A Sounding Brass

by Shelley Bates

  “It does?” Great, Claire, that was so intelligent.

  Behind her, she felt him shrug. “I just wouldn’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”

  “I don’t think there’s any danger of that.” There was nothing quite as insulting as a guy who just assumed you’d be the one to get dumped and consequently hurt.

  He moved beside her and looked at her as though he’d just figured out she was not amused. “I was just letting you know what I thought. As a friend.”

  Sure, he was. “Good night, Investigator.” Head high, in her new bottle-green suit that matched her eyes, definitely not the sort of woman who was in the habit of getting dumped, she walked out of the hall.

  “Claire, wait. Please.”

  She stopped halfway across the parking lot, where scattered groups of people stood talking about the worship center. Some could see how far-reaching Luke’s vision could be and what a great thing it would be for the community. Some were stuck in the Elect rut that automatically treated something new as suspicious and even sinful if it wasn’t first proposed by a Shepherd.

  She turned as Ray caught up with her.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to offend you.” She couldn’t see his eyes very well—the streetlights behind him and his shaggy hair combined to hide them—but his tone was contrite. “I’m better at setting up drug deals than talking to pretty women, to tell you the truth.”

  It had been so long since she’d received an honest-to-goodness compliment from anyone in pants—Luke excepted—that it took the edge off her chilly exit by quite a bit. “Drug deals?”

  He fell into step beside her as she walked to her car. “Yeah. With cokeheads the procedure is pretty straightforward. Introduction, buy, takedown. With women, there is no procedure. A guy just takes shots in the dark.”

  She had to laugh, he was so ingenuous about it. “Women are easy to understand, Ray. No matter what, just give them their own way.”

  “Yeah, but first you have to find out what that is without looking dumb by asking.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with asking.”

  “Okay, then, let me ask you this. Do you want to go somewhere and get a piece of pie and some coffee?”

  Zing! She hadn’t even seen that coming. Or maybe she had. He’d sat with her twice. That was usually a pretty good indicator that a request for a date was forthcoming. The question was, how was she going to answer him? The Elect seemed to have resolved the clothing and hair issues, but no one had brought up the deeper issues of how they might relate to the people for whom they were broadening their horizons.

  Put simply, was it now okay to date Outside or not? And for that matter, what about her sister, Elaine? She had married Outside and was struggling to hang on to her salvation. Might things change for her now, too?

  But wondering about that wasn’t giving Ray an answer. She stopped at her car and unlocked it. “I don’t usually go out with Outsiders, Ray.”

  “It’s just coffee. I’m starving and I want some company, that’s all.”

  “But you sat with me. Twice.”

  He gave her a puzzled look. “Sure. You and Rebecca are the only people I know.”

  You and Rebecca. Of course. Rebecca had been on her other side both times. Maybe it wasn’t a courtship maneuver. Maybe it was just what he said it was.

  “What’s the big deal?” he asked.

  She was going to have to tell him. “Well, this may sound a little weird to you, but in the Elect, if a man sits with a woman on purpose, it’s an indication that he’s interested in her.”

  He didn’t respond. In fact, he looked a little flummoxed.

  “You’ve sat with me twice now. People are going to start to talk.” She smiled at him cheerfully. “But, of course, you’re right—Rebecca and I are the only people you know. If they start teasing me about you, I’ll just tell them that.”

  “Oh, sure.” He sounded a little muffled. “We’re just friends.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, as just a friend, will you have a piece of pie with me before I starve to death?”

  It sounded so harmless. A piece of pie with a friend. An hour in a restaurant with an interesting guy who—face it—would be leaving when his holiday was over. And she hadn’t had a date in a year.

  Just an hour. Couldn’t she have just an hour?

  No, she couldn’t. Melchizedek’s voice sounded in her memory, giving her the reasons why she couldn’t move to Seattle. Chief among them was the fact that she was the only example of a single-but-godly woman that the younger girls had. Deep inside she might resent it, like having to do a job she didn’t want, but there it was.

