Preacher

by Blake, Joanna

  I wasn’t sure, but I was pretty sure Preacher intended to walk me home every single night.

  And for some crazy reason, I didn’t mind the idea.

  Chapter Seven

  Preacher

  I walked slowly back to the church, almost daring someone to fuck with me. I was furious. Furious at myself for the reaction I was having to a woman who very clearly wanted nothing to do with me. Even more furious that she was in danger, every damn day, just by living here.

  Fifteen blocks. It didn’t sound far. But when I thought of her taking that stroll by herself every single night, it turned my blood to ice. I couldn’t accept it. I wouldn’t accept it. I heard distant gunshots and cursed.

  I was in this now. I had to help fix things. I couldn’t leave that beautiful woman here with no one to watch her back.

  Cynthia wasn’t just physically beautiful, though Lord above, she was that. The woman made me want to do filthy things to her. Things even I hadn’t done yet. When that rat had run over her foot, all I could think about was how damn cute her feet looked in her sneakers. She was so dainty. I wanted to tear her shoes off and fucking lick her damn foot.

  Hell, I wanted to lick every inch of her. I liked women. Everyone knew that. Even though I had been taking time off from chasing skirts lately, nothing explained the way I was feeling right now.

  Restless. Pent up. Excited. Hard. But also like a serious fucking dumbass.

  And all over a woman who didn’t want to give me the time of day. Not that I blamed her. She was beautiful, brilliant, young, and good. Hell, she was practically an angel the way she cared about the people here, especially those kids in her dance troupe.

  There was a lot more to her than just being sexy. She was a hardass, for one thing. Not a bitch by any stretch of the imagination, but not a pushover either. She was tough. Sweet. Shy at times. Smart as a whip. And she seemed to be completely unaware of her effect on me.

  I was like a giant gorilla, ready to reach into her window and snatch out the pretty lady in a white dress.

  One thing was for sure. She wasn’t walking home alone again. Not as long as I was here. Not ever again, if I had anything to say about it. I’d stay here forever, working in this damn church, just to walk the lady home.

  My eyes were still closed, but I smiled when I heard the swish of yet another paper being slid underneath my door. It was early. I was still in bed.

  Well, technically, I was still ‘in couch’.

  I couldn’t bring myself to take Paul’s bed. And the second bedroom had two twin beds in it, both short enough that my legs would hang off the end. The couch wasn’t bad, either. Big and firm, it was even clean. The damn thing was just under the window, though, and that window let in a lot of light. Light and sound.

  Kids going to the school one block over. The church starting to buzz to life. There was a preschool here, too, so lots of adorable squealing. I knew from Paul that the preschool was where Cynthia had first started working. Before she took over the entire operation.

  Cynthia was like a little general, running this place with military precision.

  I grinned while covering my eyes from the harsh morning light.

  I’d sure like her to manage me.

  I groaned as I sat up, my body already pissed at me for getting up at this ungodly hour. It wasn’t even close to ten AM. I grumbled to myself as I staggered to the kitchen to make coffee. I usually managed to stay horizontal until at least noon. I was annoyed at how eager I was to start the day. The little lady might not like me, but she was already a good influence.

  That might be her only bad trait, I decided. And she wasn’t even doing it on purpose. I doubted she was aware of the whole ‘making me want to be a better man’ thing that was happening. I splashed water on my face and slid into my jeans, tugging a black T-shirt over my head. I poured a cup and stepped outside to smoke my cigar. Coffee and a smoke. That was the way to start the day.

  I dragged one of the kitchen chairs into the courtyard and looked around, wondering when the last time I’d seen this side of ten AM was. Other than at the ass end of an all-nighter, of course.

  Who the fuck are you fooling, old man?

  “Mornin’, Preacher,” chirped Clarice as she hustled through, pausing to give me a flirtatious smile with her precision-painted lips.

  “What are you up to?”

  “Teaching yoga! You should come!”

  I squinted at her, wondering how she got her ornate makeup so perfect at this time of day.

  “Did you get up at five AM to make yourself look so pretty?”

  She blushed and flapped her hands at me.

  “Preacher! You know how to turn a girl’s head!”

  I chuckled and waved her off. If only that were true. I had a feeling that if I told Cynthia she was pretty, I would get smacked.

  Or maced.

  I prayed that pretty girl had mace in her pocket while walking around a neighborhood like this. Not that it was all bad. I’d seen the smiling faces. The people here were good, for the most part. They deserved better than the violence and crime that plagued low income areas like this.

  Hell, the locals were starting to grow on me and I’d only been here a few days.

  I unfolded Cynthia’s note and read it while I sipped and smoked. This time, it wasn’t a calendar. It was a list, neatly printed out in some sort of word processing program. It was a list that was pretty clearly the bare minimum of ‘shit I have to do’.

  Spiritual counseling hours every afternoon in Paul’s office in the annex. Okay. I could do that.

  Sermon on Sundays, 10:30 AM. I could speak to the word of God. Not a problem.

  Picnics and fundraisers. There were several coming up, apparently. Fine. Okay.

  Youth group.

