Free And the Greatest of These Is Love: A Contemporary Christian Romance Novel by Staci Stallings Page B

two of them calmed down.”
    Haley, the lead babysitter, was at wit’s end and quickly agreed.
    “Why don’t you take Eric here and Charissa?” she asked quickly, handing Eric to him and pointing out one of the little black children screaming from a crib.
    “Got it.” Andrew held Eric and struggled to get the rickety stroller to cooperate. It looked like it needed some major maintenance, but he had no time to worry about that now. He placed the two little ones in the stroller and headed for the door.
    As soon as the door closed behind him, he literally thanked God that it shut off most of the noise. His nerves were shot. However, Charissa was still crying her little eyes out in the stroller.
    “Hey, there,” Andrew said, squatting down in front of it to see the two babies. “Whoa. It’s okay, we’re just gonna go for a little walk down the hall. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
    Charissa eyed him warily and stuck her fist in her mouth as she choked back the tears. Sensing he had the upper-hand in the situation, Andrew quickly went around the stroller and started pushing it. Even the sobs began to subside, and his head was finally left in peace. He hummed to himself as he walked slowly to the main lobby. He could almost hear the piano music again though the only sound was his own footsteps.
     
    The situation was heating up at the courthouse across town. The DA had been indefinitely suspended, and the authorities had begun their investigation. At noon, the police chief and federal agents made a statement to the press regarding the progress of the investigation, but the reporter who’d risked his life to break the original story was not among the throng gathered at the courthouse steps.
     
    Even the griminess of the large windows couldn’t dim the sunshine pouring in from outside them. In the lobby, Andrew gently lifted Charissa out of the stroller being very careful not to disturb Eric who had miraculously fallen asleep during their ambling walk around the building.
    “Hey, little one, how are you?” He cradled her tiny body next to his chest, and she cooed and looked up at him with wide dark eyes. “Yeah, I think you had enough of that room, too. That’s what I think. Don’t worry though. Everything’s all right now, you’re with me, and there won’t be any screaming here.” He swiped his hand through the dusty rays coming in from the window beyond. “See the pretty sunshine. It’s warm, isn’t it? Yeah. It feels good, so good.”
    They sat then enjoying the beauty of the sunshine while Andrew ticked off the things that needed fixed around them. The windows needed washed really badly, and the curtains were rags. The couch he was sitting on was just springs on a platform, and the whole room could use a good coat of paint.
    But somehow with Eric sleeping beside him, and Charissa curled up in his arms, none of that really mattered at the moment, so he turned off his critical eye, and for the first time in a very, very long time, he simply relaxed and enjoyed being alive.
     
    It was a constant battle to keep the cloying depression from taking up residence in her heart. Gabi did everything she could think of, but the second her mind wasn’t occupied with something else, it slid back to Andrew, then to the doomed article, then inexorably to the doomed existence of the center. Jerry was going to kill her when he found out, but she hadn’t seen him all day. And to be truthful she had avoided any chance encounter with him like the plague.
    However, there was no denying he would be furious when he found out, but there was nothing she could do about that now. If only Andrew had been the nice guy she had thought him to be that first day in the hallway. She sighed at that. He wasn’t. That guy was a figment of her overactive imagination, and that was all there would ever be to it.
    “Miss T, I can’t make no good s’s,” Shaniquille Taylor whined as she worked over her paper.
    “Shaniquille,” Gabi