight, but so far as they can tell, she’s fine.”
“I tried to take care of her,” Rina said, hanging her head. “I guess I didn’t do a very good job. I hope you’re not disappointed in me.”
Simone glanced at Morgan. “I’m very proud of you, Rina. You did the best you could under very difficult circumstances. And she’s fine. You’ll be released from the hospital in a day or so, and I’ll take you into Dallas to see her. I’m sure they’ll let you hold her. I read somewhere that babies thrive best when they’re cuddled.”
“Oh, no,” Rina said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t. Anyway, I’ve already called my aunt up in Missouri. That lawyer found her for me. She’s coming down to get me, and I’m going to stay with her, maybe go to college up in Springfield. She says there’s a few Bible colleges up there.”
“I’ll write you a recommendation, if you like,” Morgan offered, and Rina beamed.
“That would be cool. I’ll take you up on that.”
Simone’s heart was breaking to think that Rina would never even hold her child. She knew it was probably for the best, but still...if that had been her own little girl, no power on earth could separate her from that baby. She pulled up the photos on her phone and handed it to Rina, asking, “Don’t you even want to see her?”
Rina took the phone and thumbed through the photos. “So tiny,” she said in an awed voice. “She’s pretty, though, don’t you think?”
“She’s beautiful,” Simone told her. “There’s a video.”
Rina played the video, smiling. “I told you she was a mover and a shaker.”
Simone chuckled. “You did.”
Rina watched the short video again and thumbed a tear from her eye before handing the phone back to Simone. “So what are you going to name her?” she asked.
For a moment, Simone did not react. The question made no sense. She thought she’d misheard. Then Morgan said, “What?”
Rina looked from one to the other of them. “I just thought I’d ask. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me.”
Something started inside of Simone, a glowing, trembling, shattering pinprick of light, a stunning, joyous, unbelievable hope, the tiniest tip of a realization. Morgan put his hands on Simone’s shoulders and stepped up very close, his feet bracketing hers, his chest pressed to her back.
“Rina,” he said carefully, “why would we be choosing a name for your baby?”
She shifted her gaze back and forth between them. “She’s not my baby. She’s your baby.”
Simone would have fallen to the floor if Morgan hadn’t wrapped his strong arm around her waist. “Rina!” she gasped. “What are you saying?”
“Didn’t that lawyer tell you? I said it straight out from the first. I could look the world over and not find better parents for her than the two of you. He said you might not get married, but I knew you would. You are, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” both Morgan and Simone said at the same time. They hadn’t even spoken of it, but in her heart of hearts, Simone had known they would. Still, she rejoiced to hear Morgan’s voice in concert with hers.
“But, Rina,” Simone asked, tears streaming down her face, “are you sure you want us to adopt your baby?”
“I never did feel this was my baby,” Rina said, “just that I couldn’t kill it, that it had a right to live. Then that night I came to you at the mission when you told me about your cancer, I knew this baby was for you. I’d’ve given her to you even if you and the professor hadn’t got together for good.”
“You know, Rina,” Morgan said carefully, “most adoption agencies would feel that I’m too old to raise an infant.”
Rina waved that away. “My dad was fifty when I was born. He’s taking care of my mom and my grandma now.”
Simone had to smile at Morgan. “May we call age a dead issue, never to be raised again?”
For answer, Morgan bowed his head, pressing his face into the hollow below Simone’s ear. “Sweet Lord,” he prayed softly, “forgive me. I never even dreamed—I never even dared to dream—that You could bless me so. No wonder it took so long! What a blind, stupid—”
Simone lifted her hand to the back of his neck, interrupting that litany. “You are speaking of the father of my child,” she burbled, laughing and weeping all at once, “not to mention the man I love.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, turning her to face him, “I cannot tell you how much I love you, but I’ll try. Every day for the rest of my life, I’ll try.”
“I will hold you to that, Professor Chatam,” Simone exulted, lifting her arms around his neck and hugging him.
“And, Rina,” he said to the girl in the bed, “thank you. We’ll give our girl the very best possible life.”
