Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About The Author

Title Page

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Part Two

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Dear Reader

Copyright

“The Lord brought us together, Carla,”

Kyle told her. “I don’t know what He has planned for the two of us, but that’s where faith and trust come in, you know.”

“If only I could be as sure as you are, if only I could feel as though—”

“It’s forgiven,” he interrupted her. “It’s forgotten. That’s the answer. Take ahold of it, hold it tight to you. Our faith stands or falls on forgiveness bestowed upon us by a holy God.”

“But you have no idea, Kyle, of my past…all that I’ve done,” she whispered.

“Quiet, Carla,” he soothed her softly. “As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t.”

“But it’s true. You can’t pretend—”

“It’s not pretense at all,” he told her, showing as much patience as he could muster. “When God forgives our sin, He isn’t pretending. As far as He is concerned, none of it exists. It’s been washed away.”

ROGER ELWOOD

is a bestselling author in the Christian book market with over twenty titles to his credit. He has won twelve awards for Best Book of the Year from the Excellence in Media Association. Roger has also been named as a finalist for the ECPA Golden Medallion Award. The trade editions of his bestselling Angelwalk series have sold nearly a half million copies to date, and each of the four titles has appeared in top positions on the CBA bestseller lists.

Formerly a resident of the East Coast, Roger now lives in Agoura Hills, California.

Promises
Roger Elwood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

“…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

—Psalms 30:5

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

Victor Hugo

Prologue

With some nervousness, Carla Gearhart glanced at herself in the makeup mirror which was ringed its entire circumference by soft-ray bulbs that provided light but little glare, and illuminated every part of her face. A long time had passed since she dared to examine her reflection in this manner, afraid that she would look so weary, so prematurely aged that no amount of makeup would compensate. Yet she realized that, somehow, she actually seemed younger than she had just two years before.

That fact was why she continued to stare at the image as it really was and yet questioned whether she was simply deceiving herself, precisely what she might have done at another time, another place.

Lord, surely this is not real, what I am seeing. Surely I’ve got to be fantasizing, she thought. After all that has happened, all that pain, those long hours of doing nothing but worry and cry, how in the world could I look this good?

But the mirror was not deceiving her, nor was she deceiving herself.

Her flame red hair was healthier looking, and a bit longer than before, flowing like a river of molten fire that bordered on iridescence—the once deep-set circles under her eyes, evidence of a life lived recklessly had vanished. Her skin glowed, her complexion having lost a certain paleness, and she could also actually count less wrinkles, crow’s-feet and the like, not more, a self-analysis that surprised Carla with its results.

Lord, I have been to hell and back! she exclaimed, and yet the years seem to have fallen away from my face. I looked older than this the morning after I won my Oscar for Best Actress of the Year.

One hand happened to be resting on a relatively new red leather-bound Bible, the other on a gold-framed color photograph of a young man in his late twenties, square-jawed, with a slight scar slicing through his left eyebrow.

Older…

He looked older, over thirty in fact; his shirt off, showing a chest that was muscular but not grotesque, more like that of a champion surfer than a body builder.

I suspect that that was the problem, she told herself. If you had appeared as young as you truly were, I doubt that I would ever have—

Carla stopped that thought, suspecting all too well that there was no way she could have predicted anything about their relationship because, after all, he would have been the same person he was regardless of his age, and nothing about her would have changed except perhaps her expectations.

How she did love this man! How wise he seemed!

Though only half a dozen years older by the calendar, Carla Gearhart was much more than that in terms of her experience in a life that had had more peaks and valleys, it could be said, than much of Switzerland itself.

“By contrast, you seemed to have lived like a monk in some monastery,” she said out loud. “And that innocent, modest manner of yours. You were so different from anyone I’d ever known.”

Kissing…

A flashing memory of his lips touching her own took her back to the first time they had held one another.

We were standing on the deck of a riverboat that was cruising down the Mississippi toward New Orleans, Carla remembered. I told you I felt nervous about the performance I was scheduled to give there and I told you I had prayed about it. And you stood back, and looked at me as though you were seeing me for the first time, then you leaned over and kissed me, and we stayed like that for what seemed like the rest of that little journey but which probably was only a few minutes, lost to everything and everyone around us.

She brought her fingers to her lips.

I had not been kissed like that since high school, she told herself, with such tenderness and even a little uncertainty.

Carla sighed as her finger moved up to her lower eyelids and wiped away a tear that had formed.

You seemed so strong, she recalled, but nothing like any of the other men I had known—

Carla cut herself off, tears starting to pour in earnest down her cheeks, causing her makeup to streak.

What a mess, she told herself as she looked again at the mirror, and the sad reflection that it now gave back to her. The makeup girl will—

The door!

Lost in her thoughts, preferring the company of even bittersweet memories to the harsher present reality, Carla was startled when someone began knocking on the door to her star’s dressing room.

“Are you okay, Carla?” the stage manager asked apprehensively. Despite himself, he had developed some affection in recent months for a woman whom he once had found quite intolerable but who now was very different, changed so drastically that some idle, jesting-type scuttlebutt was actually suggesting that she might be an identical twin who had taken on the task of impersonating the real Carla Gearhart.

At first she could not answer, hoping that he would come back later, that for the present she could be left alone.

“Are you—?” the voice started to repeat with a bit more urgency.

“I will be, Albert,” she interrupted, “God knows I have to be.”

“That He does, Carla. Bless you.”

A second of silence, then: “Five minutes and you’re on.”

Five minutes!

Under ordinary circumstances, getting her makeup back on would take at least half an hour. How could she possibly reconstruct it in a fraction of that time, especially since her makeup girl was nowhere around.

“Are you still there, Albert?” she asked quickly, hoping to catch him before he was involved in some other task.

“Yes, Carla, I am.”

“I wanted to say something else.”

“Go ahead, Carla.”

She could think of few times in her adult life when she was tongue-tied but this was surely one of them.

“Thank you for being a friend, thank you for your concern, though I wonder if I deserve it,” she said without telling him what was going on inside her head, but meaning the word friend more than she had ever thought possible, since she once had been prone toward treating stagehands and assistant directors and others of their ilk as servants who had to do her bidding or she would make matters totally miserable for them.

“You never called me that before,” he acknowledged. “But I do now, Albert, and it comes from my heart, dear man.”

“I’ll be back in four minutes.”

“I know I can count on that.”

Carla glanced at that photo on the makeup table, knowing how great a part Kyle had played in her transformation from show business haridelle to what she had become, and speculating where she would be without him in her life.

Kyle, she thought, my love, my impossible love.

Carla reached out and brushed the year-old photo with her fingers, pretending that, by doing so, she could somehow touch Kyle himself, that the glossy paper it was pnnted on was a kind of portal, and he could be found on the other side, and all she had to do was reach through, and he would be there waiting to hold her again.

If only you were here tonight, she told herself, if only you were in the audience and I could sing my heart out to you in front of everyone, and tell you before tens of thousands of witnesses what it means to me that I have been able to love you.

How she hated those two words.

…if only.

It might be that they were the cruelest in the English language, forcing her mind and emotions back over territory that it might have been better not to revisit.

…if only.

That second time, the tears came in a flood that could have proven unstoppable but she was still a woman of exceptional will, a will that used to be so dominant that it sought to control others but which now focussed only on herself, and how badly she had treated people before Kyle and she had met. And Carla knew that she could never let sorrow and despair get the best of her, could never let visions of the past few months squander her present, for that would not have pleased Kyle, that would have upset and alarmed him terribly and brought him hurrying to her side as he begged her, “You must stop this, you must not destroy yourself. I am not worth it, my dearest Carla.”

Despite her melancholy, she chuckled at that.

I am not worth it, my dearest Carla.

As she put her hand back on the Bible, enjoying the texture of its leather binding, she said out loud, “Not worth it, Kyle? God brought you into my life. If for no other reason, that makes you more precious than you could ever realize.”

