A Simple Wish Read online

  “HEY THERE, MISS LORETTA!” DREW CALLED OUT FROM THE BUGGY. “I HAVE AN ERRAND TO RUN. WANT TO COME ALONG?”

  For a moment, Loretta felt lower than a worm, but she couldn’t allow Will to believe he could take up where they’d left off. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said as she’d gently countered his suggestions. Loretta nipped her lip, glancing apologetically at the handsome young man who’d gone through such an ordeal these past several months. Without a word, she hurried down the porch steps and across the front yard toward Drew Detweiler.

  Grinning, Drew dropped down from the buggy. As he clasped Loretta’s hand and escorted her to the other side of his open vehicle, she wondered if he was leading her down a path riskier than Will’s, and far more dangerous. A path more daring . . . and passionate. When Drew placed his hands on either side of her waist, he paused before lifting her up.

  Loretta’s heart went wild. Drew’s sapphire eyes held secrets and intentions she couldn’t decipher, and he brought to mind a fox in the henhouse cornering his tasty prey. Effortlessly he lifted her into his buggy and then hopped in on the other side. “Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important,” he said as he took up the lines. “If I’m not mistaken, Gingerich looks like a man come courting.”

  Don’t miss any of Charlotte Hubbard’s Amish romances:

  Seasons of the Heart series

  Summer of Secrets

  Autumn Winds

  Winter of Wishes

  An Amish Country Christmas

  Breath of Spring

  Harvest of Blessings

  The Christmas Cradle

  An Amish Christmas Quilt

  Promise Lodge series

  Promise Lodge

  Christmas at Promise Lodge

  Weddings at Promise Lodge

  Simple Gifts series

  A Simple Vow

  And don’t miss

  A Mother’s Love

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  A SIMPLE WISH

  Charlotte Hubbard

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  “HEY THERE, MISS LORETTA!” DREW CALLED OUT FROM THE BUGGY. “I HAVE AN ERRAND TO RUN. WANT TO COME ALONG?”

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  Teaser chapter

  About the Author

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Charlotte Hubbard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-3871-9

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3872-6

  eISBN-10: 1-4201-3872-3

  Chapter One

  Ordinarily, the shaded front porch was the coolest place to spend an August afternoon, but the sweat trickling down Loretta Riehl’s back had nothing to do with Missouri’s heat and humidity. Will Gingerich, her former fiancé, sat on the other end of the porch swing from her, and his back-and-forth motion was becoming so quick and jerky that she could barely guide her homemade toothbrush needle through the loose knots of the rag rug she was making.

  “The biggest mistake I ever made was to let your dat end our engagement, Loretta,” Will said urgently. “I should’ve stood my ground. I should’ve believed that our love was strong enough to withstand my losing the farm to my brothers.”

  Loretta swallowed hard, fearful of where this conversation was leading. She’d been devastated when Dat had come between her and Will a couple of years ago, but she’d accepted it as her father’s will—which was second only to God’s. “Who among us has ever stood up to Dat and won?” she asked in a tight voice. Her hands were trembling as she drew the strip of sage green fabric through the next rug knot with her needle. “I cried my eyes out and pleaded with him again and again, but he was convinced you weren’t gut enough—that you could never provide me a home.”

  “He was wrong!” Will declared. “I should’ve insisted that you and I could live at your place—back when we were in Rosewood—the way a lot of newlyweds do until they have the money for a home of their own.”

  Loretta stifled a sigh. Why was Will thinking this way, when they both knew they would’ve been miserable living under Dat’s roof after Mamm had died? Even with her sisters, Edith and Rosalyn, to encourage them, their marriage would’ve gotten off to a rocky start.

  “And the other monumental mistake I made,” Will continued fervently, “was latching on to Molly Ropp too quickly after your dat severed my relationship with you. Why didn’t I realize Molly’s parents were too eager to get us married?”

  “How could you have known Molly was pregnant?” Loretta pointed out. “We don’t like to believe that young Amish women would succumb to temptation—or keep such secrets—”

  “And how was Molly supposed to know that it was Drew Detweiler who fathered her twins rather than Asa?” Will demanded. As he raked his light brown hair back with his fingers, he appeared lost in his own world, not really seeming to hear anything Loretta said. “Molly was deceived. I was deceived—”

  “You paid dearly for that, Will. But that episode’s behind us now—although I sense you’re still mourning Molly’s passing,” Loretta put in quietly. She rested her hands in her lap, no longer able to concentrate on her rug. “Still, God saw to it that some gut came of your trials and tribulations, ain’t so? Little Leroy and Louisa are a joy to us all. And once Drew confessed and apologized to everyone for masquerading as his brother, he became an accepted, forgiven member of our church district and the Willow Ridge business community. That’s real progress, to my way of thinking.”

