A Wife Worth Waiting For

A Wife Worth Waiting For
Arlene James

EVERYDAY MIRACLESTHE WIFE WAITWidow Clarice Revere was grateful to the Reverend Bolton Charles. The handsome minister had been a father figure to her son, generously given her his friendship and elicited feelings she'd long forgotten. But Clarice–who'd always lived in the shadow of domineering men–couldn't trade her newfound freedom for love.Putting his trust in God's plan, Bolton set out to convince Clarice she was the wife he'd been waiting for. He only hoped his patience proved as limitless as his love….Everyday Miracles: Each day brings new tests for young Reverend Charles and his congregation. But with faith, they find miracles are everywhere–even the miracle of love.Welcome to Love Inspired™–stories that will lift your spirits and gladden your heart. Meet men and women facing the challenges of today's world and learning important lessons about life, faith and love.

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u228bf78d-f446-55b8-930a-d7783e3a883a)

Excerpt (#ub0be8077-8dc4-5dbe-afb1-b40b13ca0ec0)

About the Author (#u5106a459-13ae-50df-ac7b-639eb7e3d4e5)

Title Page (#u9bb686d4-acff-5a20-9612-37a0b4bc3c74)

Epigraph (#udf6394db-3482-52fc-9347-90fa19e295ae)

Chapter One (#uaa35618c-5691-5c48-aef6-226dd7acd6d4)

Chapter Two (#u58b1c184-2c25-5a6f-ad7f-4ad3011de28d)

Chapter Three (#u40cbb4a2-fe62-53cd-bd69-3615858a28be)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“I was wondering if you would like to go on a picnic with me?”

Bolton had asked the question of both mother and son, but his eyes were expectantly fixed on Clarice. He waited, one, two, three painful beats of his heart.

Clarice glanced at her son, who looked happily back at her, then turned to Bolton and smiled. “We’d love to.”

It took every ounce of his willpower not to jump for joy. He closed his eyes briefly in thanks, then got a hold of himself.

She had said yes to a picnic, nothing more. But it was a start, wasn’t it? It was progress in the right direction. Now what? Where to from here? How could he get Clarice to look at him as more than a mentor to her son and pastor to the church?

One step at a time.

ARLENE JAMES

“Camp meetings, mission work, and the church where my parents and grandparents were prominent members permeate my Oklahoma childhood memories. It was a golden time which sustains me yet. However, only as a young, widowed mother did I truly begin growing in my personal relationship with the Lord. Through adversity, He blessed me in countless ways, one of which is a second marriage so loving and romantic it still feels like courtship!”

The author of over forty novels, Arlene James now resides outside of Dallas, Texas, with her husband. As she sends her youngest child off to college, Arlene says, “The rewards of motherhood have indeed been extraordinary for me. Yet I’ve looked forward to this new stage of my life.” Her need to write is greater than ever, a fact that frankly amazes her as she’s been at it since the eighth grade!

A Wife Worth Waiting For

Arlene James

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

—Matthew 10:29-31

Chapter One (#ulink_69b614c8-af9d-57a5-bcd1-bca9cd7798f7)

It was a summons, plain and simple. Bolton chuckled and looked again at the folded sheet of stationery, very white against the green blotter on his desk. The shaky slashes of black ink revealed a bold hand infirmed by age and illness, but the wording was that of a self-assured despot. The Reverend Bolton Charles would please present himself at Revere House the following morning at the hour of eleven to discuss a matter of grave importance. His promptness was appreciated—and taken for granted. He would go, of course. Those of his profession could not afford to look askance at the manner in which a need for aid was presented, however high-handed the presentation. The only question in his mind was what he could do for Wallis Revere. Revere had made it plain in the past that Bolton’s “interference” was not wanted. Bolton couldn’t help wondering what had happened to change that. As Bolton considered the possibilities, he sobered.

Wallis Revere was seventy-three years old, his birthday falling sometime in February. Bolton knew this because, as a minister, it was his practice to mark the birthdays of each and every one of his church members, whether they participated in the function of the church or not, and Wallis Revere did not. Actually, Carol, the reverend’s late wife, had started the practice, and it was one of her many projects that he had struggled to continue during the two years and four months since her death.

Two years, four months, one week and two days. He could quickly figure the hours and minutes, as well, if he would allow himself the luxury of maudlin reflection. But he would not. Carol was gone. His own life went on. God’s ways were often mysterious, and his own faith was such that he needed no other explanation for the single most devastating event of his life. His wife had died of cancer. He missed her horribly, and yet what he missed most these days was having someone beside him, someone sharing his life, not Carol herself precisely, but someone. Someone to love—he wanted someone to love. A woman. He was man enough, human enough, to admit that he wanted, needed a woman, his own woman. God had designed men and women to want and need and love one another. He never ceased to marvel at that fact. Mysterious ways, he reminded himself, and resolutely turned his thoughts back to work.

