by Janet Dailey
“Abbie.” Seth released her name in the middle of a long, heavy sigh. “I want you. I’m not pretending to deny that.”
“Neither am I,” she murmured rawly.
A sound, something like weary laughter, came from him. “What am I going to do with you, Abbie?” The rhetorical question he muttered only confused her more.
The telephone, positioned on the table at the end of the sofa, rang shrilly, almost in her ear. Abbie stiffened with a guilty start, as if the caller could see them locked so intimately in a prone position. There was a moment of indecision while she debated whether to answer it or let it ring. Seth took the decision from her, loosening his arms to let her go.
“You’d better answer it,” he advised with husky reluctance. “It could be important.”
She moved away from him to sit up shakily, partially turning her back to him. On the fifth ring, she picked up the receiver while the fingers of her free hand fumbled with buttons on her blouse.
“Hello.” She heard the breathlessness in her voice, caused not from exertion but from the softness of love.
“Miss Scott?” a woman’s voice demanded.
An icy chill ran down her spine as Abbie recognized the voice as belonging to the same woman who had called the parsonage the other night.
“Yes.” She was stiff and wary. “Who is this?”
“This is Mrs. Cones. I’m trying to locate Reverend Talbot. Is he there? It’s urgent that I talk to him,” the woman stated.
Abbie pressed the receiver to her chest and glanced over her shoulder. Seth was sitting and raking a hand through his hair. “It’s a Mrs. Cones,” Abbie whispered. “She wants to talk to you.”
His head lifted, as if scenting trouble, then a blandness stole over his features as he reached out a hand to take the phone. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Just a moment,” Abbie said into the phone.
“He’s there? I thought as much.” The woman sniffed in a haughty way.
A scorching heat burned her cheeks at the accuracy of the woman’s vile imagination. Abbie avoided looking at Seth as she rose from that end of the sofa and handed him the phone. She moved to the center of the room using both hands to button the rest of her blouse and smooth the dishevelment of her clothes.
“This is Reverend Talbot speaking,” she heard Seth say into the phone.
Not wanting to hear even one side of the conversation, Abbie walked to the window to stare at the falling rain. She rested a hot cheek against the coolness of a glass pane and blanked everything from her mind.
When Seth’s hand touched her shoulder, she was brought back to a world of awareness. There was a slight movement of her head to acknowledge his presence, but she didn’t turn from the window.
“I’m sorry that happened, Abbie,” he said.
“It’s all right.” But the words made her hurt inside, and it was evident in the flatness of her voice.
“Wait a minute.” His fingers dug impatiently into her shoulder and forced her to turn at right angles to the window and partially face him. “I’m apologizing for the phone call—not for anything else.” Although her expression changed little, the dull green flecks in her hazel eyes brightened visibly. His gaze narrowed on them in satisfaction. “Not for anything else,” Seth repeated for emphasis.
“I’m sorry about that phone call, too,” Abbie admitted, because it seemed the safest comment to make. There didn’t seem to be any point to reiterating her feelings for him. She had already expressed them very explicitly, both by word and deed.
The hand on her shoulder eased its pressure but continued to hold her. “Do you want to know why I chose that particular section from the Bible?”
“Why?” Perhaps his answer would tell her what she wanted to hear.
“Because I wanted you to see it’s a book of love and passion, suffering and caring, but mainly it’s a book of love,” he explained. It was a subject she was intimately familiar with, since its richness filled her. “Don’t look at me like that, Abbie.” A muscle leaped along his jaw, revealing an inner strain for control.
“Like what?” It seemed no different to Abbie than the way she’d always looked at him.
“Like—” His mouth came down to crush her lips in a fiercely possessive kiss. It took her breath and made a mockery of her normal heartbeat. When he pulled away, his mouth was edged with tautness and his blue eyes glittered with turbulence. His voice fell somewhere between a groan and a curse. “I’m made of flesh the same as you are, Abbie.”
“I think I’ve always known that,” Abbie admitted as she leaned back against the coolness of the window to study him. “I just kept letting the collar get in the way.”
“You think I haven’t known that,” Seth murmured dryly, including a slight shake of his head with the reply. His hand moved over her shoulder in a restless caress. “There’s a lot we need to talk about, Abbie, but I don’t have time now. Mrs. Cones called because her mother is in the hospital, very ill, and her father—the woman’s husband—is overwrought. I promised I’d come sit with him for a while so I have to leave.”