She picked up the Bible slowly and leafed through it, then stopped as she came to Romans, and then on to 8:28: “All things work together for good to those who know and love the Lord.”

Written by Paul the apostle at a point in his life when death seemed close, a death implicit with ridicule in front of a bloodthirsty crowd of people excited by the sight of someone dying, his sentence given at the maniacal command of a gloating emperor who had sought that moment for a long time, it seemed almost incomprehensibly joyful, a grand delusion under the circumstances, and yet she was drawn to a second verse much like the first, Philippians 4:11: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”

Another knock.

“One minute, Carla,” Albert called in to her.

Her hands were trembling. In a flash she had lost her courage, and would now have to give in to her pain.

“No, I can’t,” she replied sadly. “I can’t do this. It is too soon after all. Tell them I am not ready. You must do that for me.”

Silence, for only a few seconds, but it seemed longer.

Albert asked, “May I come in, Carla?”

“Yes…”

She was not keen on spending any time with him at that moment because she could easily guess what he would say, knew what he would try to accomplish, knew that she did not want to hear any of it. And since she was the star, she could order him or anyone else to respect her every wish—at least the old Carla Gearhart would have done that.

Albert was young and rather good-looking but Carla knew that he had survived some hard times—survived only by finding his faith.

Albert saw that her hand was on the Bible.

“Still wondering?” he asked since he knew the details of what had happened, and could understand her feelings. “Still searching?”

“Wondering? Searching?” Carla repeated. “Yes, I am, Albert. I begin to wonder if I will ever stop wondering.”

She stared at him with a look that was akin to desperation.

“What has happened is still new, fresh,” Albert added. “If you cut your arm, it won’t heal in a day or even a week perhaps. Depending upon how deep the cut is, that healing might take the better part of a month. And, remember, Carla, that is a simple cut. Your pain is much more severe because the wound itself is.”

“I am afraid it will never stop hurting,” she said, her voice quavering. “How could I endure that? How could I ever endure that? Getting up each morning only to face—”

Carla stopped, embarrassed.

“I see you now, the way you are, as part of the good that came out of knowing Kyle. The two of you might not have met otherwise.”

“That’s true, Carla,” Albert acknowledged. “I might have been headed straight for an eternity in hell.”

“I don’t know about that.”

She was still uncomfortable with discussion along those lines, though the idea of hell had seemed a natural part of Kyle’s faith.

“Oh, I would have,” Albert reiterated. “My life was all wrong. I felt so weary more often than I could count. The drugs aged me a lot, you know. And they messed up my mind. I was dangerously close to cursing God. I know what that would have done to my spiritual destiny.”

“We are not so different,” she told Albert. “We lived, we sinned and we had to have ourselves cleansed.”

“There’s no past tense involved,” he reminded her. “It will be a constant battle that goes on until the day we die.”

Carla nodded, hating the truth as he presented it but knowing that truth for what it was, an unassailable series of facts from moment to moment.

“Will you get ready now?” Albert asked. “You’ve got more than fifty thousand people waiting for you out there.”

Carla had been slumping slightly in her chair but that brought her up straight.

“What?” she blurted out. “That’s capacity, isn’t it?”

“And then some, Carla. Extra seats had to be brought in. If the fire department doesn’t find out, it’ll be a miracle.”

“My biggest live audience…” she muttered.

“A record. Nobody’s got that kind of draw, and you’ve got to be aware of that. Remember, too, that there are no supporting acts, which is unusual in itself. You’re the whole show.”

“Half of me feels dead right now, and yet I’m the whole show,” she said with some irony.

“Now wait a minute!” he exclaimed sternly as he pointed toward the mirror. “Don’t you see how you look?”

“Younger…”

“That’s right, Carla. Knowing Kyle has done that to you.”

Yet she scoffed at her appearance.

“I feel ancient.”

“With that kind of attitude, you could start your slide all over again, Carla, and find yourself in a place that’s emptier and even more hopeless than you ever did before.”

His words struck a nerve and she remembered the old days, sliding from the giddy ones after the Oscar ceremony to where she could not get out of bed without drugs, nor go to sleep at night without downing a quantity of pills that could only be called dangerous.

“Kyle saw you, and look at what happened!” Albert exclaimed. “Was all that he did for nothing?”

Carla waved one hand impatiently through the air.

“All right, all right,” she replied. “Give me a few minutes.”

He smiled slightly.

“What do I tell them, Carla?” he asked. “What am I asking fifty thousand human beings to believe?”

“That this is my first gig since…since—”

She was starting to choke up, and Albert interrupted before she put more stress on herself.

“I’ll think of something,” Albert said as he stooo. “Maybe I could do some kind of comedy act.”

He kissed her on the forehead.

“Pray for strength,” he whispered with some warmth. “The Lord will give it to you, Carla.”

Then he closed the dressing room quietly, leaving her alone again.

Carla’s hands were trembling as she wiped the streaked makeup off her face, and started to apply as little as possible to replace it, just enough to give her lips some color under the glaring spotlights and soften the puffiness tears had caused around her eyes.

After she was finished, she got to her feet and turned toward the door. Then she stopped as she told herself that Albert was only one of many who were expecting too much of her. Her audiences always made such heavy demands that she was bound to crack sooner or later as she tried so hard to please every man, woman and child who paid for the privilege of watching her perform.

“Forgive me, Kyle, for I just don’t have your strength, I’m afraid,” she said out loud as she opened the door and turned toward the exit, not the auditorium.

Empty.

That was odd. It was usually too busy, with people forever bumping into one another, especially as showtime approached.

No sounds, nothing except—

She stopped abruptly, listening.

A voice.

A voice that sounded distant and she had to strain her ears to hear it, a voice that was speaking her name.

Carla!

That was what the voice said, and so distinctly that she spun around to see who had come up behind her.

No one.

Shrugging, chalking it up to her nerves, she continued toward the exit a few feet ahead of her.

Carla!

There it was again.

She had heard it that second time or thought she did but still could not tell the direction from which it was coming.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Why are you doing this? Leave me alone.”

Carla reached the exit door.

Don’t leave, please.

“Stop it!” she screamed. “I can’t go out in front of those people and pretend that I feel like entertaining them!”

Yet pretense had been a part of her life since the beginning of her career.

As an actress, she always pretended to be someone else when she played a role in a movie. As a singer, she was role-playing, too, someone happy and bursting with energy, someone an audience would pay to see so that they could have a couple of hours of escape from their own problems.

“I’d only garble the lyrics, get the rhythms all wrong, miss the cues, make a fool of myself,” she said. “Tens of thousands of people would leave and talk, how, yes, yes, how they would talk, about me washed up, that I should have retired years before, and not tricked them into paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to sit and watch a broad like me pretend that I had no crosses to bear.”

Carla hesitated, half expecting the voice to say something else immediately.

She was wrong.

Only sounds from the auditorium behind her could be heard as Albert told the awaiting thousands something that the speaker system magnified a little too loudly so that the volume had to be turned down.

“Carla Gearhart will be with you soon,” he said.

Feet began to stamp in impatience and protest.

“Now I want to tell you why there is a delay,” Albert continued, pausing for effect, then continuing.

She held her breath.

Albert is pretty smooth, she acknowledged. He should be able to keep them from walking out for a little while, anyway.

Her insides were trembling.

What about later? she worried. What if they leave the auditorium and start spreading the word about me? What will happen to my career then?

She was instantly ashamed of that egocentric thought, and pushed the exit door open, a winter chill hitting her cheeks full blast, feeling like a hand slapping her across the face.

An alley.

She gasped as she saw it.

An alley, a dismal, dirty alley, beset with odors that seemed more Like those in a filthy rest room…

Inside the theater building were once-adoring thousands of clerks, accountants, teachers, computer salesmen, housewives, many others, along with the requisite bright lights, glitter at every turn, however fake it might have been, as well as all the other aspects of a million dollar engagement.