  “I really can’t, Ray. It would set a bad example.”

  “Come on, it’s not like I’m a criminal.”

  “Of course not. But we’re not encouraged to look Outside. If some of the younger girls saw me doing it, they’d be tempted to look Outside, too, and that could lead to bad decisions.”

  He bowed his head and chewed on the corner of his lip, looking for all the world as if he were coming to some kind of decision.

  Or maybe she’d just hurt his feelings. “I’m sorry, Ray. I didn’t mean to—”

  He lifted his head. “What if I wasn’t an Outsider?”

  She stopped in mid-sentence. “What?”

  “What if I wanted to join your group? Would you have coffee with me then?”

  Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times as fragments of sentences blew through her brain.

  Ray a convert?

  You don’t even believe—

  I thought you were an atheist—

  “I need to talk to someone,” he said, even as she tried to wrap her mind around it. “I was hoping it could be you.”

  Chapter 9

  THE WAITRESS put a succulent wedge of blackberry pie in front of him and Ray thanked his lucky stars that, if nothing else, the people in Hamilton Falls knew how to eat. He dug into it with gusto and watched Claire pick the walnuts off the top of her muffin.

  He’d spouted off about joining the Elect as a last-gasp effort to get her attention, and now he was going to have to keep up the act. He knew from his partner Ross’s accounts of his time investigating the Elect that converts were treated like gold. An Elect person would do anything if you indicated interest—up to and including having coffee with an infidel like him.

  Ah, well, desperate times meant desperate measures, and if he had to join this group to get a closer look at what Luke Fisher was up to, then that’s what he’d do. It wasn’t like he was out to hurt anyone with such a cover story. On the contrary, he was out to prevent a whole bunch of people from getting hurt.

  Or maybe just one.

  Claire lifted those gorgeous green eyes from their contemplation of the walnuts. “So, tell me,” she said quietly. “What makes you think the Elect is the path for you?”

  Think fast. “I, um, I want to get to know God better. And you and Rebecca and the others seem to have a handle on that, so I figure it’s the way to go.”

  “There’s a lot of sacrifice involved, Ray.” She tore the muffin in half and buttered it. “We give up our own wills to serve God.”

  “Do I have to wear black?” His wardrobe was pretty limited, especially when he was on the road.

  She smiled at him, and he watched a tiny dimple dent her cheek, down at the left corner of her mouth. How had he not seen that before? “Not anymore, it seems. Did you see Owen’s blue tie with the green stripe?”

  He hadn’t. “At least he didn’t dye his hair purple. And speaking of green, that suit’s a nice color for you.” You silver-tongued devil, you.

  “Thanks. But it’s more than our appearance, Ray. Gathering is three times a week, and that comes first before what we want to do. Then there’s all the places God’s people don’t go, such as movies, clubs, theaters.”

  “I don’t get out much anyway.”

  “You might have to reconsider your choice of career.”

  Wh
oa. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you carry a gun, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Well, not now. It’s in my truck. But in the city I do.”

  She spread her hands. “You’re in law enforcement, and the possibility exists that you could kill someone.”

  “I do everything possible to avoid that possibility. Any good cop does.”

  “But still. You’re in a career where it could happen. Not like accounting or teaching or—”

  “Radio work.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, I’ll take that under advisement. How do I become a member?”

  She sighed, and finished the last of the muffin. “That’s a problem right now. Normally you’d come to a number of Mission Gatherings, and then the Shepherd would offer you an opportunity to make your choice public. But at the moment we don’t have any Shepherds.”

  “Wait a minute.” Cognitive dissonance set up a buzzing in his brain. “Ross told me that a person is born again, begins a relationship with God, and then they go to a church they choose.”

  “Well, that’s the easy way that worldly churches do it, I suppose. In the Elect, the Shepherd would make sure you have the proper understanding of our ways before he gave you the invitation.”

