"The weatherman said it might snow." Maddie helped Cait stack the music folders in a box. "Wouldn't that be wonderful? And maybe it'll snow for our pageant on Christmas Eve and we can walk through the snow for the processional. Wouldn't that just be amazing, Miss Cait?"
Though still upset, she couldn't hold back a smile. "I'd love to see some snow this early in November. Maybe we'll have a white Thanksgiving."
"Oh, wow." Maddie looked at her dad as he came across the room. "A white Thanksgiving, Daddy. Can you imagine?''
"Just barely." He grinned. "You and Shep get your coats. We need to let Miss Caitlyn go home for supper."
Maddie caught her brother by the hand and ran to the back pew, where the coats had been piled. Cait finished stacking the folders and put the top on the storage box, unwilling to argue with Ben over his interference—especially with the children listening—but unable to say a word about anything else.
"Those kids are wild sometimes." Ben shook his head and picked up the box of folders just as she started to. "I hope they remember to listen next week."
Cait put her arms around the box and pulled it out of his hold, then walked away. "I can carry this." She knew the gesture was childish. So was sulking.
"I'm sure you can." He caught up with her halfway across the church. "But you don't have to."
Despite her good intentions, she spoke through gritted teeth. "I can control my own choir, too."
"Whoa." He put a hand on her arm and turned her to face him. "What does that mean?"
"That I don't need you to browbeat these children into submission. If I had needed—or wanted—help, I would have asked for it."
His eyes narrowed. "I did not browbeat anybody."
"You intimidated them. And made me look weak in the process."
"They were out of control."
"I would have settled them down."
"That's not what it looked like to me. Anyway, my son was causing part of the problem. I had every right to correct his behavior."
"Okay. But you lectured the rest of them. And they need to respect me, ''
In other words, you want to be in charge."
Is that so unreasonable? I am the music director."
"By all means." He stepped back and made a mocking bow in her direction. "You're obviously the expert when it comes to show business. I'm sorry I presumed on your authority. I won't make that mistake again." Stepping past her, he headed for the back of the church. "Come on, kids. Time to go home."
"Bye, Miss Caitlyn," Maddie called. Shep waved.
"See you later," Cait called weakly.
Ben didn't look back as he herded the children outside. He let the wind slam the front door closed behind him, leaving Cait alone in the empty church.
he'd chosen. Pulling on his dad's hand, he climbed upstairs to the kids' bathroom, where Maddie had finished and gone to bed without even saying good-night. Ben ran Shep a bath and sat on the edge of the tub while the boy washed. Pajamas, a selection from Pooh, a kiss, and Shep was down for the night.
Totally wrung out, Ben started down the hallway to his own room. Maybe a carpentry magazine would put him to sleep early. But first, he stopped at Maddie's doorway and peeked through. From the quality of the silence, he could tell she wasn't asleep.
"Maddie." He sat down on the very end of her bed. She jerked her feet up and away. "C'mon, sweetheart. I just want you to do your best work."
4 'I do." She sniffed.
"I know you do. Maybe I'm just grumpy tonight."
After a silence, she said, "You had a fight with Miss Caitlyn."
"Um...well, a disagreement. Yes."
"She's nice."
And Vm not? "Yes, she is."
"So you have to say you're sorry."
His immediate impulse was to say something stupid like, "Why can't she apologize to me?" But that would assign more importance to the incident than it deserved. What difference did Cait Gregory's opinion make, one way or the other? They would pull off this stupid pageant, and then go their separate ways. Caring enough to invest pride and hurt feelings in the process, or the relationship, was a mistake he did not intend to make.
"You're right. I will apologize the next time I see her. Better?"
She sniffed, then nodded. Maddie took a little time to
forgive and forget, but she got there in the end. Ben bent to kiss her cheek. "Love you. Good night."
And then he lay down on his bed alone, with a journal about woodworking in his hands and the image of Cait's snapping green gaze on his mind.
