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someone’s heart, it had really disturbed him. Kip’s conviction about marriage, leaving a woman burdened financially and grieving and his feelings about passing his genes on to his sons ran too deeply in him to be ignored. Consequently, he never dated. He would never chance hurting someone like that again. And he certainly wouldn’t do what his dad and uncle had.
    But when he thought of Sarah exiting the hotel in her distracted frame of mind, he shuddered inwardly. His mother would call her a babe in the woods. And she’d be right. If he didn’t offer her help, it would be like abandoning a child in the middle of a mine field. So he jumped in. “These are pretty low-end apartments you circled.”
    She shrugged. “It’s what I can afford. Maybe after I get a full-time teaching job and a little savings stored up again, I’ll be able to get a bigger place.”
    Kip put the paper on the table between them again, pulled out a pen and his cell phone. Five minutes later, after several calls, he’d crossed out half of those she’d circled. “Look, I can’t afford to be picky,” she finally protested.
    “These aren’t cheap because they’re small apartments. They’re cheap because they’re in really bad neighborhoods. Neighborhoods where no one lives safely. Where kids have been shot playing in front of their houses. Killed watching television in the living room.”
    Sarah’s eyes widened. “But this is a beautiful city.”
    “I’m not saying a lot of it isn’t wonderful. But this isn’t small-town USA. This is a big eastern city.” He took the paper and circled the places that by the high-end pricing he assumed were in acceptable areas. “These are probably small apartments in center city or in other high-end sections of the city.” He pointed to the first one she’d circled. “This one’s probably a whole floor of a huge home but it’s in heavy drug territory and there’ve been several home invasions around there.” He ran his finger down the column. “And here there were several drive-by shootings last month…all of which were drug related.” He moved to the top of the next column then looked back up at her. “Should I go on?”
    Her dark eyes looked troubled. “But those were the only ones I could afford until I get a job. Other people live in those neighborhoods. I’ll just have to be careful and make sure I can move before Grace comes home.”
    It was on the tip of Kip’s tongue to promise to help her solve her problems. But he hesitated again. Did he have the right to become involved in her life? Thinking of the places she’d circled, the question he had to ask himself was, did he have a right to let her try navigating the mean streets of Philly alone?
    He’d prayed that someone would enter Sarah’s life to give her the support she needed but that someone wasn’t supposed to have been him. On a mental sigh, he admitted he had no choice. He had to offer help.
    His friend and pastor always said the Lord had a weird sense of humor. It seemed once again Jim had been proven right!
    And this time the joke was on Kip!

Chapter Three
    “I think I have a solution to your problem,” Kip said and prayed he wasn’t creating a bigger one for himself.
    But rather than calming her down, Kip could feel Sarah’s anxiety heighten. “I hate to be a bother,” she said. “You’ve done so much for us already by flying Grace here on your holiday weekend and helping pay for my hotel room, too.”
    Had his reluctance to get involved shown? He felt small and mean. “It isn’t a bother,” he told her, meaning it. “It’d help my sister out, too. She’d be part of the solution. Miriam lives out in the suburbs and she has this cute apartment over her garage. She’s rented it in the past but she had trouble with her last tenant. My brother-in-law travels a lot, and he’s leery of renting it again with his wife and kids subjected to a tenant he doesn’t know. But you’d be the perfect