  “Your ways? But Ross says you just begin a relationship with God. Learn His ways.”

  “Well, sure. His ways are the ways of the Elect.”

  “What about other churches’ ways?”

  “There’s only one way, Ray. Jesus laid it down for us, and that’s the path we walk in.”

  “‘Jesus is the Way.’”

  “Right. His way is the way the Elect live.”

  “You’re saying two different things.”

  She sat back, distress shadowing those eyes. “Now, see, this is why you need to come to Gathering. I’m terrible at explaining. The Shepherds give their whole lives to do it, so they know the words to use.”

  “So, you’re saying that because there isn’t a Shepherd around, I can’t come to Jesus?”

  Her face crumpled, and she lost that salesman-like look of animation she’d been trying to hold up. “I don’t know, Ray. It sounds terrible when you say it like that, but I suppose that’s the way it is.”

  “Claire, don’t you think that’s a little wonky? I mean, I don’t know a whole lot about it, but I would think it’s more of a heart thing. Like the difference between falling in love and going through the marriage ceremony. One’s a heart thing, and one’s a legal thing.”

  She propped her elbows on either side of her plate and ran her fingers up into her hair, gripping her head as though there were a buzzing in her brain, too.

  “I don’t know. Things are changing, and change is good. I totally support Luke and Owen. But I still don’t know how the Shepherds can stand in the gateway, saying who gets to be saved or not. Even though we say we’re broadening our horizons, I still don’t see how people can be saved if things aren’t the way they were. And that’s a little scary because nobody’s talking about it.”

  He didn’t have any answers, either. It was enough of a struggle to get through a day without adding this extra layer of religion on top of everything. Though Ross seemed pretty convinced that a relationship with God made things easier, not more complicated.

  One thing was for sure: He was out of his depth, and when you got too deep, there was only one thing to do. Paddle back to shore.

  He tossed ten bucks on the table. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to your car, okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said miserably as they ambled back down the block. The evening air was cool, giving a not-so-subtle hint that fall was on its way.

  He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “Don’t be. There’s a good reason people don’t talk about politics and religion over their food.”

  “But I should be able to talk about it. It’s all I’ve ever known . . . and yet, I know so little about it.”

  “That depends what it is, I guess. God’s way or the Elect’s way.”

  “Maybe that’s the trouble. Maybe I’ve been taught that they’re the same, and now I’m beginning to think they’re not. Maybe I want all the rules about clothes and hair and—and where a person lives to just go away so I can do what I want. But how is that doing God’s will?” She glanced up at him as they crossed the parking lot to where her car sat all alone. “And if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll hunt you down personally and hurt you.”

  He tried to look harmless and innocent. “I don’t know anyone to tell. Besides, my lips are sealed. I never pass on what my friends say to me.”

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth, as if she were looking to see if his lips really were sealed. Something sizzled through him and he froze in place, gazing into her eyes as if they were enclosed in a bubble and the parking lot, the few cars, the trees planted along the sidewalk had all disappeared into the night.

  She swallowed, as though she felt it, too.

  No, some part of his brain said incredulously. Not this girl. Not now.

  “Ray?” His name was a whisper on the charged air.

  “Yes?” The word was practically soundless, a question less of her than of the universe or God or whatever combination of events had led him here to this place, this woman, this sudden halt in the carefree cartwheel of his life.

  She shook her head. Did she mean she’d forgotten what she’d been going to say? Or was that voice in her head telling her the same thing? No. Not this man. Not now.

  There was only one thing to do.

  In a single smooth movement, he leaned down, tilted her chin up with the tips of his fingers, and captured that sweet mouth with his.

  * * *

  CLAIRE WASN’T THE most experienced girl on the block, but she’d had a boyfriend or two in the past and she knew what she was doing in the kissing department.

  Or so she’d thought.

