Bluegrass Courtship Read Free Page B

right in here. Did you meet him? Andanyone else? Did you meet Kevin Cooper?” Her small, lean frame was practically vibrating with excitement.
    Kevin Cooper was the landscaping expert of the Missionnovation team, and a personal favorite of Janet’s mother, who was close to her pruning shears and potting soil herself. The trellis of blooming flowers that graced Janet’s back deck this summer was copied directly from a Missionnovation episode. Janet had the misfortune to mention to her mother during said episode that she had “some spare lumber just like that lying around the shop.” Before she knew it, Janet’s back deck had its own Missionnovation -inspired garden trellis.
    â€œNo.” Janet hadn’t yet seen any of the people she saw on TV except for Downing. Despite her “Shenanigan” title, Annie must be a producer or some such thing because Janet had never seen her on the show. “But Drew Downing was in here.”
    â€œI got to meet him,” her mother boasted as she unzipped the dark blue canvas Bishop Hardware windbreaker she always wore. It had been Janet’s dad’s and she had to cuff up the sleeves more than a few times in order to make it fit. “He seems just like he is on the show. A nice fellow. Bit high energy, but of course I knew to expect that. He invited me to the prayer meeting at the bus tonight.” She pulled a Missionnovation Daily Devotional booklet out of one of the jacket’s interior pockets. “They don’t ever show those on TV, but I read about them. And now we get to be part of it. It’s just amazing. Even you have to think this is amazing. After all we’ve been through trying to raise enough money to fix that preschool?”
    â€œIt’s gonna be something, that’s for sure.”
    Her mother shot her one of her looks. That “oh, stop being such a wet blanket” look she always gave Janet when she got all worked up about something church-related. Janet no longer did the bubbly religion thing. She told herself sherespected the Almighty enough not to try and fake Him out after all she’d seen.
    â€œNo prayer meeting,” Janet said before her mom even had a chance to ask. “I’ll see enough of those folks during the day.”
    â€œThey’re ordering through the store, aren’t they? I hadn’t even thought about that. Should be a whole lot of business. God’s been kind to you. You think about that.” She tapped her green brochure on Janet’s arm. “You may want to think about giving Him another chance one of these days.” Another look.
    It was an exchange they’d had far too often. A few years back, Tony Donalds, the son of Middleburg Community Church’s pastor at the time, had pulled Janet into a serious relationship. It had been a whirlwind of newly energized faith with the promise of future adventure. And it had opened up facets of Janet’s relationship with God she’d never discovered before.
    It just hadn’t been real. Because Tony hadn’t been real.
    Janet didn’t blame Pastor Donalds—now the former pastor, of course—for not seeing his son’s true nature. Tony’d fooled them all. He’d been traveling to raise funds—and then home to raise Janet’s hopes—for a mission project that never existed. To capture it in a tired cliché, Tony took the money and ran.
    They’d been ring-shopping, hoping to announce their engagement within the month, when it all unraveled. While her mom thought of it as God saving Janet in the nick of time, Janet saw it differently. She’d seen how false “the God’s honest truth” could be, and she had every right to put permanent distance between herself and the church.
    â€œDid you hear?” Dinah Hopkins’s voice pulled Janetfrom her thoughts. Dinah owned the Taste and See Bakery just up the street, and she had become Janet’s close