Thomas came up behind her and pulled her under the mistletoe before she could resist. His kiss was long, slow and thoroughly provocative. She clung to him afterward, wishing for more.
“Thank you for going with me this afternoon,” he said.
They had talked of other things on the ride home—when they had talked at all. She had wondered when or if he would discuss their visit to the church.
“They loved you, Thomas. They still do.”
“I’ve never doubted that they loved me. I loved myself. That was the problem.”
“Can you honestly say that when you were serving that church, you were doing it all for your own glorification? That you didn’t feel a sense of commitment to others or maybe, just maybe, to a higher purpose?”
“I’m not sure what I think right now,” he said. “Except that it’s getting late. It’s been a long day.”
“And you want to go to bed.”
He pulled her closer. “Yes.”
Her heart threatened to stop beating. This was a different Thomas, one who was not so torn by his past mistakes. A man looking toward the future. And if the light smoldering in his eyes was any sign, he believed that future included one Garnet Anthony Stonehill.
“I love your hair.” He reached up and unclasped the wide gold barrette holding it back from her face. “It has a mind of its own. Like a certain woman I know.”
She had always done the seducing. Now she was nearly tongue-tied in her eagerness to see what he would do next. She circled his waist with her arms. “What else do you love?”
“Your eyes. They’re a collage of greens, and they change with your moods. When you’re angry they’re almost gold, the way I imagine a tigress’s eyes.”
“Grrr...”
“And your skin.” He trailed kisses to her neck. “It’s the color of wildflower honey, and it tastes as wild and sweet.”
She arched her neck to give him better access. “Don’t stop.”
“Oh, I don’t intend to.” He sealed his intention by swinging her up into his arms.
He kissed her as he carried her into the bedroom. She felt boneless in his arms, a willing participant in this new chapter in their marriage. She was sure, absolutely sure for the first time, that he wanted her. Not because she had provoked him. Not because she had seduced him. But because he was a man who desired the woman he had married.
He helped her undress, one piece of clothing at a time stripped at an agonizingly slow pace from her willing body. She repaid him in kind, her pace even slower and more provocative, until they were both naked, their bodies flushed with desire.
The evidence of his desire was there for her to see. He was ready for her, proud and indisputably male. She had seen him this way before, then felt his desire disappear in the next moment. But she knew that tonight was going to be different. Tonight Thomas wanted her. Tonight he believed in their future together. Tonight he believed in himself.
They fell to the bed together. Their limbs tangled; their hands collided as they caressed each other. Thomas kissed her as if each kiss was a discovery. She entwined her legs with his as he pulled her on top of him. She looked into his eyes and knew that he was the man she had never believed existed, the man she had given up hope of finding—before hope had even been allowed to grow.
“I love you,” she whispered. “The man you were, the man you are, the man you’ll be. All the Thomas Stonehills.”
He closed his eyes, but not in sorrow. He looked humbled, as if the gift of her love was more than he had ever asked for.
“Make love to me, Thomas,” she said, closing her eyes, too. “And let me be your lover now.”
She eased herself over him. She could feel the rigid pulsing of his arousal inside her. Pleasure burst through her. He filled her as completely as a dream. This was a dream that had been denied them too long. “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes, Thomas.”
She moved slowly, filling herself with him again. His whole body was rigid beneath her, as if his pleasure was too exquisite to allow him movement.
And then the pleasure was gone for both of them.
At first she was confused. They had conquered the problem. They were victorious. They had truly become one. She moved, but there was no answering pulsing inside her. His body no longer responded to hers. She opened her eyes and saw that his were open, too. And instead of confidence, instead of belief in a future, she saw a bleakness that turned his eyes to ice.
She couldn’t tell him it was all right. It wasn’t, and she wouldn’t patronize him by pretending. She lay against his chest, but his arms didn’t come around her in comfort.
Finally she moved to the bed beside him. “This time we’re going to talk about it,” she said.
He wondered how much pain one person could endure, how much humiliation a man had to experience before he saw the truth. “What is there to say?”
“What happens in your head, Thomas? What memory or thought comes between us?”
“If I knew that, don’t you think I could get beyond it?”
“We got farther today.”
“As if it made any difference! Sex isn’t a climb up Mount Everest. You don’t get credit for every hundred yards you go up the side of a cliff.”
“Maybe not, but it gives me even more hope that eventually we’ll reach the top.”
He stared at the ceiling. There was so little he was sure of, but in the last agonizing moments, one thing had become crystal clear. “There won’t be any eventually, Garnet. I’m not going to put you through this again. The marriage vows don’t apply here. You never signed on for better or worse. You signed on so I could help you through a tough time in your life. That time has ended. You’re safe now. No one is going to go after you again now that Demon’s in jail.”
“And I’m not allowed to stay with you through your tough times?”
“You would be bound to me for life.”
“That’s ridiculous. This will change. It was better tonight-”
“Better?” He sat up and faced her. He could no longer avoid the fact that she was lying there, warm and desirable and completely unattainable beside him. “Do you think this travesty was better? Do you know how tortured I feel every time I fail?”
