Without Spot or Wrinkle: Book One

By Robert Parrish

Men are jerks. They're insensitive, immature and dishonest. Just ask Jordan Montgomery, fresh from falling in love with a powerful man who happens to be married. So when handsome, gentle Jared Jones is assigned to co-lead Jordan's Bible study, all her generalities about the male gender are in disarray. Despite determined self-protection, Jordan finds herself warmly drawn to this caring man who talks with God as easily as he talks with her.

When Jordan and Jared finally conclude their romance is, in fact, made in Heaven, Jared proposes four safeguards to shield them from plunging ahead too rapidly. Will Jordan's father and Jared's mother give their blessings? How will Jordan's best friends advise her? What will be the surprising outcome when Jared talks with two of Jordan's former loves? Throughout the process, Jordan discovers a new depth in dependence on her Heavenly Father.

An inspirational Christian romance for women, written by a man, with sensitivity and tenderness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 4, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469786278

Robert Parrish

Robert Parrish is a writer and author happily living with his wife, Alicia, in Mesa, Arizona.

Book preview

WITHOUT SPOT OR

WRINKLE

Book One

Robert Parrish

Writers Club Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Without Spot or Wrinkle

Book One

All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Robert Parrish

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in

writing from the publisher.

Writers Club Press

an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse, Inc.

5220 S. 16th St., Suite 200

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

Any resemblance to actual people and events is purely coincidental.

This is a work of fiction.

Cover Design Credit:

Calligraphics by Julie Ann Stove Zerilli

480-832-0403, Mesa, Arizona

email: [e-mail]

ISBN: 0-595-21951-9

ISBN: 978-1-4697-8627-8 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Prologue

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

Epilogue

About the Author

For Alicia

Prologue

I was born into the X Generation just after the Vietnam conflict. Daddy was a South Carolina peanut farmer and Momma kept house. Before I was four years old, my parents concluded that the commercial value of peanut farming had run its course in post-war America. They packed our entire household into a 1949 Packard and drove to Bakersfield, California where Daddy had family who were making a decent living in truck farming.

Uncle Paul and Aunt Louise were as different from Daddy and Momma as I could have imagined, but nonetheless, we moved in with them until we could get our feet on the ground, as Daddy said. That would take a year and a half while he learned to be a plumber on the GI bill. I hated every minute of that time, so much wanting our own house. But finally Daddy got a job and that very same week we moved into our own apartment on the east edge of town. I wasn’t sure whether we’d gone up or down, but at least we had our own place and I had my own room.

Two years later we finally got a little white house in a nearby town, population 152. That was probably the best part of my growing up life. We had two dogs, mangy mutts, Daddy called them, but he fed them every morning and night because I kept forgetting my chores.

Two blocks away was the small church where I was sent to Sunday School with our next-door neighbors. During revival meetings, however, the whole town turned out. Once I walked the aisle because the preacher scared me so much about the fires of hell. There had been a strange…feeling, I guess…inside my chest that literally propelled me to the front of the church that day.

Momma and Daddy had followed me up the aisle and we were all three baptized that very night in good evangelical tradition. But my parents never went back to the white-steepled building like the rest of our neighbors. We got enough religion, Daddy declared.

Pretty soon I, too, began making excuses for missing church. Being transplanted from South Carolina into north-central California was enough to make me feel like an outsider, what with all the taunts and teases at school about my Southern accent. My parents and I were practically the only people in town not going to church on Sundays, so my sense of isolation escalated. But with no one to talk to, no one to help me understand, I concluded that my expectations of what family life should look like were misinformed. So I buried in my memory yet another dream and got on with life as I knew it.

Was I really a Christian then, at age six? Was I like our neighbors and the pastor who went to church every Sunday? Who knows but God Himself? All I know is I’m glad our whole family had walked forward that morning, for now Momma has gone to Heaven and Daddy rarely goes to church due to his war injuries. Will I ever see Momma again? Is she really in Heaven? Who has answers to these kinds of questions?

CHAPTER 1

Oh, God, please, please let there be a parking space! I’ve driven around and around this stupid church so long that now I’m late. This is crazy! I don’t even go to church. I think Christians are flakes, they’re hypocrites. Why am I even here?

And suddenly there it is, Sunday morning at 10:57 AM. The only space open in the whole, huge parking lot. Part of me is glad it’s near the front door; the other part of me wishes there were no parking space at all. Is this supposed to be funny, God?

