Topaz Heat (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) by Hallee Bridgeman Page A

watched him take a step back. “I’m sorry,” Derrick said. “I …” His face looked into the eyes opening around him and he proclaimed. “Amen. Amen.” Then he rushed from the room. Tony followed him at a more sedate pace. Sarah heard their deep, masculine voices, but could not make out what they said. She felt a burning flush cover her face and reached forward to retrieve the glasses Maxine had set on the table next to her hip.
    “Well,” Robin said, standing and rubbing her hands on the sides of her thighs.
    She didn’t say anything else, and Sarah felt her face burn hotter when Maxine smiled and said, “Well, indeed.”
    The older sisters said nothing else, as if sharing a long kept secret or a private joke. Sarah put her hands against her cheeks which felt hot and damp with tears. “Goodness.”
    Tony came back into the room and cleared his throat. “Derrick had to go.”
    Barry’s bark of laughter made Sarah flinch. “I bet,” he said. He immediately sobered up and looked at Sarah, “Sorry.”
    “No problem,” she whispered as she stood, shakily, to her feet. Maxine stood with her, reaching an arm out to steady her. “Can you drive me home?”
    “Stay here, tonight,” Robin said.
    “I don’t want to.” She had discovered that Maxine and Barry had dropped the kids off with Robin so that they could go to New York for Maxine’s show. “I don’t think I can face the kids in the morning.”
    “This house is big enough that you wouldn’t have to,” Tony observed dryly, by way of teasing Robin.
    Sarah gave a curt shake of her head. “I need to go home.”
    “We can drive you home,” Barry said.
    “I left my purse in my locker at work,” Sarah said.
    “We’ll go there first.”
    She hugged Robin then Tony. “I love you,” she said to them.
    Robin stepped forward and hugged her again. “I love you. Call me if you need me.”
    Sarah knew Robin meant it. Robin had taken care of Sarah from birth. When she was six-years-old, Robin was the one to wake up in the middle of the night to feed the infant Sarah. She was her mother more than the woman who died at the hands of a drug dealer, or the woman who fostered Sarah for the last nine years of her childhood. “I will.”
     

CHAPTER 9

    THE rain from a few days before ended any false hope that the mild autumn weather gave of a perpetual summer. Now a wind howled, blowing the remaining leaves from trees and sending people scurrying indoors. Several miles outside Boston, a cold, foggy mist settled around the mountains, making the world gray and dark.
    Derrick looked straight up the imposing wall of rock in front of him and secured his backpack around his waist. He rolled his head on his neck and shifted his shoulders, shaking his arms and loosening up the muscles. Settling his gear comfortably, he stepped forward and started the climb.
    Up and over, finding purchase for his fingertips and toes and sweating as he pulled his body upward and upward. Thankful for the unwelcoming weather, he had the mountain to himself. Derrick gripped a slate outcrop with the fingers of his right hand and pulled himself up, finding a toehold on the wet rock. The wind picked up a bit, shooting a misty rain against his face. Angry at the slip of his tongue the night before, he barely felt it and just kept moving up the mountain, gradually finding purchase on the wet rock as he made slow progress.
    An hour later, he realized that he couldn’t feel the rock beneath his hand anymore. The cold had numbed his fingertips. Despite the riskiness of coming out alone in this weather in the first place, he wasn’t going to push his luck any further. He found a crevice in the small outcropping and stopped to put on a pair of gloves. He slipped his pack off his back and pulled out his thin cold-weather jacket. In each pocket, he had hand warmers, and he broke them open and shoved his hands into his pockets, immediately feeling the relief of the chemically generated heat.
    He sat