Coming Home: (Contemporary Christian Romance Boxed Set): Three Stories of Love, Faith, Struggle & Hope

  The Coming Home Collection

  Three Stories of Love, Faith,

  Struggle & Hope

  Debra Ullrick, Staci Stallings, Debra Lynn Collins

  Published for a Limited Time

  In a Joint Partnership With

  ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS ~

  Déjà vu Bride by Debra Ullrick

  Deep in the Heart by Staci Stallings

  Cowgirls Don’t Cry by Debra Lynn Collins

  ~*~*~

  Déjà vu Bride

  Copyright © Debra Ullrick, 2014

  All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne, Universal and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  1st edition published by Spirit Light Publishing 2008

  2nd edition

  Published by: Sweet Impressions Publishing

  Cover by Lynnette Bonner

  Image ©BigStock-48847910

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-615-25201-8

  Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, The New King James Version™ Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to John Seasock, driver of the Batman monster truck, and two-time Monster Jam World Finals champion in 2007 and 2008. Congratulations, John! Thank you for sharing your expertise with me, for making the monster truck scenes come to life, and for patiently answering my bazillion questions. To learn more about monster trucks visit John’s website at www.JohnSeasock.com

  SPECIAL THANKS TO

  Staci Stallings. Thank you for believing in me, and for all the boo-coo hours you’ve spent editing my books, encouraging me, teaching me, and mentoring me. And not just in my writing but in my Christian walk, and life in general. My life is richer and happier because of you. Thanks for constantly directing me to the only One who truly matters. I love you and appreciate you more than words can say.

  It is my honor to dedicate the ministry part of this story to you and to Raef. And you know why.

  Greg S. Davis, photographer and airbrush painter extraordinaire, thanks for sharing your vast knowledge of airbrush painting with me. To see Greg’s beautiful photography and airbrush paintings visit his website at: www.gsdavisphotography.com

  Tamarack in Beckley, West Virginia, thank you for the beautiful pictures and valuable information you sent me. I hope I did Tamarack proud. And if I misplaced something, I apologize ahead of time.

  Rick Ullrick, thank you, honey, for supporting me and for loving me, even when I was unlovable.

  And last, but definitely not least, to my Lord and Savior, Jesus, thank you so much for loving me enough to die for me.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication & Special Thanks

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Also Available from Debra Ullrick

  About the Author

  Déjà vu Bride

  LIFE IS FULL OF CHOICES

  When tragedy strikes, we have a choice to turn to God or away from God.

  I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life.

  Deuteronomy 30:19b

  Prologue

  Olivia Roseman peeled back the curtain and pressed her head against the marred glass of her apartment window. Tears of rain poured down from the dark afternoon sky. She tried to shake the foreboding heaviness that pressed in on her from all sides but it clung to her like a blood-sucking leech. The last time she’d felt like this, something horrible had happened to someone she loved. She could only hope that wasn’t the case this time. Too many people she cherished were already dead.

  Dead.

  That one word sent a tsunami of fresh grief gushing over her, sucking her in to its path of destruction like it had so many times before. She tried hard not to focus on the ominous intruder enshrouding her. But no matter how hard she tried, the bleak cloud of doom lingered like the unwelcome flood waters outside.

  Moisture filled her eyes, she blinked it away.

  The loud ringing of her telephone jarred her body.

  She gawked at the antiquated device as if it were a poisonous snake ready to strike.

  Dread, familiar and unwanted, flooded every part of her being.

  Four rings later, she knew she couldn’t avoid it or the bad news that was certain to come, so she released the tattered gold curtain, letting it fall back into place.

  She inched her way toward the phone, gulping in several deep breaths, and forcing as much courage into herself as she could muster.

  Receiver in hand, she slowly pressed it against her ear. “Hello.”

  “Livvy?”

  Olivia’s heart skipped at the familiar breathy voice. “Hammond?” she squealed, pressing the phone tighter to her ear as if that would somehow bring him closer to her.

  “No. It’s me. Haskell.” A heavy sigh accompanied his answer.

  “Oh.” Disappointment plopped into Olivia’s heart. She braced herself against the dilapidated desk, feeling as if they would both crash to the floor at any moment.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t returned any of your calls.” His tone was so soft she barely heard him.

  “Why haven’t you?” Olivia knew she sounded perturbed, but the frustration she’d felt every time she called and he “wasn’t available” angered her even through her grief. He was avoiding her, and she wanted to know why.

  “I’ll explain it someday, but not right now. Listen, the reason I’m calling is to let you know that I’ve received news about—”

  “Hammond,” Olivia blurted, bolting away from the desk. “You have news about Hammond?”

  “Yes.”

  “What news? What have you heard?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not good, Liv. They’ve found Hammond’s plane.”