Yet outside—

None of this was unusual except on Broadway perhaps, and even in that fabled district of Manhattan, derelicts managed to hide briefly behind trash Dumpsters or use sections of each alley as not-so-private outdoor rest rooms.

Oh, God, Carla thought prayerfully. This is where I’m headed if I don’t stop myself tonight. Oh, God, I need Your help’ I can’t end up this way, my guts eaten up by drugs or maybe in a cheap motel, dying after taking a hundred sleeping pills.

A filthy back alley seemed a metaphor for what her life would have been like without Kyle Rivers—dark and filled with all manner of trash and with no real hope that any of this would ever change.

Go back inside…

That voice!

She pressed her palms against her ears but it would not stop since she now realized that it seemed to be coming from within her.

Kyle loves you, Carla. Whatever happens, remember that. And don’t give up. That’s what the enemy of your soul wants.

She answered instinctively, pointing out the sheer ugliness of that alley, and its putrid odors.

“Yes, I know that he loves me,” she spoke. “And I love him enough to know that without him in my life, what do I have left? This is where I could be someday, eating scraps that others have thrown away.”

God is with you.

“Sounds like an old story, often repeated,” Carla retorted sarcastically. “Isn’t there anything new to say?”

She clenched both hands into fists.

“Why give me hope, and then snatch it right from my grasp?” she begged. “Why show me my true love and—?”

Never mind any of that, Carla. You must go back inside and trust God Without trust, your faith is a charade.

But still she resisted though less certainly, taking one step, then another away from the stage door and down the alley toward the street beyond it.

Suddenly she saw movement.

A middle-aged derelict had pushed aside a pile of cardboard boxes under which he had been sleeping. In his hand was an old rusty trumpet.

Carla walked faster, a bit afraid because she was well dressed, obviously “from money” and he was a typical panhandler. Normally these people, she had heard, were not violent but then desperation was a wild card in anybody’s life.

She was almost at the end of the alley, just a few feet from the street outside.

“You can just walk ‘way and leave everythin’ and everyone behind you,” the derelict spoke. “I can’t. I’s stuck where I am, can’t do nothing about it.”

…you can just walk ‘way and leave everythin’ and everyone behind you.

Carla stood still. Suddenly she could not move.

Her band.

She was leaving every member of it behind her, betraying them along with fifty thousand customers, part of that great mass of people who had made her the success she was.

How can I do this, Lord? she prayed. How can I stab them in the back like that?

She took one more step toward the street.

The derelict let out a cry of despair that hit her like a very large block of ice, chilling, it seemed, every nerve in her body.

Slowly Carla turned, and saw him standing in the middle of that alley, and seeming very much a part of it, as dirty, as smelly, as filled with debris but his trash was different, for apart from his wretched clothes, it was inside him, the refuse of a life that apparently had been inexorable in driving him to that alley that night. She walked back into the alley, and approached him, standing there, wanting to say something but not yet quite sure what the words should be.

“Hey, lady, what are you starin’ at?” he snarled defiantly, having learned the bad habit of being offensive to everyone.

“You,” she told him honestly.

“What about me? You ain’t seen no bums before?”

“None with a trumpet in one hand.”

He looked at it, and chuckled as he said, “You got that right, lady. I’m one of a kind I am.”

“Why are you carrying it like that?” she asked.

“Only thing I got left from the old days. I never let go of it. I’ll be buried with it, yes, ma’am, I surely will.”

“You have played the trumpet professionally?”

“Shoot, lady! I was tops years ago. Lookin’ at me now, you’s probably thinkin’ I’m dreamin’ or somethin’. But I ain’t. Gene Krupa, those other guys, they were no better than me, no, ma’am, they sure enough weren’t.”

“Do you have any family left?” Carla asked, aware that scaring him by talking about his eternal destiny would only have made him shut her out.

“Not any more. All dead, or so disgusted with me that they might as well be. My parents were the last to go. I’ve been all alone since then. Nobody wants me, you see. Nobody cares no more.”

She glanced more closely at the trumpet, saw that there was a possibility it could be repaired.

“You could play that instrument,” she offered. “If you were as good as you say, you’d get gigs even now.”

He scratched his dirt-streaked hair.

“Who would sit still and listen to a has-been or maybe some guy who never was?” he spoke, sighing forlornly. “Maybe all I ever did have was my stupidity in thinkin’ that I was any good, you get what I’m sayin’, lady?”

“I can help you,” she insisted.

He coughed convulsively and Carla’s heart went out to him.

“Sorry…” he told her as he caught his breath again and seemed to mean it. “What’s some slick broad like you able to do for a godforsaken guy like me?”

“You think God has turned His back on you?”

“You blind or somethin’? I ain’t seen nothing and no one showing me God’s love lately.”

“I am an entertainer myself. There are fifty thousand people inside this building who have paid to watch me.”

“Oh…” he said, impressed but growing more uneasy. “Well, I’ll be goin’ now. You can’t be late. Audiences hate that.”

“I am very late already, mister,” Carla remarked ruefully “A few more minutes could never matter.”

She reached out for his arm.

“Let me take you inside,” she said, understanding why he would hesitate, given his appearance and the body odors coming from him.

“I stink.”

Carla had no need of being convinced of that.

“Yes, you do, mister, very badly,” she agreed. “But a good shower can take care of that. And there are some stage clothes you can slip into. Would you tell me your name?”

“Thomas…” he blurted out, narrowed his eyes, the cynicism that was part of the outlook of most homeless people, especially the ones as bad off as he was, an instinctive fact of life that most of them never shed. “Thomas Gilboyne.”

“God doesn’t want you to end up like this, Thomas,” she told him.

“And you speak for God, lady?” he asked. “Then ask Him to snuff me out like He does everybody else sooner or later.”

Thomas coughed again, nearly collapsing to the ground and Carla thought for an instant that he was indeed dying, right before her eyes. She gripped his arm and held him upright, fighting her revulsion as she inhaled the rank odor of his body and filthy clothes.

As Carla glanced around desperately for help her silent prayer was answered when two stagehands appeared at the exit door. They stepped into the alley, both apparently about to light up cigarettes, since smoking was not permitted in most of the backstage area.

“Randy! Jeff!” Carla called out to them.

The young men ran over to her and she read the confusion on both faces as they took in the sight of Carla supporting the derelict musician. “Help me get him into the theater, please,” she instructed. “He’s sick. He needs a doctor.”

“But Carla…” Randy began. He glanced nervously at the other stagehand.

“If you won’t help, I’ll do it myself,” she insisted. She took a stumbling step forward doing her best to support the sick man and suddenly, Randy and Jeff moved to help her.

The company always traveled with a doctor and Carla knew her specific request to have Thomas examined and given the best possible medical care would not be ignored. He would in fact most likely get better medical attention here, she reflected, than in any of the city hospitals that would accept him as a patient.

The two stagehands gently carried Thomas Gilboyne between them, and as Carla opened the stage door, they took him inside.

He was beginning to regain consciousness, his bloodshot eyes widening.

“Am I where I think I am?” Thomas asked, casting a longing glance in the direction of the stage. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“You were God’s instrument,” she said, “and that makes you special.”

“God used me?”

“He did, my new friend, he did use you in a wonderful way,” Carla assured him as she smiled broadly.

Carla pointed out where the doctor’s little office was.

“When you’re finished,” she said, “you can stay for my second performance.”

“Second?” Tom repeated. “You must be bone tired after the first one.”

“I do not allow myself that luxury!”

After they were done, Carla bowed her head for a moment.

“Lord, Lord; that could have been me a year ago or maybe a year from now,” she prayed, “if You hadn’t given my beloved Kyle to me. If only I could have done for him what he did for me.”

