Donovan’s Angel (3 page)

She looked at the Reverend Paul Donovan with
his radiant smile and his lofty ideals. She was no fool. Although
she had never done anything she was ashamed of, she knew that by
his standards she was a tarnished woman. Furthermore, she wasn’t
about to find out how long she could stand the strictures imposed
by a relationship with a man of the cloth. She knew herself too
well. She was a free spirit, a maverick; living by the rules would
smother her. A small sigh of regret passed her lips. If only he
weren’t so heart-tuggingly appealing. That lock of hair still
needed brushing back from his forehead. It took all the willpower
she possessed not to reach over and do it herself.

She hardened her heart. “Did you come on your
own, Reverend, or did your church send you?”

He knew she was deliberately erecting a wall
between them, and he was more determined than ever to crash through
and get to know the woman on the other side. He also knew that she
was using his title as a barrier between them, but he decided to
let that go—for the moment.

“I’m not on a holy crusade, Martie,” he said,
“but I think you would like me to be. Why?”

Paul’s forthrightness shocked and unnerved
her. She realized that if she had expected to intimidate this man,
she’d been mistaken. Instead, it was the other way around. She
wished they had stuck to socks.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,”
she lied. It was probably the only time in her life that she had
ever felt the need to hide behind a lie.

“I think you do,” he said. “You’re putting
stumbling blocks in our way.”

“There is no ‘our way,’ Reverend. There’s
your way and mine.”

“And never the twain shall meet?”

“Precisely.”

He threw back his head and laughed in what
she considered to be a very unpreacherlike manner. The laughter
unnerved her even more than his penchant for total honesty.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked.

“I’m thinking what fun I’m going to have
proving that you’re wrong.”

“You are the most forward minister I’ve ever
met.”

“Lesson number one, Martie.” He quickly
crossed the small space between them and took the rake from her
hand. Letting it drop to the ground, he put one hand on her
shoulder and one on her chin. Gently he tipped her face upward,
forcing her to look directly into his eyes. “I’m not just a
minister,” he murmured. “I’m a man. And don’t you forget that.”

She felt as if she’d been pulled into the
center of a volcano. His eyes seared her face, his hand burned her
chin, and the nearness of him blazed through her with a ferocity
that made her knees weak. Not for one second since she’d met him
had she forgotten that he was a man. Unconsciously her tongue
flicked over her lips, and she wondered what he would think if he
knew that she wanted to seduce him. Right now. This very minute.
She wanted to wind herself around him, pull him down to the
browning stubble of grass, and make love with him. In broad
daylight she wanted to rip his clothes from his body and run her
hands over those magnificent muscles and defy the likes of Miss
Beulah Grady to peep through a hole in the fence and label it
bad.

In the small eternity his hands were touching
her, the thoughts reeled drunkenly through her mind, and she knew
that she would have yielded to those impulses if he had not been a
minister. So much for going by the rules. How long had she been in
his company before her maverick nature had her flouting convention
and wanting to do the socially unthinkable? All of ten minutes, she
decided. No, she would never forget that he was a man. But she also
would not forget that he was a minister.

Paul lowered his hands and shoved them deep
into his pockets. He balled them into fists and strained against
the fabric so hard that it was a wonder he didn’t rip holes in his
jeans. He hoped that she had no idea how close she had come to
being kissed. Don’t push too hard and too fast, he warned himself.
Give her time to get used to the idea. Curb that impatience that’s
been growing inside from the moment she fell from the oak tree into
the marigold bed. She reminded him of foxfire, and he knew that
foxfire glowed only for those who were patient enough to wait for
the right moment.

“When I make a pastoral call, I’m usually
invited in,” he said pointedly, deftly steering them away from
treacherous shoals of dangerous conversation and even more
dangerous passions.

“For a neighborly cup of tea?” The words
tumbled out breathlessly. He was waving a white flag and she gladly
accepted the truce.

“With a generous dollop of cream.”

“Will milk do? I never keep cream.” She led
him into her kitchen and cleared the yogurt shake from the
table.

