“Andrea is one of the most common name for boys in Italy. It’s more common than Marco or Leonardo. My cousin’s name is Andrea Casiraghi, and I assure you, he’s male. Every Andrea I’ve ever known has been a male. Why would I think it was different now?”
“I can’t help the fact that your cousin’s parents gave him a girl’s name.”
“It’s not. Andrea is a male name.”
“Well, I assure you I’m not a male.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“I should say you are. Speaking of which, why are you wearing a Roman Catholic priest’s shirt and people are calling you father? Are you impersonating a priest? That has to be a crime or something. This is weird.”
He flipped his hand in the air toward the door. “As Sister Mariam said, I’ve been ordained as a deacon, not a priest, so I am called Deacon Father Maxence. I have a vocation to be a priest but have not been ordained as one yet.”
After being a nurse in an inner-city hospital for years, Dree had a finely tuned bullshit detector. “Deacons are supposed to be either married or celibate.”
He shrugged. “Not yet.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you are waiting for God to grant you the ability to keep your pants on? It doesn’t work like that.”
He bit his lip, his white, even teeth pressing his full lower lip in a way that Dree had done just two days before.
And wanted to do again.
No. He was a priest.
Or close enough.
And she was detecting some mighty large bullshit.
She said, “Don’t you have to go to confession and enumerate your sins and say penance like the rest of us do, or do deacons get a free pass?”
“Deacons do not get a free pass. I’ve had to do the rite of reconciliation twice for our time together in Paris.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you did.” Something rather stupid in her felt pride at that. “You should’ve told me you were a deacon and supposed to be celibate.”
One side of Maxence’s mouth rose, and the depths of his dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “I’m rather glad I didn’t.” He sighed. “And now I’d better go to confession for that, too.”
Dree snorted at him. “Having some impure thoughts?”
“You have no idea how impure my thoughts are right now.”
“You’ve got to stop doing that, Augustine. Speaking of which, what is your real name? Is it that Maxence thing or something else?”
“I was baptized Maxence Charles Honoré Grimaldi. Because I have been ordained as a deacon, you can call me Deacon Father Maxence or Father Maxence.”
Her tone sharpened. “‘Yeah, it’d be too suspicious if I called you daddy.”
He winced like she’d slapped him, as he damn well should.
She hadn’t meant to be quite so sarcastic, but dang, this was not some minor thing he’d forgotten to mention. She didn’t like that he’d put her in the position of helping him break his vows, either.
She said, “Auggie, you don’t even look like a Maxence. A guy named ‘Maxence’ should be effete, skinny, and blond.” Not shredded with muscle and with thick, dark, curling hair and a face like a movie star. “And I don’t know how I’m ever going to get used to calling you that.”
He glanced at his reflection in the ornate mirror above the fireplace mantle, and so two gorgeous men were looking at each other. “I don’t think I look like an ‘Auggie.’”
Dree said, “So, that whole story about you being a prince was to cover up the fact that you’re a priest, or you’re going to be one, or you want to be one. Bravo, Father Deacon Maxence, bravo.” She slow-clapped, and for some stupid reason, her heart felt like it was cleaving over and over into a million slices and fluttering as it fell around her.
“It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves, and it doesn’t matter how we got here. The most important thing now is to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”
“I think that’s obvious. I’m a nurse practitioner, and I’m going on a Catholic charity mission to help save the lives of newborn preemie babies by building tiny little NICU clinics all over the Nepali countryside. I don’t know what you’re going to do.”
He frowned and shook his head. “I’ve done many of these charity missions all over the world for eight years, from Rwanda and The Congo to Argentina and Nicaragua to West Virginia and the Appalachians. The problem is that we usually slate all-male groups of volunteers for these missions, and I had planned for this group to be the same.”
“So, you’re saying, what? You don’t think there’s going to be any women’s bathrooms where you’re going?”
“There aren’t going to be any bathrooms where we’re going. We were planning to stay in rectories with other priests when we can, but there is camping gear that has been rented, and we will be roughing it in the extreme out in Jumla province. A woman would not be comfortable in those conditions.”