She half expected the once persistent voice to say something but it did not, and she sensed that whoever it needed to help, it had been accomplished and now she was expected to take care of her part.

Carla cautiously stepped into the wings as she had done a thousand times over the years in hundreds of arenas but none as big as that one.

“Albert…” she whispered.

Perspiring heavily due to the strain of keeping the audience from bolting, Albert caught a glimpse of her.

Carla smiled, holding up one finger to show him that she needed just a minute, and he nodded in acknowledgment. then she hurried back to her dressing room, and prayed for a moment while holding her Bible tightly with both hands.

Then she headed back toward the wings. Albert saw that she was ready.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, obviously relieved, his voice choking as tears mixed with sweat, “I am happy finally to present to you, tonight, the one and only Carla Gearhart.”

The band immediately struck up its regular introductory music as the audience became absolutely quiet.

With some awkwardness in view of what had happened, Carla stepped out into the glare of spotlights.

“It’s real amazing to me that you haven’t left here by now,” she confessed. “I would have, if I were sitting where you are.”

A curly-haired young woman, dressed like a cowgirl in the front row, stood and smiled pleasantly as she said, “Carla, your friend told all of us what is going on in your life. We’re waiting…because we love you. And our prayers go with you.”

One by one, people were standing until nobody remained in their seat. In an instant, some fifty thousand pairs of hands started clapping, with a chorus of voices shouting, “Carla, Carla, Carla!”

Finally she signaled that she was ready to begin.

Visibly relieved, Albert handed her a cordless microphone and then left the stage but stayed in the wings, bowing his head as he prayed briefly.

“I remember a time when I would look out over an audience like this,” Carla said, “and know that my beloved Kyle was sitting there among you, and I could sing my heart out to him. That made a big difference to me.”

She paused, fighting back some fresh tears.

“But tonight I have only your love to reach out to,” she added, “to sustain me, and that is all I need.”

So it began that evening in Nashville, in an arena that had been completed only six months earlier, but no one would ever break her attendance over the ensuing years because no one had lived the drama that was hers and the man’s to whom she would remain devoted through time and eternity.

“I believe in a God of miracles,” she said, “and tonight is proof that He exists, that He cares, that He will be with us every step of the way, no matter how rebellious we are, no matter how many times we try His patience.”

As Carla started to sing, memories came back in a flood that threatened to sweep her off the stage but she held on, as though that microphone were her life raft. She refused to do anything but sing from the center of her soul, sing of the love that had transformed her, love from Almighty God and, as well, from the wonderful man whom He had been gracious enough to send into her life.

“This first number is dedicated to Kyle Rivers,” she said. “I guess my friend Albert told you a little of what’s been going on. If only Kyle could feel tonight what you and I are experiencing.”

…if only.

She had let “if onlys” rule her for far too long. It was time to declare her independence of them.

Carla started with her favorite gospel number, “He Lives.” “‘I serve a risen Saviour, He’s in the world today. I know that He is living, whatever men may say.’“

Then she did something that not even her loyal band could have predicted.

“Lord…” she nearly whispered as she clipped the microphone to the front of her sequined dress.

The band members hesitated, trying to anticipate when Carla wanted them to join in again.

Her eyes sparkling, that resplendent hair like a crown of scarlet as it reflected the spotlights overhead, she thrust out her hands in front of her, palms upward, and spoke, “Dear Lord Jesus, take care of my beloved, for now, for eternity…”

And then the band, at a nod from her, started its accompaniment again.

“‘I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,’“ Carla Gearhart, eyes closed, continued singing words that had been written by someone else but were coming straight from her own heart and soul that night of nights in Nashville. “‘And just the time I need Him he’s always near. He lives, He lives…’“

No other song could have said it better.

Part One

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Saint-Exurpéry

Chapter One

Three months ago…

Carla had returned to Nashville from Hollywood after losing out on a movie role that she coveted, despite her Oscar win the year before. She was depressed, tempted to drown her sorrows in a bottle but with enough inner strength left to hold off just a bit longer.

Wandering the streets of Nashville, she recalled, like some pitiable waif, depending upon the kindness of strangers.

She had driven into town on her own, dismissing her driver, Rocco Gilardi, for the evening. The car she chose out of the half dozen she owned was her Jaguar convertible, driving it at top speed, the top down, the wind blowing her red hair in a dozen or more directions.

No state police stopped her, though she was hoping that someone would. She felt suicidal, wrenched as she was from the high of the Academy Awards triumph to being rejected in favor of a younger actress. Irving Chicolte had tried to argue that she was “big box office” now, her first picture after the Oscar earning $100 million plus in the United States alone where it played at a bit over two thousand theaters. Counting the foreign take, Chasing Dreams would eventually bring in nearly $200 million altogether, and that did not factor in the substantial video, cable and network broadcast revenue.

Yet she lost to someone ten years younger.

The news devastated her. Every time she passed by her Oscar statuette, it seemed to be mocking her, having promised a whole new world of career opportunities, and yet delivering little except invitations to entertainment industry functions which she had been attending anyway. Only now she was getting the better seats, either a table of her own or one that she would share on a given evening with the power elite.

From that glamorous company to the streets of Nashville, alone, walking aimlessly, not a soul in the world knowing or caring where I am tonight.

That was when she heard Kyle’s voice.

She stopped short, listening.

He left the splendor of heaven, knowing His destiny was the lonely hill of Golgotha, there to lay down His life for me…

She could not move, could not open her mouth or shut her eyes or turn her head.

If that isn’t love, the ocean is dry, there’s no star in the sky, and the sparrow can’t fly!

Suddenly she seemed to be gasping, as though someone had placed a pillow over her face and was suffocating her.

If that isn’t love, then heaven’s a myth, there’s no feeling like this, if that isn’t love.

A brief pause.

Then the second stanza was being sung.

Two voices.

She realized that there were two voices, one of which was strangely familiar, the other not recognizable at all. But it was the second that had hooked her, that had grabbed hold of her body and was now tugging at it.

Finally she could move.

She walked slowly, still unaware of her surroundings, her senses locked in on that voice as though it were a radar signal, drawing her toward it.

Lights ahead. Flashing lights.

Above the entrance to one of the myriad little clubs that was part of the Nashville music scene, clubs where fledgling country music stars often got their first taste of performing in public.

She walked up to the front door, which was open, and went inside.

In an instant she recognized one of the two performers on stage.

Darcy Reuther.

Carla had known the woman for many years.

What are you doing in a club like this? she thought. You’re a star. You should never descend back to this level. Are you crazy?

But then her attention drifted to the man standing next to Darcy. He was about a foot taller than she, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt and black vest.

As they finished the song, the audience of a few dozen people burst into applause that was loud and sustained. But nothing took Carla’s attention away from Darcy Reuther’s singing partner.

“I wrote that before Kyle Rivers was born,” Darcy said after the room was quieter, “so I guess I’m old enough tobe his grandmother!”

Laughter.

“But I’m not that fortunate,” she continued. “Nothing would have made me happier than to say Kyle is my grandspn son. I would have been very proud of him, as a young man, as a young singer.”

She turned to him.

“Kyle, would you do that number we discussed?” she asked.

He smiled, and nodded, then turned to the band leader and asked him to cease any accompaniment.

That departure from the norm for such clubs had not been scripted, so the members of the band seemed confused.

“I feel a special leading tonight,” he said. “All I need is my guitar.”

The band leader nodded understandingly, and gave him the sign of the cross.

“Praise God, brother, and thank you,” Kyle said.

And he began to sing “Amazing Grace” as Carla had never heard it sung before. Carla found herself staring at him, hardly blinking.

On the final stanza, Darcy Reuther joined in with Kyle.

“‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,’“ they sang as though they had been doing duets together for a very long time, “‘we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.’“

Carla could not move, not even to join in with the applause.

