The Parson's Waiting

by Sherryl Woods

  “No matter what profession a person is in, it’s impossible to please everybody,” she said pragmatically. “Just ask Luke Hall how folks have been treating him since he stopped carrying five different brands of corn flakes because he was running out of shelf space.”

  “But old Luke has the hide of an elephant,” Richard observed. “Something tells me you don’t.”

  She shot him a troubled look, as if she hadn’t expected him to be able to read her so easily. “How’d we get on this, anyway?” she demanded, sounding flustered. “I came down here to haul you back to Sunday dinner. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. A rousing sermon always makes me hungry.”

  Richard recognized a lost cause. Anna Louise wasn’t about to go back to the house alone and face Maisey’s wrath. “Let’s go,” he agreed, getting to his feet in one lithe movement. He struck off ahead of her, then turned back. His gaze pinned on hers, he said quietly, “Give ‘em a run for their money, Anna Louise. That’s what the folks around here deserve.”

  He caught a glimpse of her startled expression before he picked up his pace and moved on.

  * * *

  Over Maisey’s crisp, fried chicken, buttery mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and apple cobbler, it took everything in him to keep his eyes on his plate and his thoughts in line. It had to be some sort of divine test. Why was it man’s perverse nature to desire what he couldn’t have?

  He couldn’t for the life of him reconcile what Anna Louise did for a living with the observant young woman who kept them laughing at her outrageous stories about Luke Hall down at the general store in town and his lazy trio of good-for-nothing sons. Naturally, Anna Louise seemed to think those boys had the potential to be saints, particularly young Jeremy, who, at eighteen, was already making plans to be married. Richard could have told her stories about those three hellions, but he didn’t. No point in disillusioning her, if she couldn’t see what was plain as day. Jeremy was the instigator of most of their mischief. Jeremy married? Richard couldn’t picture it. Nine times out of ten, a boy who got married at eighteen hadn’t been able to think of any other way to persuade his girl into bed. Maybe parsons had to turn a blind eye to facts like that.

  Right on through dessert, Richard kept waiting for Anna Louise to offer to save his sorry soul, but either she didn’t feel it was worth saving or she was storing up the offer for another occasion. He was almost disappointed not to have the chance to tell her what she could do with her plans for his eternal salvation.

  * * *

  Anna Louise honestly didn’t know what to make of Richard Walton. She’d heard about Maisey Walton’s grandson, the renegade journalist who defied death by chasing stories into places no other journalist would dare to go. He was every bit as bitter and cynical as she would expect a man to be after witnessing the atrocities he had seen.

  And yet she knew that no grandson of Maisey’s could grow up without being instilled with her values and generosity of spirit. She wondered what it would take to wipe that jaded look from his eyes and restore the sense of joy he must have felt as a child growing up in this beautiful, serene place.

  At least Richard hadn’t turned out to be one of those people who thought she didn’t belong behind the pulpit. Her very own pastor back in Tennessee didn’t hold with women preaching, even though she’d been encouraged to attend Sunday school and take part in youth leadership activities. It seemed a line had been drawn at the front of the church and she wasn’t allowed to step over it.

  Fortunately her parents had understood her calling and had encouraged her to follow her chosen path, no matter how difficult it might be. Some of her own cousins, however, had been appalled and had wasted no opportunity to tell her so. As for the men in her classes at seminary, most of them had felt it their duty to show her that she didn’t belong. It was amazing how selective they could be in their reading of Scripture, picking only passages which seemed to disapprove of women in the pulpit. She had quietly gone about the business of proving them wrong, by becoming better educated, a better preacher and a more tolerant person than any of them. She also had her own Bible passages to counter all their claims.

  Being asked by the congregation to become the full-time pastor of the church here in Kiley had been the sweetest, most satisfying moment of her life. It had made all of the years of struggling, all the tests of faith worthwhile.