  When Loretta looked across the road, she noticed that one of the Detweiler brothers was coming out of the stable in an open buggy pulled by a tall black Percheron. Asa and Drew, identical twins, owned matching horses, so it was impossible to tell which one of them was heading down the long lane toward the road.

  She held her breath. Was it her imagination, or was the driver of that buggy looking right at her?

  “I—I’ve never forgiven myself for tur
ning my back on the love we shared, Loretta,” Will said again. He stopped the swing so suddenly that Loretta’s long, loose strips of rug fabric fluttered to the porch floor. “We both knew we had a love that would have seen us through a lifetime together. I was so upset about your dat splitting us up that I didn’t realize Molly was coming on to me too fast, too soon,” he lamented, gazing at her with the soft brown eyes of a begging dog. “I am so sorry, Loretta.”

  Loretta was feeling more unsettled by the second, because Will’s soul-baring was leading her down a path she no longer wanted to follow. How could she tell him she wasn’t interested in rekindling their relationship? It would break his heart and depress him further while he still mourned the death of his wife and their misguided marriage.

  Sighing, she chose her words carefully. “God has a reason for everything He does—every stumbling block He places in our paths—”

  “But I see the world so clearly now!” Will blurted out. “I’ve prayed over these things night and day since Molly died and left me with her six-month-old twins. And while I never wished her ill, once she was gone I began to hope that you and I could—”

  Loretta stood up, dropping her unfinished rug onto the swing between them. As the Detweiler buggy approached the road, coming toward her, she realized that Drew surely must be driving, because Asa and her sister Edith were inseparable—they went everywhere together and took the twins they’d adopted with them, in their baskets. Her pulse quickened. Drew was gazing right at her, pulling out of the Detweilers’ lane and stopping the buggy on the roadside in front of her house.

  “Loretta, I’ve got a gut steady job now, farming for Luke and Ira Hooley,” Will was saying, oblivious to the buggy. “Soon I’ll be planting a vineyard for them—can you imagine that? And I’ll be asking the Brenneman brothers to build us a house—”

  “Hey there, Miss Loretta!” Drew called out from the buggy. “I have an errand to run. Want to come along?”

  For a moment, Loretta felt lower than a worm, but she couldn’t allow Will to believe he could take up where they’d left off. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said as she’d gently countered his suggestions. Loretta nipped her lip, glancing apologetically at the handsome young man who’d gone through such an ordeal these past several months. Without a word, she hurried down the porch steps and across the front yard toward Drew Detweiler.

  Grinning, Drew dropped down from the buggy. As he clasped Loretta’s hand and escorted her to the other side of his open vehicle, she wondered if he was leading her down a path riskier than Will’s, and far more dangerous. A path more daring . . . and passionate. When Drew placed his hands on either side of her waist, he paused before lifting her up.

  Loretta’s heart went wild. Drew’s sapphire eyes held secrets and intentions she couldn’t decipher, and he brought to mind a fox in the henhouse cornering his tasty prey. Effortlessly he lifted her into his buggy and then hopped in on the other side. “Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important,” he said as he took up the lines. “If I’m not mistaken, Gingerich looks like a man come courting.”

  Feeling downright wicked—yet too flummoxed to look over at Will on the porch—Loretta let out the breath she’d been holding. “You saved me from a really embarrassing scene,” she murmured as the buggy lurched into motion. “Once upon a time I loved Will with all my heart, but after Dat broke us up and Will latched on to Molly so fast—well, I had second thoughts about his . . . sincerity. His true feelings for me. And now, well—”

  Loretta faltered. The man beside her had lied to Molly about who he was when he’d gotten her in the family way, before poor deluded Will had married her. Everyone in town had officially forgiven Drew for deceiving Molly, but Drew was still a mysterious newcomer who played his cards close to his vest.

  If Dat saw whom you were riding off with, he’d be even more upset than when he made you break up with Will.

  It was true, yet Loretta didn’t regret what she was doing. For the first time in months, she felt breathlessly alive. Anything might happen when she was with the Detweiler who had such a checkered past, and Loretta welcomed the sense of adventure that filled her.

  “You and I have a lot in common, Loretta.” Drew scooted so close to her that their thighs brushed with the rhythm of the buggy. “I was head over heels for Molly, the way you were for Will. I admit that it was wrong to tell her I was Asa,” he went on with a shake of his head. “But she ripped my heart out and stomped on it, as though bearing my children meant nothing to her—as though she wouldn’t so much as give me the time of day. She up and married Gingerich without even telling me she was pregnant. That still stinks!”

