Cecily Evans had managed the Balm in Gilead Center for Rest for eight years, and she’d owned it on her own for three, ever since her original partner retired. She had enough experience now to know when she was about to get dumped.

Bob was the pastor of a large church in Raleigh, and he’d been holding his leadership retreats at Balm in Gilead since they’d first opened their doors. He’d been one of the first people to take a chance on a newly opened spiritual and physical rest center—something no one had ever heard of—and she’d gone out of her way to show her appreciation by always giving him his choice of April weeks for his retreat and giving him a substantial discount on the rooms no matter how booked they were.

But after all these years, he was about to dump her. She could hear it in his voice.

She made a point of settling her features into her normal, tranquil expression—even though their conversation was on the phone and he couldn’t see her—because she didn’t want even a trace of her rising emotions to be heard in her voice.

“I do understand that your leadership retreat is still six months away,” she said, smiling intentionally at her empty office so her tone would reflect it. “But we’re booked solid a year in advance now since we were featured on Faith and Fabulousness a few months ago, and I just need to confirm your reservation.”

Bob hemmed and hawed on the other end of the call, obviously uncomfortable and not wanting to provide the needed confirmation.

The tense feeling got heavier in her chest. “You’ve come every year since we’ve been open, but I don’t like to assume your reservation is confirmed. If you’re rethinking it this year…”

“We’re just looking at other options. You know how people are. Always finding something to complain about.”

Cecily did know how people were, but she couldn’t help but wonder what the specific complaints were about Balm in Gilead. If she’d known, she would have tried to address them.

“And it’s awfully expensive,” Bob added.

“I’m already giving you a discount because you’ve been so loyal to us from the beginning. I can’t reduce the price any more and still meet expenses.”

“I know. I know. We’re just looking at other options.” He sounded like he thought she would be offended.

She wasn’t offended. This was a business, after all.

But she was a little bit sad.

She’d gone out of her way to remain loyal to Bob and his church because they’d always been loyal to her.

“I completely understand,” she said after taking a moment to ensure none of her emotional response was evident in her voice. “I just need to know one way or the other whether to confirm your reservation. If you can let me know by the end of week?”

Bob agreed, sounding relieved at the reprieve from the final decision.

Cecily hung up and stared at her computer screen, on which was displayed her perfectly organized email inbox. She breathed a few times, talking herself down from the irrational feeling of betrayal.

It was silly. Bob could make whatever decisions were best for him and his church. It wasn’t personal.

It wasn’t personal.

And just because she’d made financial sacrifices to make sure she could offer Bob the lowest rates possible for his retreat didn’t mean he’d necessarily take his leadership team to Balm in Gilead every year.

When he canceled—and she knew now he would—the empty slot in her schedule would be filled in less than a day. She had a waiting list since the center had gotten so much good press after being featured on an incredibly popular Christian blog.

It wasn’t the loss of business that bothered Cecily.

She shook off the feeling of loss and pulled up Facebook on her computer, hoping for something to distract her.

The first thing she saw was a picture her sister, Mercy, had posted of her and her husband on their vacation to Hawaii.

Their father had died in his sixties, when the girls had been in college, and their mother had died a couple of years ago. So Mercy was all Cecily had left of a family. For a long time both the sisters had been single, so they’d always traveled together. They were just a year apart, and they’d always been close. But a year ago—at thirty-five—Mercy had gotten married, so Cecily had lost her vacation partner.

She was happy for her sister—of course she was—but it was hard not to feel a very small sense of loss.

Cecily was thirty-seven and single. She was happy with her life and professionally successful. It had been nice to have someone to go on vacations with, but naturally Mercy would now take vacations with her husband.

Cecily scrolled through her Facebook feed, looking at pictures and reading posts from her friends. Nearly all of them had spouses and families, people who walked through life with them.

Cecily had a lot of friends—from college, from graduate school, from seminary, from professional circles, from the local church she attended. But they all had their own lives, and she was rather isolated on the Outer Banks, which was made up of very small towns and mostly populated by tourists and weekenders.

Living here full time as a single, professional woman didn’t make a social life easy.

