A Love Like Ours

  © 2015 by Rebecca Wade Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-6945-4

  Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Jennifer Parker

  Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC

  For Linda Kruger, my literary agent You’re an amazing supporter of my work, my ally in business, and the one I count on to give me wise feedback on each and every novel. Thank you! I’m very fortunate to have you on my team and even more fortunate to have you as my friend.

  Special thanks to Kari, Aaron, Lily, and Claire for sharing your family’s story with me. Your family inspired Lyndie’s family. And your story inspired me personally. God bless you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Epilogue

  Questions for Conversation

  About the Author

  Books by Becky Wade

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Prologue

  Twelve-year-old Jake Porter never felt a hundred percent right unless Lyndie James was beside him.

  She was his sidekick. Or maybe he was hers. She was the one with the flair and the imagination. He was the one with the even temper and the sense.

  They were a pair.

  Jake stood at the edge of the pond, watching Lyndie try to skip a stone. Without bouncing even once, her rock dropped straight into the afternoon sunshine sparkling on the top of the water. Another dud. Her fifth dud in a row.

  “Well, shoot,” Lyndie muttered. Standing halfway up to her knees in the pond, she bent over to look for another rock.

  “Hold still. I’ll get one for you.” He didn’t want her cutting her foot on a piece of glass or a sharp stone. Jake put his boots on just about as soon as he got up in the mornings. But Lyndie only wore shoes when her mom made her. He sort of wished her mom made her more often.

  He handed her the two smoothest, flattest rocks he could find. Lyndie was ten. For a girl who could do almost anything else, she was getting kind of old not to be able to skip a stone.

  Jake’s brother Ty approached them. “Still can’t skip one, Lyndie?” He grabbed a rock and showed her how to use her wrist. “Like this. See?”

  Jake frowned at his brother, irritated. Ty was only fifteen months older than Jake, but he acted like he knew everything. It annoyed Jake, sometimes, to be the youngest of the three Porter brothers. He was only older than his sister, Dru, which didn’t even count. She was just two years old.

  Ty sent his rock flying and it bounced off the water four times, leaving circles. Ty had always loved for people to watch him do stuff, so he picked up another rock and did it all over again. “See that?”

  “Lyndie doesn’t need your help.” Jake had already shown her how to skip a rock lots of times. “She just needs practice.”

  Ty looked at Lyndie and lifted one eyebrow. “I skipped one twenty times once.”

  Lyndie’s eyes rounded.

  Anger shot though Jake. “No, you didn’t. The most I’ve ever seen you do is six.”

  “That one time, at the Millers’ house?”

  “No.”

  Ty shrugged and pushed sweat off his forehead with his wrist. “I’m getting hot.”

  Now that the spring weather had turned warm, the Porter brothers and Lyndie spent their weekends riding horses, exploring, and seeing what kind of orneriness they could get themselves into when their parents weren’t paying attention.

  “I’m going to jump in,” Ty said.

  “You’re not supposed to,” Jake warned.

  “Who said?”

  “Dad.”

  “Nah. I don’t remember that.”

  Ty definitely remembered. Their dad had told them more than once that they weren’t supposed to swim in the pond without permission or without an adult around.

  Jake looked toward their older brother Bo, who was sitting against the trunk of a nearby tree reading a book about horses. Bo was sixteen. Their mom had made him come along to keep an eye on the rest of them.

  Jake cleared his throat. When Bo lifted his head at the sound, Jake pointed in Ty’s direction. Ty had already started climbing the hill that curved around the side of the pond.

  Bo rose in one smooth motion, his book dropping to the side. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going swimming.” Ty pulled off his T-shirt.

  Bo started toward him. “No you’re not.”

  Jake gave Lyndie a small smile. Tattling on Ty made having Ty for a brother a lot more fun.

  Lyndie smiled at him in answer, her brown eyes dancing. A few pieces of long, white-blond hair blew in front of her face. She reached back, grabbed all of her wavy, windblown hair, and brought it over one shoulder. She wore a shirt with a faded picture of a dog on the front and jeans she’d cut off herself to make shorts. Both of her thin knees had Band-Aids on them.

  “Ty!” Bo broke into a run. “Don’t you jump in.”

  Ty yanked free his boots. “Of course I’m gonna jump in, Bo. Rolling in or crawling in would take too long.”

  Bo didn’t have a chance of making it to Ty in time to stop him. Jake reached for Lyndie’s hand and led her carefully from the water.

  Two seconds later, Ty did a running cannonball off the hill. He hit the surface with a loud ker—splash.

  Bo groaned and stuck his hands on his hips.

  Ty came up smiling and laughing. He whooped and used both hands to send water high into the air.