  “Hamm—Hammond’s plane?” She put her hand behind her, searching for the wobbly chair, then lowered herself onto its hard surface. The words she never wanted to ask slipped past her tongue in a hoarse whisper. “Is he…?”

  “No.”

  She sat up straight as that one little word sent a spark of hope into her threadbare heart. “He’s not dead?”

  “I—I don’t know. His bod—he wasn’t in the plane.” The confusion and sadness in Haskell’s voice seeped into her, and her heart went out to him.

  After all, he and Hammond had been inseparable. When you saw one, the other was likely to be nearby. Born only minutes apart, they shared the same hazel eyes, light brown hair, tiny cleft chin, an
d low timber voice. This had to be killing him as much as it was her.

  Olivia brushed her fingers over her eyes, down her cheeks, and over her chin. While she hated to ask Haskell her next two questions, for her own sanity’s sake, she had to know about her missing fiancé. “Then where is he, Haskell, and where did they find his plane?”

  “It’s lying on the side of Rock Cliff Canyon in Colorado.”

  Lying on its side? Olivia gulped back the lump forming in her throat. Her soul went numb as she tried to maintain some semblance of sanity long enough to make sense of what he was telling her.

  “The officials said the only thing that kept the aircraft from slipping off into the river below were the trees.” He sniffed. “They also said…”

  The rest of the conversation blurred as Haskell’s words sunk in…

  …aircraft lying on its side…

  …river below…

  …body nowhere in sight...

  Olivia’s stomach heaved.

  Her hand flew to her mouth.

  She swallowed several times, forcing the burning bile back into her stomach.

  This was déjà vu all over again. At ten years old, she’d heard those same words when her parents had flown in their friends’ private plane, and it had crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. They’d never found their bodies either.

  “No,” she whimpered, shaking her head. Please, not again. “I’m sorry,” she interrupted Haskell. “But I have to go.”

  “I’m so sorry, Livvy. I know how much you loved him. I did too.” Haskell’s weepy voice sent Olivia over the edge.

  “Good—goodbye.” She placed the phone in its cradle, her arms fell limp at her sides.

  Crumpling onto the lumpy rollaway bed, she buried her face in her pillow and wept bitter tears.

  An eternity later, when there were no more tears left, Olivia rolled over and sat up. Her eyes stung, and her head throbbed. She lifted the picture of Hammond from its home on the rickety nightstand and lovingly ran her fingers over his face. She closed her eyes and clutched the picture to her chest. A lone tear trickled down her cheek.

  Oh, Hammond. My precious, Hammond. Why did you fly when they warned you not to?

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. She knew why.

  Hammond loved adventure. At one time, she had too. But her adventurous spirit had disappeared with him. If only he would have listened to her.

  If only God would have listened to her.

  But He hadn’t.

  The rejection she felt from God not answering her prayer stabbed painful daggers into her soul, slicing it and shredding it until it bled the life out of her. Once again someone she loved had been ripped from her. And once again she was left with the unbearable pain of losing someone she loved.

  Her eyes journeyed heavenward. “How could You allow this to happen, God? I trusted You.” Olivia didn’t even try to keep the anger from her voice. “I did everything right this time. I prayed. I believed. I stood on Your promises. I even called several prayer lines and asked them to agree with me that Hammond would be found safe and sound. And yet You still let him die. Why, Lord? Why?”

  Just how much more did she have to endure in this lifetime? Or more to the point, how much more could she endure without completely falling apart?

  Olivia jerked the picture away from her chest and slammed it face down on the nightstand. The piercing crack echoed in the room. Pain sliced through her already throbbing head. She raised the picture and turned it over, marveling at how her life resembled the mess staring back at her, broken, shattered, and beyond repair.

  Her eyes stung as if someone had scraped sandpaper across them. On weak legs, she wobbled the few steps to her bathroom and opened the rinky-dink linen cabinet. The only hinge holding it together broke loose, and it flew from her hand and landed in the turquoise bathtub. The reverberating bang caused her head to throb even worse. Olivia closed her eyes. What else could possibly go wrong?

  She grabbed a washcloth, turned the spigot, and placed the shabby cloth under the running water. Her gaze snagged on her reflection in the mirror. Red blotches dotted her face and puffy bloodshot eyes stared back at her.

  Several wobbly turns of the sprocket-like sink handle and the water stopped running, except for the perpetual, irritating drip. Olivia squeezed the excess water from the washcloth, pressed it against her eyes, and allowed the coolness to seep into them.