Given the delicate state of Anna Remington's pregnancy, Harry waited until Thursday to contact her husband about the missing funds. As church treasurer, Timothy Bellows should have been present. But Timothy had pleaded an out-of-town appointment he couldn't miss. So Harry met with the pastor alone.
Sitting behind the desk in his dark, Victorian-era office at the church, David Remington stared for a minute, his eyes round, his jaw loose. "Ten thousand dollars? Are you sure?"
Harry fetched the ledger. "See for yourself. Kathleen Fogarty died in April and her will cleared probate in June. So the check should have come in sometime that month or the next. Did we even get the money? Maybe the lawyer's office didn't send it."
The minister took off his glasses, propped his elbows on the desk and rubbed his hands over his face. "We definitely received the check. I remember seeing it." When was that?''
I have no idea." David started to shake his head, then put his glasses on again and looked up at Harry. "Wait. It had to be June because that's when Anna found out she was pregnant. She was opening the mail that morning and brought the check to me. We were talking about Mrs. Fogarty... and then the phone rang and it was the doctor's office, saying her pregnancy test was positive." He smiled briefly. "We both went a little crazy."
"But what did you do with the check?"
t «T>
I'm sure I put it in the bank bag, along with the receipts from Sunday."
"Did you make the deposit?"
The minister shrugged. "I might have. Or Anna, or Timothy. I can't remember."
Harry swallowed a caustic comment. He didn't tolerate such uncertainty and inefficiency in his department. His employees were accountable for their every action.
Make that past tense, Harry reminded himself. You don't have employees nowadays. Because you don't have a job.
He blew out a frustrated breath. "Maybe we'd better look at the bank statements, see if the deposit just wasn't recorded in the ledger."
The bequest didn't show up in the checking account record, either. A quick call to the lawyer's office garnered the information that the funds had been withdrawn from Mrs. Fogarty's estate account. But not how or by whom. The canceled check had been endorsed with the church's regular stamp.
"I don't know how this could have happened." As David got to his feet, his cheeks were even paler than usual. "Give me a couple of days to track this down, Harry. The money can't have simply disappeared. Nobody in the church would have stolen ten thousand dollars."
Harry looked at the young man, taking in the frayed edges of his collar, the worn elbows of his suit jacket, thinking about the two used cars David and Anna drove. They had a baby on the way. They could find a lot of uses for ten thousand dollars.
"I hope you're right, Pastor," he said heavily. "I really hope you're right."
Cait was alone in the living room about nine on Friday night, playing her guitar—resolutely avoiding "Bobby
McGee"—when the doorbell rang. She went to answer, still humming the snatch of melody she'd just found. The music died when she opened the door.
Ben stood on the front porch, his snow-dusted shoulders hunched against the wind, his hands in the pockets of a heavy leather bomber jacket. "Hi." He didn't grin. "Can I talk to you for a few minutes?"
Speechless, she stepped back to allow him inside the entry hall.
"Maddie's finally getting her wish for snow." He blew into his cupped hands. "We're
supposed to have three or four inches by morning."
"That's what I heard. Why are you here?" Maybe it wasn't hospitality at its most gracious, but when there was something to be said, Cait liked to be direct. "David's at a dinner meeting and Anna's asleep."
His hands dropped to his sides. "I want to apologize. Wednesday's...argument...shouldn't have gotten so far out of control."
She shrugged and led the way into the living room. ' 'If something is worth arguing about, you might as well give it all you've got."
"But you shouldn't leave the issues unresolved." The zipper on his jacket rasped, and she turned to see him hanging the coat over a chair back. He wore a dark-green sweater over a yellow shirt and tan cords—nothing special—but just looking at him drove her pulse higher.
"I care about our friendship," he said, and Cait forced her attention back to what he'd come to say. "And I regret the things I said Wednesday night. You made me mad."
Her legs threatened to give way. "Sit down," she told him, retreating to her place on the couch. He took the
nearest chair, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
"So..." His smile was tentative. "Can we back up and forget the fight?"
She stared at him, torn between the desire to smile back and an urgent need to protect her heart. Her independence. Her...life. "Sure," she said, the decision made before she realized it. ' T could have been a lot more tactful in asking you to back off."
