“YOU WANT TO TAKE a bunch of unseasoned college students on a fishing trip to raise money?”

Ross looked up from his studies into Melinda’s soul-spearing brown eyes. “Yep.”

“Then I’m going to state it loud and clear so we’re moving to the same music.” Melinda leaned over the lunch table, her red fingernails clicking. She looked like a Hawaiian princess in a turban and orange floral-print muumuu. “I don’t touch fish. I don’t cook it, clean it, or pull any ugly hook out of its mouth —noway, nohow.”

“Noted.”

“And the no-touching rule includes worms, leeches, and any other kind of gross and slimy fishy-type bait.”

“Got it.” Ross glanced at his Greek book, painfully sure that even if he hot-glued his head to the pages, he hadn’t a hope of imprinting the words onto his brain for his final exam.

“You feeling okay?” Melinda sat beside him and pressed her hand on his forehead. “You’re not sassin’ me.”

Ross hung his head in his hands. “I’ve wised up. You know everything, Melinda.”

His words only half kidded. Nearly finished with her master’s in child psychology, Melinda had a job lined up at Elisha’s Room in New York as a youth counselor for the homeless, a job Ross would give all the teeth in his mouth for. He’d nearly landed the position, highlighting his two-year stint after his junior year serving with Youths in Crisis in Mexico in lieu of a diploma. In the end, however, they wanted brains as well as savvy. Something he obviously didn’t have. He already felt like the class dunce, being three years older than every other senior.

It seemed downright unfair that his desire to reach the lost youth of the new millennium would require a bachelor’s degree.

Melinda laughed, her eyes sparkling. “Such a smart boy. Well, I don’t know how you got the dean of students to jump aboard your idea nor how you talked the Wellbridge Group into offering a matching grant to the winner’s purse. That’s a fine bit of fund-raising, Springer.”

“Finesse, my dear Lindy,” Ross said in his most-likely-to-succeed tone. She didn’t have to know that he’d called his father with a proposal to fund the contest and received a direct line to the Wellbridge president, a personal friend of Ronald Springer. For now, his father was in the dark, and Ross was still in his good graces. But then again, what choice did his father have, really? He had one son left on whom to pin his hopes.

“And you know how to fish, right?” Melinda asked.

“Piece of cake.” Ross closed his book. His eyes felt crossed, and the pitch-black filling the cafeteria windows didn’t help. “Speaking of food, is the café open?”

As Melinda glanced at the clock, Ross spotted Abby sitting across the room. She rose, tucked her bag over her shoulder, and started toward the door. Her gaze didn’t even skim him.

He remembered the day he returned from Mexico. She actually glowed —her eyes, her smile, her entire being —when she saw him. His throat thickened. She looked stunning today in light-brown dress pants and a sleeveless white top. Tall, elegant. Perfect. She was tan —probably from all those hours sitting on the lawn studying —and the sun had raised the highlights from the depths of her brown hair.

It nearly turned him deaf as Melinda continued her monologue.

“So we get up there on Wednesday and fish until Sunday? Where are we going to sleep? After last summer, I swore off tents, thank you. What about Noah? Does he know we’re . . . ?” Her voice faded.

Ross glanced at Melinda. She’d caught him watching Abby leave through the double doors.

“Still nursing regrets?”

He forced a smile. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s not a sin to like her, you know. Even if she was Scotty’s girlfriend.”

Ross opened his mouth, intending to deny his feelings.

But Melinda smiled and touched his hand. “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean you have to stop living.”

Laurie strode into the library looking like she’d reeled in the winning walleye. “I got everything we ever need to know about fishing.” She plopped her backpack onto the table with a smack and began pulling out books. “Fishing from A to Z. The Quintessential Fisherman. Bait and Lures Encyclopedia.”

Abigail picked up one of the books. “A River Runs Through It?”

“That’s recreational reading to get us in the mood.”

Abigail sighed. Her synapses must have been misfiring when she’d registered the Sojourners for the contest. Just because a few old members surfaced from the dusty rosters didn’t mean their ranks would swell or that they had a prayer of winning. She pushed the books away. “I don’t know, Laurie. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to fish.”

“So?” Laurie pushed the book back. “Miss Straight-A Student can’t learn? Girlfriend, you are the one who told me that anything I needed I could find in a book.” The wind had teased Laurie’s kinky reddish-brown hair but left a nice glow in her green eyes. “C’mon. It’ll be fun. Remember fun?”