“I know. Thomas, I know it must be terrible. The frustration must tear you apart inside. But you didn’t fail, you just weren’t as successful—”
“I failed you!” He stood up and reached for his clothes. They were right beside the bed, but he couldn’t find them quickly enough to suit him.
“No, you—”
“I can live with the frustration. I have been living with it. But I can’t live with you and know that I’m failing you every time we try to make love. You’re a sensual, vital woman who needs a man in her life who can perform!”
“You make it sound like I’m looking for a gigolo!”
“You need a man. Not a eunuch. I’m not going to sit by and watch you dedicate your life to someone who can’t give you sex, can’t give you children—”
“But you will. When the time is right.”
For a moment, for just one single moment, he found himself yearning to believe her. Then reality intruded. He was standing beside the most desirable woman he had ever known, and he was incapable of making love to her. Even now, with their relationship coming to an end, his body could not comply with what his heart craved.
He turned away from her. “The time will never be right. I thought tonight it might be. I thought maybe I’d put some of my ghosts to rest today. But it didn’t matter. Not even a little bit. And it’s never going to be better than this. I’m never going to be better! It’s time for you to think about the rest of your life.” He turned away. “But don’t include me in it. Because I’m not going to be there.”
“Do you care anything for me at all? Since you’re being so viciously honest, why not go all the way. Do you? Have you learned to care for me?”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
> “It has everything to do with it.”
“I’ve learned to care enough to let you go.”
She sat up, pulling the sheet around her as she did. “What does that mean?”
“It means that it’s time for you to think about moving out.”
She stared at him. “Moving out?”
“Soon, Garnet. We’re fooling ourselves. We’re just getting deeper into something that’s going to hurt us both. Get out now, while it doesn’t matter so much. You told me your old apartment is almost ready to move back into. Talk to your landlord and tell him you’ll be in after Christmas.”
“I see.” She looked away. The sheet felt cool against her breasts. The wall she stared at was a pale yellow; she had painted it herself one weekend. She was aware of cars passing on the streets below, cautiously, because of the falling snow. She was aware of so much—and so, so little.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The words threatened to choke him. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“So your intentions were honorable, Thomas. They were honorable when you were married to Patricia, too. Just exactly what does that say about the patterns in your life?”
He didn’t answer. He disappeared into the living room. She could hear sounds, as if he was dressing. Then she heard the front door close.
She wondered why he had given her until Christmas. Was this to be her Christmas present, a few more weeks with the man she claimed to love? A few more weeks of trying to make him see that they could conquer his problem together?
She didn’t want those weeks. She stared at the wall and knew that she couldn’t stay in Thomas’s apartment any longer. She cast around for a place to go until the repairs on her apartment were finished. There were plenty of people who would welcome her. Serena would take her in, despite having only a little space for herself and Chantelle. Tex and Finn would be happy to have her. She considered a dozen other names and discarded them. No place was really right.
No place but home.
Still trailing the sheet, she went into the living room. Thomas was gone, just as she’d thought.
She found her address book and turned the pages. For the first time in the years since she had committed herself to staying in the Corners, she could not imagine staying here any longer.
She called Tex for a brief conversation. Then she dialed her mother’s phone number in Florida.
14
There was a light snow on Christmas Eve after a week of no snow at all. The snow crunched softly under the tires of workers rushing home for the coming holiday. It fell over Kensington Park, and the city’s Christmas lights glittered brighter against the swirls of white. It fell on the sidewalk in front of the Church of the Samaritan and in front of all of the Corners’ churches, where it disappeared under the booted feet of candlelight processions moving toward the Kensington Hotel.
Thomas led the silent procession from the Church of the Samaritan. Behind him, two by two, walked the members of his congregation. There were many more than the thirty who had made their membership official. Some of the men who had helped him repair the building walked behind him. Others in the procession had been brought there by publicity about the coming event.
The publicity had been excellent. With the help of his contacts at Deering Hills Community and media people he had known during his years there, the word had gotten out to the city at large. When the other churches in the community had agreed to participate, even with such short notice, news had spread still farther.
There were representatives from Deering Hills Community in the line behind him. Chris Shallcross and his family planned to come later, after their Christmas Eve service was finished. In the meantime, two dozen Community members walked behind Thomas in support.
He could see the other candlelight processions converging on the hotel. Some had walked for over a mile, lighting and relighting candles, he supposed, as the falling snow extinguished them. Some processions were short, and one that was now nearing the hotel looked to be almost a block long.
His procession walked slowly. They were to converge on the hotel and the abandoned warehouse just beyond it at seven-thirty. The time had been chosen to coordinate with various church services. It fell between the most traditional times of early evening and midnight.