She hadn’t dated in two years.

If she wanted to have dinner with a friend, she had to either drive at least two hours or else plan well in advance so they could make arrangements for their families.

She’d read research study after research study about how spending time on social media made people feel lonelier and more discontent than they otherwise would have felt, and she realized that effect was happening to her at the moment.

So she closed down Facebook and breathed deeply, telling herself truths about her life rather than listening to those sneaky lies that kept whispering she was alone and she didn’t really matter to anyone.

When her phone rang, she was happy to see it was Kara, one of the few single women who lived in the area and whom she could legitimately call a friend.

“Hi, Kara,” she said, smiling as she picked up the phone.

“Cecily! It’s so good to talk to you. How are you doing?” Kara’s voice was cheerful, bubbly, excited—as it always was—and it immediately made Cecily feel better.

Kara had been living in Charlotte, but a few months ago she’d moved to the Outer Banks to live with her aging parents. She didn’t currently have a job, but she spent a lot of time working on her lifestyle blog, which seemed to be modeled after Faith and Fabulousness and which Cecily knew Kara had big ambitions for. She was just a couple of years younger than Cecily, and Kara had made a point of getting to know her.

Cecily had appreciated it.

They chatted for a few minutes, and then Kara asked about scheduling a photo shoot for an article she was writing on Balm in Gilead. Cecily didn’t normally let random bloggers get privileged access to the center, but Kara was a friend and so she was making an exception.

They left the date open for sometime next week, and Kara said she’d let her know once she’d talked to the photographer she was going to use.

It was all perfectly amicable—nothing unusual or surprising in the conversation.

“Fabulous!” Kara exclaimed. “You’re awesome, absolutely incredible. You know that, don’t you?”

Cecily chuckled. “Is there any good way to answer that question?”

“You don’t have to answer. I just have to say it. So thank you so much, and I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

Cecily said goodbye and put down her phone, feeling that something had been off about the conversation. There hadn’t been anything obvious, but she felt uncomfortable, slightly rattled, disturbed in the way she was when she’d intuited unpleasant undercurrents but hadn’t yet processed them enough to identify.

She sat for a minute, thinking over everything that had been said and what might have been implied. Then she gave her head a firm shake, brushing off the discomfort.

She was probably just imagining it.

Standing up, she smoothed down her pale blue shirtdress and walked out of her office. Zeke was cleaning the pool this morning, so she headed outside to the back of the building.

She found him bending over at the edge of the pool with a net, trying to fish out a few stray leaves. Today he wore a pair of beat-up camouflage trousers and a bright purple T-shirt.

The shirt was a little tight, and her eyes focused unconsciously on the size of his biceps beneath his sleeves and the impressive muscle development of his abdomen, which she could clearly see beneath the stretched fabric.

Despite his hideous taste in clothes, he had a very fine body. No doubt about that. It was big and strong and hard and masculine.

For a moment Cecily had trouble lifting her eyes to his face.

When she did, he was peering at her with startlingly blue eyes above his unkempt beard. He didn’t say anything, but he was clearly waiting for her to speak.

She cleared her throat, telling herself to get it together.

This was Zeke. Zeke. He worked for her.

And even if he didn’t, he was romantically unavailable in every way.

She really couldn’t be ogling his body.

When several seconds had passed and she hadn’t yet found her voice, Zeke’s thick, dark eyebrows arched inquisitively. “Something wrong?”

“Not at all,” she said quickly, pleased when her voice sounded mostly cool, slightly prim. Her regular voice. “Of course not.”

“What do you want then?”

The tone and words would have been rude had any of her other employees used them, but with Zeke it was just everyday conversation. “I wanted to tell you that Kara is arranging for a photo shoot next week, so we’ll need to have the place in great shape. Do you think you’ll have the garden ready by then?”

Zeke scowled.

“If you need extra help, we can hire—”

“No!”

Cecily lifted her eyebrows since his voice had been rougher than normal.

“I don’t need extra help,” he muttered in a moderated tone.

