by Teresa Hill
“You really mean that?” he asked.
“I do.” She could never hate him. She could be angry for a while, and she was hurt, but she was as much to blame as he was, and she truly hoped his next relationship worked out better than theirs. Kate whispered, not angry any more and not interested in causing a scene, “She’s not married, is she?”
“No!”
“Okay. Well…what is it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Well, tell her. I mean, if she’s the one you really want, go get her,” Kate said.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is. If you’re in love with her, and she’s in love with you—”
“I have no idea how she feels about me, and I hope she doesn’t know how I feel about her.”
“Joe, that’s ridiculous. You don’t stand a chance that way. You have to tell her how you feel.” Kate remembered how bewildered he looked that first night when he’d told her. He seemed to be wishing every bit of emotion he had for this other woman would just magically disappear, so he and Kate could follow their nice, safe, little plan that wouldn’t have worked for either of them.
“It would ruin everything if I told her,” he claimed.
“That makes absolutely no sense. I’ve never heard you make such little sense before. Telling her is the only way it can work out between you. Unless you’re waiting for her to just figure out how you feel and come throw herself at you.”
“She’s not going to do that.”
“So…what? The two of you are just going to go on like this? Loving each other and being miserable and apart?”
“I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea what to do. I’ve never felt like this in my life.”
“Yeah…well, I know all about that.”
She gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, wondered if the gossips in town would have them back together by dinnertime, but just didn’t care anymore. It was over. She knew it.
Ben got back from the hospital shortly after three that afternoon, and Mrs. Ryan was waiting for him. She had a cup of hot fresh coffee in one hand and a stack of messages in the other.
“No change in little Hannah?” she asked.
“Still hanging on.” He took the messages. “Anything urgent here?”
“Two of those teenage moms called back. They’re willing to meet with you and Shannon.”
“Good.” At least one thing was going okay.
“It was a good thing you did, chasing after her that way, helping her.”
Ben thought he might have lost so much sleep he was hallucinating. Mrs. Ryan was complimenting him on something? “Are you feeling okay?”
“Don’t be mean about it. When someone says something nice to you, the proper thing to do is to simply say, ‘Thank you,’” she told him, her stern self back.
“Thank you, Mrs. Ryan. I mean that. Anything else?”
“Well…there is one thing, and I’m not sure how to tell you this. You know I’m not one for gossip…”
“Of course not.” She was the soul of discretion.
“But…I thought you should know…that woman who’s been helping you with Shannon? Kate Cassidy?”
“Yes. What about Kate?”
“Apparently, she and her fiancé ran into each other at the Corner Café today at lunch,” Mrs. Ryan said, as if the whole thing was distasteful to her, to stoop so low as to gossip like that.
“And?” he prompted.
“Apparently, they’re back together.”
Ben frowned. “I don’t think so.”
“Apparently, they were seen…hugging and kissing in the diner today.”
“I don’t think so,” Ben said again.
“I just thought I should warn you, because…well, you seem to have taken an interest in her, and I didn’t want you to hear about it from someone else.”
“You’re afraid I’m going to get hurt?” he said, astonished. “You’re worried about me?”
“I felt it was my duty to warn you. I didn’t want you to be blindsided by small-minded people who have nothing better to do than spread malicious gossip.”
“You are worried about me, which means you must like me just a little bit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, as primly as he’d ever heard her.
“I’m touched,” he told her. “Honestly. I didn’t think I’d ever do anything to make you like me.”
“You still have a lot to learn about running a church.”
“Of course. And I’m counting on you to teach me. And to keep me in line.”
“I’ll do my best,” she promised.
Ben laughed. He didn’t believe Kate and Joe had made up for a second, not given how wrong the gossips had been about him and Kate lately. Talked to each other, hugged, maybe even kissed good-bye, but not gotten back together.
Kate was going to be his.
Kate, Ben and Shannon went to visit Allison Grant the following Saturday. She’d just turned seventeen, was a high school junior and raising a little boy, Graham, who was eight months old.
Shannon looked nervous. Kate looked determined, probably to make Shannon see that she couldn’t raise her baby on her own. She’d been talking about making pro-and-con lists while they were at Allison’s house. Ben was tired, because he was still spending a lot of time at the hospital with baby Hannah and her parents, but happy to be taking this step with Shannon.
They found the house with no problem, then the apartment over the garage where Allison was living. It didn’t look like much.
“What about her mother?” Shannon asked, as they got out of the car.
“Didn’t want her to keep the baby, and when Allison did, she made Allison and the baby move out. I think she’s still holding out hope that Allison will change her mind. The mother said she’d take Allison back if she gave up the baby.”
“That’s awful,” Kate said, looking up at the garage apartment.
“The mother said she wasn’t going to end up raising the baby for Allison.”
“My mother would have probably done the same thing,” Shannon said.
