His arms unfurled to his sides, held to the level of his shoulders, and he lifted his chest and his face to the warmth of the morning sun, breathing in a serenity of spirit he found nowhere else but in prayer.
He recited the Lord’s Prayer, leaning forward with his heart when he said, “Thy will be done,” and finished the praxis with the doxology, “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.”
Maxence was made small and humble by dedicating his time and work to that which was good and holy.
His hunger for all that his family held dear—power, wealth, envy toward each other’s influence and belongings, avarice for more and worse violent delights, and a gluttony of the soul for the entire Earth and everything in it and to consume every person they could reach—receded. Maxence was a damaged man and a dangerous one, but these moments in prayer restored what was lost and broken for a few moments.
When he finished, he stood, brought the crucifix to his lips, and returned the rosary to his pocket.
The morning sun from outside the plane’s porthole window warmed Max’s face, and they flew through clouds of molten gold and silver.
Malini approached him, smiling and holding a tray with a cup of cinnamon-scented chai. The air hostess’s smile was less conspiratorial, kinder, and entirely unsurprised.
He took the cup, grateful. “Thank you.”
“A blessing, Deacon Father?”
Maxence had tried arguing with her that he wasn’t a priest yet, but she always just smiled and said that she wanted a blessing anyway. The Catechism of the Church said that every baptized person is called to be a blessing and to bless, so Maxence drew on that as his guide. He drew a cross in the air over her, intoning, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, may the Lord bless you and keep you safe. Amen.”
She sighed, and her shoulders lowered as if in relief.
“Are you Catholic, Malini?” He’d never asked before.
“No, I’m Hindu, but we believe that all religions are paths to God. I attend many churches because I feel closer to God. I have been to Catholic Mass many times. The singing is very nice.”
Maxence felt compelled to ask, even though it seemed intrusive, “You don’t take communion in Catholic churches, do you?”
“Oh, yes. It is very important to partake of prasadam. The plane is on final approach, Deacon Father. You should probably take your seat. I have to go to the crew seats now.”
“Malini, communion is different than prasadam. There’s an important distinction. You really shouldn’t—”
“The captain has turned on the seatbelt sign, and the crew has to go sit down now. You drink your chai and have a good landing.” She hurried off.
Maxence stood beside the table, shocked and utterly at a loss as to what to do. To take Holy Communion, one must have been baptized in the Church and be in a state of grace. She had to go to confession. There were rules.
He called after her, “Malini, this is important. It’s considered a mortal sin.”
She waved him off and sat next to her friend, belting herself into the seat, while Max was relegated to his table for the landing.
After the plane touched down, Malini dodged Max until he had to get off the plane. She obviously didn’t want to hear what he had to say. He thought he had her phone number, so he could text her a more coherent explanation later.
After Maxence got off the plane and cleared Nepali customs at the airport, he was met by Father Xavier Kocherry, a tall priest with skin the color and texture of worn mahogany leather, whom Maxence had known from a previous project in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. He heartily shook the man’s hand and then hugged him while they laughed.
Maxence hoisted his rucksack onto his back, while Father Xavier picked up the wide cardboard box filled with supplies Maxence had carried off the plane. He said, “Sorry, I could only find one jar of peanut butter in Paris.”
Father Xavier laughed. “I am very glad for the one jar of peanut butter. Next time you come to Nepal, plan ahead and make sure to bring two.”
Maxence asked him, “Is there Mass this evening?”
Father Xavier shook his head. “There is one tomorrow morning over at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. We will attend that one, but I am then called away to minister in other parts of the city for the week and will be staying at the rectory there. Sadly, we do not have much time together.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to need to be reconciled before Mass tomorrow morning.”
“You, Deacon Father? I’m shocked.”
Father Xavier’s absolute earnestness as he said that shamed Maxence even more. Father Xavier had never heard one of Maxence’s confessions after he’d gotten back from Europe. “I’m afraid so, and it’s probably good that I should have sufficient time to do penance before Mass tomorrow morning.”
Father Xavier’s honest confusion forced Max to look away because he could not meet the priest’s eyes. Father Xavier asked, “Have you been having doubts about your vocation? You have wanted to take Holy Orders for years. I would have thought that you would have received that sacrament by now.”
“It’s complicated.”
“God is not complicated. The Divine is not complicated. There is only love.”
Despair left Max’s body with his next breath. “Father Xavier, that was exactly what I needed to hear today. I brought some of the butter crackers you like, too. Let’s go to the rectory and demolish the crackers and peanut butter before I unburden my soul.”
He grinned. “I was hoping very much you would say that.”
As a significant amount of peanut butter was smeared on crackers and Father Xavier rightfully fretted about sodium-sensitive hypertension and his hypothesized, impending stroke, they talked about the project that Maxence would be leading over the next few months.
“A team of five laypeople,” Father Xavier said. “This will be such a blessing, and it is so desperately needed.”
