The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 by Susan Meissner, Mindy Starns Clark Page A

pretended I didn’t.
    I heard the mother murmur, “Girls! It’s not polite to stare.”
    I raised my head to smile at them and wordlessly assure the mother I wasn’t offended. Sometimes when I was out in the big world, people stared. I was used to it.
    “I’m so sorry!” the mother said when our eyes met.
    “It’s quite all right.”
    “They’ve just never seen an Amish person before. Well, except for on TV.”
    I smiled and nodded. I had no ready comeback for that comment.
    “Actually, I haven’t either,” the mother added. “We live in Los Angeles, so…”
    “I see.”
    “I didn’t think you could fly.”
    “He can fly ?” the younger of the girls asked, wide eyed.
    The mother laughed. So did I.
    “Where’s your buggy?” the older one said, quite serious.
    “Back at the farm.”
    “How about your horse?” said the other.
    I sat up straight and feigned looking around. “I’m not sure. Last I saw, he was having a little trouble getting through security.”
    She hesitated and then giggled, not quite sure if I was kidding or not.
    The older one rolled her eyes at the naïveté of her little sister. “Do you want to see my iPad?”
    “Uh, sure.”
    While we waited to board, she showed me photos of her family and friends, a word game, an interactive map of Hershey Park, and a sketch pad where I could draw with my finger. The girl seemed intent on introducing me to every technologically wonderful thing the device could do, as if my spaceship had crash-landed here and she were welcoming me to her planet.
    When we finally boarded, my row was way past that of the little girls, but they knelt on their seats, facing backward, to look at me and wave before it was time to buckle in.
    Everyone on the plane seemed to be looking at me.
    The man in the Amish clothes.
    The Amish man.

N INE
    T he moment I stepped off the plane at John Wayne International, all that was home to me seemed far more distant than the thousands of miles that now lay between us. I was keenly aware of how I stood out in my Amish clothes, even after I took off my hat and carried it under my arm. At least the pace of the hundreds of people all around me was harried and hurried, which meant that most of them were too busy getting somewhere or staring at their cell phones to actually pay me much notice.
    The last time I had been to California, my dad was stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, on loan to the Marines as a helicopter maintenance instructor. He and Liz and Brady were living on base, which in a way seemed as secluded and protective an environment as the community back home. The only people who lived on base or had any business being there were other military members and their families. And because the base was located in a sprawling stretch of wilderness between San Diego and Los Angeles, it had been easy to forget I was smack-dab in the middle of the metropolitan universe of Southern California—though day trips to Disneyland and SeaWorld and crowded beaches quickly reminded me of where I was. My dad had since retired a full colonel after twenty-five years and now worked for a Los Angeles-based defense contractor. Dad and Liz had bought a house in Newport Beach—a beach community in the suburbs south of Los Angeles—two years ago and, from what I could gather from our infrequent phone calls, he had slowly adjusted to his new life as a civilian.
    I hadn’t had to check a bag, but because I was to meet my father at baggage claim, I followed the signs there, searching for him in the sea of faces as I made my way. I stood near the carousel to wait, where I met up again with the woman and her daughters. I helped them retrieve their heavy luggage as it came around, and when the mother thanked me, she asked if I needed a ride somewhere. I thanked her in return but assured her my father lived in Orange County and was coming to meet me. That seemed to take her by surprise. She probably assumed that an Amish man like me surely had