“Augustine, I mean Maxence, you are a city boy who lives in gussied-up Europe. I am a country girl who was born and raised on a sheep ranch in southern New Mexico. I can guarantee that any ‘roughing it’ that you think you have done is what my people would call an ordinary weekend. Do not tell me that I don’t know how to rough it.”
He frowned at her. “I’ve been on charity missions in some of the most destitute parts of the world, where I lived with families while I built their wells or schools or whatever else it was that they needed. Nobody was slaughtering the fatted calf for me on those trips.”
Dree crossed her arms across her chest and looked away from him. “Still, I am a hardened country girl, and I can tell you are nothing but a greenhorn, city-boy dude.” When she used the word dude, it did not have the friendly connotations that surfers have when they say it. “You would get bucked off of a broken-down, hoof-draggin’ nag in five seconds flat.”
He said, “I can ride a horse.”
“Maybe one of those docile, Saddlebred geldings they keep at dude ranches.”
“This is unproductive. We need to contact Father Thomas Aquinas and tell him to send a different medical professional for this trip.”
“I am not quitting. I cannot go back to Phoenix. If one of us can’t go, you quit.”
“I will not back out of this mission. You should quit.”
“I’m not going to quit. You quit!”
Maxence clenched his fists and looked away from her. “I must go on this mission. Besides the fact that I have a great deal of experience in leading complicated projects such as this one, these kinds of missions are why I am a deacon and want to be a priest.”
Dree gasped and pointed at him. “You do want to be a priest!”
“Yes! I would’ve taken Holy Orders years ago if they’d let me. I have chosen this life because I want to do good work in the world, because I’m recognized for this because I do good work, and I thrive here. When I am out on one of these missions, a sense of purpose fills me like no other time in my life. This is what I was meant to do.”
She pointed in the general direction of France. “Then, in Paris, why did you—”
“I don’t know!”
Dree sucked in a deep breath like when an ER noob resident got hot under the collar at nurses who had far more experience than they did. “Okay. We just need to figure this out. So, okay. So, this work means a lot to you, but I need to go on this mission.”
“If it’s just that it’s not safe for you in Phoenix, I can send you back to Paris. I will pay for you to stay at the Four Seasons or a rented house in the French countryside or whatever you want for two months, the same amount of time that you would have spent on this mission. I’ll put money in an account for you to spend. You’ll be safe there. You just can’t be here.”
“I won’t accept charity like that. I work for my money. I’ve worked all my life, first on the ranch and then to pay my way through college, and I won’t accept your money to sit around and eat bonbons and fritter away two months.”
“You could
order Merveilleux de Fred every day,” he said.
“Oooo, that’s playing dirty. But I want to make a difference, too. When I heard about this mission, it made the rest of my life seem like I’ve wasted it. Even though when I was in Phoenix, I was working in an inner-city hospital and helping people and saving lives every day, this is even more important. I could do something that I’m really proud of here.”
He sat in a chair across from her and braced his elbows on his legs, his hands clasped between his knees, a pose that Dree knew was taught to therapists and dorm resident assistants to signal, I’m non-judgmentally listening. “We both want to go on this mission.”
“Yes.”
“It is a problem that you are female.”
“Sexist, much?”
“It is inconvenient.”
That was worse. “Sorry that my vagina inconveniences you. It didn’t last week.”
He frowned. “The other four people scheduled to go on this mission are all male.”
“You sure about that? Any of them named Chris, or Andy, or Charlie, Skylar, Frankie—”
“Two of them are old friends of mine from boarding school. I’ve known them for twenty-five years. Both are cis-het males, Alfonso de Borbón y Grecia and Isaak Yahontov. They’re tech guys, engineers, and venture capital.”
“So, that’s two. How about the others?”
“One is a translator, and we asked specifically for a male person. His name is Batsa Tamang. Batsa means ‘son,’ like a male offspring, in the Nepali language, so I’m going to guess he’s a guy.”