Zeke was responsible for nearly all the upkeep of the building and grounds for Balm in Gilead. He’d been working for her since the center opened. He supervised the housekeeping staff, and he maintained most of the outdoor areas himself, only bringing in extra hands a few times a year for the big jobs.

“All right. I’m sure everything will be perfect. Kara said…” When she saw Zeke scowl again—a more intentional scowl than his typical bad-tempered expression—she trailed off. After a moment she asked, “Do you have a problem with the photo shoot?”

He frowned.

Reading his expression and understanding that he didn’t care about the photo shoot, she tried again. “Do you have a problem with Kara?”

He snarled, his lip curling up and causing one side of his beard to lift.

That was it then. He didn’t like Kara.

“What is your issue with Kara?” she asked, brushing a few stray hairs back into her low bun.

Zeke didn’t answer. He’d leaned over the pool again and was fishing out the last leaf with his net.

Cecily found herself staring at his tight butt beneath his trousers before she realized what she was doing. Then she immediately averted her gaze. “Zeke, Kara is my friend.”

He snarled again, this time paired with a low sound in his throat, almost like a growl.

For no good reason Cecily was feeling rattled again. Zeke would never be an easy man or an easy employee, but she knew him well by now. They’d worked together for years. She could usually predict his moods, his opinions, which issues were likely to get under his skin.

She’d never imagined he’d care anything at all about her friendship with Kara. “She is my friend. Why on earth would you think she shouldn’t be?”

He didn’t answer, of course. He just rolled his eyes at her before pulling the net out of the water.

“Don’t give me that look,” Cecily said, an edge to her voice that was very rarely there. “Believe it or not, I’m not overrun with friends, so I’m not going to—”

“You have plenty of friends,” Zeke snapped, straightening up and facing her directly. “You don’t need her to pretend to be a friend to you.”

Cecily blinked, shocked by both his directness and his uncharacteristic verbosity. “She’s not pretending to be my friend. She actually is.”

“She’s using you.” His eyes were smoldering, and his jaw was clenched beneath his beard. He was always grumpy and never smiled, but she’d rarely seen him so intense about anything.

His intensity was creating jitters in her belly, her chest, that she had absolutely no idea what to do with.

She didn’t react to Zeke this way.

She just didn’t.

“That’s ridiculous,” she replied, managing to maintain the calm she always prided herself on. “Why would she be using me?”

“To get something. People like her always do.”

Cecily actually knew what he was referring to. Kara was one of those people pleasers who occasionally drifted toward brownnosing. Cecily had never been like that herself. But that didn’t mean Kara was a bad person or untrustworthy. “She would have no reason to use me. She might not be perfect, but nobody is. She’s my friend.”

Zeke made another low growl.

Cecily tried very hard not to shiver at the sound of it. What on earth was wrong with her today, responding to Zeke in that way?

She took a deep breath and blew it out. Then she squared her shoulders and said calmly, “Regardless of what you believe, Kara is my friend. I’m not going to dump her because you’ve developed this irrational antipathy toward her.”

Zeke snarled.

“So you’ll have the building and grounds ready for the photo shoot next week? It will probably be Wednesday or Thursday.”

He snarled again but with a slight inclination of his head.

“Very good. Thank you.”

She turned on her heel and walked away from him, wondering why her heart was racing and her breath was coming out in little pants. Her cheeks were flushed, and they seemed to get even hotter as she became aware of them.

This was absurd.

He was Zeke.

Just Zeke.

He wasn’t the kind of man that appealed to her, the kind that was likely to get her blood pumping this way. He was ornery and frustrating and hardly ever talked. He wasn’t even attractive.

Okay, that last part wasn’t true. He had a little something going in the looks department, despite his horrible clothes and lumberjack beard. She’d been noticing it more and more often over the past year, although she always tried to push away the thought immediately. Zeke was definitely attractive.

But still…

Most of the time, she didn’t even really like him.

His wife had died several years ago, just before he’d started working for Cecily, and he’d never gotten over the loss. He’d retreated from the world completely, and he wasn’t going to come back.

Not for anyone.

Not for her.

And she wouldn’t even want him to.

Their working relationship was good. She wasn’t sure how Balm in Gilead would survive without him.