  Apparently, Paul and Cynthia ran a youth group together. I’d seen the dance crew, but this was something else. They did outreach projects and stuff. It was after school but before my open office hours. I could do that. I liked kids. And being around Cynthia is never a hardship, I thought with a grin.

  At the bottom, she had scrawled the words Please be sober. Well, hell. That did put a bit of a cramp in my style. I scratched my chin, wondering how she had wised up to my ways.

  Probably because you sweat tequila when you’re around her, you old dog.

  I wandered back inside and poured myself another cup of coffee. I was tempted to spike it with whisky, but the lady had been clear. Not that a shot of whisky would get an old buzzard like me drunk. My liver was pretty much made of titanium at this point.

  I sighed and wondered if I should shower, then decided against it. I had showered last night. A very, very cold shower. And if I spent any quality time with Miss Cynthia today, I knew I would need another one.

  More than one, most likely.

  I brushed my teeth and ran a comb through my hair without spending much time looking at myself. I knew what I looked like. I’d been me for quite some time.

  I checked my phone, exchanged a few insults over text with Shane and Callaway, and headed over to the office. I wondered idly if Cynthia looked down on cigar smoking as well as imbibing spirits.

  The woman seemed determined to take away my fun. That was all right. She more than made up for it with pure sex appeal. Speaking of which . . .

  I stopped in my tracks, staring into one of the classrooms. Clarice was teaching her yoga class, and there were quite a few ladies in there. A couple of dudes, too. But I only had eyes for one . . . well, ass.

  I would have recognized Cynthia’s insanely juicy bottom anywhere. She was bent forward with her arms and legs straight. Her cute little feet were bare as well. Nice and pretty, with pale soles and what looked like pink toenail polish. I admired the view from the doorway for a few moments before I saw her staring at me from between her legs.

  I winked, not at all put out that I’d been busted taking a peek. I was a man, after all. I couldn’t help it.

  I was whistling as I made my way in
to Paul’s office and took a seat.

  Chapter Eight

  Cynthia

  I twisted my arm over my bent leg, trying not to fume. Yoga was not meant to be done when in a full tilt fury. But no matter how much deep breathing I did, I couldn’t get past the fact that I’d caught Preacher staring at my ass.

  Actually, it was worse than that. It had looked like he was checking out my feet with the same intense scrutiny.

  I felt hot and cold all over. I had learned to tune men out years ago. I did an excellent job of ignoring the come-ons and compliments. The men on the street who told me to smile or how nice I looked. The men who asked me out.

  But I couldn’t seem to ignore Preacher.

  I could still feel his eyes traveling over my rump, all the way down to my feet! What kind of pervert looked at a woman’s feet with that much hunger? And he had looked hungry.

  Starving, in fact.

  I lay back as we finished the class in corpse pose.

  Look on the bright side, Cynth.

  He was actually here. It was morning, well before lunch. I hadn’t smelled alcohol on his breath from across the room, which meant he wasn’t drunk-drunk, even if the man tended to sip alcohol all damn day.

  Sure, he might be a hound dog with roaming eyes, but at least he was following my instructions. I’d just tell him to keep his eyes to himself.

  Or maybe I could pretend it had never happened. That would be easier.

  Coward.

  I stood up and took a long drink of water, pulling my button-down shirt on and grabbing my bag. We all picked up our mats and added them to the stack in the corner.

  I walked down the hall to the administration area where I had my desk. It was right outside Paul’s office, where a secretary would sit for an executive. I had always liked that setup. It was reassuring and convenient. We had volleyed jokes and ideas back and forth all day.

  Now it felt like I was in a fishbowl inside a much bigger fishbowl. A fishbowl that had a shark in it.

  Preacher stood up and leaned on the frame for the double doors, looking like a gunslinger in an old Western.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt your—what do you ladies call that?”

  “Yoga,” I said, trying not to glare at him. I was trying not to stare, too. In the daylight, I could see that his eyes weren’t just blue. There were hints of darker colors, like the sky right before dusk, though they were way too bright to be called anything but blue.

  Yeah, his eyes were that striking pretty that I could see them from a few feet away. He had long eyelashes too, damn him.

  “No. I meant that stretch. Where you have your—”

  I knew he was going to say ‘ass in the air.’ I knew it. So I cut him off.

  “Downward dog!” I practically shouted, turning bright pink, I had no doubt. He raised his eyebrows, looking like he was completely innocent. Other than the tattoos and leather, of course.

  He nodded, still staring at me as if he were deep in thought. He wasn’t just looking at me. He was looking through me. Like he knew every thought and feeling I had. Every secret wish and desire and fear.

  Everything.

  It’s just a trick of the light, Cynth. He’s just a grizzled biker with nice eyes. He’s just a fill-in. He’ll be gone soon. Remember that.

  “What?” I snapped, then immediately felt like a shrew. I fired up my ancient computer and logged in so I could finish catching up on the emails I’d started that morning before yoga. I got here early and I started strong. Sometimes, I did my homework here too. Otherwise, when would I do it?

  Technically, I was only part-time on the books, although I put in way more than forty hours a week, so I didn’t feel bad about using the dinged-up old computer to do schoolwork on. If nothing else, the internet here was way faster than my boosted Wi-Fi at home.

