Promises

Cover Page

Excerpt

About The Author

Title Page

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

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

Chapter Seventeen

Part Two

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Dear Reader

Copyright

Kyle told her. “I don’t know what He has planned for the two of us, but that’s where faith and trust come in, you know.”

“If only I could be as sure as you are, if only I could feel as though—”

“It’s forgiven,” he interrupted her. “It’s forgotten. That’s the answer. Take ahold of it, hold it tight to you. Our faith stands or falls on forgiveness bestowed upon us by a holy God.”

“But you have no idea, Kyle, of my past…all that I’ve done,” she whispered.

“Quiet, Carla,” he soothed her softly. “As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t.”

“But it’s true. You can’t pretend—”

“It’s not pretense at all,” he told her, showing as much patience as he could muster. “When God forgives our sin, He isn’t pretending. As far as He is concerned, none of it exists. It’s been washed away.”

ROGER ELWOOD

is a bestselling author in the Christian book market with over twenty titles to his credit. He has won twelve awards for Best Book of the Year from the Excellence in Media Association. Roger has also been named as a finalist for the ECPA Golden Medallion Award. The trade editions of his bestselling Angelwalk series have sold nearly a half million copies to date, and each of the four titles has appeared in top positions on the CBA bestseller lists.

Formerly a resident of the East Coast, Roger now lives in Agoura Hills, California.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

“…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

—Psalms 30:5

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

Victor Hugo

With some nervousness, Carla Gearhart glanced at herself in the makeup mirror which was ringed its entire circumference by soft-ray bulbs that provided light but little glare, and illuminated every part of her face. A long time had passed since she dared to examine her reflection in this manner, afraid that she would look so weary, so prematurely aged that no amount of makeup would compensate. Yet she realized that, somehow, she actually seemed younger than she had just two years before.

That fact was why she continued to stare at the image as it really was and yet questioned whether she was simply deceiving herself, precisely what she might have done at another time, another place.

Lord, surely this is not real, what I am seeing. Surely I’ve got to be fantasizing, she thought. After all that has happened, all that pain, those long hours of doing nothing but worry and cry, how in the world could I look this good?

But the mirror was not deceiving her, nor was she deceiving herself.

Her flame red hair was healthier looking, and a bit longer than before, flowing like a river of molten fire that bordered on iridescence—the once deep-set circles under her eyes, evidence of a life lived recklessly had vanished. Her skin glowed, her complexion having lost a certain paleness, and she could also actually count less wrinkles, crow’s-feet and the like, not more, a self-analysis that surprised Carla with its results.

Lord, I have been to hell and back! she exclaimed, and yet the years seem to have fallen away from my face. I looked older than this the morning after I won my Oscar for Best Actress of the Year.

One hand happened to be resting on a relatively new red leather-bound Bible, the other on a gold-framed color photograph of a young man in his late twenties, square-jawed, with a slight scar slicing through his left eyebrow.

Older…

He looked older, over thirty in fact; his shirt off, showing a chest that was muscular but not grotesque, more like that of a champion surfer than a body builder.

I suspect that that was the problem, she told herself. If you had appeared as young as you truly were, I doubt that I would ever have—

Carla stopped that thought, suspecting all too well that there was no way she could have predicted anything about their relationship because, after all, he would have been the same person he was regardless of his age, and nothing about her would have changed except perhaps her expectations.

How she did love this man! How wise he seemed!

Though only half a dozen years older by the calendar, Carla Gearhart was much more than that in terms of her experience in a life that had had more peaks and valleys, it could be said, than much of Switzerland itself.

“By contrast, you seemed to have lived like a monk in some monastery,” she said out loud. “And that innocent, modest manner of yours. You were so different from anyone I’d ever known.”