“I know that,” she said. “I know all about you from your cousin, the lawyer, but I saw it all that day at the amusement park. You’re just the kind of people I want for her. You’re the kind of people I want to be.”
“What a lovely thing to say,” Simone told her.
“There’s just one kind of person to be, though, Rina,” Morgan said, “and it starts with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Rina nodded. “That’s what the Worths said and that Miss Chatam. They’ve prayed with me, and I figure I’m on my way.”
“I’m so glad,” Simone said. “We’ll stay in touch, won’t we?”
“Sure. I’d like that. Shouldn’t you be going, though? Seems to me you’ve got some things to do. I told the hospital that you were the parents and you and the lawyer would be taking care of everything.”
No wonder the pediatrician had reported to them and let them into the nursery so easily!
“I’d better call Asher,” Morgan exclaimed.
They hugged Rina and parted with tears and smiles. Simone felt that she was floating through the hospital corridors and out into the parking lot.
“Talk about getting the cart before the horse,” Morgan said with a laugh. “It isn’t just that we have a baby and we’re not yet married!”
Simone stopped in her tracks and covered her lower face with her hands, her eyes wide as the implications sank in. “Oh, this is one family circumstance that’s going to take a lot of explaining.”
“I think the soonest possible wedding date is the best possible answer, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Halfway there,” he teased. “Thanksgiving is in a week. Good time for a honeymoon.”
“Or to set up a nursery,” she countered.
“Speaking of that, you’ve barely even seen the house. We also need to hire a nanny. I’m sure there must be home studies and things like that, too, even in a private adoption.”
“Where to begin?” Simone asked, her mind awhirl.
“How about if we head into Dallas to see our little girl first?” Morgan suggested. “Maybe they’ll let us hold her.”
Simone threw her arms around him. “Yes, please.” He grinned down at her.
“What are we going to name her, anyway?” he asked, turning Simone toward the Beemer in the lot. “My mother’s name was Ardis Clara, a bit old-fashioned. My stepmom was Kathryn Ann. I like that, but I suspect my sister will want to use it, although I did beat her to the punch, so to speak.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. I’m a father, and I’m about to be a husband. Have I told you that I love you?”
Simone laughed. “Yes, but please keep doing so.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Simone said, coming to a halt in front of the car. “I was thinking of Brigitte. For a name, I mean.”
Obviously surprised, he took her face into his hands, his warm brown eyes glowing. “She deserves that, and I would like it very much. So would Brooks, I think.”
Simone smiled. “Brigitte it is, then.”
He took her into his arms and kissed her, there on the sidewalk in the very early morning on that chilly November day when God answered all their prayers and showed them just how complete and far-reaching His plans for His children could be.
Afterward, as Morgan handed her down into the car, he said, “You know, we might need a minivan.”
Simone snorted with laughter. “For one small child?”
“Well, maybe a station wagon,” he said, closing the door. Then as he came around to drop down behind the steering wheel, “Or a sport utility vehicle.”
“Why not all three?” Simone quipped.
“There you go,” Morgan said. “We’ll just trade all three existing vehicles.”
“And what of the moped?”
“No,” he said, starting up the engine. “No moped.”
“And the motorcycle?”
He made a face as he backed out of the parking space. “I guess that a husband and a father does have some responsibility when it comes to his personal safety, so...actually, I don’t think I need the motorcycle anymore.”
“In other words,” she teased, “you’ve finally grown up.”
“Maybe not completely,” he said, shifting gears and laying down a little rubber, just because he could.
Simone laughed indulgently and said, “There are always roller coasters.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, “I’m on one, and I don’t ever plan to get off. You’re all the thrill I need from now on.”
Simone closed her eyes. There were thrills and there were thrills. Some lasted only long enough to shock and rattle. Some could be clutched close for bright, heady hours. A few burrowed into the heart and lasted a lifetime. After all her mistakes and misfortunes, God had seen fit to gift her with the latter, and she would never take it for granted, never stop being grateful and never doubt His provision or love.
“I’m a mother,” she said dreamily, “and will you look at this, I caught the campus heartthrob!”
Morgan put back his head and laughed with all the joy she felt.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from LAKESIDE SWEETHEARTS by Lisa Jordan.