The Amish Cowboy's Refuge by Adina Senft

Author:Adina Senft [Senft, Adina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moonshell Books, Inc.

Hot, stinging tears trickled down Rachel’s cheeks. Her breath was gone, the words like a blow to the gut, a shock to the soul. Like a flaming sword to the conscience … I can only trust her. Marlon had loved her wholeheartedly. He was a man who could not help but trust the one he loved. And how had she repaid him? By keeping that secret room under lock and key in her heart. By loving him every day—but on this day this was written, it had been a love with a piece missing.

Twenty-four years of marriage before he died. And he had known the whole time.

He’d never shown her by word or deed that he suspected there had been someone else. And worse, that the someone else was the man he trusted as much as he did his own brothers.

Leaning on a pine tree’s trunk, Rachel buried her face in her apron and wept.

She didn’t know how long she was out there. Long enough for her throat to hurt and for the tissue in her sleeve to be soaked into uselessness. Long enough for the lamps to be lit in the house, their light enough to guide her out of the trees to the edge of the lawn.

A dark shape pushed off a tree trunk a short distance behind her. “Rachel?”

Her heart jerked in her chest. “Not now, Luke.”

“Something’s upset you. I could hear you crying. I didn’t want to leave you out here alone, but I didn’t want to intrude on you, either. Can I help?”

“Neh.”

“Can you … tell me?”

She made up her mind. Pushed the envelope with its damning letter into his hand. “Here. Delivered thirty years too late.”

He slid it into the tool bag slung over his shoulder without looking at it. “Does this have something to do with how Susanna is acting in there?”

“Probably.”

“She practically screamed at me.”

Rachel sighed. “It’s best if you go.”

“I was. And then I heard crying and realized it was you. So it’s not between you two—it has something to do with this letter?”

“Ja. I’m going in now.” She was so emotionally exhausted it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. “Guder nacht, Luke.”

She was thankful he didn’t reply, only saw her to the steps and then turned and walked off into the dark, his boots crunching in the gravel of the parking lot. She climbed the steps as if they were the final summit of some snow-capped mountain. One hand on the door handle, she swiped the streaks of tears off her cheeks with the heel of her other hand, summoned her last reserve of strength, and went in.

“What’s the matter with Aendi Susanna, Mammi?” Benny, seated at the family table with his spelling words, laid down his pencil as she closed the door. Gracie took the opportunity to do the same. “She made herself a plate and took it to her room. Why can’t we do that?”

“Because you don’t have a table in your room.

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