City Church sure is crowded. What’s the draw, anyway? It certainly isn’t the warehouse of a building, cleaned up though it is with contemporary stained glass and a monastic, domed steeple. I’ve appreciated beautiful architecture all my life and this isn’t it. So what is it, on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning, that gets all these people out of bed and brings them together, fresh-scrubbed and dressed in their finest, eager to hear Pastor John Darby pontificate about God? I prefer coffee and bagels, along with my Sunday paper, rather than church any day!

But through the giant copper-clad doors I plunge, committed to finding out whether there’s something here to stop the pain in my life. And curious about what these six or seven thousand…fanatics?…find so alluring.

As I sit here in the next-to-last pew experiencing church for the first time in my adult life, from the hymns to the choir music to Dr. Darby’s ringing sermon, my emotions are deeply stirred. The memories of our small town chapel come flooding back and I remember walking the aisle with Momma and Daddy scurrying to keep up with me.

All that was more than twenty-five years ago and now, out on my own, making my way in the world. Funny how the mind recalls things we think are over and done with, out of our lives forever.

How odd, now, that here I am sitting in one of the richest churches in town. How can all these beautiful people be so excited about a dull, boring sermon? I’m beginning to find out, however, for even as the preaching is winding down, all the confusion and the turmoil and unhappiness I’d felt for the past three years…maybe forever, locked securely away in my heart…is bursting forth in torrential tears. Up on stage Dr. Darby is inviting people to walk to the front, to accept Jesus as their personal Savior, just like I did as a kid! Only these are sophisticated, upscale movers and shakers. Why, in God’s name, they’re responding like this, I am not sure. All I know is that I have to become part of…of…whatever they have in their lives. So powerful is this tug on my heart that I must respond! I jump from my seat and rush forward, too, leaving my purse and all its contents there on the pew behind me.

Tall, tanned Ron meets me in front of the speaker’s platform with a comforting arm and a box of tissue. As I sob, he gently guides me into a room off the side of the auditorium. In less than five minutes, Jesus and I are re-introduced and my pain and confusion suddenly passes. I am certain I’m home at last. Certain I will live in His protection forever, safe from the world, safe from my thoughts and worries, safe from the past and safe from myself. After all, I have put my trust in Jesus, the Messiah, haven’t I?

The months leading to this decision were more emotional, more difficult than any I’d ever experienced. Scott and I had dated since college and it looked like we were headed for marriage. His mother wanted him to become a lawyer, but being the baby of the family, he resisted and became a yacht captain, sailing pleasure craft for the wealthy. Like his mother, I wanted prestige, stability and a house, but Scott wanted boats. In fact, he wanted us to live on a boat at a marina. He just wanted to play, to ski, to take flying lessons. His career, as well as his lifestyle, was about good times.

So I set about building my own career as a marketing analyst. I loved what I did for a living and I was good at it. I loved research and making sense out of disparate numbers and trends. The career side of my life was quite fulfilling, but not so my social life. Finally, after three years of dating, of knowing Scott and experiencing, even enjoying, his grand adventures, he and I concluded it was better to go our separate ways. We reasoned that, being in our middle twenties, we were still too young to make lifelong commitments. Those memories of my first real love had been hard to stuff away. So hard, even, that it had made sense for me to move from our small farming town to the city rather than risk running into Scott again.

The first apartment I rented had been perfect, but my landlord, that lawyer Scott’s mother had wanted, kept hinting about a lower rental fee in exchange for other so-called benefits. I moved out as soon as I could.

My second apartment was the top story of an older home in the central city. Charming enough, but not in the best neighborhood. Nonetheless, my landlords, a couple in their seventies, were more like parents and I much preferred them to my first, scumbag property owner.

In less than a month I met Todd Jonathan MacKenzie. Handsome, tall and manly, with enough flexibility in his workday for long, relaxing lunches. I loved those first glimpses of his black Mercedes with the tan leather interior parked in front of our favorite restaurant every time we’d sneak away. I loved his starched blue-and-white striped shirts with his initials embroidered on the cuff. TJM. How powerful that seemed! And the ever-present scent of his musk cologne drew me to him time and time again. How could I not be in love? Todd treated me like a precious jewel, so differently from Scott, always holding doors open, standing when I arrived at