And then Darcy Reuther noticed that she was in the audience.

“We have a special patron tonight,” she said, “someone who is a country music legend and, now, an Oscar-winning actress.”

She pointed in Carla’s direction.

“Carla Gearhart is here tonight. Won’t you come up onstage, my dear friend?”

She did not want to do anything but leave, but she was caught literally in the spotlight and, in order to be gracious, she had to accept Darcy’s invitation.

After having met many male performers during ten years as a singer, while she was making hundreds of appearances in the main metropolitan areas of the United States as well as small country locations, Carla should not have been nervous to stand next to Kyle, to have him whisper into her ear that he had been a fan for a long time, to look briefly into his eyes.

“Carla, you didn’t really plan on this,” Darcy Reuther observed, “so I can’t ask you to sing anything tonight.”

As she said that, everyone in the small audience seemed to start shouting, “Sing, Carla, sing!”

She was at her best when she had had plenty of time to rehearse and so the idea of singing with no preparation played havoc with her normal confidence on stage.

“I have no idea what I could do tonight,” she muttered, partly to the audience, partly to Darcy.

Kyle whispered, “What about ‘Were You There?’ You sing the first stanza. I’ll do the second. Darcy can take the third. And the three of us can sing the fourth together.”

As an afterthought, he asked, “Do you know it?”

“Yes…I do,” she told him nervously.

“Let’s go ahead then, okay?”

“Sure.”

He kissed her on the cheek.

Carla had not sung that hymn in years but, somehow, she had never forgotten the words, the tempo, anything about it.

“‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord?’“ she began. “‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.’“

And she felt better about her unexpected performance in that little club than others that she had spent long hours rehearsing in order to face tens of thousands of people in a single stadium or arena.

Kyle and Darcy could do nothing but stand amazed, Carla seemingly at the top of her form during those few minutes.

Now it was Kyle’s turn.

“‘When through the woods and forest glades I wander,

and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees…’“ he sang with great skill, imbuing that less familiar stanza with a power that seemed to shake the ceiling and the walls of the club.

Next, Darcy stepped into the spotlight.

“Something special is happening tonight,” she said. “I have heard the greatest female voice in the history of country-and-western, and I have heard the greatest young man’s voice in ages, and I must step aside. The spotlight is theirs tonight.”

More applause, louder, sustained.

“I have to ask Carla Gearhart and Kyle Rivers to sing the remaining stanzas while I sit down and enjoy them as you all are doing,” Darcy continued. “This is not a church, this club, but that’s okay, for I feel the Holy Spirit here just the same, and I think He is saying, ‘Let Carla and Kyle be a blessing to everyone!’“

The next day, Carla and Kyle went on their first date, beginning a relationship that they would come to pray would last a lifetime, and beyond.

Chapter Two

Carla had never met anyone like Kyle before.

The men she had known were veterans of show business and life itself. She could never think of them in the same way as she was beginning to think of Kyle.

Strong…

He was strong physically, but there was a strength of the spirit that she found appealing as well, which did not translate into arrogance.

She talked with him about this during their fourth date, a simple one that involved dinner, a movie and a walk through one of Nashville’s parks.

“You are just so solid,” she told him.

“I work out a lot,” he replied.

Chuckling, Carla said, “That much is obvious.”

They were holding hands as they walked, enjoying the cool evening after an especially humid day.

“It’s something else,” she explained.

“Tell me…” he encouraged her, pointing to a bench where they could sit down.

“I have known men who never seemed to look me straight in the eye. You could tell that their minds were someplace else or that they felt insecure.”

“Or, maybe, it seemed that they were always planning something, always thinking of an angle.”

“That’s about it, Kyle. How did you know?”

This was one aspect of his personality that Carla had not decided whether she liked or hated. He seemed prone to honest answers at any given moment. She could not help wondering how much of what he told her along such lines was not wisdom but simple judgments that were inherently superficial.

But this time he had a good reason to say what he did.

“I’ve dated some women who were the same type,” he told her. “Pretty infuriating at times.”

“Is calculating a better word?” Carla ventured.

“Well, yes. There was no way I could trust them.”

“How about me?” she asked.

He sucked in his breath as he exclaimed, “Oh, brother!” then looked rather sheepish seconds later.

“Is it that bad?” Carla asked.

“It isn’t. But you aren’t perfect.”

She had never had any illusions. If anything, she tended to dwell too much on her imperfections.

“That’s funny,” Carla remarked.

“What’s funny?” Kyle asked defensively, unsure of whether she was making fun of him or not.

“You…”

Jumping to conclusions, he was beginning to feel rather awkward and uncomfortable just then. “What’s funny about me?” he asked.

“I kind of think that you’re perfect, Kyle.”

“No!” he declared, his insecurity gone but something of even more concern replacing it. “I’m not. Only one man was.”

“Jesus?”

“Yes, Jesus. He was the only truly perfect man. The Bible says so, and I have never felt otherwise.”

“What about me? Is there something that I have a tendency to do that annoys you, Kyle?”

“Nothing, really.”

“But you said I wasn’t perfect.”

“You seem edgy now.”

“Edgy? What do you mean?”

“As though you’re waiting.”

She was now the one to face insecurity, regretting that she had ever gone in the direction of what the two of them were discussing.

“You’ve lost me,” Carla spoke.

“Waiting for me to let you down.”

She was silent for a moment, then nodded grudgingly.

“So it’s true!” Kyle exclaimed, surprised at himself.

“Yes, it is,” Carla admitted.

“You must have been hurt real bad in the past.”

“I have been.”

“You think I’m too good to be true, is that it?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’m real, Carla. I don’t have time for subterfuge, you know. The games that people play with one another. I hate that sort of thing. I live life with more urgency than a lot of people because none of us know what tomorrow will bring.”

“So do I. But it seems to be all that I have ever known. Few quiet moments, not much occasion to trust in the Lord, as you would say.”

“How sad.”

“Oh, yes, sad is the right word.”

“Not knowing who to trust—what that must do to your emotions!”

“But it’s typical of my profession. Phoniness is common. And actors are good at this, good at being convincing. They rope you in, and then when they are through with you, they cast you aside.”

“Have you done that to others?” Kyle asked.

She looked at him, having hoped that he would not ask her anything like that but now that he had, she struggled with an answer.

“I have,” she acknowledged. “There have been relationships built on pretense and deceit.”

“Is the one between us any different, Carla?”

“Of course.”

“You say that easily.”

“I meant it. I think that I am—”

She stopped herself.

“Go ahead,” he encouraged her.

“It’s hard,” she said.

“Hard to be honest?”

“Very hard, Kyle.”

“I’m willing to listen. I won’t pull away, Carla. I’ll stay right here and you can tell me whatever it is that you want to say.”

“Falling in love with you,” she said, forcing the words out.

He smiled in his most sensual way.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said, his voice not much above a whisper.

His gaze did not waver. She felt as though he were looking right into the center of her soul.

“Carla, it’s the same with me,” he finally told her. “I think I’m beginning to fall in love with you.”

Part of her rejoiced at hearing him say that but another part did not, the part that had felt so much hurt over the years, so much disappointment in her relationships with men.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” she admitted.

“I think I do.”

“You can’t possibly know!”

“You’re an actress. What more is there?”

“I’ve not been as pure in my life as you have.”

“Do you think I’m naive, Carla? I have friends who have been in show business for many years. I know what goes on.”

“I’ve not been as bad as some women I know. My involvements…never with married men. I—”

“Shush!” he told her. “None of that matters.”

“If you only knew!”

“I don’t need to know.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Carla! Last week, you and I went to church. And you walked down the center aisle when the invitation was given at the conclusion of the service.”

It had been a remarkable experience for her. She seemed to have been lifted up out of her seat and nearly pushed down the aisle.

“The sermon seemed to be about people like me,” she recalled.

