Waterfalls Read online

  “Years ago my daughters and wife were inhaling Robin Gunn’s stories and loving them, so I had to take a peek myself to find out why. I did. Robin’s characters are believable, and her stories have just the right blend of hope, broken hearts, disappointments, lighthearted fun, joy, and an eternal perspective. The Lord Jesus always plays a role, whether behind the scenes or in the thick of things. Robin lives the faith that’s so evident in her books. She knows how to tell a story—and the stories she tells make an eternal difference.”

  RANDY ALCORN, AUTHOR OF DEADLINE

  “When you read a Robin Gunn book, you know you’re going to receive a tender lesson in what it means to belong to Christ—and you will be blessed for it.”

  FRANCINE RIVERS, AUTHOR OF REDEEMING LOVE AND

  THE MARK OF THE LION SERIES

  “Gratefully Robin’s warmth, insight, and humor spill over from her heart onto the written page. She delights us with the well-woven fabric of a well-told tale and I’m certain Robin delights the Lord with her obvious passion for him.”

  PATSY CLAIRMONT AUTHOR OF GOD USES CRACKED POTS AND SPORTIN’ A ’TUDE

  “Robin Jones Gunn cares. She cares about her characters, she cares about her readers, and most of all, she cares about their mutual search for a life that pleases the Lord. Her novels are a delight to read—perfectly crafted, heartwarming, and fun. I’m always thrilled when one of Robin’s books appears on the top of my to-be-read stack!”

  LIZ CURTIS HIGGS, AUTHOR OF MIXED SIGNALS, BOOKENDS, AND BAD GIRLS OF THE BIBLE

  “Robin Jones Gunn is one of those rare and wonderful writers who infuses her stories with bountiful doses of humor, wisdom, and warmth. Her books have touched and changed countless hearts and given a whole generation of readers a host of fictional characters who feel like dear friends!”

  CAROLE GIFT PAGE, AUTHOR OF HEARTLAND MEMORIES SERIES

  “Whenever I think of stories that touch the heart, I think of Robin Jones Gunn. They touch my heart and leave me wanting more. Reading a novel by Robin Jones Gunn is like spending time with a good friend … troubles are lighter and joys are deeper.”

  ALICE GRAY, AUTHOR OF STORIES FOR THE HEART BOOK COLLECTION

  “Robin Jones Gunn writes from a heart of love. Her tender stories honor the Savior and speak truth to a world desperately eager to hear it.”

  ANGELA ELWELL HUNT, AUTHOR OF THE TRUTH TELLER

  “Robin Gunn is a gifted and sincere storyteller who gets right to the heart of matters with her readers.”

  MELODY CARLSON, AUTHOR OF HOMEWARD

  THE GLENBROOKE SERIES

  TITLES IN THE GLENBROOKE SERIES

  #1 Secrets

  #2 Whispers

  #3 Echoes

  #4 Sunsets

  #5 Clouds

  #6 Waterfalls

  #7 Woodlands

  #8 Wildflowers

  This is a work of fiction. The 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.

  WATERFALLS

  published by Multnomah Books

  © 1998 by Robin’s Ink, LLC

  International Standard Book Number: 978-1-59052-231-8

  Cover design and images by Steve Gardner/His Image PixelWorks

  Scripture quotations are from:

  The Holy Bible, New International Version © 1973, 1984 by International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House

  The Holy Bible, New King James Version © 1984 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc, New York

  MULTNOMAH and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

  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, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission.

  For information:

  MULTNOMAH BOOKS

  11265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gunn, Robin Jones, 1955–

  Waterfalls/by Robin Jones Gunn. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-307-82467-7

  I. Title. PS3557.U4866W36 1998 97–36524

  813′.54—dc21

  v3.1

  To my dad,

  Travis Garland Jones,

  with all my heart.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  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

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;

  all your waves and breakers have swept over me.”

  PSALM 42:7

  Chapter One

  Meredith Graham ripped open the sample-sized pouch of Sweet Avocado Bliss facial mask and read the instructions aloud. “Apply generously to face and neck. Let dry for fifteen minutes or until mask begins to harden and crack. Rinse with warm water. Pat dry.”

  Gazing at her image in the guest-bathroom mirror, Meredith began to follow the instructions, using upward motions from her throat to her chin. She had heard once that all lotions and cleansers should be applied with upward motions as an act of defiance against gravity. Not that her twenty-four-year-old face was ready to wage war with gravity. Meredith just liked to think she had some control over her looks.

  That’s why she colored her hair. She had for years. One of her three older sisters, Shelly, had teased Meredith a few weeks ago, saying she was a recovering brunette. Shelly’s husband, Jonathan, had added, “Yeah, she keeps re-covering the brunette roots.”

  Meredith didn’t care. At this very moment, she had the alarm on her watch set for twenty-five minutes and wore a perky blue plastic cap over her short, soggy, dyed locks. Her face was now covered in a subtle shade of lime. And she was enjoying every minute of this royal treatment.