“Since this is going to become a neighborly
tradition, I’ll bring my own the next time.” He leaned back in an
antique chair and stretched his long legs before him. “Or perhaps
we can train your puppy to go through the hole in our fence and
fetch the cream from my refrigerator.”

She put the water on to boil and joined him
at the table. “I think Baby has done enough fetching to last a
lifetime,” she said. “I’m really sorry about your socks.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure Aunt Agnes will give
me some more. Purple socks are her stock in trade. Baby is an
interesting name for a dog. How did you come to name her that?”

“I always use baby talk with my animals. When
I got her, she was so small and cuddly that I addressed her as
Baby. The name stuck.”

“That was before you moved to Pontotoc?”

“Yes. Baby was my going away gift from Booty
Matthews. We were in Albuquerque at the time.”

“He must have been a good friend of yours,
this Booty Matthews.” Paul almost held his breath, hoping she would
not say that Booty Matthews was more than a friend.

“He was and still is. And he’s a darned good
musician. I traveled with Booty a year, singing in his band.”

Martie stuck out her chin defiantly. He might
as well know every detail of her tarnished past. Maybe then he
would stay on his own side of the fence. She watched the struggle
on his face as he tried to decide just what her relationship with
Booty had been. It almost made her giggle. Booty was pushing sixty,
had the voice and build of a grizzly bear and the personality of a
pussycat. He had been a father to her that year, and it had been
Booty who had noticed the restless stirrings in her and diagnosed
them as a longing for roots.

“He’s partly the reason I came to
Pontotoc.”

“I hope I can thank him someday.”

Martie was saved by the whistling of the
teapot. The preacher was incorrigible, she decided. One minute she
felt on safe ground with him, and the next she was spiraling into
that volcano once more. It was almost as if—

“Ouch!” she cried as she sloshed water on her
hand.

Paul had crossed the kitchen before she even
knew that he’d left his chair. “Let me see that,” he said as he
took her hand and gently rubbed the reddening spot.

The hot breath of the volcano spewed over
her, and she tried to remove her hand from Paul’s. “I’m okay,” she
said quickly. “Really. The water wasn’t that hot.”

He kept a firm grip on her hand as he reached
into the refrigerator and got a piece of ice. “Sometimes these
things can get nasty. Where’s your dish towel?” Numbly, Martie
nodded in the direction of the towel holder. He deftly wrapped the
ice and applied the cold compress to her hand. She tumbled over the
edge of the fiery furnace, felt the molten heat pour through her
body and settle in the apex of her thighs.

“Now isn’t that better?” His thumb traced
shivery circles in her palm as he held the compress in place on the
top of her hand.

She thought that the kitchen floor might be
even better than the grass in her backyard for a seduction.
Oh,
help.
If she didn’t get out of this state of mind soon, she
would start a scandal her first week in Pontotoc.

“Did they teach this bedside manner at
seminary, Reverend?”

He kept the compress on her hand, but the
erotic circling in her palm stopped.

“I learned first aid from my mother. I have
six brothers and two sisters. One of us was always burned or bashed
or bleeding. I think that’s why Theo became a doctor. It was pure
self defense.” He still didn’t release her hand.

“And why did you become a minister?” It was
more than an idle question. Suddenly Martie wanted very much to
know why this man had chosen the ministry.

“To serve, Martie,” he said simply. “To serve
God and my fellow man.”

The honest simplicity of his answer took her
breath away. She forgot about her burn and his hand on hers.

“I don’t run a honky tonk,” she
whispered.

“I never believed that you did.”

“I teach Jazzercise. That was the music Miss
Beulah heard. I practice every evening. My ad will be in next
week’s paper.”

Still holding her hand, Paul led her to the
table and gently pushed her into a chair. “Now that the air is
clear between us, let’s have that neighborly cup of tea,” he
suggested. “You sit there and I’ll pour.”

Without protesting she acquiesced and watched
him move about the kitchen. His movements were surprisingly
graceful for such a big man. He brought the teacups to the table,
and they talked of inconsequential things, of the weather in
Pontotoc, of Saturday night auctions, and of small community
doings. And beneath the surface of their conversation swirled
seductions and volcanoes and heady carousel music.