They paused at the stoplight where Thomas had first encountered Garnet. Across the street at Wilford Heights a procession was forming on the sidewalk. The leader was a retired minister who lived in the housing project with his daughter and her family. He had been a friend of Dorothy Brown’s, and now he was a friend of Thomas’s. He was an old man, and life in the project was particularly hard for the old, who were easy prey for the young and armed. But when Thomas had told him of the plans for Christmas Eve, the Reverend Ray Johnson, bent and wizened, had gone from apartment to apartment throughout the complex recruiting his own volunteers.
By the time everyone gathered on the sidewalk outside the hotel, the count was in the hundreds. Thomas was gratified that so many had turned out. Some of those in attendance were onlookers. The processions had drawn attention, as they had been designed to do. Thomas saw kids flaunting gang colors on the sidelines, along with people who had obviously just returned from work and vagrants who hadn’t worked in years.
He also saw the media. He recognized one newscaster, a young man who anchored the earliest local evening news program and probably wished that he was home with his family. There were others from the media who weren’t familiar but whom he identified by their equipment.
The crowd parted as the Samaritan procession arrived. Thomas, as prime organizer, was to lead the way. It wasn’t an honor he had asked for or even coveted. The idea had been his, but he felt no claim on it. This demonstration of the meaning of Christmas belonged to the community, and he wished someone else would act as spokesman. But the decision had been unanimous. Thomas and his church were to lead.
There was a narrow alley behind the Kensington Hotel. Some of the homeless families who lived temporarily at the hotel watched from windows as the procession turned into the alley. Until this afternoon it had been lined with garbage cans and debris. Now it was cleared of everything except one permanent Dumpster in front of the empty warehouse that stood at the alley’s end.
The alley wasn’t dark. It was lit by one security beacon from the warehouse roof. It shone on the people walking, two by two, toward the warehouse doors. The people in the procession were silent, but the barking of guard dogs inside the warehouse shattered the reverent hush.
As Thomas and his followers approached the doors, they were pushed open from the inside. The warehouse was dimly lit, empty of almost everything except cobwebs and a few abandoned crates. But in the center, fifty yards from the doors, were two figures kneeling beside another crate, and others standing nearby. This crate hadn’t been abandoned. It was open at the top, and inside it, on a bed made of blankets and swaddled from head to toe against the cold, was a child.
The procession parted as they reached the center of the room, surrounding the two lonely figures kneeling beside the child.
Candy, kneeling on one side, was dressed in the colors of the MidKnights, black T-shirt under a dark plaid shirt with a long hoodie dragging the ground at her feet. She wore a blue bandanna over her blond hair, but the reverent look on her face as she gazed at Matty was worthy of any Madonna.
Francis was dressed in Coroner's colors, white shirt, thick parka, and a red hat with the letter C emblazoned on it. He gazed at his son, too, a proud young man who was obviously moved by his participation in this event.
The procession continued to enter the warehouse, and behind them, the onlookers came, followed by the media. When everyone was assembled, Thomas nodded. The dogs, four Dobermans chained near the doors, had barked unceasingly as the procession had filed into the room. Now, with their handlers beside them, they were brought to the front. At a spoken command, the dogs stopped barking and lay, heads on their paws, at the side of the room. They stared silently at th
e tableau in front of them, but they didn’t move.
Men in uniform, who had been waiting as the crowd entered, moved closer to the center of the room, as if to adore the child. There were no shepherds in the Corners. But there were city workers who cleaned the streets and cared for the park. There were firefighters and police. Finn was one of the men who moved in a semicircle around Candy, Francis and Matty, as if to protect them.
No one else moved for a long time. The room was silent. Then the last of the people who had been in the warehouse when the others entered stepped forward. They were three women. One was dressed in the distinctive uniform of the Salvation Army. Another was dressed in a suit and heels. The third wore jeans and a heavy sweater. Separately, one at a time, they approached the kneeling mother.
“I have no frankincense,” the woman from the Salvation Army said, “but I have clothes enough for you and your child.” She left a bundle in front of the crate where Matty lay.
The second woman stepped forward and left her gift. “I have no gold, but I work for HUD, and I have forms you can fill out to get rental housing.”
“I have no myrrh,” the third woman said, “but I bring supplies from the emergency food pantry.” She put a small box of canned goods beside the other gifts.
The women stepped to one side and stood silently.
Thomas nodded to the choir director of St. Michael’s church. A group of nearly a dozen stepped forward, and after one note on the director’s pitch pipe, they began to sing “Silent Night.” The assembled worshipers took up the song.
Thomas looked around at the faces of those singing. They were all beautiful, old and young, black and white, Hispanic, Mideastern and Asian. He saw people who were singing the carol in a language other than English, people whose lives were so bleak and desperate that only a great faith could have brought them to this place tonight.
He tried to sing, too, but his throat closed around the familiar words. The idea for the manger scene had come to him when he and Garnet had spoken of Candy and Francis’s alienation from their own community. It had been a simple idea, but there had been a great deal of planning and coordination needed. He had thrown himself into it, as he had once thrown himself into his ministry at Deering Hills Community. He had ignored everything else, as he had once ignored his personal life in Deering Hills.
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