“I think it was, Carla…about people who are convinced that they have led a life so sinful that there can never be forgiveness for them, not ever, as though God has written them off. Do you feel the same way now?”

She felt some resentment at how he was categorizing her feelings but not enough to contradict him, at least not then.

“Not as much. But you can’t expect me to change in an instant.”

“That’s right, I can’t. Yet I want you to know right now that since God has forgiven you, and forgotten your sins, so have I. As far as He is concerned, they never occurred. They are gone, totally, eternally gone. It’s that way with me as well, Carla.”

“Are you sure?” she pressed. “Are you absolutely sure, Kyle?”

“As sure as I am of my Lord Himself.”

He reached out for her, and she moved a few inches into the circle of his arms.

“It’s as though I have never lived before now,” she whispered, hating to feel so emotionally naked at that relatively early stage of their relationship, but unable to restrain herself, unable to slip into some kind of deception.

“The difference is that you now have something really worth living for,” he told her. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

She wanted to dispute this young man named Kyle Rivers, to tell him how close to arrogance that statement was, but she stopped herself, because she realized that he was not talking wholly about himself but, rather, Someone else.

“I do…” she continued whispering.

“You do what?” he asked.

“I do love you.”

She smiled at him.

“I want to kiss you now,” Carla said, “the longest, sweetest kiss in history!”

“You expect me to object to that?”

“Not one bit.”

“Well, I don’t.”

…the longest, sweetest kiss in history.

It probably did not come close to achieving that record but trying was still a lot of fun.

Chapter Three

A nother side of Kyle that Carla saw was his exceptional thoughtfulness, which never seemed put on but to come from the center of his soul…

Her parents both had had to be confined to a retirement center months before she won her Oscar, and so they couldn’t be in the audience at the ceremonies that night. She had arranged for a videotape of the ceremonies and a few days later visited her parents at the center, but Alzheimer’s disease’s relentless march had speeded up a bit, and no one could be certain how much her mother understood about what was going on around her. As for her father, caring for his beloved had proved too demanding, bringing on him a stroke that left most of his body paralyzed.

Kyle and she had visited them for the first time just two weeks ago, and Carla would never forget what one of the nurses had told her.

“Treat him good!” the heavyset woman whispered to her while Kyle was in the men’s room.

“Kyle?” Carla replied. “I wouldn’t do otherwise.”

“He’s a treasure.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s something like when we bring in animals now and then.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a bond that develops almost immediately, it never seems to fail. Cats especially are a real blessing to these people, you know. Something in a cat, a sensitivity that is just beautiful to witness. The elderly, even the ones worst off, seem to come out of some kind of inner world for the few minutes that they can hold those warm, purring bodies.”

“What does this have to do with Kyle?”

“It’s in him, too, that ability to connect with people. I’ve never seen anything like that. What a doctor he would make! This friend of yours is special. I’ve watched him. He seems to ease the pain of anyone whose hand he holds. I think he does repair their emotions. This lasts only as long as he is with me, but, then, it may be a continuous process, and this is just an awfully important first step.”

The nurse stopped speaking. Smiling, she added, “What it must be like to have him hold you in his arms. He must be a passionate man.”

Carla agreed that he was.

“You are real lucky,” the nurse remarked.

“It’s not luck,” Carla told her honestly. “It’s God opening up his heart and mine to one another.”

“But you might never have met him. That’s luck, the fact that you did, right?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s pure and simple—an answer to a prayer for Kyle and for me. I was lonely. So was he. We felt that way before we ever met one another.”

The nurse nodded as she smiled strangely, and then went about her duties elsewhere in the center.

Carla had lost track of Kyle, but assumed he would be with her parents.

She was right.

He was kneeling in front of her mother’s wheelchair.

Normally, looking impossibly thin-faced, frail, not much more than a living skeleton, Rosemary Gearhart would not have been able to pay any attention to him or anyone else unless she was in a comparatively and increasingly rare lucid moment, but there was no way to predict when this would happen.

But, for Kyle, it would prove different. Every time he subsequently visited her, she would react like she did on that first occasion.

As Carla stood in the doorway, her mother was reaching up to touch Kyle’s smooth cheek.

“Where’s the beard?” she said.

He chuckled agreeably as he told her, “I just don’t have a coarse beard, ma’am.”

Her fingers touched his strong chin.

“Nice,” she said knowingly.

Kyle was surprised at the way she talked, and delighted that she was responding as well as she did.

“Why, thank you, Miss Gearhart!” he told her.

She touched his lips next.

“Are you a good kisser?” she asked abruptly.

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

Carla saw a chance to enter the little tableau.

“He is a very good kisser, Mother,” she said, smiling broadly, while Kyle blushed a very deep red.

Her mother looked up at her and, then, in an instant, the blankness that was part of Alzheimer’s returned, as though her comprehension, to the extent that she could grasp anything at all, was now trained on a scene beyond that one, a scene that only she could visualize.

That would not be Kyle’s only visit.

Over the coming weeks, he would return to the center half a dozen times. Carla did not have to ask him to join her.

“Are you going to visit your folks this evening?” he would say.

“Yes, I am,” she replied. “You’ve got my schedule down pat, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

During the other visits, Kyle seemed to be in demand all over the center, with an astonishing number of requests for a little of his time before he left. Gradually the visits began to last longer.

Carla could not have been more pleased because she was privileged to witness another side of Kyle’s personality that only confirmed what she felt about him.

She would never forget what he told her on the way back to her house that first time, after she asked him about her mother and the other residents at the center.

“What was it like?” she spoke.

“Strange at first,” he said.

“How do you mean strange?”

“I am usually a little shy being that close to strangers. Onstage, it’s not difficult for me at all. The audience is a sea of faces and they all blend together.”

“You can say that again!” Carla echoed his reaction.

“After all, I am not one-on-one with any of them. But today, I must have spent time with at least a dozen folks, aging men and women who needed me a lot more than anyone in any audience has.”

“At the start, it was awkward for you back there.”

“It’s the shyness I mentioned. But that passed soon enough.”

“I’m really sorry that I subjected you to all that, Kyle, and without much warning.”

“Oh, no, Carla, it was fine. I was enjoying myself but then, at some point, it went beyond ordinary enjoyment.”

“And became—” Carla prompted him.

He paused, recalling how he felt, the expressions on pale, wrinkled, liver-mark-splotched faces.

“I thought of what it would be like when my own parents reach that stage in their lives,” he said. “Could I help them in some way also?”

“You were saying that the way you felt went beyond carnal enjoyment as such.”

Kyle leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose.

“Something spiritual,” he said, “my soul touching theirs.”

She rubbed her arm.

“That sounds wonderful but—”

“Eerie?”

“Exactly the word I would have used!”

“I agree with you. But it was pure and beautiful, not dark and sinister, Carla. God’s purpose was being fulfilled.”

…God’s purpose was being fulfilled

“I need to learn a great deal. I don’t have the fix on His Will that you seemed to be blessed with, Kyle.”

“But you can learn. That’s the wonderful thing about faith. It can only grow, and along with that growth comes experience.”

He was holding her hand in one of his own.

“Some are willing and will learn nothing,” he told her. “Those who are eager to learn will be given much.”

“Kyle?” she asked.

“Yes, my love?” he replied with such warmth that she wanted to hold him so tightly that their hearts would be practically touching one another, making it difficult for Carla to control her emotions.

“I have one criticism,” she said, gulping a couple of times.

Kyle was frowning as he asked, “Criticism of—?”

Carla had not meant to make him nervous in any way but that was how he seemed to be reacting.

“You, Kyle.”

“Me?”

He looked so good, his bright blond hair glistening as a ray of sunlight framed the top of his head.

“A halo,” she muttered, trying to get out of the corner into which she had backed herself. “You’ve actually got a halo around your—”

“You’re changing the subject, Carla.”