Ben laughed. "Is there a tactful way to ask somebody to back off?"
She grinned. "I guess not. I'm sorry I was rude. I... I'm used to being in charge. No one's ever accused me of having too small an ego."
"Don't worry about it." He glanced at the guitar and the notes she'd been jotting down. "Composing something new?"
"I'm not sure. Incidental music, maybe, to get us from one scene to the other. This melody just came into my head, so I thought I'd write it out."
"What's it sound like?"
Cait wasn't sure he was serious, but when he stared at her, waiting, she decided to take the risk. Some people understood the growth of music, and some didn't. She had a feeling Ben was one of the perceptive kind.
The melody Cait played was sweet, a little plaintive. For Ben, even without words, the tune conjured a desert night, a black sky and bright stars, a sense of awe. When the music abruptly broke off, he almost protested.
"That's special," he told her. "You draw pictures with
music'
She bent over the guitar and her hair fell forward, hiding her face. "There's a lot more to it...I can't quite hear...' Her fingers roamed the strings, sometimes strum-
ming, sometimes plucking, with an occasional slap on the soundboard—in frustration or as a special effect, Ben wasn't sure. So he leaned back in his chair, crossed his ankle over the other knee and settled in to listen.
And to watch. Soft lamplight played over Cait's loose hair, striking sparks of gold, silver, copper. Sometimes she pushed the long curls back over her shoulder and then he could see her face—eyes half-closed in concentrated dreaming, the dark lashes lying like black stars on her cheeks. Eventually the hair would fall again, hiding her from view, leaving the music to weave its spell. Alone, either the woman or the music would have exerted a powerful force of attraction. Together, they were irresistible.
After a while she paused, fingertips suspended over the strings, with the last chord still hanging in the air. Ben held his breath, hoping she wouldn't stop.
In the back of the house, a door creaked, then slammed shut. Ben jumped. Cait gasped, and the guitar jangled.
Striding in with his coat still buttoned, Dave looked as startled as they were. "Ben? What's wrong? Why're you here?"
Ben cleared his throat. "Nothing's wrong. Cait and I are... working on the Christmas pageant. She was playing some of the music she's composing."
"Oh." The minister lifted his glasses with one hand and rubbed his eyes with the other. "That's...that's great. You've taken a load off Anna's mind by agreeing to handle this project." He glanced almost nervously toward the hallway into the back of the house. "Is she asleep?"
Cait nodded. "She was when I looked in about eight-thirty."
"Oh. Good." Dave blew out a deep breath, started unbuttoning his coat. "Then I think I'll spend a few minutes
on Sunday's sermon before I turn in. Y'all have a good night."
Ben waited until the door to David's study had shut firmly. Then he looked at Cait. "Is it me, or was that weird?"
She put the guitar aside. "Things are pretty strange around here these days. Anna mostly sleeps, or stares at the wall—she doesn't read, doesn't want a television in her room, doesn't talk much if I sit with her. More often than not, David comes home late and he spends most nights on the couch in his library. I don't know whether to stay out of it or interfere—and what would I say if I did get involved?"
"My gut instinct says leave it alone."
She frowned at him. "That's what a man's gut instinct always says. But Anna's my sister and she's unhappy."
"Marriage is between the two people involved. They're the ones who ultimately have to solve the problem. Nobody can do it for them.''
Her frown dissolved into a rueful smile. "I'm definitely at a disadvantage in this discussion. You've actually been married." Suddenly, the frown reappeared. "That's probably not the most sensitive thing for me to say. I'm sorry—I guess I'm out of practice at talking to...to...real people."
"Don't worry about it." He shrugged. "It's much worse when someone just ignores the fact that Valerie ever existed. That feels like...like treason or something. She was here and we had thirteen happy years together. I work on being grateful, instead of bitter over what's lost. Most of the time these days, I handle things okay."
"And you have two great kids."
"I do." He pushed himself out of the deep armchair. 1 'The good thing about kids is that they force you to keep
waking up each morning. You can't give up when you've got them to take care of."
