Free October Joy (Moments In Paradise 1) by Melanie Wilber

we can be Andrew and Sarah, not Levi’s wife and that strange man she’s with?”
    She smiled.  “I had a woman ask me this morning where my brother was today.”
    “Your brother?”
    She laughed.  “That’s what I said.”
    “She saw us leaving together last night and thought I was your brother?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did you say?”
    “You don’t know how badly I wanted to go along with her.”
    They both laughed.  Sarah had started a new Bible study with some women at her church last month on the book of Genesis, and they’d had a specific lesson on how Abram and Sarai’s scheme to pose as brother and sister instead of husband and wife before Pharaoh hadn’t gone so well.  At the time she didn’t understand how Sarai could have lied like that, but now she did.
    “What did you say?” Andrew asked again.
    She smiled at him and knew her response had been the honest truth.  “I said you were a friend.”
    He smiled.  “So how about that walk?”
    “Okay.”
    He released her hand and rose from the chair, putting it back into its place and telling her he would be waiting downstairs for her.  She thanked him and said not to forget his jacket he’d laid on the end of the bed after removing it from her shoulders.
    He took the jacket and let himself out.  Sarah got out of bed and went to find something suitable to wear.  She had always dressed nice at these things, so she hadn’t brought a lot of casual clothes, but she had tucked her jeans in the bottom of her bag and had brought her tennis shoes in case she decided to walk on the treadmill.  When she made the reservations for this hotel she had seen they had an exercise room, and she thought she might keep her routine of walking on the treadmill every morning before breakfast.
    She hadn’t been that ambitious this morning, just like many mornings during the last three months, but she could have taken a taxi here after lunch and maybe swam in the pool too.  “That’s what I should have done instead of trying to navigate my way around Des Moines,” she said out loud to herself as she slipped out of her dress and reached for the pants.
    Levi’s first church assignment had only been thirty minutes from here, but with grocery and department stores nearby, she’d never had a reason to come into the capital city, and whenever she did, she was with Levi and he always drove.  Even with living in Minneapolis for the last seven years, she sometimes got turned around when she needed to go to an unfamiliar part of the city and find a place she’d never been to before.
    She chose a pink top to go with the jeans and grabbed her white cardigan sweater, hoping it would be warm enough for this October evening in Iowa.  It had been a warm day, and she hadn’t gone over to the church until almost noon, so she hadn’t thought to take a sweater for later.  She had remembered her Bible this time, but not that, and she suddenly realized she had left her Bible at the church in the main auditorium where they had attended the praise and worship hour after lunch.
    She and Linda left them on their seats before she went on her walk because there wasn’t anything else going on in the main room until this evening where they both planned to attend the meeting together.  “They’re going to wonder what happened to me,” she said, deciding she would point that out to Andrew and see what his solution would be.  “Oh, God, what would have I done if he hadn’t been here?  I would be such a wreck right now!”
    Going to the mirror, she revised her statement.  “Okay, a complete wreck instead of a minor one.”  She washed her face with a cool rag to lessen the puffiness around her eyes, reapplied some makeup, and brushed her hair into place.  At least it was in a good phase right now and cooperated easily.
    Before she left the room she thought carefully about what she might be missing.  She knew she was properly dressed, and she had her card-key in her back