Revere was elderly, ailing from some sort of degenerative bone disease, and stubbornly reclusive. He had not welcomed the three previous calls that Bolton had dutifully paid him. In fact, Revere had been barely civil on those past occasions, dismissing the minister quite firmly in the end. Nevertheless, he had continued his generous monthly monetary contributions to the church’s treasury—and now it appeared that the old boy was ready to extract his money’s worth from the minister whose comfortable salary he helped to provide. It was, of course, the very sort of thing that Bolton Charles was paid to do. Visit the infirm and elderly, render aid to the needy, comfort, advise, counsel, exhort, pray…organize, oversee, encourage, teach, preach, intercede, introduce, support, defend…The list was endless, but they were all duties, each and every one, for which he was called much more than hired, and for that reason he would clear his schedule and appear at Revere House at precisely eleven the next morning. He would have gone even if Revere previously had tossed him out on his backside, revoked his church membership and demanded a refund of his tithes. Bolton’s reasons were simple. He was a man of God, a minister, sworn to aid the needy in body and soul in the name of his Lord. He considered that no greater calling existed, and he was thankful beyond words that it was his own. But that moved him no closer to divining Wallis Revere’s problem.

Might not the old boy have developed a concern for his soul? The dying often did, and it certainly was not beyond the realm of possibility that the man was dying. Bolton hoped it was not so. A minister’s job was inexorably coiled up with death, and while his personal belief in heaven was firm, dealing with death and dying and its aftermath for the living was a decidedly unpleasant business. But one he did well, especially after his own personal experience in that area. He had never truly understood the matter of comfort for the bereaved or how to give it until Carol had left him. He wondered who, if anyone, would grieve Wallis Revere.

By eleven the next morning, he had satisfied himself somewhat on that question. A discreet conversation with his secretary, Cora Beemis, had elicited the nearly forgotten intelligence that the Revere family consisted of Wallis, a young grandson and a daughter-in-law, the widow of Revere’s son and only child, who had died some years previously in a riding accident. Neither the daughter-in-law nor the grandson were members of the congregation, which, coupled with Revere’s stubborn reclusiveness, explained why Bolton knew little of them. He was relieved, however, just to know that they existed. It was the thought of them that occupied his mind as he turned his conservative four-door sedan through the brick columns flanking the broad drive of the Revere estate.

Estate was the only word for the Revere place. It was nestled, as much as a three-story Georgianstyle colonnaded house with various outbuildings could be nestled, in a gentle, shady hollow on the northern edge of the Duncan city limits. The site itself was atypical of this section of Oklahoma, which tended to consist of rolling fields spliced with low, eroded, red-orange cliffs sparsely scattered with spindly post oak, willow and mesquite. The only significant tree growth seemed to be restricted to the areas surrounding the creeks, lakes and ponds that dotted this south central portion of the state. But Wallis Revere had found—or created—a cool, leafy vale all his own, as cool, anyway, as an Oklahoma morning in a new June could get. The radio had reported only minutes earlier that the temperature was eighty-four degrees and climbing. It would break ninety before the day was done, and soon summer would be upon them with a vengeance.

Bolton parked the car in a shady spot on the circular drive and lowered the window several inches before getting out. The place was quiet except for the rustle of leaves and the gentle chirping of unseen birds. A fat blond cat with a single ear and a patchwork of scars on one flank ambled up the brick walk with dignified unconcern. Bolton followed it to the door, feeling absurdly as if he ought to speak.

“Nice day for a stroll, isn’t it?”

The cat twitched its single ear as if in dismissal and hopped up onto the doorstep, twisting itself sinuously around the base of a big clay pot containing a small tree and a lot of drooping ivy. Bolton stepped up behind the cat and pressed the doorbell button. Almost instantly the paneled door opened and a plump, smiling Mexican woman appeared. She was wearing a simple shirtwaist dress, a pristine white apron and clunky black shoes. Her hairline was streaked with gray, but the long ponytail draped over one shoulder was black as ink. Her slender black eyebrows went up.

“Preacher?” she asked in heavily accented English.

Bolton nodded. “Reverend Charles. And you are?”

“Teresa.”

“Nice to meet you, Teresa.”

She giggled and beckoned with a plump, chapped hand for him to follow. “Mister Wallis is in the study,” she informed him, leading him across the foyer and down a long, dark hall flanking the stairwell. She opened a door and stepped aside.