“Mine wouldn’t have,” Kate said. “She wouldn’t have raised the baby herself. She would have made sure the baby’s mother did that, but she would never have kicked us out of the house, either.”
“She wouldn’t have just ordered you to give up the baby,” Ben whispered in Kate’s ear.
She turned around and glared at him, and he laughed.
“Still think it would work?” he asked.
“I’m not speaking to you right now,” she said.
Shannon turned around and gave them a funny look.
“What?” Kate said, as they climbed the rickety steps leading to the apartment.
“If you two want to go out or something, don’t let me stop you.”
“We’re not going out,” Kate said.
“So you’re just going to keep flirting with him, but never do anything about it?”
“I’m not flirting with him!”
“Sure you are,” Shannon said.
“I was really hoping you were,” Ben added.
Shannon laughed.
Kate glared at him some more.
“You look so cute when you do that,” Ben said.
“Do what?”
“Try to look intimidating and mad.”
Kate rang the bell with more force than necessary. “I do not look cute. I look intimidating. I have a very intimidating look!”
“No, you don’t,” Shannon said. “You can look uptight like no one I’ve ever seen, but you can’t do intimidating at all.”
“I’ll have you both know, there are people who live in fear of making me mad.”
At which both Ben and Shannon broke out laughing.
Kate rang the bell again, not sure if she heard anything when she did, so she knocked instead, intent on ignoring her two companions.
“By the way, she’s not getting back together with Joe,” Shannon said. “No ma
tter what you heard about them at the diner.”
“I know,” Ben said.
Which only made Kate even madder.
Shannon thought baby Graham was built like a barrel, short and stocky and round. He was strong as an ox, determined and simply would not listen to reason.
“You cannot have that,” Shannon said, sitting on the floor to get at eye level with him, enunciating each word very carefully, as if that would help him understand. “You’ll break it.”
“Ahhhhuuuhhhh,” he squealed, reaching for the phone, which he liked to bash against the coffee table, probably because he liked the noise it made.
“He’s a complete barbarian,” Kate said. “I don’t remember my sisters being like this.”
“Ahhhhuhhhhuhhhhuhhh.”
The sound came out like an angry wave. Big tears filled his pretty brown eyes and fell down his soft, baby cheeks. He was cute, but a lot of trouble and still greatly distressed over the phone thing.
Ben, that rat, had offered to let the mother go out for a few hours while they were here, and she’d jumped at the chance. Shannon was beginning to see why. When she thought of her baby, she pictured something cuddly and sweet, not strong and determined and nearly always mad.
Or maybe she was just doing it all wrong.
Maybe she didn’t know what to do.
“Ahhhhhrrrrr,” he squealed again.
“Keys?” Kate offered hers. There were about ten on the ring. She showed him how they jingled when she shook them.
He took them and promptly poked himself in the face with one, then started to cry. It left a big, red mark, which he obviously blamed Shannon for. He looked at her as if she was a monster and cried some more.
Kate looked horrified. Ben looked as if he wasn’t too surprised at how this was working out.
“You’re making this harder than it has to be,” Shannon said.
“I don’t have to make it hard. It is hard,” he argued, sitting comfortably on the couch and letting her deal with everything. “And you need to know that.”
“You want me to say I can’t do it,” she said nearly crying.
“No, I want you to know what you’re getting into.”
“He just doesn’t like me. That’s all.”
“Fine. We’ll go see a dozen babies to find out if any of them like you more than he does.”
Graham was chewing on the edge of the coffee table now. Surely that wasn’t good.
Shannon picked up his gushy, plasticlike ring and handed it to him. He sucked greedily, then started gumming it, drool leaking out of his mouth and onto his fingers, his sleeper, onto everything.
“Oh, gross,” Shannon said.
“I’m sure that’s not the grossest thing he can do,” Ben said.
“Yeah, but I know there’s more to it than this,” Shannon said. “There are good things. Lots of them. I bet he loves his mother. I bet he’s happy with her.”
“Sometimes. But a lot of times, he’s just like this,” Ben said.
She and Kate had chased him all over the living room. He wasn’t quite crawling, but he did this scooting thing, up on his arms and dragging the rest of his body, and managed to get around really well. Really fast.
He’d pulled a bunch of magazines down on his head and cried about it. He’d stood up and made his way around the coffee table, then fallen and banged his chin on it and cried more. He’d wanted to suck on Shannon’s boots. The bottom of her boots! Gross!
He was always busy and never happy for long.
“It would be different with my baby,” Shannon insisted.
Kate, now sitting comfortably in a chair, gave her a look that said, Sure it would.
Graham scooted over to Shannon and pulled himself up by hanging on to her shirt and arm. He patted her cheeks, kind of. Or maybe he was hitting her. She couldn’t be sure. It didn’t really hurt, but it didn’t feel good.
Then he stuck his fingers into her mouth and said, “Bahhhhhhh.”
“Yuck, Graham!”
He looked hurt.
He looked…odd.
