Free A Love All Her Own by Janet Lee Barton Page B

with you.”
    “Good. It is at eleven o’clock on Wednesday. After the meeting, we’ll have a nice lunch.”
    Abigail had never been very demonstrative, but she found herself hugging the older woman. “Thank you. Being around you makes me feel as if I have family here.”
    Mrs. Wellington hugged her back. “That’s exactly the way we want you to feel. I wish your parents could come for a visit.”
    Abigail grinned. “If I stay long enough, perhaps they will.”
    “Then we shall strive to keep you here,” Mr. Wellington said.
    Abigail looked over the older man’s shoulder at Marcus, and something about the look in his eyes made her heart turn over. When he smiled at her and showed his dimple, that same heart seemed to do a sort of flip and dive that left her feeling more than a little breathless.
    The feeling didn’t leave her until long after she and Marcus had said good night from opposite sides of her door.
    The next day at church, Abigail tried to ignore the way her pulse raced as she sat beside Marcus. She had to admit that she didn’t mind having him escort her wherever they went. It was obvious that he was well-thought-of and respected by those people she’d met when with him. And if anyone had heard of her broken engagement, she certainly didn’t think they’d bring it up, knowing she was a friend of the Wellington family. All in all, she was very pleased her father had hired Marcus, and knowing her father as she did, he probably took the family friendship into consideration when he did so. That way, people wouldn’t just naturally assume he’d been hired to protect her.
    She stood up when the rest of the family did to sing a hymn and chastised herself for thinking about Marcus when she should be paying attention to the church service. . .and for all the times she’d let her mind wander back home when she was in church. She’d been attending all her life and could remember when she’d been baptized. But it suddenly hit her that somewhere along the way, she’d only been putting lip service to her Christianity. It was time for that to change.

Seven
    Abigail’s mother had written to let her know that Nate and Meagan had set their wedding date for the third of September, and while she’d shed tears over it, Abigail also felt relief that she hadn’t destroyed their chance for happiness. Over the next few weeks, Abigail began to feel at home in Hot Springs. She’d been invited to several more dinners and had gone shopping a few times with Sally. But the time she’d enjoyed most was the hours she spent with Marcus and his family. She loved going to church with them and then spending the rest of the day at their home. Usually, others were invited for Sunday dinner, and she was beginning to feel comfortable around them as well. It was hard to believe she’d been in Hot Springs for more than a month and that it was now September.
    The days were still warm, but the leaves were beginning to change on the hardwoods on the mountain across from her hotel. She still had no desire to return home, and she’d begun to think she might want to stay in Hot Springs permanently.
    On the weekdays when Abigail went with Mrs. Wellington to her meeting at church, Mr. Wellington picked her up at the hotel, and then she somehow ended up going back to their home for the afternoon and evening. Marcus would join them for dinner and take her back to the hotel. It had become something she really looked forward to. . .more and more each week.
    Over the last few weeks, she’d been studying her Bible in ways she couldn’t remember doing back home, and this Sunday, she listened closely to the sermon John Martin preached. His subject was based on Philippians 3:13, on what Paul had said about “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.”
    “Brethren, we must not dwell on our past mistakes but on what we are doing now and in the future. We must forgive ourselves as we have