“I understand,” Abbie assured him, smothering her regret that he had to go now.
“Will you wait for me after church tomorrow? We’ll have Sunday dinner together here or at the parsonage. It doesn’t matter, just as long as we can have the privacy to talk,” he said.
“I don’t think the parsonage is a good idea.” Neither place was exactly wise but Abbie suggested, “Why don’t we eat here? I can put a roast in the oven so dinner can be ready when church is over.”
“That’s fine.” His glance flicked past her to the falling rain outside, then returned to sweep her face. There seemed to be struggle going on inside him. “I have to leave now,” Seth stated with grim determination, and kissed her hard before turning away to walk swiftly to the door, as if he thought he might change his mind.
He grabbed his jacket from the hall tree and opened the door, pausing to look over his shoulder at Abbie standing by the window. His mouth twitched with a quick, hard smile, then he was walking out the door, pulling it closed behind him.
Chapter Ten
Abbie followed the line of people shaking hands with Seth as they left the church. When it was her turn, she placed her hand in his and felt his grip tighten in firm possession. There was an added vibrancy in his blue eyes, an interest meant for her alone.
“Good morning, Miss Scott.” He faintly drawled the words, as if mocking the formality.
“Good morning, Reverend,” she echoed his greeting, a responding smile playing with the corners of her mouth. Abbie was conscious of others listening to their exchange, some critically and some with simple curiosity.
“Your parents aren’t with you?” Seth observed with a questioning inflection in his voice.
“No. They went out of town today—to Missouri to visit some friends,” she explained.
“I hope you’ve fixed a good Sunday dinner then.”
“I have,” Abbie assured him, fully aware that his comment was a subtle reminder they would be sharing it together. It was written in the way he was looking at her.
Then he was releasing her hand to greet the next ones in line and Abbie moved on. At the base of the steps, she angled to the edge of the sidewalk, removing herself from the flow of people leaving the church. She lingered there to wait for Seth.
The Coltrain sisters spied her as they came down the steps in a glaring mismatch of colors—Isabel dressed in pink and Esther in bright orange. The two sisters were inseparable, yet they seemed determined to establish their own individualities, hence their clashing clothes. Abbie smiled a greeting as the pair converged on her.
“Good morning,” she said, noting the excitement in their faces.
“We saw you in church and we were hoping we’d have a chance to speak to you,” Isabel rushed.
“Yes.” Esther echoed her sister’s words and leaned closer to Abbie to whisper conspiratorially, “We mailed the you-know-what t
o a company in New York.”
“The reverend gave us the man’s name. He’d already talked to him personally about us and the man wanted to see—what we’d done. Isn’t that wonderful?” Isabel nearly giggled like a giddy young girl.
“It certainly is.” Abbie didn’t have to pretend to be happy for them. She was hardly a judge but she had enjoyed the novel they’d written and felt certain a publisher would like it, too.
“The reverend said it might take two months before we hear what the man thought about—it,” Esther explained. “But…” She hesitated and glanced at her sister.
“Esther and I have another idea,” Isabel spoke up. “But we aren’t sure whether we should start on it until we’ve found out about the first. We could just be wasting our time.”
“Yes, and we wanted to ask you what you thought we should do,” Esther finished.
“If it were me, I’d go ahead and start working on it,” Abbie replied, and their faces lit up.
“Do you hear that Esther?” Isabel declared. “I just knew she’d say that. Didn’t I tell you?”
“If we didn’t have you and the reverend to talk to about this, I think Isabel and I would bust,” Esther insisted, ignoring the “I-told-you-so” challenge from her sister.
“You’ll do the typing on this one for us, won’t you?” Isabel inquired anxiously.
“Of course, I will.” She could hardly refuse.
“You really are a wonderful girl,” Esther said, and squeezed Abbie’s hand. “And you shouldn’t pay any attention to all that talk going around. Those people spreading it are just nasty busy-bodies who don’t have anything better to do.” She didn’t appear to notice the sudden tension that whitened Abbie’s face as she turned to her sister. “We have to get home, Isabel.”
“Yes. Now that you’ve agreed that it’s the right thing to do to start on another one, we have a lot of research we need to begin. We don’t mean to rush off,” Isabel explained. “But you do understand.”
“Of course.” But it was a somewhat absent response Abbie gave as the two women hurried away.
