Free To Heal A Heart (Love Inspired) by Arlene James Page A

brick-edged walk.
    “I’ve always thought so. It has a kind of timeless quality about it for me.”
    “You know what they say. Styles change, come and go, but a classic is a classic.”
    “I was thinking more in relation to my childhood,” he told her, guiding her toward his British-made luxury coupe parked at the crest of the shallow circular drive. “No matter how many times they redecorate, and there have been many, the house always feels the same to me. It’s not even my home anymore, but I’m what’s changed. Do you know what I mean?”
    He used his remote to unlock the car doors and reached for the handle on the passenger side, which happened to be nearest.
    “I’m not sure,” she answered honestly, allowing him to hand her down into the leather bucket seat. “I didn’t grow up in one place. My parents never even owned a home until they retired. When I think of my childhood, I think of jungles and bamboo wind chimes and being different.”
    He thought about that as he walked around to the driver’s seat. “That must have been difficult,” he said, settling in and reaching for his safety belt. Hers was already buckled. “Is that why your parents sent you away to boarding school?”
    She lifted a shoulder. “I’m not sure. It may have been part of it. My feeling always was that they just wanted me to get a good education in safe surroundings, to know my home country.”
    “You didn’t discuss it?”
    She seemed to think about that. “Not really. It was always sort of a given. ‘When you go back to the States for seventh grade…’ It was never ‘if,’ always ‘when.’ I don’t suppose I’ve really thought too much about it.”
    Obviously she had lived in a very different world from his. He started up the car and drove out to the street. While waiting for a pickup truck to pass he asked, “Would you go back to Thailand if given the opportunity?”
    “To visit, of course.”
    “But not to live?” He turned the car into the right-hand lane.
    She shook her head and after a moment said, “Somehow it was never home. Isn’t that odd? I was born there, spent the first twelve years of my life so deep in the jungle that hearing English spoken openly in the halls at my school seemed weird, but something inside me always knew that it wasn’t home.”
    “Where is home, then?” he asked, braking to a smooth halt at the stoplight on Abrams.
    Several moments crept by. He’d begun to think that she wasn’t going to answer when she looked at him and said, “I don’t know.”
    He couldn’t quite imagine what she meant, wasn’t sure what to think or feel about such an answer. He said nothing more until he pulled into one of only four unenclosed parking spaces in front of her apartment building.
    She unbuckled her belt, but before she could let herself out, he opened his own door. She subsided instantly, sinking back into her seat until he could get to his feet and move around to get her door for her. He extended a hand, and she placed her much smaller one in it.
    “Every time I see you,” he said as she pivoted on the seat and put her feet to the ground, “I wonder afterward why I didn’t ask for your telephone number.”
    “Wouldn’t do you any good,” she said matter-of-factly.
    His face must have fallen as quickly as his heart, for she suddenly smiled and said, “I don’t have a telephone.”
    He chuckled and shook his head, crooking an arm over the edge of the open door. “I’d like to see you again.”
    Her gaze dropped to her toes, then rose slowly to his face. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. At lunch. In Thanksgiving Square?”
    That sounded like a date to him, so he didn’t quibble. If she wanted to go slowly, keep it on her terms, he could accommodate her. Nodding, he smiled and said, “Tomorrow, then.”
    She stepped out from behind the door. He closed it and walked beside her to the locked gate set into the grillwork of the security fence. He was glad she was sensible