That meant she overlooked his bad attitude most of the time.

And that also meant she couldn’t start seeing him in any other way.

***

That evening, Cecily was still feeling a little blah and a little rattled, so she closed down her work email earlier than usual and took a long, hot bath with a glass of white wine.

She was feeling better afterward as she pulled on a tank top and a pair of pale blue cotton pajama pants. She glanced at her phone since she’d heard the email notification chime a couple of times, and when she saw whom the emails were from, she pulled them up.

The first one was from Vivian Harper, who had been a guest at Balm in Gilead a few months ago and whose story on Faith and Fabulousness had led to the center’s recent burst of popularity. Vivian’s note was short and friendly. She’d recently gotten married to her business partner, Jeff, and they were checking in to see if she had room for them to have a staff retreat at Balm in Gilead next year.

Cecily smiled, feeling a tension in her chest relax a bit at this evidence of appreciation and loyalty.

The other email was from Daniel Duncan, who was a pastor in a small town church in the mountains of North Carolina. He and his wife had visited Balm in Gilead a few months ago for a weekend away, and he was wondering if she’d have any interest in doing a workshop on spiritual rest at his church.

Cecily was asked to do talks and workshops fairly regularly, but she usually turned them down. She didn’t like to travel all the time, and she didn’t like to commit to activities that might distract her from her most important work here at the center.

But she knew from experience that getting away, trying something different, was a good way to break her out of her current mood. Plus she really liked Daniel and his wife, and a month from now would be peak time for the leaves in the mountains.

Since she’d already turned off her computer, she’d wait until tomorrow to get back to him and find out more details, but she was thinking that she might do it.

It might be good to get away for a weekend.

She put her phone down and went back to her bathroom mirror so she could finish combing out her hair.

Her hair was ash blond and reached just past her shoulders. She nearly always pulled it back in a low bun—a rather prim style she’d cultivated when she was younger and had been trying to find a way to approach her clients and the professional world as a young, relatively pretty, blond woman. Everyone found their own way to do this, and hers had been to dress in an old-fashioned style—like a clichéd librarian. She liked her style, and she enjoyed shopping for clothes and shoes. But she also used the primness as a kind of distraction from her sexuality.

It had worked.

Most people she encountered didn’t view her sexually at all.

She reminded herself that this was a good thing.

She stared at herself with loose hair and bare arms and shoulders and was almost surprised that she looked so pretty. She had small bones, and she worked out fairly regularly, so her body was slim and fit. Her hair had a few strands of gray in it, but they blended into the blond and so weren’t particularly noticeable. Her eyes were hazel, and her skin was fair and smooth. She generally liked the way she looked.

It would be nice if there was a man who liked the way she looked as well, but she couldn’t judge her worth or value through that.

She never had. And just because she happened to be in a lonely mood this week didn’t mean she was going to start.

She was giving herself a little pep talk when there was a knock on her front door.

She frowned and glanced at the time. It was just after eight, so it wasn’t really late, but she certainly hadn’t expected any visitors.

When the knock came again, she went to open the door.

She lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of Balm in Gilead. It was separate from the public areas, and only staff ever went down the hall that led to it.

She had no idea who would be knocking now.

When she swung open the door, she blinked when she saw Zeke standing in front of her, a frown on his face and a few damp spots on his T-shirt from sweat.

“Zeke,” she said in surprise.

He stared at her, his eyes running down her body and then back up to her face.

When he just stood there, she prompted, “What’s the matter? Did you need something?”

His eyes traveled up and down her body again.

She glanced down at herself. She was covered mostly appropriately—with more clothes on than people usually wore in the summer or on the beach. But she wasn’t wearing a bra, and the shape of her nipples was visible through the fabric of her top. Her feet were bare, and one of her straps was slipping down over her shoulder.

She might be covered, but she was not quite ready for public viewing.

She cleared her throat and pulled the strap back up her shoulder. She wondered what Zeke was thinking as he stared at her like that.

She really wanted to know.

“Zeke?” she said coolly, mostly to cover her sudden wave of self-consciousness.

