Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (bill gates books recommendations .TXT) 📗

could of her usual composure. "You make me forget my past. You make me think I'm worth something. Being with you this summer has been amazing. But I'm not going to stand in the way of your future. And since we'll never agree on that, we might as well drop it."

"Shit," he said, shaking his head. "I'll drop it for now, but only because my dad just drove up."

Candy turned and followed the direction of his gaze, slicing off a sharp laugh. "And he's not the only one. Check out Holden Wagner's sweet ride. I'd better go find Neva and Liberry and see what's going on."

Five

Holden drove his white BMW 745Li past Neva's combined home and office and up to the front of the Big Brown Barn. He glanced at the Tag Heuer on his wrist. It was precisely the time he'd arranged to meet Sheriff Munroe.

Breaking his own habit of punctuality, Holden decided, would no doubt make some sort of sense. Less disappointment. Less aggravation. More of a feeling of fitting in. The latter, of course, made no difference. He had never expected to fit in. That wasn't why he'd come to this small Texas town.

He'd come here to find a place out of the limelight. To downplay his past, the good along with the bad. Disappointment, aggravation—those he'd learned to live with long ago. So the status quo would remain. He would be on time and no one else would bother.

After leaving Munroe's office this morning, Holden had gone for a drive—as Sunday-after-church as that sounded— instead of going back to work or even heading home. Since he remained on the fringe of church involvement, he found no need to embrace much of the religious doctrine, especially the one espousing austere self-denial.

The township paid him well, and the work he did for the church supplemented that income nicely. He enjoyed fine things, his clothes and his car, his home and his office—none of which bore any resemblance to the Amish-like plainness found throughout Earnestine.

As comfortable as were the environments in which he lived and worked, however, returning to either space offered an open invitation to visitors. He had too much on his mind to countenance interruptions—his intolerance was a trait he supposed was inherited as much as ingrained.

The same trait had, after all, been the final lapse of faith that had factored into his missionary parents' brutal, bloody end. And their end had been the determining factor in the direction he'd taken his life.

By the time all was said and done, by the time he'd completed his education, by the time he'd reached the pinnacle of his very public career, he'd even convinced himself that they'd been martyrs for the cause of religious freedom, that they had been massacred for their beliefs.

In reality, their deaths had been a testament to their hypocrisy. To the life they'd lived behind the scenes. To the patience and forbearance they'd presented to their audience but never practiced at home.

He had been the only witness to the truth, the only one able to give testimony, but he'd let their good names stand in the end because it had benefited him to do so. Or it had until guilt crept in to steal away all that he had gained.

In the early years, he'd been too frightened to speak, a cowering little boy afraid to say anything at all for fear that he'd use a word incorrectly, one with a meaning he didn't know or didn't understand. His silence had pleased his parents, as had his devotion to his studies.

Yet it had been those very studies that had pricked at his conscience and begun to unravel his safety net of blind denial. Knowledge was like that, a big bright light shining down on the truth.

Unfortunately, not all truth was so liberating. The truth haunting him now, in fact, presented a reversal of fortunes. All these years later, all the steps he'd taken, backtracking and sidestepping to cover his long and winding path, disappearing into the great void arid settling into Earnestine Township, and still he'd been discovered.

He was too deeply rooted to tear up all that he'd built here and start over again. And so he'd made a choice. A decision with which he wasn't comfortable, but which offered .1 logical situational solution.

If all went as planned, he would be losing the personal freedom he'd enjoyed for so very long. Not exactly the goal he'd been working toward, but certainly a choice he pre-ferred over the alternate.

That of losing his life.

At the sound of car wheels on the gravel road that ran past her house to the Barn, Neva leaned forward to look out the window over her kitchen sink. Oh, dear. Oh, my. The microwave timer dinged from the counter beside her. Oh, hell.

She couldn't even sit down to a nice nuked dinner of chicken noodle soup without Holden Wagner ruining it for her the way he ruined so many things for so many people. She couldn't believe she was going to have to deal with him now, after hours. Seemed nothing about his cause could wait.

Twelve hours ago, she'd been in Carlsbad, New Mexico, about to make her way home. Now it was seven o'clock, the end of a long stressful day, one she was more than ready to put to bed. But when Sheriff Munroe's car pulled in several seconds later, following Holden's down the road to the Barn, Neva accepted the fact that neither sleep nor chicken noodle soup were in her immediate future.

She left the kitchen, soup and all, pushed open the back door of the two-story, white-framed house, and headed out into the lingering heat of the day. The screen squeaked on its hinges and slammed behind her. She loved this house and the huge pecan trees that shaded it. Her own little nutty oasis in the desert. It was too large of a house for one person, but she didn't care.

She loved the