Then he made a silly face and spit up on her.
It was all Shannon could do not to throw up herself.
“Well, I guess you think that went well,” Kate said later, when they’d gotten back to her house and Shannon had gone to her room to get out of her smelly clothes and try to wash baby spit-up out of her hair, among other things.
Ben shrugged, not looking happy, just tired, resigned, maybe. “It had to be done.”
“You think she’ll meet with the adoptive parents now?”
Ben nodded.
Kate decided Ben could give lessons in getting people to do things they didn’t want to do. He’d certainly gotten her to face up to her true feelings about Joe.
“About what Shannon said, I meant to tell you myself that if you should hear a rumor or two about me and Joe at the café last Monday…”
He grinned. “That you’re getting back together?”
“Right. About that. Shannon was right. We’re not.”
He looked like he was waiting for something that was actually news. “Mrs. Ryan told me,” he said.
“Mrs. Ryan gossips?”
“No. Never. She was just…looking out for me. We had a breakthrough. She’s decided I’m not completely worthless.”
“She was worried about you?” Kate realized. “Wow. That is a breakthrough. I just thought you’d want to hear it from me, that we weren’t getting back together.”
“I know,” he insisted.
Kate put her hands on her hips. “Just like that? No doubts.”
“None.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know you, Kate. You hate to do the wrong thing, and going back to Joe would definitely be the wrong thing, and you know it.” He came to her, put his hands on either side of her waist. “Besides, you like me.”
She tilted her head up to look into his eyes. He was going to kiss her, and she was glad. “You’re sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“Anybody ever tell you that you have an arrogant streak, Reverend?”
“No.”
“Because you look awfully sure of yourself.”
“There’s a difference between being sure of yourself and being arrogant. Although, I’m not quite sure what the difference is now.” He paused, a millimeter away from her mouth. “Shut up and kiss me, Kate.”
Chapter Twelve
Kate’s smile was so big, she wasn’t sure they could manage a kiss, but he made it work. She went eagerly into his arms, happy to wrap her arms around him and hold him close, to give herself up to this moment.
It was as if he wove a spell around them, pushing everything else away.
There was something about him, something very, very special.
He groaned and crushed her to him, his kisses like something she could happily drown in.
“You shouldn’t be so good at this,” she protested. “There’s something decidedly unministerlike about it.”
“I didn’t go into the seminary until I was twenty-seven.” He backed her up to the couch and eased her down. “I was just a regular guy. I’d kissed a few women by then.”
“I’d say more than a few.”
He sat down on the edge of the sofa and leaned over to kiss her. “It would be ungentlemanly of me to talk about it.”
“And you would never be ungentlemanly.”
“Well, I shouldn’t be.”
Kate pulled him down to her. She rolled onto her side, and he was on his side, facing her. It was close quarters, but she wanted to be close.
“So, what does a gentleman do in a situation like this?” she asked.
“Listens very carefully for the sound of the shower, so the teenager doesn’t come out and find us like this,” he said.
His mouth settled softly on the side of her neck. It tickled, and at the same time felt very, very good. She squirmed and laughed, wrapping her arms tightly around him, sheer joy fi
lling up inside of her and spilling over.
She pressed her mouth to his, closed her eyes and simply enjoyed herself and the feel of his entire body pressed to hers. Her whole body was tingling and alive, hungry for him.
He kissed like a man who had all day to do it, like he could happily explore nothing but her mouth for ages and ages. Kate ran her hand through his hair, along the hard line of his jaw, holding him to her.
Nothing was going to happen, because Shannon was in the shower, which meant this was nothing more than an exploration of each other, an enjoyment.
Kate intended to enjoy it to the fullest. She wasn’t worried about controlling it or analyzing it, just letting herself go with it.
He was nibbling on her ear, which made her squirm some more, trying to get away from him at the same time she was trying to get closer. He buried his head in the curve between her shoulder and her neck, and she gasped. There was something about that spot that just made her melt.
“Like that, huh?”
She nodded.
He used his teeth, gently but very effectively. She shivered and made a pitiful little begging sound that she knew he heard. She could feel him grinning against her neck.
“Oh, yeah. This is a good spot,” he said, lifting his head just long enough to nudge the lapel of her blouse aside to find her collarbone. “I need to find every spot like that on your body.”
Then he traced her collarbone with his tongue, nuzzled it with his nose.
She could feel what it was doing to his body and what this was doing to hers, and all she wanted to do was get closer to him.
Her breathing was labored, as was his.
“The shower’s still going?” she asked.
“Still going. I’ll listen. Don’t worry.”
“Okay.”
Maybe she wouldn’t worry about anything.
A woman could do that with him.
She felt perfectly safe with him, until she considered how much she wanted him and how fast it had all happened.
He just felt so good.
And he was so good to her.
His mouth was playing in that hollow at the base of her throat, and then at the back of her neck. It sent shivers all the way down her spine, all through her body.