Forever Promised Read Free

his cheekbones, and when he opened his eyes again, they were both hopeful and fearful at once.
    “He’s a tough act to follow,” Drew said softly. “Have you told him yet?”
    Benny gnawed on her lower lip. “That I’m ready to move out of the house on his property and into the other house on his property?” she asked factiously, hoping the facts would obscure what a big step this was.
    “If you’re ready to move you and Parry into my home. Benny, I love it here, and I’m happy to live here, go to school when you’re done, raise a family working in Deacon’s business. But I need you in my own home. Is that so much to ask? I want to….” He grimaced again and looked around at where they were. It was a swimming hole, plain and simple, but it was also the family church. The shade from the oak trees kept the August sun from pounding too hotly on the two of them, and the water from the irrigation stream burbled as it rounded the bend. It was a pretty place, carved by necessity in what could be a harsh world, and when they weren’t having weddings or summer parties or greeting new babies or making love (at least with her and Drew it had happened here the first time), it was the summer swimming hole and family thinking spot.
    Important things happened here, and apparently Drew had decided that it was time for one more.
    “Benny, don’t you want to get married?” he asked rawly, and Benny blinked and smiled huge, delighted because she thought this conversation was going to get a lot more serious than this.
    “To you? Because, well, duh !” she laughed. “What do you think, Drew? Two and a half years we’ve been seeing each other?” Her voice dropped, and she splayed her small hand across his chest, hard with weighty muscle underneath his pink dress shirt. “Do you think I… I mean, my whole family knows about us. Do you think that would happen if I didn’t want us to be permanent?”
    Drew covered her hand with his larger one, and she resisted the temptation to examine it, as she often did, to contrast the coffee color of the skin on the back with the tender pinkness of the palm and the pads of his fingers. These things fascinated her, and she never made any secret about the fact his skin color delighted her as much as the rest of him. She was unafraid of their difference in race, and unafraid of the skin under his prosthetic leg, and unafraid of the complete contrast in culture between his upbringing in the South and hers in Northern California. About the only thing she did fear about her relationship with Drew was that somehow it would take her away from her family.
    “I want us to be permanent,” he said softly. “But you know that means that you’re going to need to move you and Parry out of that house. And someday—not now, but someday, after we’re both through school, and when we’ve had another baby or two—we may have to move away from here. From The Pulpit. From Levee Oaks. From Deacon. And I need to know you’re up for that.”
    Benny swallowed hard and tried not to tear up—she still had that leftover hot feeling behind her eyes from the wedding, she told herself stoutly. It was only natural.
    “You mean choose you,” she said, knowing that this was where it was leading.
    “Over Deacon,” Drew affirmed. He glanced furtively up, and Benny looked to where Deacon was holding Parry Angel, and now she had to wipe her face with her hand again.
    “Of course I choose you,” she whispered painfully, because it wasn’t that cut and dried and they both knew it. They both owed Deacon so much. Leaving him alone seemed a horrible way of paying him back. “I’ll tell him we’re moving out tomorrow.”
    Drew nodded and smiled, and he looked like the weight of the world had fallen from his sturdy shoulders. He pulled her close and rested his forehead against hers, and she smiled into his eyes.
    “I really love you,” she said softly, thinking that it was true, and her heart felt so swollen in