He made a strange sound in his throat and yanked his eyes back up to her face. “Sorry. Sorry. I thought you’d be up.”

“I was up. I just took a bath early tonight. Did you need something?”

“You said you needed to talk.”

She’d sent him a text a few hours ago, asking him to come talk to her when he had a minute, and when he didn’t show up immediately, she’d assumed he wouldn’t get the time until tomorrow morning.

“Oh. Oh right. Right.” Realizing she was stammering—which she almost never did—she stepped back to let him into her living room. “Have a seat and I’ll be right back.”

She went to her room to grab a sweater and fully cover herself. A glance in the mirror showed that her cheeks were very pink and there was a strangely wild look in her eyes.

What was wrong with her?

True, she wasn’t in the habit of wearing her pajamas around Zeke, but it wasn’t the end of the world. He dropped by her apartment every now and then when they had something to discuss. They worked together fairly closely and they had for the past eight years.

There was nothing intimate about his sitting on a chair in her living room.

She returned and found him sitting at the small dining table, which was a relief since it meant there could be a table between them. She sat across from him with the cool smile she always used to approach business matters.

He was still staring at her with a strange intensity from above his dark beard, but at least his eyes stayed on her face this time.

She’d learned early on never to waste time trying to make small talk with Zeke. It never went anywhere. So she said, “Matt Friedman came to talk to me this afternoon.”

Zeke grunted. She could see a slight expression of understanding in his eyes, as if he now knew what she was going to say.

“He was very upset, saying you yelled at him earlier and said some very rude and disrespectful things to him.”

Zeke grunted again.

“Is it true?”

“I didn’t raise my voice.”

Cecily nodded. Matt and his wife were staying with them for just the weekend, the trip being funded by the corporation he worked for. He was a man who was obviously used to being in control, and he’d bristled from the beginning at the rules and restraints of the center. She’d hoped Matt had been exaggerating or making it up, but it sounded like his story had been mostly true. “I know Matt can be rather… obnoxious, but I thought we’d talked about your just walking away if one of our guests angered you.”

She hated doing this kind of thing—particularly with Zeke. Usually her staff behaved very well, but some correction or critique was unavoidable. But Zeke was different. He was never nice, and sometimes guests complained about him, but he didn’t usually do something like this, something so out of bounds.

Zeke grunted again, his blue eyes still fixed on her face.

“Is there more to the story?” she asked, genuinely confused.

He didn’t say anything.

She sighed. “If there’s not, then you’re going to have to apologize to Matt. I’m sorry, but you can’t treat guests that way.”

He gave a curt nod and stood up, turning toward the door without another word.

Usually she would have been relieved that an awkward conversation was over, but things didn’t feel right or settled right now.

She stood up too. “Zeke?”

He stopped and turned his head to look back at her over his shoulder.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Zeke didn’t speak for a moment. Then he finally muttered, “He’s a bully.”

“Who was he a bully with?”

“His wife.”

Cecily’s eyes widened. “He was bullying his wife?”

Zeke nodded.

“Physically?”

“Verbally.”

“It was bad?”

Zeke nodded again.

Cecily trusted Zeke—both his judgment and his honesty—more than almost anyone else in the world. She never even doubted that he was telling her the truth.

She let out a breath. “Okay. You don’t have to apologize. Just avoid him until he leaves tomorrow.”

A tension relaxed almost imperceptibly in Zeke’s shoulders, but that was the only sign in his face or body of his response to her decision. “Thanks,” he muttered as he left the room.

Cecily stared at the closed door after he left for a minute, feeling a smile play on the corners of her mouth. Then she actually chuckled.

She should have known that Zeke wouldn’t go beyond the bounds toward a guest without a good reason. He was never polite, but he also didn’t lose control.

She could rely on him in almost every way, and that simply wasn’t true of most people.

As she took off her sweater and looked for a book to read for the evening, she couldn’t help but wonder what Zeke had been thinking when he’d seen her answer the door in her pajamas.

She wondered if he’d thought she looked pretty.

Then she reminded herself that it didn’t matter—she was Zeke’s boss and nothing else—and forced herself to stop replaying it in her mind.