Uh, actually, no. Abigail hadn’t had fun since the day she spent with —

“And I hear that they’re having other contests too. Like the largest walleye, northern pike, and the most crappies.” Laurie raised her eyebrows as if Abigail had the slightest idea what she was talking about and should be impressed.

“Crappies?”

Laurie dug out a slightly crumpled green flyer from her backpack. “And they’re having a cook-off. Best shore lunch batter.”

“Gross.”

Laurie’s face fell. “Please? I know it’ll be fun. A final fling.”

“Our only fling.”

“Yes, but final. As in, I’m going home to Sioux Falls and you’re going —”

“No, I’m staying here. They offered me an assistant professor position.”

“What?” Laurie’s voice rose, eliciting a chorus of hushes. She leaned closer.

Abigail smiled. Just when she’d decided life wasn’t fair, that she’d have to move home and listen to her parents wax eloquent about her sister’s handsome, accomplished fiancé, she’d been rescued. Thank You, God. She’d begun to wonder if the Almighty even knew she was down here. She certainly wasn’t making an impression so far. “Assistant professor. Greek and Hebrew department.”

Laurie high-fived her. “Way to go. Guess you’ll be tutoring all the summer school flunkies then, huh?”

Abigail shrugged. As long as she was employed. And busy. Preferably too busy to let the wedding invitation, now shoved deep inside her Greek verbs dictionary, do serious damage to her self-esteem. Too busy to be hurt that her sister had asked her to be a personal attendant rather than a bridesmaid.

Just because God had given her beautiful, talented younger sister an adoring fiancé who relegated Abigail to an afterthought in the wedding party didn’t mean He’d forgotten her, right? Twenty-eight wasn’t too old to find the perfect man —even if it felt like that at Bethel Bridal College. Except she wasn’t looking. She liked her life, her dedication to splicing ancient languages and discovering God’s treasures within His own words.

“So that means you’ll be tutoring Ross,” Laurie said through Abigail’s thoughts.

Abigail blinked at her. “What?”

“Word has it he failed his Greek final.”

Abigail kept her face stoic. “Interesting.”

Laurie glared at her. “Why don’t you just tell him the truth and end this charade?”

What truth? That he’d skewered her heart the day he walked out on her at Scotty’s funeral? Or that he’d stomped their relationship to a pulp a month later when he accused her of loving Scotty instead of him? Or that he hadn’t once, not in a year and a half, mentioned the fact that he’d declared his love? Had he been lying to her even then?

There was a reason she preferred her books to men. Her Greek book didn’t make her want to hide in a closet and cry.

“What charade?”

“Oh, please.” Laurie shook her head. “The guise of grieving girlfriend. You and I both know that you never loved Scotty the way you love Ross.”

“Shh.” Abigail leaned close, her voice tight. “Oh, thank you for that news. I was just waiting for the right time to announce to the entire campus that I was hanging around Scotty to get to his brother.”

Laurie went white, and Abigail felt sick. Despite her sarcastic, arsenic tone, every word was horribly, bitterly, unforgivably true.

Scotty had been a friend —not a boyfriend, but it looked that way. Only Scotty knew that she accompanied him home on the weekends not to visit her family or even to study with him, but to attend Ross’s baseball games and bankrupt him in Monopoly. Around Ross she didn’t need the academic accolades to feel special, didn’t have to carry a book like a portable friend. Around Ross, she didn’t feel like an afterthought. In fact, she’d believed that perhaps she’d been Ross’s main thought.

At least until he took Scotty’s place on the campus hotshot list.

“I’m sorry,” Abigail said softly and touched Laurie’s arm. “I’m just —”

“Hurting.” Laurie took her hand. “Let’s go to the contest. Maybe in Deep Haven, away from the campus, you’ll find a way to make peace, if not friends.”

Abigail dredged up a smile and the smallest of nods. But she knew the truth now, even if she hadn’t then. Ross wasn’t the thirteen-year-old boy she’d fallen for when she’d socked him in the eye with a baseball. She’d never be able to keep up with this charismatic Ross nor muscle through his harem.

Most of all, she wasn’t about to love a man who considered her only one of his adoring multitudes.