  Clearly, though, Richard Walton had been taken aback to discover her profession. There had been an unmistakable difference between the way he’d treated her the day they’d met and the way he’d acted during dinner. On that first day he had reacted to her and she to him, their responses as natural as could be between two people whose hormones were intact.

  Now, though, there was a distance, a caution that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t the first time she’d experienced such a reaction. Some men seemed to fear eternal damnation if they dared even to ask her out. Up until now she had always been able to shrug it off, partly because she’d had her career to keep her occupied. It was challenge enough without adding romance to her life.

  Quicker than the blink of an eye, Richard Walton had changed that. For the first time in her life, she thought she knew the real meaning of temptation. She had to admit she was oddly disgruntled that a man who reportedly feared nothing suddenly seemed to fear even having a conversation with her.

  Had it been any other man, she might have convinced herself to forget about it, but this was Maisey’s grandson. Maisey clearly worshiped him, and Anna Louise loved Maisey. There was no question that she and Richard Walton would be thrown together more than might be wise, given the sparks that had been there when they’d first met.

  But, she thought irritably, if today had been anything to go by, he seemed perfectly capable of resisting the temptation.

  Surely she had every bit as much willpower as he did, she told herself sternly. Just in case, though, she vowed to pray very hard that the next time she saw him she would find him to be no more attractive than a toad.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Unfortunately, Anna Louise’s fervent prayers went unanswered. When she ran into Richard Walton inside Patterson’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain first thing on Monday morning, her traitorous heart skipped a beat. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, with little crinkles at the corners from laughing or from looking into the sun. She preferred to think it was the former, even though she’d barely seen his mouth curve into a smile. Surely at some point in his life, he’d found things to laugh about.

  “Miss Perkins,” he said formally.

  There was no mistaking his reluctance to acknowledge her existence. He’d cast one desperate look around as if there might be another exit that wouldn’t necessitate going past her.

  “Mr. Walton,” she said, matching his prim demeanor and wishing she could think of some way to tease him out of it. She would give almost anything to see that spark of interest back in his eyes again. She had almost given up hope that any man in Kiley would ever look at her like that. She—or her profession, to be perfectly accurate—intimidated most men, even after they got to know her. Now it appeared that Richard Walton felt the same.

  She was so absorbed in her own regrets that she missed Richard’s shifting stance and his uncomfortable determination to offer an unneeded explanation for his presence in town.

  “I just came in to pick up some medicine for Maisey,” he said.

  Instantly, worry crowded out this stupid game they seemed to be playing, a game at which she was obviously thoroughly inept. A woman who had been determined to get through seminary despite all the odds had little time left to perfect the art of flirting. Besides, it would have been considered unseemly. She’d spent a lot of effort taming anything in her outgoing personality that others might view as a wild streak.

  “Is Maisey feeling okay?” she asked at once.

  “She claims she is, but I noticed she wasn’t moving quite so fast this morning. And she barely touched her breakfast. Hopefully it’s
nothing more than her arthritis acting up. It turned cool overnight.” His gaze met hers and skidded away. He was staring at a point beyond her left shoulder—probably at the exciting display of Ace bandages—when he added, “Anyway, thanks for asking.”

  Anna Louise made a quick decision. “Perhaps I should come back to the house with you. Sometimes she’s too stubborn to call the doctor when she’s feeling poorly.”

  “It’s not your problem,” he said curtly. “I’ll call the doctor, if she needs him.”

  Anna Louise didn’t have a lot of patience for people who wouldn’t accept help when it was offered. “And how will you tell? Do you have a medical degree I don’t know about?”

  “Do you?” he countered.

  “No, but I know Maisey.”

  He stiffened visibly. “She’s my grandmother. Are you suggesting I don’t know her as well as you do?”

  “Her health has been failing steadily for the past few years,” she said vehemently without thinking about how it might hurt him. “You haven’t been around, so, yes, I guess I am saying that I know more about it than you do.” She glared at him. “Is that really the point?”