  Waves of Drew’s regret and hurt carried Loretta along on the tide of his emotions. She felt bad for him. His brother and Edith were now adopting Leroy and Louisa, but Drew hadn’t had a chance to make good with Molly, because she’d died from cancer before he’d learned the little twins were his. Loretta admired Drew for assisting with the twins’ expenses—and for agreeing that they were better off growing up with a mother and a father who had married and were able to put their welfare first.

  Drew halted the wagon near the big windbreak of evergreens just down the road from the house. He turned to face her, drinking her in with his midnight gaze. “What say you and I put the past behind us, Loretta?” he whispered. “I’m betting I can make you forget all about Gingerich, and I think you’re the kind of girl who can put Molly’s memory to rest for me. Know what I’m saying?”

  Before she could answer, Drew framed her face with his large, pleasantly calloused hands. His kiss, earnest and probing, took Loretta to a place she’d never been. She poured all of her being into making the kiss go on and on, reveling in the feel of Drew’s embrace even as she felt Will watching them from her front porch. She hadn’t intended to snub her former fiancé quite so brazenly . . .

  But Drew made her feel so daring—so free—that she wasn’t sorry.

  * * *

  Will choked on a sob, wishing he could stop staring at Loretta. He’d loved her for so long, it nearly killed him to see the way she was responding to Detweiler’s kiss . . . as though she’d shared his affections many times before.

  Could this be true? Has she been sneaking around with that con artist, only pretending to listen to me? The way Molly did? Am I the biggest fool on the face of the earth?

  Will turned and bounded down the porch steps. He cut around behind the house, jogging alongside the Riehls’ thriving vegetable garden and past the large fenced section of yard where their chickens pecked at the ground. The rooster’s crow mocked him. As he picked up speed behind the Grill N Skillet Café and Zook’s Market, he was nearly blinded by anger. Loretta’s betrayal ranked right up there with Molly’s crying out her love for another man on her deathbed—the moment he’d learned that Leroy and Louisa were not his children. Even after Molly’s parents had kicked him off their farm, he hadn’t felt this destitute. This desperate.

  Just ahead, the big wheel of the Hooleys’ gristmill slowly turned, splashing the Missouri River’s surface, but the scene’s beauty was lost on him. Now that Ira was married and living in the new white house behind the mill, Will was renting the bachelor apartment in the mill’s upper level. Unfortunately, the stairs to his new home were inside, so he had to pass through the mill store—and when he burst through the door, Luke and his redheaded wife, Nora, were lip-locked, sharing a clinch behind the checkout counter.

  Luke had the presence of mind to ease away, cradling Nora to his chest as he smiled at Will. “Oops,” he teased. “Guess we should save this mushy stuff for after we get home, jah?”

  Will’s breath escaped him in a rush. He looked doggedly around at the shelves of bagged flour and cereals, and the refrigerator case filled with local eggs, butter, and goat cheese—anything to avoid watching yet another couple pouring their hearts into a kiss.

  “Will, what’s wrong?” Nora asked softly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Jah
, the ghost of my hopes and dreams for Loretta Riehl.

  Will coughed nervously. Luke was his employer more than his friend, and he hesitated to reveal too much about his love life—or lack of it. But Nora’s concerned expression touched him. From what he’d heard, she had endured more than her share of rejection and upheaval when she’d moved back to Willow Ridge to be with the family who’d shunned her, so maybe she would understand. Maybe she could empathize with his degradation and shame.

  “Loretta just left me for that lying cheat of a Detweiler,” he spat. “That dog had the nerve to kiss her, right there on the road, knowing I’d see him at it.”

  Nora’s mouth dropped open as she came out from behind the counter. “Will, I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

  “Jah, well, sorry doesn’t begin to cover it for me,” he blurted. “I was practically on my knees as she and I talked on her porch swing, saying I’d been wrong not to marry her back when her dat came between us—”

  “Gut luck going against Cornelius,” Luke muttered as he joined them.

  “—but I might as well have been talking to the wall,” Will continued miserably. “One look at Detweiler as he pulled his buggy across the road, and Loretta was his—hook, line, and sinker. No doubt in my mind that before the day’s out, he’ll ruin her reputation. Ruin her.”

  Luke cleared his throat. “I can understand why you feel Loretta kicked you to the curb—kicked you where it hurts most,” he said, “but she’s fully aware of Drew’s earlier deceptions. And she’s old enough to know what she’s getting herself into.”

  “Loretta has no idea what he’s capable of !” Will countered hotly. “She’s led a sheltered, quiet life with her sisters, keeping the household running since their mamm’s passing. Jah, Cornelius is a piece of work, but Drew Detweiler passed himself off as his twin brother with not one but two other women!”