“I received the names in an email this morning,” Maxence told him while scraping a thin layer of peanut butter on his third cracker. He would probably stop after this one, and he reminded himself to send more of Father Xavier’s favorite snack foods once he returned to Europe or the US. “The medical doctor who was slated for this trip dropped out. His mother had a stroke, so he withdrew. Luckily, a nurse practitioner volunteered at the last minute to fill the slot. He’ll be arriving in a few hours. I assume it’s all right if he stays at the rectory tonight?”
“Of course, of course. He can have my room because I’ll stay over at Perpetual Help. Do we know him?”
“I’ve never met him before, but he comes highly recommended by Father Thomas Aquinas at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the United States. He’s recommended a number of laypeople for projects like this whom I have found to be excellent. Tom is very persuasive at convincing his parishioners and acquaintances to volunteer for missions.”
Father Xavier chuckled. “Yes, we don’t know anyone like that.”
Maxence declined to reply. Yes, he had a knack at persuading people, which was why two of Max’s friends from his exclusive childhood boarding school had “volunteered” their time and resources for this very worthy charitable project.
One of Max’s school friends, Alfonso, had committed a large amount of money and resources to build NICU micro-clinics all across the hinterlands of Nepal, a surprising move. The charity had approved the project while Maxence had been sitting by his uncle’s hospital bed, watching him slowly die, so Max hadn’t been available to consult on it. Undoubtedly, the charity’s board had properly vetted it. They always did.
The other guy, Isaak, was a good man who pretended he wasn’t. He was the diametric opposite of Maxence in so many ways, which was probably why they got along so well.
The whole team would arrive the next morning, the day before the mission officially began.
After Father Xavier ha
d decimated the crackers and peanut butter, he indulgently looped the stole he wore during confession around his neck and, with a crooked smile on his face, asked Maxence what mortal sins he had committed since his last confession.
Maxence couldn’t look at the man’s dark eyes as he stated that it had been five days since his last confession and he had committed an untold number of sins of a sexual nature with a woman as acts of fornication, at least fifteen acts, impure thoughts, wrath, and an act of violence that was in self-defense.
Father Xavier stared at the swollen knuckles of his hands folded in his lap and was silent for a long moment. His black eyebrows twitched, and he breathed to say something at least once, but caught himself and bit his lip instead.
His dismay and disappointment were palpable in the small room in the rear of the rectory.
Finally, Xavier said, “My dear Deacon Maxence, please say one good Act of Contrition in penance, and let us pray together for grace and to know the true will of God in your vocation.”
Losing Father Xavier’s respect hurt, and Maxence prayed with every shred of his soul, holding Father Xavier’s weathered hands, that he would know the will of God and commit himself to it.
Even as Max prayed, soft sparks glimmered at the edges of his vision: satin skin, hair like shredded silk, a joyous laugh, a glance of blue eyes filled with kindness as she listened to him, and a quiet voice speaking gentle words with him that healed instead of wounded.
Not Dree. Don’t think about Dree.
Think about the will of God.
Maxence wrestled with his soul and his thoughts.
Father Xavier sighed, removed the stole from around his neck and kissed the cross in the center, and rose as he wound the small strip of fabric around his hand. “I sense that you have great conflict in your soul, Deacon Maxence. I hope you can reconcile it with God.”
“I hope so, too, Father Xavier.”
Father Xavier pressed his lips together and shook his head, and then said, “I have heard the ladies in the kitchen, cooking. Lunch will be served soon. I hope you can devote yourself to prayer this day before your mission begins in earnest tomorrow.”
After lunch, Father Xavier hurried off to the other church, and Maxence did devote himself to an afternoon of reading and contemplative silence, trying to remedy the trouble in his soul.
His soul did not cooperate.
Maxence slowly conquered his wayward mind. Each time he prayed the hours of the Divine Office, working his way through Sext at midday and None in the midafternoon, he felt stronger in the philosophy and practice of filling his day with prayer.
The clock’s hands slowly spun toward five o’clock in the afternoon, local time, and Maxence began to look forward to the evening prayer of Vespers, a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude for the day, when there was a knock at the front door of the rectory.
Ah, this would be the new volunteer sent by Father Thomas Aquinas in Phoenix, the one with the same last name as Dree, Clark.
What a coincidence.
She’d said it was a common surname.
Maxence pulled on his suit jacket, ever careful about first impressions, and brushed the front of it for travel dust before he opened the door to the front garden.
Two women stood in the early evening’s fading sunlight.
One was Sister Mariam, a religious sister whom he’d met on a previous mission in India where they had worked together on girls’ education in Kerala. She was a lovely young woman, kind and funny. She had excellent taste in tea shops.
The other woman was facing away from him, looking over the careful landscaping in front of the rectory, and she was a curvy, feminine figure. Her short blond hair swirled around her head in the evening’s cool breeze.
Before she turned, he knew she was Dree Clark, the sweet and lovely woman whom he’d left in Paris in a bed rumpled by their lovemaking just the previous morning.
As she turned, golden sunlight glowed on her creamy skin, and her wary glance told him that she was just as surprised to see him as he was that she was there.