  She raised her eyebrows and watched the lines forming on her forehead. It resembled the way her mother looked when she was worried, and Meredith didn’t like that. To her, people who walked around with wrinkled, worried foreheads were people who had no imaginations.

  Meredith tilted up her chin and checked on the gooey green lotion rapidly drying on her neck. She tucked the blue plastic bonnet behind her right ear and made a gruesome face in the mirror as the drying mask cracked across her cheeks. With her best cackle, Meri squinted her left eye and said, “I’ll get you yet, my pretty!”

  The country-western music floating from the portable radio came to an end on her third cackle, and Meredith listened closely. “It’s 8:42 on this gorgeous
first Saturday morning in May,” the smooth voice of the female announcer said. “We’re looking for a high today in Glenbrooke Valley of seventy-eight degrees. Lows tonight around sixty with some partially cloudy skies tomorrow morning. Highs tomorrow near seventy.”

  “Perfect,” Meri muttered, her lips beginning to tighten at the corners. “I’m wearing shorts.”

  The radio began to blare out a song with repetitious lyrics about a girl, a pickup truck, and a dog. Meredith flipped the “off” switch and rummaged in her cosmetics bag for her travel-sized toothpaste and soap. Not that she needed to use her own. Jessica and Kyle had provided plenty of everything for the guests who were staying at their restored Victorian home for the big weekend event.

  The room assigned to Meredith was the Patchwork Bedroom. Some of the women of Glenbrooke had made the patchwork quilt that graced the large brass bed. A framed square of patchwork fabric over the bed was part of a quilt made by a pioneer woman who had migrated west on the Oregon Trail more than 150 years ago. Jessica had been given the treasured piece by the pioneer’s great-great-granddaughter.

  This turret room was originally a storage place until Jessica transformed it into another guest room. Kyle had recently built on this small adjacent bathroom where Meredith stood, checking the timer on her watch. Four more minutes until she could hop into the shower.

  The big kickoff at the camp wasn’t until noon, but Meredith had promised her sister Shelly she would show up early to help with all the preparations. Shelly and her childhood sweetheart, Jonathan, had married in Seattle a year ago this weekend. They moved to Glenbrooke, where they worked side by side to develop a conference center in the woods. Kyle and Jessica owned the property and had had the original vision for the camp. About six months ago, in a broad stroke of generosity and trust, Kyle and Jess turned the whole project over to Jonathan and Shelly. And today was the grand opening of Heather Creek Conference Center.

  Meredith squirted some toothpaste onto her toothbrush and made another wild Martian grin in the mirror. As the sample packet had promised, her face felt cracked. Time to hop into the shower.

  Right before she turned on the water, Meredith realized she didn’t have her clothes in the bathroom because she had been trying to decide what to wear. She had made the bed all sweet and tidy, almost as if she were afraid her mother would come in to check on her and scold her if it wasn’t made yet. Then Meredith had tucked her luggage neatly in the corner of the room and decided that if Mom did come in for a room check, she would have nothing to criticize.

  Meredith stuck the toothbrush in her mouth and began to scrub her teeth, grinning at her own gruesome appearance in the mirror. The blue-tinted “skull cap,” lime green cracked face, and foam now dripping from the corner of her mouth added up to quite a sight. If Mom checked on Meredith now, she would be in for a life-altering shock.

  Opening the bathroom door, Meredith stepped into the guest room and headed for her suitcases in the corner. The cooler air of the bedroom chilled her legs under her big blue nightshirt as her bare feet padded across the room. She unzipped the bag with both hands, sucking on the toothbrush in her mouth, and pulled out her underwear, a white cotton shirt, and a pair of shorts.

  Rising with her arms full, Meredith was starting back to the bathroom when she froze in place. She dropped her shorts and unwillingly swallowed the toothpaste foam in her mouth. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. All she could do was stare.

  A man was asleep on her bed. He had on all his clothes—even his shoes—and he looked as if he had dropped on the bed in a dead faint with his arms straight out to the sides and his palms up.

  The man opened his eyes, then closed them. Suddenly his large brown eyes sprung open again. He shot straight up in bed. He stared at Meredith and let out a wild yelp that sounded like an animal caught in a trap.

  Meredith screamed, too.

  “Who are you?” he yelled.

  “Who are you?” she yelled back, grasping her toothbrush like a dagger.

  “What are you doing in my room?” The poor guy’s face looked terrified.

  Meredith realized her face looked, well … “This is my room!” she shouted. “What are you doing in my bed?”

  In a confused stupor, the man tumbled from the bed and frantically grabbed his garment bag by the door. With one last bewildered and horrified glance at Meredith, the Avocado Alien, the tall, sunny blond male scrambled out the door.

  For dramatic effect she slammed the door and locked it with a snap. She stood still, her back to the door, listening. Waiting. Her heart pounding. Wondering if anyone had heard them or if he would come back. She scanned the room for any more of his belongings. It appeared he had taken everything.

