Emerald Windows Read online

  EMERALD

  WINDOWS

  Books by Terri Blackstock

  Cape Refuge (Book 1 in series)

  Emerald Windows

  Newpointe 911

  Private Justice

  Shadow of Doubt

  Trial by Fire

  Word of Honor

  Sun Coast Chronicles

  Evidence of Mercy

  Justifiable Means

  Ulterior Motives

  Presumption of Guilt

  Second Chances

  Never Again Good-bye

  When Dreams Cross

  Blind Trust

  Broken Wings

  With Beverly LaHaye

  Seasons Under Heaven

  Showers in Season

  Times and Seasons

  Season of Blessing

  Novellas

  Seaside

  EMERALD

  WINDOWS

  Terri Blackstock

  ZONDERVAN

  Emerald Windows

  Copyright © 2001 by Terri Blackstock

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition JULY 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-83026-9

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Blackstock, Terri,1957-

  Emerald windows / Terri Blackstock.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-310-22807-7

  1. Glass painting and staining—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.L34285 E5 2001

  813’.54—dc21

  2001045382

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973,1978,1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  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—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

  Interior design by Beth Shagene

  Printed in the United States of America

  05 06 07 08 / DC/ 10 9

  This book is lovingly dedicated to the Nazarene.

  Table of Contents

  COVER PAGE

  HALF TITLE PAGE

  OTHER BOOKS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

  CHAPTER

  THE WINDOWS OF HAYDEN’S landmark church—St. Mary’s—were caked with dust, and from outside Brooke Martin could see web-shaped cracks that had already been evident seven years earlier when she’d last seen the place. It surprised her that the congregation of Hayden Bible Church—usually much tighter with their purse strings than they were with their gossip—had decided to allocate funds to buy the building and renovate it. It surprised her even more that they had hired her to design the stained-glass windows that would replace the broken-out glass. There had been a time when the people of Hayden, Missouri, wouldn’t have hired her to mop their floors. Apparently, things had changed. And it was about time.

  She left her car and walked around the building to the small employee parking lot in the rear, skirted by pine trees and one sprawling oak that shaded the pavement from the early spring sun. Only one car occupied a space there—a 1980 Buick with a rusty back fender and a dent in the driver’s door. She stopped at the sight of it, and for a split second gave serious thought to running back to her own car and out of Hayden in the time it would take to say “not again…”

  Her hands began to tremble, and she dropped her portfolio to her side. Inhaling deeply, she let her troubled gaze drift to the church door. Anger swelled migraine—like in her temples. Had crucial details been left out of this job offer?

  A March breeze whispered through her hair, as if trying to calm her, and she paused at the door and told herself that it wasn’t facing Nick Marcello now that bothered her so. It was that she hadn’t faced him before. She had simply run away. But what else could she have done? With the town rejoicing over the juiciest piece of gossip they’d ever scavenged, she had gotten out of town as fast as she could, hoping to spare her family any more shame.

  But this time, Brooke reminded herself with a grim lift of her chin, she had made a pact with herself. She had vowed that when she came back to take this job, she would face the town with dignity and integrity, and then, by creating a work of art that would send them all reeling, she would redeem herself. She had assumed that process would involve facing Nick Marcello again. She just hadn’t expected to do it so soon.

  She opened the door and stepped into the musty old sanctuary. The door creaked behind her, then slammed with an echoing thud. She stood quietly for a moment, listening, looking.

  “Deliveries go back here!”

  That familiar voice came from just inside the darkened corridor at the back, and she forced herself to move. Stepping over a beam on the old wood floor and around a dusty pew lying on its back, she made her way to the only doorway with light. She saw him standing at a table, bent over a blueprint, studying it intently.

  He seemed younger than he had when she was in high school. But maybe it was just that she was older. She recalled the dress shirts and ties he’d always worn, the freshly pressed trousers, the shiny loafers. Now he wore an old flannel shirt, paint-stained jeans, and tennis shoes.

  “No delivery,” she said. “Just me.”

  He looked up, then slowly straightened. “Brooke.”

  Brooke tried to smile, but the effort was too much for her. “I…I didn
’t know you would be here. Pastor Anderson said—”

  “If you’d known, you wouldn’t have come.” He crossed the room, still keeping distance between them. “That’s why I asked him to call for me.”