Suddenly Paul asked her, “Do you like
baseball?”

“I love it,” she replied enthusiastically.
“Once when Dad and I were living in the south of Georgia, I played
first base on a neighborhood team. There was nothing to do in that
town except play ball and fight mosquitoes. They didn’t even have a
movie theater. I’ve been a baseball fan ever since.”

“Great.” Paul unfolded his long legs and
stood up. “I’m taking you to the Indian summer picnic this
Saturday.”

“How do you know I want to go?”

“You just said that you love baseball.
Besides, it will be a good chance for you to meet people. Thanks
for the tea.” And he was out the door before she could say yes or
no.

She twirled around in her kitchen, her hair
flying around her in the sunshine. “Well, heck, why not?” she asked
the cat, who had just come in to see what was going on. “What can
one little picnic hurt?”

o0o

The next day Martie alternated between
elation and moodiness. Why hadn’t she just told him no right away?
She really shouldn’t allow herself to get close to him: he was too
sexy. She whizzed around her newly purchased turn of the century
home, attacking cobwebs on the ceiling and dust balls under the
beds. She had a tug of war with Baby over the mop and finally
managed to salvage enough of it to clean the kitchen and bathroom
floors to a shine.

Pooh-poohing the old adage that Rome wasn’t
built in a day, Martie waxed her wooden floors and washed her
windows, stopping only long enough to stave off starvation with a
tuna sandwich. The sun was sinking into the western horizon when
she finally took a breather. She sat on her rickety back porch
steps and listened to the cricket songs in her yard. After a few
moments Baby nudged her leg to catch her attention and proudly
dropped a prize at her feet.

“Well, hello, you old cuddle bum,” she cooed,
scratching behind Baby’s ears. “What do you have now?” The minute
she put her hand on the soggy, dirty object, she knew it was Paul
Donovan’s purple socks. Or at least the remains. Smothering her
laughter, she scolded her pet. “What am I going to do with you, you
scalawag?”

For an answer, the golden retriever puppy
licked her hand and then bounded off to chase a grasshopper.

Still smiling, Martie jumped up from the
steps, shoved the socks into her blue jeans pocket, and raced to
the oak tree. She climbed rapidly upward until she was a part of
the brilliant sunset sky. Inching her way along a fat limb, she
traversed the fence and flattened herself out on the branch just
above Paul’s former marigold bed. A ring of fragrant tobacco smoke
drifted around her head as she parted the leaves . . . and looked
directly down into a pair of quicksilver-gray eyes.

Paul removed the pipe from his mouth. “The
Cheshire cat, I presume?” he asked, smiling.

“No. Just Baby’s messenger mistress. I’m
returning your socks.”

“Remind me to thank Baby.”

“Don’t be too hasty with the thanks. Just
wait until you see the socks.” She clutched the limb, already
regretting her impulsiveness in climbing up the tree. She was just
asking for trouble. The best thing to do would be to drop the socks
down to him and inch back across the limb to her own yard.
Cautiously she let go with one hand and tried to reach into her
pocket.

“Aren’t you coming down?” Paul asked,
obviously amused.

“No,” Martie replied firmly. “This is not a
social call. Just an errand.”

“Then perhaps I should come up,” he
suggested.

“There’s room on this limb for only one.”

“Pity.”

“Besides, what would Miss Beulah say?”

“She would probably be upset…”

“That’s an understatement!”

“. . . because she’s missing all the
fun.”

One of Martie’s legs slipped off the limb and
dangled in the air. Deftly, Paul reached up and caught her ankle.
“Don’t worry, Martie,” he assured her. “I won’t let you fall. You
can turn loose the limb.”

Falling was the least of her worries. What
really bothered her was how she could keep the flames that were
licking along her leg from setting fire to the tree. “I’m not
worried. You can let go of my leg.”

“And be responsible for you breaking a bone?
Not a chance.” He gave a tug and Martie came tumbling off the limb
into his arms.