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Redeeming-Love-By-Francine-Rivers

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R E D E E M I N G L O V E

“Does it bother you?” she asked.

“What?”

“When men stare at me.”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “When they’re looking at you like an object

and not a human being with feelings.” His mouth tipped ruefully. “Or a wife

in love with her husband.”

She turned the wedding ring on her finger. “They never look at my

hands, Michael.”

“Maybe we should put the ring in your nose.”

Glancing up, she saw his teasing smile and laughed. “Yes, or a large one

around my neck. Maybe that would keep them away.”

A long time later, as Michael lay sleeping beside her, Angel listened to the

night breeze stirring the wind chimes outside the window. The ever changing

melodies were soothing.

The new hay smelled sweet beneath her, sweeter still because it was partly

due to her labor that it was there. She and Michael had harvested the hay

together. What grueling work! She had been so fascinated watching Michael

swing the great scythe in wide, smooth strokes, dropping the golden grasses.

She raked it into piles, and they pitched it into the back of the wagon to be

taken and stored in the barn. The animals would have hay through the cold

winter months.

Everything Michael did had purpose. She thought of her own life and

how meaningless and miserable it had been before him. Her very reason to

be alive now depended on him. And Michael depended on the earth, the

rains, the warmth of the sun. And his God.

Especially his God.

I’d be dead by now if Michael hadn’t come back for me. I’d be rotting in a shallow,

unmarked grave.

She was consumed with gratitude and filled with an aching humility that

this man loved her. Why, of all the other women of the world, had he chosen

her? She was so undeserving. It was inconceivable.

But I am glad, so glad he did. And I’ll never again do anything to make him

sorry. Oh, God, I swear.…

A sweet fragrance filled the darkened cabin, a fragrance that defied defin-

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