  “He should have told me.”

  He nodded, as if he’d already given that a lot of thought.

  “I’m in charge of artistic development in the renovation,” he said. “But to be perfectly honest, that consists mainly of those windows. I’m going to be helping you design them. The church is counting on them being a new point of interest in the sanctuary. I’m counting on them being a masterpiece.”

  Brooke set her jaw and walked to the table, processing the information that changed everything. “I don’t know, Mr. Marcello.”

  “Brooke, I haven’t taught in seven years, and you’re still calling me Mr. Marcello? It’s Nick, okay? Say it. Nick.”

  She looked down at her feet. “Okay, I don’t know, Nick.”

  Nick stepped toward her, and reluctantly, she brought her eyes up to his. “You don’t know what, Brooke?” he asked. “If you can create a masterpiece, or if you can work with me?”

  “Both. It’s nice seeing you. But I can’t stay.”

  She turned and walked back into the darkness of the corridor, down the hall, and back into the old sanctuary.

  Nick followed. “Look, I didn’t hire you for this job because of any of that mess. I hired you because you’re talented. I’ve kept up with your work since you left.”

  She kept walking

  “I saw the windows in the church you did in Columbia. And the door you did at that restaurant in Kansas City.” She stopped, her hand on the door. “You’re doing well, but you could do so much more. My decision to hire you was a business decision; I needed someone with your talent.”

  Turning back, Brooke looked up at the old broken glass that skirted the circumference of the ceiling. “I’ve never done anything of this caliber, though.”

  “You’ve done plenty of this caliber,” he said. “Maybe just not this size.”

  She regarded him with questioning—almost suspicious— eyes. It wasn’t often that she was recognized as an artist. Most people viewed her as an interior decorator of sorts, someone who added life to dull rooms.

  “I’ve always wanted to work with you,” Nick said quietly. “Ever since you were in high school and I saw the talent you had. I know we could do something really amazing with these windows.”

  “This is the first time I’ve been back to Hayden since—” She glanced up at him, steadied her voice. “Since I graduated. The gossip has had seven years to die down. I don’t know if I can stand to have it start back up again.”

  Nick crossed his arms, and she saw him stiffen visibly, as if the subject was growing tedious. “Brooke, seven years can heal a lot of wounds. It’s past time to move on.”

  She loathed the fact that her own wounds had not healed. “I need time to think about this,” she said.

  He turned away from her, slid his fingers into his front pockets and seemed to consider the wood grain on the dirty pew in front of him. “How much time do you need?” he asked. “I wanted to get started this week. It’ll take months to do this job right, and we haven’t got a day to waste.”

  Brooke looked up at the windows again. She had pinned so many hopes on them. A job like this could establish her as a serious stained-glass artist. Her boss and mentor, Mr. Gonzales, had encouraged her to take this job, even though it meant she would be out of the shop for months. He was close to retirement. When he closed the shop she’d worked in since graduating from college, she would have to open her own or work for someone else. These windows might mean the difference between being on her own and being under someone else’s thumb.

  Coming back to Hayden had been hard enough. She had rolled into town, bracing herself for the debilitating reminders of what had driven her away. Working with her old art teacher would only open those wounds. “I don’t know,” she said again. “Maybe I can give you an answer tomorrow.”

  Nick looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. “All right.”

  She started back to the door.

  “Brooke?” His voice resonated in the old, dusty sanctuary.

  Brooke turned around and saw that the tension in his expression was gone. “Uh-huh?”

  “It was good to see you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was good to see you too, Nick.”

  And that was exactly why she couldn’t take the job.

  CHAPTER

  NICK WENT BACK TO THE OFFICE he had taken over for the duration of the renovation and sat down at the desk. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he was fooling himself to think that hiring her was strictly a professional decision. It had been good to see her. She seemed to have grown; in the few minutes their conversation had lasted, she had shown a quiet strength and unwavering will that hadn’t been there before. But she still had that unique, creative style of dressing, with the chains and bracelets that added an artist’s flair to her thrift-shop clothes. He’d watched the rich girls clamor to imitate Brooke in high school, and wealthy women probably envied her style now. Her hair was a little darker, and her eyes still said things she would never have expressed openly.