  Minutes later when warmth replaced the coolness in the washrag, she folded it and laid it in on the rim of her sink. She reached for the Tylenol bottle, dumped three pills in her hand, and set it back on her makeshift shelf above the washbasin. A cockroach scurried by her hand, and she jerked back. “Ewww. Gross.” Olivia cringed as she watched the disgusting invader fall over the edge and into the rust-stained sink. No matter how long she lived in this dive, she never got used to the bugs or the gross, irremovable lime deposits from previous tenants, the peeled wallpaper, cracked linoleum, brown stained 70’s orange and gold carpet or the musty smell.

  This repulsive place was just another reminder of her unanswered prayers—of God’s abandonment of her. Right then and there, Olivia determined to live her life without God’s aid; and she’d start right now by making some drastic changes. “Goodbye, Wheeling. Hello, Charity, West Virginia.”

  Chapter One

  Erik Cole stepped around the corner at Cole Chevrolet and sucked in a sharp breath. He stopped so abruptly that he almost bumped into himself. Woo wee. Surely she isn’t my next appointment. He should have paid closer attention when his secretary had told him about his two o’clock. But no-o, his mind had been on the next monster truck race down in Shreveport, Louisiana. As far as he knew his interview was with some guy named Ollie. This gal was definitely no Ollie. His heart shifted into high gear.

  Glancing around to make sure no one else was watching him, he peeked through the glass door and took in the sight of her. With her back ramrod straight and her arms crossed, she stared at the wall. Her light caramel colored hair ran past her shoulders, over her elbows, and down to her waist, reminding him of a waterfall. Unlike some of the sickeningly skinny models on the cover of Monster Truck Magazine, this gal was round and shapely and had curves in all the right places.

  “Why don’t you go in and introduce yourself?”

  Erik jumped. Heat rose from his neck all the way to his scalp. He turned and faced his mom’s sister. “Hi, Aunt Adell. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” He smiled tenderly at his favorite aunt, who resembled his mother with her long bangs blending into a shoulder length, flip style hair-do and her smiling brown eyes. Eyes so like his mother’s and his other three siblings. How he missed his family. Times like this, he questioned the sanity of moving from Alabama to West Virginia. But he had grown so tired of the everyday ho-hum of his job and had craved some challenge in his life. West Virginia had definitely proven to be a challenge—in more ways than one.

  But it wasn’t just boredom and the need for a challenge that had caused him to make the drastic move. Shortly after his sister Camara’s wedding, a restlessness had developed in his spirit and he knew God was about to ask Him to do something big. When he attended the monster truck rally at the Charleston Civic Center, the friendly people and the rugged beauty of his mother’s birth state had reeled him in. That, and a “knowing” in his spirit that a move to West Virginia was the answer to his restlessness. So, before he knew it, he’d said goodbye to his precious family and Swamper City, Alabama, and moved to Charity, West Virginia, where he joined the wonderful, proud family of mountaineers.

  Inwardly he chuckled. One of the first things his aunt had warned him about was to never call West Virginians hillbillies, but mountaineers. The second thing she’d told him was, contrary to popular belief, most West Virginians were not a bunch of backward uneducated hillbillies. That most were indeed well-educated and very Godly. Although he had only lived here for a brief while, he had to agree with his aunt. The people here did their best to m
ake Erik feel welcome and a part of their family. As hard as they tried though, it still wasn’t the same as having his own family around. He especially missed his little sister Camara. His chest heaved with loneliness for her.

  His aunt must have sensed his homesickness because she set the tin box on his outer office window ledge and wrapped her arms around him in a motherly hug. Cinnamon and spice filled his nostrils.

  “You miss your family, don’t you?”

  Erik smiled and slowly nodded. “I do. But having you around makes me less homesick.”

  “Oh tootles.” She waved his comment away, blushing.

  Erik nervously glanced over his shoulder.

  Her attention followed his. “Who’s that little beauty?”

  “She’s my next appointment.”

  “Well, then. I’d better not keep you.” The tinkling lilt in his aunt’s voice and the twinkle in her eye gave evidence to the fact that somehow she knew he was attracted to the long-haired beauty sitting in his outer office. Was he that transparent? Or was it something about older women that they could read minds? Whatever it was, it made him nervous. He didn’t want people knowing his private thoughts.

  She reached for the tin and handed it to him. “I just stopped by to give you these. I thought you might enjoy some pumpkin-apple cookies. They were your mother’s favorite.” She patted his cheek and brushed the one rebellious strand of his hair that constantly fell across his forehead back into place just like his mother used to. “You know every time I see you, your hair gets a little bit darker. The same thing happened to your uncle. My brother’s hair was buttercup yellow when he was young, and now it’s dark brown like yours. Must come with age.” She winked and smiled. “Well, I’d better go.” She peered over his shoulder. “Whatever you do, don’t let that one get away.” With that, his aunt spun around and skittered down the corridor.