  One edge of Lyndie’s lips tipped upward. “Now how am I supposed to learn to skip rocks?”

  “You could go ahead and skip them right into his head,” Jake suggested.

  Lyndie laughed.

  The sound made Jake’s heart turn big and warm.

>   Bo and Ty started arguing about whether Ty should get out of the water now or later. Lyndie watched them with her arms crossed and Jake watched Lyndie.

  He’d known her always. Their moms were best friends. Lyndie had a younger sister named Mollie with cerebral palsy, and since Mollie couldn’t play with Lyndie, Lyndie spent a lot of time at their house playing with them. Playing with him was a better way to put it.

  He’d heard Lyndie’s mom say that Lyndie trailed along behind the Porter boys. But Jake had never let her trail. He’d always stayed beside her. And he’d never minded.

  He had friends at school his own age, but he didn’t feel the same way about them that he did about Lyndie. He was a normal kid, but Lyndie? Lyndie was more than that. She could draw amazing pictures. She loved animals even more than he did. She was the bravest girl in Holley, Texas. And she had a really good imagination. Almost every day, she talked him into going on made-up adventures with her.

  She was his favorite person.

  “Did you hear that, Jake?” She stilled and turned one ear up.

  “What?”

  She looked hard into the area beneath a group of trees. “It sounds like chirping. Like a . . . a little bird.”

  Together, they moved toward the sound. Off to one side, a shrub shook, and beneath it, a black cat paused to watch them. It had something in its mouth. Before Jake could take a step in its direction, it dashed off like a streak of black chalk.

  Lyndie followed the chirping and located a baby chick covered in fluffy gray and yellow feathers. A swipe of blood marked its chest.

  “Oh no,” Lyndie whispered, kneeling beside it. “Hi, little one. Okay. Don’t be worried. Did the cat get your nest? Hi.”

  Jake dropped onto his knees. The chick’s mother had made a ground nest of mud, grass, and sticks but the chick had spilled out of it onto the dirt. If the rest of the chick’s family had been here earlier, they were all gone now.

  Lyndie and Jake lived outdoors more than they lived in. They both knew they ought to leave a baby bird alone. This baby looked weak and injured, though, and Jake already knew what Lyndie was going to want to do. For years the two of them had been able to communicate without words, like two halves of a circle.

  “He’s hurt,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m going to pick him up and take him to the house. If I don’t, that cat will come back for him.”

  “What are you going to do with him once you get him home?”

  “Mollie will help him feel better.”

  Jake didn’t see how.

  “And then my mom will take him to the wildlife center,” she said.

  “You think your mom will take another animal to the center?” This wasn’t even close to Lyndie’s first rescue.

  “She will when she sees him.” She scooped the chick into her palm. “Oh, little guy. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” Then she pulled up the bottom of her T-shirt and used it like a hammock to carry the chick. She ran toward the horses, her legs moving fast.

  Lyndie had more ideas than anyone he’d ever met. Some of them were pretty close to crazy, but when she got an idea in her head, she also got real determined about that idea. He’d learned that arguing with her was a waste of time. Keeping his mouth shut and helping her however he could worked better.

  “Hey!” Bo called to them before they’d mounted up. Jake and Lyndie waited for him to draw near. “I can’t leave yet, Jake. I have to stay with Ty until I can get him out of the water.”

  Jake glanced at the pond. Ty was doing the backstroke.

  “I found a baby chick,” Lyndie said. Because Bo was twice her size, she had to tilt her head way back to speak to him. “I need to take him to my sister and my mom.”

  “You can’t go by yourself,” Bo answered.

  Lyndie’s attention moved to Jake. He saw loyalty and confidence in her face. “Jake will go with me.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Jake confirmed. Of course he would.

  Bo eyed them.

  Next to their dad, Jake respected Bo the most. Everyone said he and Bo were a lot alike, both of them calm and responsible.

  “Please, Bo,” Lyndie said.

  “Okay, fine. Take her straight back to the house and keep her safe. All right, Jake?”

  “All right.”

  Jake cupped his palms. Like they’d done a thousand times, Lyndie placed her foot in his hands and he lifted her onto her horse’s back. He swung into his own saddle and they set off at a trot. Lyndie held the hem of her shirt protectively in one hand.

  When the trees cleared and pasture opened, Lyndie’s horse moved into a gallop. Jake increased his own horse’s speed, riding close behind her and slightly to the side.

  Lyndie’s pale hair spread behind her like ribbons. Her face sharpened with concentration as she leaned forward over the mare’s back. Her bare feet balanced on the stirrups. He’d never seen anything else on earth like Lyndie riding a horse. She guided the animals with willpower more than with her legs and the reins.