  Single women outnumbered Elect men by such a wide margin that every guy knew he could move on and have another girlfriend by the next Sunday Gathering. Steady dating often involved a careful strategy of mind games, wrestling skills, and the political savvy of a gubernatorial candidate.

  But now none of that seemed relevant. Ray’s kiss was simply Hello.

  Hers was I don’t know you.

  His became Let me show you.

  And oh, hers was Yes—

  “Hey, hey, hey! We’re in the right place for the love of God, but this is going too far.”

  The laughing baritone popped them apart as though they were spring-loaded, and if Claire hadn’t caught herself against the rear fender of her car, she might have staggered backward and fallen over. Ray reached for her arm to steady her, and dropped it once he saw she was going to stay upright.

  “PDAs, Claire.” Owen Blanchard followed Luke, carrying a box of hymnbooks. His kids, Hannah and Ryan, trailed behind him carrying the roll of designs between them. They were giggling at her. “Public Displays of Affection aren’t the best way to show your example.” His words held a rebuke, but he was smiling as if he, too, could remember kissing in public. Sometime back before dinosaurs became extinct.

  “What are you guys still doing here?” Her face felt the same flaming red as a traffic light. Could they see it in the darkness?

  “Just talking.” Luke eyed Ray up and down, and the latter stepped between her boss and herself.

  “So were we.”

  “That wasn’t how it looked from our perspective.” Luke grinned and Claire could see Ray’s hand clench.

  “No matter how it looked, it’s none of your business. Stop teasing her. Can’t you see she’s embarrassed?”

  Luke’s smile didn’t falter. “Well, now, one of the first things we learn as God’s children is that if you keep right with Him, you don’t embarrass yourself by your actions.”

  Claire opened her mouth to say something—anything—but Ray beat her to it.

  “She hasn’t done anything to be ashamed of. You’re laying sham
e on her, pal, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it to yourself.”

  “It’s all right, Ray.” She laid a hand on his arm and found the muscles under his shirt were rigid. She swung his jacket off her shoulders and held it out, and he was forced to break eye contact with Luke in order to take it from her. “Thanks for this.”

  “You’re welcome. And it’s not all right with me. I don’t get why you’re not telling him off.”

  “Luke and Owen are just looking out for me.”

  “By using shame tactics?”

  “Ray, please.”

  “Okay.” His mouth closed on a grim line.

  Owen unlocked his car a few spaces away and popped the trunk. The box of hymnbooks made a heavy thunk as they landed. He opened the car doors and the kids scrambled inside, Ryan buckling his little sister into her car seat.

  “I’ll meet you and Mark at the bank in the morning, then,” Owen said, handing the roll of drawings to Luke. “With the collateral we put up and the contributions from your listeners, the sale should be pretty straightforward.”

  “Sale?” Ray asked.

  “Please keep this confidential.” Owen looked from Ray to Claire. “Claire, you’ll be involved because of your position. Mark and I have decided to offer our homes as collateral for the loan.”

  “We’ll own the land and construction can start right away.” Luke’s voice held barely contained excitement. “The Lord has been moving in strong and unmistakable ways, calling both Mark and Owen to this task.”

  “My goodness.” Claire fished in her purse for her keys. “I hadn’t realized we were so close to getting started. That’s wonderful. Well, good night, all.”

  Luke moved a few steps closer. “See you bright and early tomorrow?”

  She looked up from the pit of darkness that was her handbag. “Of course.” Didn’t he always?

  “I was thinking we should get together before my show and go over a few things. Say, over breakfast?”

  “Um . . .” Her mind went blank. Aside from the “welcome to the station” lunch, he wasn’t in the habit of asking her out for meals. After the show he was always wired and buzzing with energy. He usually took off, drumming up advertising for the station or taking informal polls on the street or going to the big music warehouse in Pitchford to troll for new music—doing the zillions of tasks that went into the seamless production that was his show. Meals with the accounting manager didn’t usually fit in with that level of activity.