Sweeter than Honey by Kelly Irvin

Author:Kelly Irvin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

No rest for the weary. Especially when it was their fault. Isabella squeezed her bowl of potato salad onto the picnic table between pickled beets and a platter of cheese-spread sandwiches made with huge slabs of sourdough bread. The end-of-school picnic was in full swing. Only two had graduated from the tiny one-room school. Sally and Luke. It might be a small school, but Susan and Rebekah took their charge seriously.

Thrilled to be out of school until August, the rest of the kinner were screaming with laughter over a game of volleyball that involved both teachers, Mordecai, and Phineas. Both men could spike the ball over the ratty net without their feet leaving the ground. The kinner found this funny, for some reason, even though it meant they invariably lost each match. Susan and Rebekah had teamed up to try to match the men. It was a battle that made for good entertainment on a fine spring day.

At least it would if she weren’t so tired. Trying to ignore the headache that pulsed at her temples, Isabella picked up a Styrofoam plate and slapped a cheese-spread sandwich on it. Between the smoke she’d inhaled in the pool hall and the late hour of the previous evening, she felt as if she were coming down with the flu. Not to mention the hours of wakefulness that followed as she tried to turn off the images that kept racing through her mind—Ray with his beer breath and clammy hands, the girls with their slurred words and bare heads, the car smelling of burnt oil and gasoline, and Will’s whispered admission that he was glad she’d moved to Beeville. His hand on hers, helping her out of the buggy. The way he’d looked at her. No man had ever looked at her like that.

Goose bumps prickled up her arm despite the humidity-drenched heat. His hand had been so warm, his grip so strong. She swallowed against warmth that rose across the back of her neck and swirled around her cheeks.

She would ask Rebekah about it. Rebekah would know what it all meant.

“Are you hogging the food table?” Jacob bounded up the steps to the porch, an empty plate in one hand, a glass in the other. “Potato salad! That wasn’t here before.”

“I just set it out.” Cheeks still burning, Isabella dropped her gaze and grabbed the ladle in the barbecue beans. She dumped more than she would ever eat on her plate. Juice ran into the sandwich. “We didn’t want the mayonnaise to go bad.”

Jacob sent a furtive glance toward the grown-ups seated in lawn chairs scattered across the yard. “So I guess you got home safe and sound.”

“I did.”

“Will preach to you?”

“Nee.” Nor had he shown up for the picnic, a fact that surprised and dismayed her. “He was only concerned that I get home safe. That’s all.”

“He’s a good man, but sometimes he acts like an old fogy. He’s only a couple of years older than you and me. He’s forgotten what this time is about.

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