  He looked downright bemused by the attack. He probably thought pastors weren’t subject to the same flare-ups of temper that afflicted other people. Anna Louise almost felt sorry for him and not just because he’d underestimated her. A guilty conscience sometimes had a way of taking a person by surprise.

  She looked into his eyes and suddenly relented. However rotten his attitude was toward most people, he clearly loved Maisey and was bound to be worried by the decline in her health. After all, it had been enough to bring him home when nothing else ever had.

  “How about a cup of coffee?” she suggested impulsively.

  His gaze narrowed suspiciously as if he were trying to figure out some ulterior motive for the offer. “I thought you were so damned determined to get up to the house to check on Maisey.”

  She clung tenaciously to her last thread of patience. “Five minutes won’t make any difference. Think of this as an olive branch. It’s clear you and I have gotten off on the wrong foot this morning. I don’t want Maisey to worry about the tension between us. She’ll pick up on it right away.”

  He sighed and some of the stiffness eased out of his shoulders. “You’re right about that. Okay, a cup of coffee sounds good.”

  They sat down and Tucker Patterson brought the coffee to the table, along with two pieces of homemade coffee cake they hadn’t ordered. The old pharmacist grinned at Anna Louise.

  “I don’t want to hear any of your dieting nonsense, young lady. You need your energy if you’re going to keep up with all you’ve got to do around here. Saving sinners can take a toll on a person. Leastways, that’s what my son is always telling me.”

  She glanced over and caught Richard grinning. His smile was everything she had imagined, warm and devastatingly attractive.

  “And me?” he said to Tucker. “You trying to give my energy a boost?”

  “I doubt your energy needs it. Unless you’ve changed, you can turn around and eat five minutes after your last full meal. When you and Orville were boys, I had to put the two of you on the payroll around here just to break even.”

  Anna Louise chuckled at Richard’s indignant expression, fascinated by the obviously fond byplay between him and Tucker. “Isn’t that a little like leaving the foxes guarding the henhouse?” she asked.

  Tucker’s eyes twinkled behind his rimless glasses. “Sure was, but I paid them in food they’d have eaten anyway. At least I wound up with free help.” He winked at her. “Now you two enjoy yourselves. Good to see you back, Richard. Hope you’ll be around for a while. I know Orville will be mighty glad to see you.”

  When he’d gone back behind the counter, Anna Louise bought some time by tasting her pecan coffee cake and taking a few swallows of coffee.

  “So you and Orville Patterson grew up together,” she said finally, after it became obvious that Richard had no intention of getting the conversational ball rolling.

  He nodded. “You know him?”

  Anna Louise considered her reply carefully. She and Tucker Patterson’s son were not on the best of terms. In fact, he was leading the crusade to get her thrown out of her church, had been from the day she’d been voted in. His father, thankfully, didn’t seem to share his bias against women preachers. In fact, Tucker obstinately sat in the front pew of her church every single Sunday just because he knew it gave his stiff-necked son hives. Unfortunately, just in the last two months Orville had gained support from two new pastors in the region.

  “He’s the pastor over in Jasper Junction,” she said finally. “We meet on occasion.”

  Richard shook his head in wonder. “Old Orville is a preacher?”

  She grinned at his amazement. “Not what you expected of him?”

  “Actually, I thought he’d go straight from juvenile hall to prison.”

  Fascinated, she leaned forward. “Exactly what mischief did you and Orville used to get into?”

  “By today’s standards it wouldn’t even warrant a slap on the wrist, but back then we were regarded as troublesome,” he admitted.

  “Come on, tell,” she encouraged. “What did you do?”

  “Why the fascination with our childhood pranks?”

  Anna Louise wasn’t prepared to admit that her motive wasn’t entirely pure. She figured one of these days she could probably use all the ammunition she could get to fight the narrow-minded man who’d sworn to see her thrown out of the Kiley church or die trying. “Let’s just say I always like to know the character of the people I’m dealing with.”