Sister Mariam introduced them, “Andrea Catherine, may I present Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi. Father Maxence, this is Miss Andrea Catherine Clark, our new nurse practitioner for the premature infant project.”
Dree’s expression changed from wide-eyed wariness to the faint gasp of a gut-punch and downward fall of her eyes and mouth, outward signs that she recognized the depth of his deception. She asked, “Augustine?”
Yes, he was Augustine, praying to God to not yet grant him sobriety and chastity but instead to allow him to resume his life of hedonism and the indulgence of everything he wanted, which at the moment was her, her, her.
Maxence reached his hand forward, palm up, beckoning, beckoning her.
Dree didn’t touch him, and she didn’t smile.
He should welcome her off-handedly, and most of all, he should not reveal to Sister Mariam that they were far more than casually acquainted.
And yet he couldn’t.
His intensity sharpened.
The sight of this beautiful woman shattered the quiet in his soul that came from prayer.
Appetites raged in him: hunger for her skin, her scent, her touch, and the sweetness of her taste in his mouth.
He was a dark thunderstorm, and his desires formed words. “Dree, chérie.”
Chapter Two
Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi
Dree
Dree sat on the sumptuous sofa in the rectory’s living room, her ankles crossed, her knees together, and her hands clenched in her lap. “This is not my fault.”
She wasn’t sure that they should have told Sister Mariam that it was okay to go back to her convent quite so quickly. Having some female moral support and a chaperone would have been very welcome just then, especially when she was confronted with her one-night stand who turned into a half-week stand, and who turned out to be a freaking Catholic priest.
Or, you know, close.
He was a deacon, which meant he had been ordained and had taken the first sacrament of Holy Orders, the Roman Catholic rite that consecrates someone as a priest or a deacon.
He might as well be a priest. Unmarried deacons were supposed to be celibate, too.
Augustine—who Sister Mariam had called Deacon Father Maxence—stood by the fireplace and rested his elbow on the high mantle. He had combed through his thick black hair with his fingers, leaving it curling around his face, and was still hanging onto his hair on the back of his head like he thought the top of his skull was going to blow off.
Hers might.
The top of her head might actually hit the ceiling if somebody didn’t tell her what was going on immediately.
The man she’d formerly known as Augustine said, “I do not believe this is your fault. Indeed, I do not think anyone is at fault. I should thank you for volunteering to go on a rigorous mission into the interior of Nepal. That was the first thing I had planned to say, but I don’t understand how you came to be here.”
Dree was still holding her hands clasped in a tight knot on her legs. Adrenaline coursed through her body, screaming at her to fight, flee, or freeze. Freezing seemed to be her best option right now, and yet she had to talk to the man. She would rather blend into the soft, royal blue velvet under her legs and hide.
Her throat was nearly too tight for words. She forced out, “It’s not safe for me to go back to Phoenix. I told you everything that happened with my ex, Francis. There is some weird stuff going on there with the police and, I think, other drug dealers. So, I called up Sister Annunciata, the principal of my Catholic high school that I went to in New Mexico, and she called up a friend of hers, Father Thomas—”
“Father Thomas Aquinas from Immaculate Conception in Phoenix,” he said with her, in unison. “The Catholic Mafia strikes again.” Augustine shook his head.
Not Augustine, Maxence.
And yet, he was still the astonishingly tall, ripped, beautiful specimen of a man Dree had
met in Paris.
But, he was named Maxence. She had to remember that.
Deacon Father Maxence.
The white tab of the Roman collar on his shirt shone in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, accusing her.
He had not been wearing that in Paris, and he should have been.
“Yeah,” she said. “Father Thomas said he could get me on a plane for somewhere far away from the southwestern US without any questions asked. So, here I am, far away from the southwestern US.”
Augustine nodded. “Nepal is very far away from the southwestern US.”
“Didn’t he or somebody tell you I was coming? Did you know?”
“The Catholic Charities division managing the project emailed me yesterday that a person named ‘Andrea Clark’ had been assigned to us.”
He was pronouncing it wrong, Ahn-DRAY-ah.
She corrected him, “Andrea.” ANN-dree-uh.
“I thought it was amusing because you had mentioned that Clark was a very common name,” he said, “that there was a university and shoes and department store, and other things also named Clark. So, I thought that the person coming must be yet another Clark. It did cross my mind that they might be a cousin or distant relative of yours, but I assumed the person would be male.”
“I can’t believe you thought I was a guy.”
He frowned. “Well, there’s the name, Andrea.”
“There you go again, mispronouncing it. I thought it was weird the way you said it when we were in Paris when you were talking about your cousin. I’ve never heard anybody pronounce it that way, Ahn-DRAY-ah. Who even says that?”
He looked up at her, his eyebrows raised in exasperation. “That’s how you pronounce Andrea. I’ve never heard anyone say it the way that you do, ANN-Dree-uh. Andrea is a boy’s name.”
“Andrea is a girl’s name. It’s always been a girl’s name. It’s how you get Ann, which is a girl’s name.”
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