Free The Rancher Takes a Bride by Brenda Minton Page A

past his anger. He had a long list of unanswered prayers. The list started with the ones he’d said years ago, for a mom who’d left and never came back. For a dad who had given up. Most recently, prayers for men who had died in Afghanistan even though he’d desperately tried to save them.
    It didn’t seem fair that on this Sunday in late May the sermon was about prayer. “The prayer of the righteous man availeth much,” Pastor Allen repeated twice. What did that mean? That he wasn’t righteous? That his prayers didn’t count?
    He wanted to get up from the pew and walk out, but Lilly sat on one side of him, and Oregon on the other. Jason Allen looked at him, as if he knew all the turmoil this sermon caused him. And Oregon seemed to know, too. Her hand reached for his, and she gave it a quick, reassuring squeeze.
    Not too many people got it. They wanted him to get past it, to let it go. But he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing faces. So many faces. And he remembered all the letters from home, from wives, from moms and dads, from children. He remembered all the pictures that those guys had shared with him.
    â€œSometimes we feel like our prayers are going unanswered, as if we’re hitting our heads against a wall.” Pastor Allen’s words broke through the fog. Duke’s gaze connected with his pastor’s.
    It was as if this sermon had been on hold, just waiting for his reappearance.
    â€œTrust begins with accepting that God’s got this, no matter what
this
is. God’s got it. To be effective in prayer and to understand what we call ‘unanswered prayers,’ we have to comprehend that we see in bits and pieces, but God sees everything.”
    Duke got up and walked out. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t stop when Oregon tried to stop him. He left with all of his anger, all of his resentment, building like an inferno. Because words were easy when a person lived in Martin’s Crossing, but men dying in battle, that was a whole other matter.
    She caught up with him at his truck. He was shaking as he reached for the door, and her hand settled over his, stopping him. He started to tell her to go away, but he couldn’t get the words out. He felt like he was about to cry, and he sure didn’t want her to see that. A week ago she’d just been the pretty mom who lived and worked across the street from the diner. Today she was the mother of his daughter, and she was digging in deep where no one else dared to go.
    Without saying a word she took his keys and told him to scoot to the passenger side. She climbed behind the wheel of his Ford King Ranch and started the thing, shifting into reverse, grinding the clutch enough to make him shudder. When the truck lurched forward a few times, it made him smile. He brushed at his eyes and leaned back in the seat, trying to let go of his anger, one sharp breath at a time.
    â€œLilly?” he finally asked as they were heading down the road.
    â€œWith Breezy.”
    She kept driving. He kept breathing, pushing past the sound of helicopters in his memory, of men, some just kids, crying out in pain. He’d held bandages on gaping wounds that wouldn’t stop bleeding and tried his best to hold their hands as they faced eternity.
    He’d prayed. He hadn’t thought of himself as a righteous man, just one who wanted to save a life. He’d prayed, yelling at God to help him help those men.
    Oregon parked his truck at the edge of the lake. And still she didn’t say anything. No one else knew, the way she seemed to know, that he needed silence to process his thoughts, his pain.
    â€œWant to walk with me?” he asked as he got out of the truck.
    â€œOf course.”
    She met him at the water’s edge, stepping carefully over the rocky ground. The water lapped the shore, and in the distance a boat motor broke the early-afternoon silence. Her hand reached for his, and he took it,