  He shot her a puzzled look. “Are you talking about me now or Orville?”

  “Both,” she said candidly. “Though I assure you the reasons are very different.”

  He leaned forward intently, a sudden glimmer of pure mischief crossing his face. That look reminded Anna Louise of Maisey and made her like him all the more. In a way, she suddenly felt as if she knew him.

  “Do tell,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You first,” she insisted.

  “Okay, then,” he agreed, but he took his time about getting on with it. He stirred another teaspoon of sugar into his already sweetened coffee and took a long sip, before leveling a serious look at her. “Keep in mind, though, that Orville was always the ringleader. I was merely an innocent he led astray.”

  Though his tone was sober, she caught the amusement lurking in his eyes. “Right,” she said dryly. “Talk.”

  “Well, now, let’s see.” He drummed his fingers on the table as if he was considering which tale to tell first. The one he chose brought a smile to his lips. “I suppose the height of our glory as Kiley’s bad boys was the time we stole Mabel Hartley’s girdle from the clothesline and paraded it around town like a flag.”

  “That’s not so bad,” Anna Louise said, trying—and failing—to hold back a chuckle. She doubted, however, that Mabel had the sense of humor needed to excuse the act.

  “You don’t understand,” he said, sounding offended that she hadn’t given the misdeed enough credit. “Mabel was chagrined. She was convinced that everyone in town thought her fine figure was purely natural.”

  Anna Louise practically choked on her coffee. “Excuse me, but she weighs nearly two hundred pounds now. What did she weigh back then?”

  “At least that,” Richard confirmed. “It was a heck of a girdle. I’d say that sucker could have tucked in the sides of a freighter.”

  Anna Louise laughed out loud at the image, but what made her even happier was the expression of pure mischief on Richard’s face. She was right about the laughter. It transformed him. The hard angles of his face softened. His eyes lit up. For an instant there was no trace of the hard, bitter man who’d seen too much of death and destruction around the world.

  “What else?” she prodded, just to keep the mood alive. “Nobody goes to jail for stealing a girdle and embarrassing one of the town�
�s matrons.”

  “They do if her husband is the sheriff, which he was back then.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Orville and I spent two whole hours in a jail cell until Maisey and Tucker came storming through the door to rescue us. Actually I credit Tucker with that. I think Maisey was inclined to leave us there. She was very sympathetic to poor Mabel.” He shook his head, an expression of wonder crossing his face. “I can’t recall the last time I thought about that.”

  “You’ve had other things on your mind the past few years.”

  “That’s part of it, I suppose.”

  “Only part?”

  He shrugged. “The good memories of Kiley were few and far between after that summer. It wasn’t all that difficult to forget they’d happened at all.”

  Anna Louise was taken aback by the renewed bitterness in his voice and by its apparent cause. “What happened to make you hate this place so much?”

  His gaze lifted to meet hers. The spark had gone out of his eyes, leaving them dulled with pain again.

  “Small town, small people. Let’s just leave it at that,” he said in his typically cryptic way. He picked up the bag of medicine and shoved it in his pocket. “I’d better be getting back to Maisey.”

  Anna Louise blamed herself for the sudden shift in his mood, the renewal of the tension between them. For a fleeting moment he’d seemed almost happy. Then he had plunged back into that dark antagonism that she had foolishly attributed entirely to his experiences overseas. Now it seemed obvious that Richard Walton’s discontent had begun right here in Kiley a long, long time ago. Given that, she wondered if he’d stick around long enough for her to figure out what made him tick. She found herself oddly disappointed by the thought that he might not.

  * * *

  Richard’s long strides took him up the side of the mountain in less than half an hour. He needed this hike, this time to himself. The day had quickly turned hot and humid, a last reminder of summer before autumn’s chill arrived for good. Sweat broke out on his forehead and streaked down his back. At least he could blame the heat for leaving him feeling restless and irritable. Chances were, though, that was only part of the explanation. Anna Louise was the bigger part of it.