  “Just wondering if you had another list for me,” he said with a chuckle. “But I can wait.” He turned around and went back to his desk. I deliberately didn’t look at him. I heard a thud and saw him put his big boots on the desk with a thud. The man had no manners at all!

  He started shuffling through the papers on the desk. I stood up and stared at him, horrified.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure there isn’t anything that can’t wait for Paul.”

  “Reverend Paul will be back in a few weeks! I can handle anything that comes up before then.”

  “Did you look through his mail already? These look like bills,” he added, holding up a couple of envelopes.

  I huffed and stomped into the room, snatching them from his fingers. His eyes lit up as he watched me. I tossed my hair, feeling annoyed at his warm regard. Did the man have to look at me like I was a juicy steak?

  They were bills. A lot of them. I frowned.

  “Where did you find these?”

  “The drawer.”

  “You shouldn’t be looking in the Reverend’s drawers,” I said to cover my surprise.

  He sighed and leaned back.

  “You must know that Paul doesn’t think he’s coming back.”

  I stared at him in shock.

  “What?”

  “He wants me to take over. For real.”

  My jaw dropped. Preacher here . . . for good? No more Reverend Paul? It was unthinkable.

  “Trust me, I don’t like it either. I like my life just the way it is. And a world without Paul . . . that would be a much darker place.”

  He meant it. I felt it in my gut. If nothing else, he loved Paul. Preacher had a way with words, surprisingly.

  “He’s coming back,” I said tightly.

  Preacher said nothing, just looked at me in that unnerving way of his. Doing that X-ray vision thing again. I felt naked and exposed. Like he could somehow see my fears about Paul. My hopes and dreams for my future. Every stupid lie I told myself to get through the day. He saw all of it. He saw all of me. I knew it. I felt it all the way to my bones.

  He nodded slowly.

  “All right.”

  And just like that, he made everything okay. He was going to play along. He was going to let me believe that Paul was coming back.

  I nearly sagged in relief.

  The lie felt less lonely with two of us sharing it.

  “These are old . . .” I said, looking through the bills. “I think these are medical expenses.”

  “Let me.” He held out his hand for the envelopes. When I hesitated, he added, “Paul is a brother to me. I don’t cast judgement. I just want to help.”

  I nodded and handed over the bills. I watched nervously as Preacher opened them one by one, his eyes getting darker with each bill. He cursed softly and closed his eyes.

  “Dammit, Paul . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “He’s been sick a lot longer than we thought. These bills . . . they’re catastrophic.”

  “But he has insurance. He must.”

  “I guess a lot of this stuff isn’t covered.”

  He shook his head and looked at me with a sad look in his beautiful blue eyes.

  “No wonder he felt he had to go to Mexico for treatment.”

  “Mexico? I thought he was going to Switzerland.”

  Preacher let out a curse so salty that it turned my cheeks pink. The chair squeaked as he pushed away from the desk and started pacing. I stared at his long legs. The man was ridiculously well-built once you got past the tattoos and leather.

  “What is it?” I squeaked out.

  Preached stopped and looked at me.

  “He lied to us.”

  “Reverend Paul? He would never tell a lie!”

  Preacher started laughing.

  “What could possibly be funny about that?” I asked indignantly.

  “I’m sure he would consider it a white lie.”

  “But why?”

  “Because,” he said, raking his hands through his salt and pepper hair. “That old dog doesn’t want to be found.”

  Preacher cocked an eyebrow ov
er those unfairly pretty eyes of his. He had lashes like a girl, I noticed distractedly.

  “Dog? That’s insulting to a man like Paul,” I said, making it clear that the present company wasn’t included in that statement.

  “I knew him when he was a young man. He had his moments.”

  “But he’s a man of the cloth!”

  “Exactly. He’s a man first. Paul is as good as they come, but nobody is that good.”

  “So, you don’t even try to be good?” I challenged.

  He leaned his hands on the desk and gave me a look laden with meaning.

  “I’m trying to be good right now.”

  And just like that, my nipples got hard. It must be getting chilly outside, I thought distractedly.

  I could almost hear Clarice in my head saying, Chilly, my ass.

  I crossed my arms and frowned, ignoring the intense sexual tension that had suddenly filled the room.

  “So, did he go somewhere for treatment or not?”

  Preacher’s eyes got dark and pensive. His craggy face was so expressive. I could tell exactly what he was thinking, even though he barely moved a muscle.

  “He either went to get help or to go somewhere and die in peace without these creditors hanging over his head.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Paul.”

  “Dying changes a person.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’ve come close more than twice,” he said as if it were nothing.

  “Really?”

  “When you ride, death is a constant companion. Plus, I spend a lot of time with disreputable sorts.” He grinned. “Being one myself.”

  “But you believe in God and right and wrong?” I asked, feeling confused. How was this the man Paul thought could take over caring for his flock?

  “Hell, yes, I believe in God. I just don’t always like him. We’ve had some . . . profound disagreements over the years. But I know he’s up there. Right and wrong, on the other hand . . . that can get pretty fuzzy. I prefer to ‘live and let live.’ ”