“You never can tell with names, evidently. And there are trans people in Nepal.”
“We’ll cross that rickety, swinging suspension bridge over a raging river when we come to it. Speaking of which, there will likely be several of those on our journey. If you don’t like heights—”
Her words came out as almost a sneer, but he was being an ass. “My cousins and I used to go rock climbing up cliff faces with nothing but Keds sneakers and prayer. You can’t scare me.”
He cleared his throat. “You haven’t seen some of the bridges that I’ve crossed in Nicaragua and Argentina. The other guy is purported to be a Jesuit, so he’s probably a man.”
“Heh. Maybe.”
“Right, but it’s likely you’ll be the only woman on the trip.”
“I’m fine with that.”
“I’m not. I might not be around every moment to protect you. I have connections to make, business to do, while we’re up there.”
“Do you seriously think that some of these guys might be Rapey McRapists? If they are, should you be taking them way out in the middle of nowhere, where maybe the police aren’t particularly reliable?”
“Alfonso and Isaak are fine. They would never force a woman or do anything untoward. I’ve never met the translator or the Jesuit.”
“I got along just fine for twenty-five years before I met you.”
“The night I met you, it looked like you were not fine.”
She eye-rolled at him. “I promise not to get smashed at the Buddha Bar in the Nepali outback and make stupid pronouncements.”
He shrugged. “That did seem like a one-time event. Is there anything else on that napkin bucket list of yours that’s going to get you into trouble?”
Dree poked around in her purse and pulled out the napkin she had been writing her craziest goals and ideas for the future on. One corner was limp and becoming frayed. She should laminate it or something. “I promise not to do any of the ones that involve getting naked while on the mission. Going to Nepal is on the list, so if you hand me that pen, I’ll just cross that one off right now.”
He handed over a slim pen that had been sitting on the coffee table between them, holding it by one end.
She took the other end of the pen, pinching it carefully, leaving as much space between their fingers as possible.
The heat from his skin warmed the air around the pen, and when she grabbed it, their eyes flicked up and met.
Magic.
Magic like a spark and a crackle and anticipated warmth washed over her, and the dark depths of his eyes pulled her in.
His luscious lips parted.
No, no, there was no such thing as magic, and Dree was just taking a pen out of his hand. It was nothing.
She leaned back.
He leaned back.
She drew a careful line through the words Visit Nepal.
An ink-dot spread from the end of the line and bled into the napkin’s paper fibers.
Above where she had crossed out Visit Nepal, the items on her bucket list read, Play Baccarat at the Monte Carlo Casino, Meet someone royal, Swim in the Mediterranean Sea in the French Riviera, and Marry someone you love with all your heart because it’s worth it.
Yeah, well, maybe someday.
She leaned back over the coffee table, offering him the pen back. “Um, thanks.”
He took the pen back without looking her in the eyes that time, keeping his gaze on the pen and the table. “Of course.”
If she went on this mission, out into the wilderness of Nepal with this incredibly attractive man who thought he wanted to be a priest, she was going to have blue lady-balls the whole time. Even a waft of warmth from his hand was making her dizzy and distracted. “So, if I wasn’t going to go, what would you do for medical personnel?”
Deacon Father Maxence had crossed his legs away from her and was looking out of the front window over the small yard with carefully manicured hedges and bushes, almost like a labyrinth. He rested one elbow on the back of his couch and rested his knuckle on his lips. “I would call Father Thomas Aquinas in Phoenix and a few other network connections and see if they could find a replacement for you and how soon they could be here.”
She couldn’t look away from where his knuckle touched his full lips. “Could you do that?”
He nodded. “We’re supposed to leave on the day after tomorrow, early in the morning. We’re having a team meeting here tomorrow afternoon after I assist with Mass at Perpetual Help, and then we will arrange for permits and problems after that. We leave early Sunday morning. I can’t imagine that they could get someone here in time.”
“You could just postpone the beginning of the trip for a few days until someone got here. Father Thomas was supposed to send someone else. Maybe they could jump on a flight.”