  She’d been seventeen when he’d first seen her, sitting in the front row of his class, working on a sketch of the mangled bicycle he’d placed at the front of the room. The project had been deliberately difficult, and he’d used it to test the students’ skills and talents. Slowly he had walked up and down the aisles between work stations, commenting on each student’s crude progress…when he had come to her.

  It was her work that caught his attention first. The lines of her sketch had been so precise, so accurate, that he doubted he could have captured the bicycle better himself. But something about the drawing had reached out to him. It was the uniqueness of the image…the vision of something fresh in something so used up.

  He remembered the way she had looked up at him, embarrassed that he’d been watching her.

  “It’s not finished,” she had said, and he’d recognized the apology in her voice.

  “It’s good,” he told her. “Have you been studying art for long?”

  “Just two years,” she said, meeting his eyes directly. “Mr. Jasper taught me last year, but he didn’t let us get very creative. He was really into precision.”

  “You can get as creative as you want in my class.”

  Brooke laughed under her breath. “Yeah, I kind of thought you’d feel that way when I saw you,” she said. “Most stuffed shirts don’t own antique hot rods.”

  If there was anything that made a friend of Nick, it was complimenting the classic Duesenberg he only brought out of his garage for antique car shows. “You saw my car?”

  “I went to the Autofest Car Show last summer,” she said. “I wanted to draw some of the vintage cars. Yours was my favorite.”

  He had laughed then, not really caring that others in the room were beginning to listen in. “I’m proud of that car,” he said. “My grandpa left it to me, and there aren’t many like it. It’s a real work of art.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Brooke had agreed. “And you’ve taken good care of it. That’s how I knew I’d like your class.”

  There had been a lot of pretty young students in his classes that year he’d taught at Hayden High School, and not all had been there because of a burning interest in art. Some of them saw art as an “easy A.” Others competed for the interest of the new young teacher. But Brooke had been different. Her passion for art had been evident in every assignment she’d completed for him. She had fast become his favorite student.

  He’d grown even more amazed when she brought in the sculpture she’d worked on at home for a year, to finish it as her final project for the class. The stone sculpture intrigued him so much that he found himself watching, mesmerized, as the piece came to life. It was the sculpture of two hands—a man’s and a woman’s—joining in a gentle embrace. There was something so
tentative about the touch that it had tapped an emotion deep within him. That was what great art did, he’d taught his students. It grabbed you by the heart and didn’t let you go. He hadn’t expected one of his students to have talent that surpassed his own. Captivated by that talent, he’d offered her extra advice, extra lessons, extra help. When they reached the final term of the year, he urged her to enter the sculpture in the statewide competition for an art scholarship at the University of Missouri. The new goal had sent her into a tailspin of nerves and self-doubt.

  One day, when she’d stayed after school with another student to work on her project, she had looked up at him with forlorn defeat in her eyes. “I can’t do it,” she said, setting down her chisel. “It’s too ambitious. I should have tried something easier.”

  “What do you mean you can’t do it?” he asked. “You’re almost there already.”

  “With the woman’s hand,” she said. “But I can’t get the man’s hand right. I don’t know how to capture the texture…the strength.”

  Before he’d realized what he was doing, Nick had sat down beside her and offered her his hand. “Here,” he said. “Study mine.”

  Brooke’s hand had trembled as she’d taken his hand, and she had studied it as if it were a fragile piece of china that she had no right to touch. “Feel the texture,” he’d said quietly. “Feel the bone structure. The veins. The imperfections. Notice the way the light falls over it, and the contrast of shadows.”

  Slowly Brooke had begun to study his hand with the most tentative touch he’d ever experienced. He had tried to separate himself from his emotions as she nervously traced the lines in his knuckles. Then she had turned his hand over, and explored the height of the bones and the cracks in the skin. Her touch had grown less tentative as she stared down at the shadows playing across his palm and the way the light from the window moved across it. Her artist’s eyes had not missed a thing.

  Startled by the realization that the emotion he was feeling was not appropriate between a teacher and a student, he finally withdrew his hand. “Now see if that helps,” he’d whispered.