Redeeming-Love-By-Francine-Rivers

R E D E E M I N G L O V E
Her face went deathly white. “It’s been over three years. He can’t still be
waiting.”
“He is.”
Paul’s words struck her squarely in the chest. Oh, God. She shut her eyes
for a moment. She stood and turned away. She pushed the lace curtain back
to stare out the window. It was raining. She couldn’t breathe past the pain in
her chest. Her eyes were on fire.
Paul saw the way her hand clutched the curtain until her knuckles were
white. “I think I understand,” he said bleakly. “You figured if you went away,
he would turn to Miriam. Eventually he would fall in love with her and forget
about you. Isn’t that it?” Hadn’t he expected that to happen as well?
Hadn’t the possibility torn at his guts?
“He would have.”
She didn’t even have to say it: “If you hadn’t interfered.” Once, Paul had
said to Miriam that he didn’t think Angel had the capacity for pain or love.
Those words came back to taunt him now. How could he have been so
wrong about her? When she turned and looked at him, he was ashamed.
“Miriam is perfect for him,” Angel said. “She’s the sort of wife he needs.
She’s pure and intelligent and tender. She has a tremendous capacity for
love.”
He heard so much more than words this time. “That’s all very true, but
Michael loves you.”
“He wants children, and Miriam could have given them to him. They
understand one another.”
“Because they’re friends.”
Her eyes flashed. “They could have been more.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, facing his own selfishness. “If I’d had the
courage you did and if I’d left. I didn’t. I couldn’t.” Until this moment he’d
thought it was because he loved Miriam too much, but he saw clearly now
that he had loved himself more. Angel had understood a higher quality of
love: sacrifice.
Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands. Now he knew why
Miriam had been so insistent that he be the one to find her. “I was wrong,”
he groaned, “I was wrong about you the whole time.” His vision blurred. He
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