“The doctor’s mother had a stroke. He had to drop out.”
“So, he can’t come.”
“And the flight time from the southwestern US to Nepal is over a day, sometimes more like thirty-two hours. Even if we found someone as close as India, getting them here and ready to travel would be problematic. Do you have cold-weather gear?”
“Yes, Father Moses in Paris set me up with all kinds of gear—”
“Father Moses Teklehaimanot? Black guy, African, missing part of his small finger of his right hand?
“Yeah, at Saint-Sulpice Cathedral in Paris?”
“Yes, and of course, Father Thomas Aquinas sent you to Moses. They’re all connected. I think I met your Sister Annunciata in Rome a few years ago.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Nuns and religious sisters choose the best ecclesiastical names. Annunciata. Scholastica. Priests usually don’t choose such devotional names, and most keep their given names.”
“Anyway, Father Moses set me up with ski pants, a ski jacket, hockey gloves and liners, longies, thick socks, boots, everything. I was wearing half of it when I walked out of the airport in Kathmandu and about had heatstroke.”
Maxence chuckled and looked down, his thick eyelashes lying on his skin. “Southern parts of Nepal are covered by a subtropical rain forest. The climate here varies by region due to the altitude. Kathmandu is quite warm.”
“Yeah, it’s like winter in Phoenix.” She coughed because they were talking so much, and her throat felt a little abraded.
Maxence shot her a look. “Are you sick?”
“No, the air pollution i
s getting to me. It’s like Phoenix during a winter temperature inversion, when the air gets bad.”
He leaned over to a small dresser and opened a drawer. He removed some white half-domes and tossed them on the coffee table. “Those are N95 masks. Wear them around Kathmandu when you’re outside. Once we’re out of the city, the air becomes perfectly clean, so you won’t need them.”
Dree retrieved the masks and tucked them in her purse.
Max said, “Where we’re going will be colder, though. Much higher altitude. You’ll need your cold-weather gear.”
“He sent everything, even space blankets and thermal hand warmers.”
“At least you have gear. I’ll make inquiries,” Maxence sighed, “but I think if we want a medical professional on this trip, it will have to be you.”
“At least you know I really do want to be here.”
“There is that. I’ve headed a few projects where people were suckered or pressured into going. Most of them didn’t complain, but they weren’t happy they were there.”
Dree nodded. “So, we’re going to be together for a while.”
Maxence nodded, his eyebrows flicking up as if Dree had made the understatement of the year.
“I didn’t know that you were a deacon or a priest, or whatever you are, or that you wanted to be a priest when we were in Paris.”
Maxence’s shoulders lowered. “Yes, well, I didn’t tell you. That was my failing.”
“I’m not the kind of girl who sleeps with priests or even with guys who want to be priests.”
“I never thought you were.”
“So, that’s why you didn’t tell me?”
He shrugged, and he still didn’t look at her.
She said, “While we are on this mission, we need to keep it professional.”
He nodded. “I was just about to broach the same topic.”
“I mean, I’m a fun lay for a week or two, but I’m not the kind of girl you give up the priesthood for.”
Maxence looked at her first, and then he turned his whole body to face her directly. He leaned again with his elbows on his knees and didn’t look away from her eyes when he said, “Dree, chérie, I apologize for lying to you while we were in Paris. I should have told you that I aspire to the priesthood, and after I got you back to your hotel that first night, I shouldn’t have touched you. That was my weakness and my sin. I take full responsibility for everything that transpired. And even though I have every intention of becoming a priest, I want you to know that any man would be lucky to marry you. Francis Senft is a despicable human being for swindling you out of everything you owned, and he’s an idiot because he didn’t marry you and cherish you for the rest of his life. He didn’t know what he had. You are a beautiful, kind, wonderful woman, and if I didn’t feel that I have a real call and a vocation to become a Jesuit priest in the order of the Society of Jesus, I would’ve swept you up and never left Paris without you. You deserve a husband who will love you with his undivided heart, not a liar like me, and not an idiot like Francis Senft.”
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