  As soon as her pulse slowed down, she moved away from the door and gathered up her strewn articles of clothing. I can’t believe that just happened! I probably shouldn’t have yelled at the poor guy. He looked awfully confused. What am I saying? He invaded my privacy! I should have thrown something at him.

  Marching into the bathroom, Meredith turned on the shower with a twist of the handle. Her hands were still shaking. It really was my fault. I should have locked the door. But how could he have gotten the wrong room? And why would he be asleep at nine in the morning?

  Meri adjusted the shower curtain so the water wouldn’t drip on the tile floor. What if he was waiting for me? Maybe he does landscaping around here, and he heard that a lovely young princess was staying in the corner turret, and he wanted to meet me so …

  Meredith looked at herself in the mirror, and the fanciful fairy tale vanished with a poof. She smiled. Then she let loose her silvery, wind-chime laughter, spilling it all over the bathroom floor. “Look at you, Meri Jane Graham. You are a fright to behold! You scared that poor guy to death.”

  She slipped into the warm shower still laughing. It felt great to rinse out the cold, smelly hair coloring and to liberate her cracked face.

  He didn’t exactly look like a landscaper. Meredith thought about the intruder’s hair. The color was too nice to be natural, she decided. The sun streaks and flecks of gold couldn’t have gotten that way this early in the year without a little help from a peroxide bottle. Unless he lived someplace where the sun had already been working its mischief. He did seem pretty tan. She tried to remember what he had on. Jeans. Sloppy, camel-colored loafers with no socks—she remembered that part of his outfit. And a short-sleeved cotton shirt with an island print. She liked the shirt. Maybe he lived in Hawaii. Or the Bahamas. Jonathan’s parents lived in the Bahamas. Maybe this guy had come from the Bahamas with Jonathan’s parents.

  Wrapping a towel around her hair and stepping out of the shower, Meredith realized something painfully inevitable. She would see this man again today. He was obviously friends with Kyle and Jessica; otherwise he wouldn’t be here. And he most likely was friends with Shelly and Jonathan or he wouldn’t be here this weekend. He was possibly even a relative on Jonathan’s side. She didn’t remember seeing him at the wedding, but then if he was a lifeguard in the Bahamas, maybe he wasn’t able to take the time off from the resort.

  No, not a lifeguard. That would be too teenish for this man. He had a certain polished look, even in his frenzy. The resort golf pro. Yeah, that was it. He was a golf pro at a remote island resort, and he used to work for the CIA.

  Meredith stopped drying her legs and wondered why that sounded familiar. She was quite comfortable with the way her imagination kept her endlessly entertained with story lines. They were usually far-fetched, fantastic tales loosely based on all the plots she consumed daily in her job as an acquisitions editor. For a year and a half she had filled her noodle with the creativity of hundreds, maybe thousands, of writers who had pitched to her their best ideas for children’s books. The huge amount of input had taken its toll, and she was experiencing her first occupational hazard. She was never alone. A story line was always within her grasp to amuse her or confuse her. In this case, it confused her.

  But
this wasn’t a children’s story. This was a plot from a movie. She knew this plot. The CIA agent tries to get back his normal life; so he hides on some ritzy island at a French resort where he is hired as a golf pro. Then that new actress … what’s her name?… the blond one with the thin lips, comes to the resort and …

  That’s it—Falcon Pointe! I loved that movie! The Goldilocks guy in my bed looks like the actor in that movie. It was the shirt. The CIA guy in the movie always wore shirts like that.

  Meri took the towel off her head and checked her roots in the mirror. Not a pinch of brown showed through.

  Recovering brunette, am I? Well, no one needs to know. Especially when my hair turns out this good. I have to remember this shade. Honey cream. I’m buying this one again.

  Meri gave her face a careful examination. The mask didn’t appear to have helped or harmed. Maybe that was the best anyone could ask from an experiment.

  She began to comb out her hair and had a sudden pleasant realization. The mystery man might not recognize her. They would inevitably see each other again, but she might be introduced to him, and he wouldn’t even know she had been the screaming creature under the blue bonnet. It was possible. Maybe. Hopefully. At least in her imagination.

  He was pretty good looking, for a man who was in the middle of a freak-out. Meredith dressed and then coaxed her dried hair into place with a part on the side. She smoothed the sleek ends under with a curling iron and smiled at the results. She loved rare days like this when her hair came out perfect. The makeup was a snap. A little brown eyeliner, some mascara, a quick swirl of the lipstick tube, and she was ready. All she needed was her hiking boots and socks, and she was on her way to Heather Creek Conference Center.

  Unless, of course, she ran into some poor, distraught houseguest wandering the hallways. Some tall, brown-eyed male in a tropical-print shirt who had a frightening story to tell about a creature from the green lagoon who had so rudely disrupted his nap. Then she would stop to listen sympathetically and suggest a cup of coffee to chase the nightmarish thoughts away.