“I guess I am.”

He was teasing her a bit but with an edge of seriousness as well and said, “You were about to tell me what that one criticism is.”

“I guess I was.”

“What is it? No more evasion, okay?”

“Okay,” she told him.

“Well?”

Carla hesitated, not sure when or if she should say anything after all.

“Go ahead…” Kyle kept prodding. “There is not one word or a thousand in the English language that you would use that could ever offend me or make me want to reconsider our relationship, okay, Carla?”

She was grateful for that reassurance.

“You are beginning to sound like some ultrasophisticated whoever from New York City or someplace. It’s almost like you are putting on a facade that you hope people will think is real. You weren’t like that when we first met. You sounded much more—”

“—normal?” he finished the sentence for her.

“Well, yes, that’s right.”

“You’re not the only one to point that out to me. My father said something just a few days ago.”

Kyle pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Carla,” he said earnestly, “I’ve dated lots of women, you know. I think each one was special in her own way. But you’re different. You are very special. I find that I am always stretching myself emotionally to keep up with you.”

“But I don’t understand why you would feel that way. We’re on the same level. I’ve never felt that I was above you.”

He seemed unconvinced.

“I want to be a proper husband, a man you can respect. Rely on. I don’t know all that much about you yet I know enough to say that I am looking forward to us spending the rest of our lives together. And I don’t want you to be ashamed of me when we meet those big-time executives you know. It would be terrible for your career to have people saying that you settled for me out of wild passion, that there was no real love involved. What if important folks started whispering, ‘He might be a good lover but he doesn’t have a brain in his head.”‘

Kyle cupped her head in his hands.

“And I want to think that I can be a proper father to any children the Lord blesses us with, Carla, that they can be proud of me, too.”

Listening to Kyle talk about their future, about marriage and the children they would raise together someday, Carla felt so moved with love she couldn’t speak. She took his hand, threading her fingers through his. Staring down at their hands clasped together, she spoke in a quiet voice, one straight from her heart.

“I respect you more than any man I have ever known. More than anyone rich, or powerful or famous. I am proud to be with you and the proudest day of my life will be the day I become your wife.” She smiled tenderly at him. “I hope we’ll be blessed with children. And I pray I’ll be a good mother. I thought I’d done it all and knew it all when I met you. But now I know there’s still a lot I have to learn about life and about relationships, too.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “We have a lifetime ahead of us, my love. To discover it all together.”

Chapter Four

An Oscar!

It was coveted by virtually everyone in the moviemaking business.

Carla Gearhart had placed the statuette on the mantel over her fireplace at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee almost as a talisman to ward off failure.

For a while it seemed to be working. Winning an Academy Award for Best Actress had opened up a new career for her and revived the one she had started with when she was in her late teens: country music.

What a night that Monday was, with an in-person attendance of thirty-five hundred producers, directors, studio executives and many others, as well as a television viewing audience numbering into the millions.

Betting handicappers in Las Vegas and elsewhere were loading the odds against her, in part because no country music singer had ever gone from the Grand Ole Opry to any kind of real movie stardom, but also due to the kind of role that she had played: an obsessive, control freak mother who drove her daughter to a successful suicide attempt and her husband to booze. The film was dark, sad, largely downbeat. And her competition included more than one previous Academy Award winner.

Yet she won.

Columnists, media reviewers and others speculated after the ceremony had ended that Carla had been absolutely convincing in playing a character who was utterly opposite her own personality. None of the others did anything that the Academy Award voter had not seen them do before, however well they did it.

Carla was a breath of fresh air!

The morning after the annual ceremony in Hollywood, and the winners’ parties afterward, was precisely when her agent received a dozen phone calls from the various studios as well as major independent producers, most of whom would have little to do with her before she was able to hold the Oscar in her hand, and smile.

“You’ve got no worries, Carla!” Irving Chicolte had told her over lunch that next day, less than two hours after she had managed to drag herself out of bed, the two of them now sitting at a favored table in the most coveted section of a restaurant only minutes from the auditorium. But then Irving was a master of feel-good sensibilities, and would have told her the same thing if she had just been signed to do a role in a grade C quickie.

He was a genuinely sweet man, this bald-headed, bushy eye-browed, dimpled little character, a leftover from another era, surviving, and doing it well, in an industry of cookie-cutter young Turks, some of the other agents laughing at flashy old Irving behind his back but, at the same time, jealous of the deals he was able to secure for his clients, some of whom had been with him for decades.

More honest than he was willing to admit for fear of blowing his image, Irving Chicolte turned down deals that were suspect, telling people that he could not face his cigar in the morning if he ever threw his integrity out the window. Producers and studio executives, while not themselves above shady business from time to time, found dealing with Irving curiously reassuring, which was why he still had a varied roster of clients.

But it was Carla Gearhart who invariably seemed to require a wholly disproportionate percentage of the man’s efforts. She was hardly over the hill, but her singing career had been sliding because she revealed a penchant for accepting any kind of gig anywhere just to keep working. The only time she truly felt alive and functioning as a worthwhile human being was onstage before an audience. Her act defined her as a woman, because her work was her only reason for living.

Until Promises.

The truth got through even to Carla eventually.

Irving received the script from a producer at a major Burbank film studio who had her in mind for a part other than the lead. But as Irving read it, he had some sort of hunch that she was just right for that main role. He campaigned for the change, telling the producer and the studio brass bankrolling Promises that they could not have her for any part except the starring one. And Irving was promptly told that this was a possibility but she would have to screentest for it. Irving assured them that this was fine.

His hand was shaking as he hung up the phone on his cherry wood desk in an office that was more like a plush penthouse suite.

What have I done? he thought. I must have let the pressure rot my brain. It can’t be anything else.

Two nightmares.

One that he would have to face was telling Carla about the screen test; the other was getting her to do something better than simply coast through it on the assumption that being a big name in one sector of the entertainment world made her automatically an equivalent powerhouse in another.

Irving thought he would have to battle her for days.

But when he asked Carla, she agreed right away. Not one second of hesitation! And she rehearsed like a woman possessed, almost maniacal in her determination.

The result: she got the role, and just over a year and a month later, won an Oscar for best starring role as an actress.

Finally, at lunch the following day, Irving managed enough chutzpah to ask her why she gave him no trouble when he told her about Promises originally.

“That surprised me, too,” she confessed.

“What are you saying?” he asked, puzzled. “That you don’t know why you went along easily?”

Her smile then was the most radiant he had seen for a very long time.

“Obviously something is going on here,” Irving observed slyly.

“As I look back now,” Carla said, “I guess I can think of a reason that I wasn’t aware of at the time.”

“Tell me, Carla.”

“Because it was what God wanted. There’s a verse in the New Testament that suggests God gives each of us who acknowledge our dependence on Him a certain peace that passes understanding from time to time.”

“God?” Irving repeated. “New Testament? Carla, you’re scaring me.” Carla knew Irving had been raised a Christian but his faith had long ago lapsed.

“Yes, God, my good friend. And not like that cigarsmoking old comic actor, either.”

“I never heard you talk about Him before now.”

She paused, thinking, and then threw her head back, long strands of flame red hair flowing down her back, and said, “I have met a man.”

“So what does that have to do with God?” Irving asked lamely.

“Because, I think, it’s true that heaven opened up and dropped Kyle Rivers right in my lap.”

Irving Chicolte was twenty-five years older than Carla, and looked it, while she was in her early thirties and could have played a high school or college student.

“Now, now, I feel happy for you,” he told her, the father part of him coming to the surface. “But I’ve got to ask why you have kept him a secret until today?”

“I wanted to make sure that there was something serious going on. I didn’t want to find myself hooked by his looks or his charm only to find that’s all it was.”

“Fair enough, Carla. Now my second question: How long have you known him?”

“Only a few weeks.”

