Glimmers of Heaven

By Connie Keenan

Hayley Latham wasn’t expecting the new youth pastor the night she was working in the church as its caretaker...and she certainly hadn’t expected him to be a jeans-and-cowboy-boots kind of guy who could whisk her right off her feet. And on a thrilling motorcycle ride, no less! Pastor Zachary Phillips, who is a long way from his upstate New York hometown, is at first out of place in that struggling city church. He soon finds that working with the congregation’s teens is a lot more demanding, especially when he's distracted by his growing feelings for the pretty teacher's assistant. Will his ministry drive them apart? Or will it strengthen those feelings into an everlasting love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Connie Keenan
• Release date: Mar 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452403724

Connie Keenan

Connie Keenan, who has also written under the pseudonym Consuelo Vazquez, is the author of more than twenty-five novels and novellas and over one hundred short stories. With many more works to come, she's mostly written Christian fiction and sweet contemporary romance. She loves hiking, discovering fun little shops, trying out new recipes, and spending time with her family. Connie and her husband Bill live in North Carolina with a spoiled German Shepherd and two sassy Chihuahuas.

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GLIMMERS OF HEAVEN

A Christian romance

Connie Keenan

Glimmers of Heaven © by Connie Keenan

Cover Art: Bigstock.com

Scripture references are from the King James Version

This is a work of pure fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination.

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For Pep & Marlene Vazquez

Chapter One

At that hour of the evening, Haylee Latham could think of many other things she would rather be doing—anything but cleaning a fairly large church.

Certainly, that wasn’t a helpful attitude. As she pulled on a pair of plastic cleaning gloves and collected the paper towel roll and other cleaning supplies she said a hurried prayer under her breath, asking the Lord to help her get her work done. After a day at her full-time job at Lincoln Elementary School, she could use whatever extra energy God could send her way.

It was just much easier before, when her mother had been alive. Easier—and more fun. Between her and Mom, they had gotten the place clean and sparkling so much quicker. In two hours, sometimes less, the sanctuary, hallways and entrances would be vacuumed, all the dusting would be done, the bathrooms neat as a pin, and whatever needed filling in the periodical rack in the vestibule area would be filled.

But her mother was gone now. Lately, nothing had been the same without her. Why should she expect the duties of a church caretaker—which now fell solely on her, at least for the time being—to have been any different?

Three months. Hayley sighed, rolling out the church’s old canister vacuum. Three months had gone by since she’d come home from work and found her mother in the kitchen. She was sprawled out on the floor, not breathing, in a puddle of orange juice and the shattered glass fragments of a pitcher she’d been carrying when she fell.

An aneurysm, the doctor at the hospital had said. Fifty-one years old, still so full of life. She was gone out of her daughter’s life, just like that. Her mother’s death would have been tough on her at any time, but it had been particularly painful and difficult coming after all the recent goings-on at the Church of the Good Shepherd.

The machine’s old motor was so noisy that she didn’t hear the steps coming up behind her in the center aisle until she’d hit the on/off switch with her foot. Heavy steps, the footfalls of a man walking on the old navy blue carpet. Frightened, Hayley whirled around, almost stumbling over the canister.

Instantly, the visitor’s hands shot up in the air. Whoa! Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to startle you. I rang the doorbell, but I guess you didn’t hear me. And the door was unlocked, so…

So you shouldn’t have just walked in! she snapped.

Immediately she regretted her rudeness. He was young, maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven, only a couple years older than her. Tall and lanky, he reminded her of a lost kid with his head slightly bowed after being scolded.

You’re right, he admitted. Well, I’m not making a very good first impression, that’s for sure. I’ll come back another time.

A very good first impression. She quickly made the connection and swallowed a groan.

You must be the new youth pastor, right? Oh—the only youth pastor we’ve had in a long time.

Well, uh…yeah. That’s me.

Then I’m the one who’s not making a very good first impression. I apologize.

But it’s just that I lost my mother a few months ago and it still feels like yesterday. And the church was broken into recently. And I’m so tired of working all day as a teacher’s assistant that the very last thing I want to be doing is picking gum wrappers out of our hymnals!

She dispensed with all the excuses and accepted his hand to shake. Hers was smaller and still covered by the plastic glove, which amused them both. At least the proverbial ice was officially broken.

So you’re Zachary Phillips, she said, having heard his name mentioned several times over the past two weeks.

That’s me. And you must be Olivia Latham. I don’t know why, but I thought you were an older lady.

"That’s because I’m Hayley Latham. Olivia’s my mom. Um, was my mom. Or still is, in Heaven." She gripped the long vacuum attachment with both hands until that new wave of sadness passed.

I didn’t know. I’m sorry to hear that. Boy, I’ll really messing up big-time, right off the bat today.

He rolled his eyes in a way that, oddly enough, was as cute as it was funny. Hayley found herself staring at him a little longer than she should have and swallowed hard.

He was a blond. She liked dark-haired guys, she reminded herself. That is, whenever she dated, which hadn’t been often throughout her twenty-four years.

Besides, he was the new youth P-A-S-T-O-R. Probably already married, too, or at the very least engaged.

I’d better let you get back to work, he said then. I just need to find Pastor Doyle.

Oh, he’s in the pastoral house. That’s the white one in the back. We—I mean, I—live in the red brick one. That’s the caretaker house.

Okay, well, thanks. Nice to meet you, Haylee. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.

I guess we will…Pastor Phillips.

He shot back over his shoulder on his way out, You can call me Zachary. Or just Zach. I go by both.

Pastor Doyle would compromise. The youth pastor would come to be known as Pastor Zach. That had a warm, friendly ring to it. Maybe, just maybe, he’d even stay. The church really needed some consistency, some cohesiveness. The little flock at the Good Shepherd Church had been through some rocky patches lately.

Discreetly, Hayley glanced behind her. She grinned at Pastor Zach’s long-legged stride. He could move faster, yet his gait was leisurely, easy. In his black jeans—and were those leather cowboy boots?—there seemed to be something about him that distinctly said, Not a city guy at all.

She liked that. More than she should have liked it, too. She did a double take at something white and small on the dark, blue aged carpet.

Dolefully, she recalled the day it was installed. She must have been around twelve. It had replaced a dull gray carpet that was stained in several areas. That was when Pastor Gentry was the minister, the same pastor who’d married her parents and dedicated her as a baby. The same pastor who baptized her that August evening, back when she was sixteen years old.

When he died, that had started what had seemed like a downward spiral for the church. As always, though, God was faithful. Hayley believed they’d go through all that change, all those trials together, but the Lord Jesus would still bring them through that time in the wilderness.

As soon as she opened the folded paper, she frowned, remembering that a coworker had clipped it out of the local newspaper for her. It must have fallen out of her pocket while she was cleaning. An ad for a rental, an apartment on the other side of town. Because the house she lived in, the home she’d shared for years with her mother, didn’t belong to her. It would soon be turned over to a new sexton, most likely a family man who was also handy with tools. A one-hundred-year-old-plus church could use someone like that.

More than it could use a young teacher’s assistant-by-day. Still, it broke her heart.

Changes. Perhaps some of those changes would be for the better.

Hitting the switch again with the tip of her sneaker, Hayley returned to her work. The roar of the