But we all know she’ll love that. Maybe it would help launch her authoring career.
I grin, thinking of the happiness that would bring her.
After chatting with Hadley a little longer, I hang up the phone, toss my hair back into a ponytail, and get back to work on the case file in front of me, feeling more at ease over the situation.
I’ll continue to ship the two of them… for now.
Chapter Four
Finley
“You sure about this? I’m all for surprises, but don’t forget you sometimes learn things you don’t want to when you try to surprise someone.” Mason, my roommate, gathers his Bible before patting his jean pockets. “Ah, here’s my wallet.”
“Do you know something that I don’t? Is there some reason I shouldn’t surprise Lucy at church this morning?”
I glance around the kitchen island until I find my cup of tea and my Bible. I open it and glance at the picture of my family printed on the inside cover. My mamma’s neat handwriting dedicating the Bible to me upon my fifteenth birthday is underneath the photo. I should get an English Bible, but this one holds a special place in my heart. The fact that it’s in Korsan makes it difficult to follow along sometimes as my brain short-circuits on which language I should be thinking in, but I love this Bible too much and enjoy having it with me.
“Not at all. I’m actually glad you’re finally coming,” Mason responds. He’s dressed in jeans and a flannel while I wear a poloand khaki pants. Mamma would screech at me for showing up to church in anything less than a suit and tie, but here in Mississippi, I’d get mistaken for the pastor.
I snap my Bible closed and take a sip of green tea. “As am I. It was hectic with the move prior, and then I was gone to Korsa. Now feels like the perfect time.”
Mason grins and waggles his brows. “It’s always for a girl, am I right?”
“She’s a benefit, I suppose.” Yes, I am anxious to see Lucy Spence again. The more I let the date Friday night marinate in my mind, the more I realized just how grand of a time I had. I found myself daydreaming of the excited inflection in her voice as she rambled on about random facts. Her eyes starred in my sleeping dreams. The way she avoided my kiss at the end of the night…
“Dudes, y’all are going to stick out like a sore thumb,” Mason says, and I follow his gaze to Gabriel and Anders sporting their typical all-black suits. Both men, about ten years older than me, reside in this cabin with me and Mason; Father insisted I keep PPOs around me at all times while I’m here for the next three months since my status and future shifted with one sentence out of my brother’s mouth while I was home last month.
Needless to say, it’s getting too crowded and stuffy here. My precious peaceful and carefree life has come to an abrupt end.
“You American men should dress nicer. Especially for church,” Gabriel huffs in his French accent. His brawny figure does not pair with his higher, snooty voice. But the man can probably kill someone a thousand different ways.
Anders, a tall, lean Korsan man and long-term friend of my family, shrugs. “I do not typically like to agree with Gabriel, but he’s right on the money.” His accent is much thicker than mine, which has all but disappeared with all my time in the States and traveling to other parts of the world.
“Please only monitor from outside the church, and don’t be suspicious. Do what you do best and hide well,” I tell them both. The last thing I need is to give Lucy a reason to be suspicious over me. No, she needs to think I’m a plain guy who chose to study abroad and fell in love with the country. I want a woman to fall for me. Not my title. That’s why so many of my relationships in the past have failed.
Mason laughs, and the two men glare at him. Gabriel and Anders bicker back and forth often, but they both agree that Mason Kane and his southern ways gets under their skin.
“Let’s get going, man. Don’t want to be late.” Mason claps my back, then we exit our little cabin. He climbs into his lifted Tundra while I slide into my 1969 Mustang, and I momentarily miss my collector cars back in Korsa. I had this one shipped to me back when I was in South Carolina, but it doesn’t need any work.
I miss working on cars. Will I have time to regale in my hobby once I’m king?
Gabriel and Anders trail me in the blacked-out sedan. Glancing past my PPOs in my rear view, I watch the cabin grow smaller. This place was once Braxton’s, but he let Mason and I stay in it after he married and moved in with Hadley. Mason’s house is almost finished, so he will be moving out soon. I have less than three months before I’m summoned back to Korsa for good…
The drive to the church isn’t long. Spring has made its way to the little town, and flowers are blooming on the sides of the road. Once we arrive, we park in the little lot and enter the red brick building. I say a small prayer that my PPOs go unnoticed. I don’t want to have to explain why two men in black suits are following me around.
I’m given a brief tour from Mason, who started attending the church alongside his fiancée after they got engaged last month. The layout is simple: a sanctuary, a gym-slash-fellowship area out behind the sanctuary, and a side wing for Sunday school classes. That’s the entirety of the place. It isn’t much to look at, and it still retains old-fashioned pews and carpeted floors, but based on the warm greetings, hugs, and bright smiles, the people seem to be what make it an important and sacred building within this community.
But there’s no sign of Lucy yet.
“Where’re you from, Finley? You gotta little accent,” an older lady who introduced herself as Netty asks as she sips her coffee from a small styrofoam cup. Mason and I stand around in a group of older men and women, all of them tuning into me.
“A tiny island country called Korsa tucked between England and Norway.”
“Huh. What brought’cha here to Juniper Grove?”
As if invited by my very thoughts of her, though she isn’t the reason I came to this area—Hadley did say she wanted me to meet Lucy, but I had no clue how that would turn out at the time—Lucy enters the fellowship room followed by a woman whose appearance is just like her but with bangs. Though identical in their faces and builds, the two present a stark contrast to oneanother in countenance. Lucy is taking my breath away in a dark gray pencil skirt with a white buttoned blouse tucked in, a pair of white sneakers on her feet. Though her clothing is business and plain, she looks like she should be on the cover ofTimemagazine. Her low, curly ponytail hardly swishes as she walks, her gait regal all in itself. Mamma would be remiss to not approve of her mannerism.
Her twin, Lorelei, on the other hand, is wearing a baby blue peplum dress (thanks, Astrid, for educating me on women’s style) with white block heels, her curls and bangs bouncing with every step. She’s beautiful, no doubt, but she doesn’t carry that same refined air that her sister does. Maybe it’s the swollen black eye throwing her off.Ouch, that actually looks painful.