He was astonished, theatrically slamming the palm of his hand down on the round wood table.

“And already he is God’s gift?”

Next, he threw his hands up in gesture of disbelief, a reaction he’d perfected over the years. Learning such gestures, especially in Hollywood, had served him well over the years.

“I’ve never met him. What’s the problem?”

“He lives in Nashville.”

“Is that all, Carla?” Irving asked, knowing all too well when she was being less than totally forthcoming.

Carla blushed as she admitted, “You got me again.”

Irving’s eyes narrowed.

“Come out with it,” he insisted. “I need to know.”

“Kyle’s gotten involved in church activities.”

Irving was surprised but took that in stride.

“The rest of it, my dear,” he probed. “I don’t condemn men who spend time in church instead of bars.”

Carla wanted to spit the words out right away instead of hesitating but she equivocated a bit until Irving demanded that she let everything out once and for all.

“And there are his college classes,” she said. “These take all morning and most of the afternoon.”

That one got through big-time!

Irving had been sipping from a glass of white wine, and was so startled that he spilled half of it on the table.

“Are you—?” he asked hopefully but with an increasing edge of chilling resignation, knowing his client nearly as well as he had his ex-wives.

Carla nodded.

“Yes, Irving, I am serious,” she said. “I will never deceive you or play some odd practical joke.”

“Tell me that, at least, he’s a senior. Please tell me that, my dear.”

“I can’t.”

She reached out, placed her right hand on the back of his left.

“He’s a music teacher at college…” she said rather sheepishly.

“Holy Mother of—!” he started to shout but stopped when he saw a monsignor, who was sitting at the next table, turn around and glare at him.

For a moment Irving was quiet, and Carla knew why. He was already planning what might be called damage control.

“I can imagine what the tabloids will do with this if…when they find out,” he said, an old stutter long ago conquered threatening to resurrect itself. “But then, if you never see him again, the chances are—”

Carla knew the routine, knew the kind of pressures Irving was going to put on her so that she would cave in and do what he wanted.

“I will not stop seeing Kyle,” she said firmly but without raising her voice.

“Is he that good in bed, Carla?”

She might have slapped anybody else who would talk to her like that but she knew Irving Chicolte as well as he knew her, and she had come to accept such outspokenness as evidence of his honesty, even if it said a great deal about his lack of taste.

“We’ve not beentogether that way,” she said.

“Soon, I’m sure,” he muttered.

“No, Irving, now stop it!”

He cleared his throat and added, “But, dear, dear Carla, that’s what everyonewill be saying. You’re deceiving yourself if you think otherwise. At this point in your career, do you want people suspecting that you are running around with a college kid? It might send the message that you couldn’t get anybody your own age.”

Carla knew that Irving would not beat around the bush when she told him. And she was prepared.

“He teaches at a college, Irving. He’s not a student,” Carla replied patiently. “There’s something else,” she added.

“Not again!” he exclaimed. “You’re going to tell me that he’s got a prison record, but you love him despite everything.”

“Irving…” she tried to say.

“How can I ever explain this to our friends, let alone our enemies, of which there are a few in this town?”

“Irving, please!”

“Don’t you realize what is happening to your career now that you are an Academy Award winner?”

Carla reached out and put the palm of her hand over his mouth.

“Irving, enough!”

He quieted down.

“Any more surprises?” he asked, fully expecting that she might have a few more up her sleeve.

“He’s younger than me, yes. But not all that much. And he’s gorgeous,” she said, “and the absolute best male country music singer I have ever heard. I want you to meet Kyle Rivers, and see if you agree that he could be very big.”

“Is it love, Carla,” Irving asked cynically, “or a career opportunity?”

She had been all in favor of her agent’s renowned outspokenness until he said that.

“If I didn’t find you so adorable,” she said, “I’d fire you right now.”

“If I didn’t think of you with so much affection,” he told her, “I would go without protest, sighing with relief all the way to my attorney’s office, my dear.”

“So, will you go?”

“To Nashville?”

“Yes, Nashville.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“With less than the greatest anticipation.”

“Why do you say that, Irving? I’ve not seen quite this attitude coming from you before now.”

“I think, in your present state, you would find a hog caller good enough to audition for the Metropolitan Opera!”

He smiled at her, then added, “Will I like this Kyle Rivers, Carla? I mean, really like him?”

“You will find him charming and talented.”

“Is it love, Carla? Can you be sure? I couldn’t bear to see you hurt.”

Carla smiled softly, her eyes shining. He had his answer.

Car horns were honking.

“We’re blocking the driveway,” she said. “Let’s go, Irving.”

He half smiled, nodded and drove away.

“I’ll ask my secretary to make the travel arrangements,”

Irving said as they approached his office where one of her own cars was parked in the building’s garage.

“The Opryland Hotel would be fine.”

“When should we plan on going?”

“This is Monday. How about leaving on Thursday?”

“Roxie and I could make it earlier, if you want.”

“Okay, Wednesday would be fine.”

He was getting out of the car when Carla reached over and grabbed his sleeve.

“Irving?” she asked.

“Yes, Carla?” he said, sounding a bit weary.

“Can I tell Kyle when I call him later?”

“About us coming? That would be fine.”

“No, about your prayer need.”

He hesitated, then acknowledged, “I haven’t had a Christian offer to pray for me or my loved ones lately.”

“I am now a professing Christian, Irving.”

“For how long?”

“Just a few weeks.”

“You might get over it soon then.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said sincerely.

He kissed her on the cheek, then got out of his car and walked up the sloping driveway to the pavement outside. His shoulders were slumped, his walk shuffling.

“Irving!” she shouted. “I love you!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied, waving back at her, and then was gone from sight, swallowed up by the glare of the sun as he emerged from the relative darkness of the garage, an aging veteran of the Hollywood entertainment world, able to make the most arrogant stars and studio executives dread his ire but now tired of going to “war” every day and being so wired at night that a restful sleep is something he cherished almost as much as life itself.

Carla called Kyle as soon as she was inside her apartment, which was more like a miniature mansion, with black Italian marble floors, white imported furniture and a large crystal chandelier.

“Did you go and tell Irving that you and I were getting married?” he asked.

She knew that Kyle, always a model of directness, would ask that very question.

“I didn’t have the nerve frankly,” Carla replied honestly.

“He’s been so much a part of your life for so long. Shouldn’t you avoid giving him any surprises?”

Carla had been asking herself that same question.

“I want him to meet you first,” she said a bit defensively.

“If that’s what you think is best.”

Not again! her mind shouted. You keep doing that.

Again and again…sometimes when Kyle was acquiescing too readily, it seemed as though this indicated weakness on his part, or that he was afraid of losing her if he disagreed about anything. She had never found indecisive yesmen very attractive for long.

“I wish you would stop that,” she told him at last.

“What, Carla? Stop what?”

“Always giving in to me. You really can disagree with what I say, you know, and it won’t mean that we are going to split up.”

“I know that.”

As always, his voice disarmed her. The first time they spoke weeks before, and during that conversation, the circumstances were not any different. Kyle’s deep, warm voice had an amazing effect on her. It was not harsh at all, as though coming from some macho football hero whose vocal cords had been affected by chewing tobacco and booze, but, rather, an inexpressibly sexy one that seemed almost like a caressing hand. But she was determined not to let it detour her from finding out what she wanted.

“Then why did you leave it up to me again?” she asked, trying very hard not to sound peevish.

Carla knew how much she was gambling by confronting him just then.

“Irving is your agent, your friend, has been for all these years,” he stated. “How can I help you with a man I’ve not even met?”

That made sense but the same voice she loved to hear was also one that showed naked emotion, making it easy for her to read, and so she asked, “Is there something more, though, Kyle, now if not other times?”

“Yes, there is. Maybe I am afraid of losing you. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lost someone I loved,” he admitted.

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