this story to my artistic daughter, Ashley.
Acknowledgments
I want to give a huge thanks to my agent, Tamela Hancock Murray, for all the ways she’s guided and encouraged me. I also want to thank my husband for listening to my ideas and sentences, paragraphs and pages as I read them for the umpteenth time. Shannon Taylor Vannatter, thank you for all the constructive feedback, encouragement and prayers you’ve offered over the years, and Mindy Obenhaus and Renee Ryan, thank you for all the guidance you provided as I worked through this story. I want to thank Architectural Glass Arts for teaching me how to work with stained glass, answering my questions and sharing your cool restoration stories! Finally, thank You to my Savior, the author of fun, romance and creativity.
Contents
The long, deserted road felt much too similar to one Faith had taken decades before, with all her belongings crammed in a pair of tattered suitcases. Hopefully Sage Creek would be nothing like her experience in Alpine, back when she’d been a gawky, metal-mouthed kid in desperate need of a friend.
She’d received taunting and rejection instead.
Her cell phone rang, and she glanced at the screen. It was her best friend, Toni. As a fellow artist fighting to survive Austin’s competitive market, she understood Faith in a way few others did.
She answered through her Bluetooth. “Hey, girl. What’s up?”
“Girls’ night out this Friday. Bahn mi French fries, baby!”
“Sounds fun but can’t. I’m on my way to that contract job I told you about. I’m just over fifteen miles out. With no sign of civilization, except the occasional longhorn, in sight.”
“You make Sage Creek sound so appealing.”
Faith glanced at her wobbly trailer through her rearview mirror, packed with, she hoped, everything she’d need to restore Trinity Faith’s historic stained glass windows, which had decorated the church since its founding. “Let’s just say I haven’t had the best experience with small-town Texans.”
“Not all ranching communities measure a person’s worth based on how well they bake a casserole. Besides, those people didn’t hire you to make friends.”
“True.” She was going to, hopefully, get some media exposure, enough to salvage her career. If she, and whoever else she’d be working with, pulled this job off well, the church stood a good chance of receiving historical status. “Depending on how this deal turns out, I may even be able to get Jeremy Pratt from Lone Star Gems to write a feature article on me.”
“Wow.