  His dad called Lyndie a natural and that’s exactly how she looked, like God had made her to ride horses, like she wasn’t afraid even though her horse was racing toward home as fast as it could go.

  Jake never could believe it, how such a small girl could make a horse run so fast. It impressed him. It worried him, too.

  Keep her safe, all right, Jake?

  That was his job, to keep her safe. And that’s what he would do.

  She was his favorite person.

  The chick lived.

  But shortly afterward, Lyndie’s family moved across the country and took her away from Texas, from the Porters, and from Jake. The Porters went on about their lives. All the Porters that is, except Jake, who missed Lyndie terribly.

  Her departure from his life broke their circle of friendship into two pieces and left Jake with only half.

  Lyndie would return one day.

  And when she did, Jake would be the wounded one in need of rescue.

  Chapter One

  It had been twenty years since Lyndie James had seen Jake Porter. Twenty years! The bulk of her life. By all accounts, Jake should not matter so much to her still. Her memories of him should not have remained so clear. But he did. And they had. And now she was about to see him again, face-to-face. After twenty years.

  Lyndie steered her Jeep around a curve in the road that offered a beautiful view of Whispering Creek Ranch’s Thoroughbred farm.

  The towering gates and the security guard at the ranch’s front entrance had been wildly impressive. The lodge-style mansion she’d glimpsed, jaw dropping. But the horsewoman within her appreciated this vista most of all.

  Low green hills framed a picturesque redbrick structure. Behind it, white fences marked off paddocks and pastures that enclosed horses of varying hues.

  It was mid-March, a time of year in Texas that could mean tank top weather just as easily as sweater weather. Today classified as a sweater day, complete with low and moody gray clouds and tossing wind.

  The scene made her fingers itch for her paintbrush. If only she could somehow capture the rare pale green of that tree up ahead. Such a bright, almost yellow-tinted green. The color of spring’s first leaves . . .

  Whoops. She straightened the car’s trajectory before running herself off the road.

  The guard had given her a map of the horse farm, which she’d clamped against the steering wheel with her thumbs. He’d told her to pass by this first barn, right? She double-checked the route he’d marked. Right. She continued along the paved road.

  Jake’s older brother Bo managed Whispering Creek Horses. Bo had told her that she’d find Jake at the barn that stabled the racehorses in training. Bo was the one who’d encouraged her to pursue the job opening on Jake’s staff and the one who’d asked the guard to let her in.

  Jake didn’t know she was coming.

  Which didn’t seem, suddenly, like the best plan in the world. Hi, Jake. I haven’t seen you in twenty y
ears. Do you remember me? No? Can I have a job exercising your Thoroughbreds, please? I’d really, really like a job.

  She’d purposely arrived here at the ranch late in the morning, knowing that by this hour Jake would have finished working out his Thoroughbreds. And she’d purposely come unannounced, because Bo had assured her that was her best strategy. Though he hadn’t said why, she feared she knew. If she or Bo had given Jake an opportunity to prevent her visit, he’d have taken it.

  The thought made her emotions twist, stupidly.

  Jake.

  Lyndie still recalled her last morning in Holley, Texas. She and Jake had been two kids shell-shocked with grief. Their sadness had been too deep for tears, even. In the final moments before she’d gotten into her parents’ car, they’d simply stood facing each other, saying what could not be said.

  Afterward, she’d cried into her pillow at bedtime for weeks. She’d pleaded to God through prayers. She’d written letters to Jake in her kid handwriting on lined notebook paper. For months, he’d written back. Then her letters and his replies had grown more scarce. She was positively certain, though, that she’d been the one to write last.

  She’d followed every detail of his career as a Thoroughbred racehorse trainer. One might even say that she’d followed it a mite obsessively. Lyndie knew all there was to know about his professional success and little about his personal life, except what she could glean from the occasional updates passed from Jake’s mom to her mom and the Porter family Christmas card photo.

  Every year since her parents had moved the family to Southern California, the Porters’ annual photo would arrive and her gaze would go straight to Jake. The dark-haired, hazel-eyed twelve-year-old boy had become a star football player as a teenager, then a Marine, then an aloof adult with a scar across one side of his face. Through her mom, she knew that Jake had received the scar in Iraq, when the Humvee he’d been traveling in had been struck by an IED.

  Every December she’d stared at that family photo as if she had the power to divine the state of Jake’s soul based on a 4x8 glossy from Walmart. She didn’t.

  Since she’d returned to Texas, Jake’s family had been warning her that the state of Jake’s soul ranged, due to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder he struggled against, somewhere between merely dark to downright terrifying.