Picking up his jacket, he walked to the door. Cait uncurled from the sofa and followed, wishing she could ask him to stay longer. For what, though?
"I've got some guys coming over tomorrow afternoon to start on frames for the backgrounds," he said, zipping up his coat. "Next weekend, we can begin painting."
"Sounds good." Leaning against the wall next to the door, she watched him pull on well-used leather gloves. ' 'Drive carefully—I imagine the roads are pretty slick by
now.'
ti
Four-wheel drive and snow tires ought to get me the five blocks between here and home." He grinned and stepped forward to put his hand on the doorknob. "Good night, Cait. Thanks for the music."
"You're welcome." She gazed up at him, noting the angle of his jawline, the arch of his cheekbones, the neat curl of his ear. His eyes darkened as he caught her staring, and the air around them got hard to breathe. All Cait could think was, Please...
And she wasn't even sure if she was asking him to go, or to—
Ben bent his head, tilted her chin with one gloved finger, and touched his lips to hers. The brief kiss felt like an electric shock—sharp, exciting. He drew back and she sighed with disappointment. So soon?
Suddenly, the storm outside was indoors with them, around them, as he closed his hands on her arms and brought her body up against his. Warm and deep and wild, the kisses he gave, the kisses he demanded, swept Cait into a dark place where nothing mattered but the need between them. She closed her arms around his waist, pressed a hand against the leather on his back, and the
softer fabric over his rear. Ben growled deep in his throat and pressed even closer, his weight stealing her breath, making her ache.
But just as abruptly as it had started, the storm ceased. In an instant, Ben stood the width of the entry hall away, his chest rising and falling with the force of his breathing, his face pale, his eyes glazed. He looked almost panicked.
"I'm...sorry.
God..." Both hands covered his face for a moment, then raked through his hair. "I really didn't mean..." He gave a shaky chuckle. "No woman wants to hear that you didn't intend to kiss her. But I thought I could let it go with just—just—'' Rubbing his eyes again, he shook his head. "Dumb. Really dumb."
Cait held herself together with her arms wrapped around her waist. "It's okay," she whispered. "Really. I understand." She stepped back out of the way of the door, hoping he would take the hint and leave. Quickly.
He did. But with the door open, he stopped and looked at her once again. "You understand, do you?" Another strained laugh. "Maybe someday you can explain it to
me.
Then he strode into the snowy night.
Instead of three or four inches of snow, they got eight. With Shep's unmistakable support, Maddie begged to stay at the Shepherds' house on Saturday morning to take advantage of the perfect sledding hill in the field next door to her grandparents' house. Much as he dreaded being left alone with his thoughts any longer than necessary, Ben okayed the proposal. Then, needing to escape the what-ifs and shouldn't-haves tormenting him, he pulled on his heavy boots and a wool cap and walked to the village center.
Always picturesque, today Goodwill looked like a post-
card advertisement for small-town U.S.A. The town owned one snowplow, which didn't always work, so this morning the Avenue was still buried deep. But farmers and mountain folk with their four-wheel drives and trucks never let a little snow get in the way of Saturday's chores, so the merchants wouldn't find their profits too badly affected by the weather.
In the center of town sat a grassy park, complete with stone fountain, wrought-iron benches and a gazebo trimmed with Victorian ruffles and flourishes. On his way to the coffee shop, Ben grinned as he passed parents and kids adding to the crowd of snow people already gathering on the square.
"Hey, Mr. Tremaine!"
"Hello, Blackwell clan." He detoured to chat with a family of five boys creating a family of five snowmen, then moved on after promising to bring Shep to play with his buddy Adam one afternoon before Christmas. As he made his way around the fountain to the other side of the park, Ben looked down the slope of the street, to see a sports car heading toward him, its bright-red paint almost painful in contrast to the fresh snow. Completely without traction on the slick street, the red car climbed about a third of the way to the top of the hill before gravity, a lack of friction and a build-up of snow under the chassis stopped it cold.
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