Abbie had known her relationship with Seth had stirred up a lot of idle gossip. It was to be expected when a local minister was involved. Some of the remarks that had gotten back to her had been unfair and unkind. She had always been more concerned about all the talk affecting Seth’s standing in the community rather than her own. But Esther’s comment seemed to indicate Abbie was the one being maligned, and she was absolutely helpless to do anything about it. It did little good to tell herself she shouldn’t be bothered by vicious gossip, because she suddenly was.
The stream of people coming out of church had ended, although the doors remained open. There was no sign of Seth, but Abbie assumed he had gone to change out of his robes. The church grounds and parking lot were virtually emptied of people and cars. She felt rather conspicuous standing near the bottom of the church steps and decided it would be more discreet if she waited inside the door.
As she entered the church she heard voices coming from the pulpit area. She recognized Seth’s among them and was drawn across the small entry area by an inner need to see him. Seth and three other men were standing by the front pew. Abbie noticed he was still wearing his black robe. She had no intention of intruding or even eavesdropping. The three men were members of the governing board, so Seth was obviously discussing some church business with them.
Before she could turn away to wait near the front doors, she heard one of the men mention her name. She was held motionless, frozen by a kind of dread. Against her will, Abbie listened to what they were saying.
“We don’t mean to sound critical, Reverend.” A bald-headed man was speaking in a stiffly censorious voice that belied his words. “But we have an obligation to ourselves and the church to express our feelings on this matter.”
“I’m sure your intentions are above reproach.” Seth’s murmured response was exceedingly dry. Even from this distance, Abbie could see the coldness in his blue eyes and the attitude of challenge in his stance.
“It isn’t that we have anything personal against Miss Scott.” A second man hurried to assure Seth of that.
“We freely acknowledge that she comes from a good family. Her parents are respected members of the community and this church,” the third man said. “Miss Scott herself is probably a very nice girl.”
“However?” Seth prompted the qualification that had only been implied by their tones.
“However …” The bald-headed man glanced at his two colleagues. “… she doesn’t strike us as being a suitable … companion”—he paused before selecting the words—“for the minister of our church.”
“Since Miss Scott has returned to our town, she hasn’t participated actively in church affairs. She didn’t even attend church on a frequent basis until you came,” the third man explained.
“These are things you couldn’t have known about her,” the second man inserted. “Which was why we felt we should bring it to your attention.”
“I’m sure you understand now why we are advising you to break off your relationship with Miss Scott. It would be in the best interest of everyone concerned,” the bald-headed man concluded, with a slightly righteous tilt of his head.
Tears burned the back of her eyes as Abbie heard the final edict. She hadn’t dreamed that anything like this might happen. The whole scene took on a nightmarish unreality. Her gaze clung to Seth as the silence stretched over the span of several seconds.
“I fully understand the concern that prompted you to seek me out, so this could be discussed openly.” Seth’s low-pitched voice was clear and concise. “And I’m in full agreement with you that Miss Scott lacks some of the qualifications that are regarded as essential for a woman to be considered as a minister’s marital partner….”
An involuntary gasp of pain was ripped from her throat at this ultimate condemnation from the man she loved. Abbie cupped a hand to her mouth to smother any more sounds, but it was already too late. Seth had seen her.
“Abbie!” He called to her.
But she heard the irritation in his voice and whirled away to run out the door. Tears blurred her vision as she hurried down the steps, breathing in sobs. Her high-heeled shoes restricted her pace to a running walk.
All her illusions were torn asunder. She suddenly realized why Seth had wanted to talk privately to her today. He had intended to break it to her gently that she wouldn’t be a suitable wife for him. Love had led her down another dead-end road.
Yesterday, that passionate scene on her apartment sofa had been just that—passion—at least on Seth’s part. Now Abbie could see what he had been trying to tell her when he had asserted he was made of flesh. The desires of the flesh—as opposed to the desires of the heart.
She remembered the way he had held her and murmured, “What am I going to do with you, Abbie?” Tears ran hotly down her cheeks as she reached her car in the church lot. It was all very clear now why he had said that. No doubt Seth had guessed that she was in love with him, but marriage was out of the question. What a fool she’d been! What an unmitigated fool!
“Abbie!”
Her glance was jerked in the direction of Seth’s voice. He was half running across the lawn toward her, his black robe billowing out behind him. The flutterings of panic went through her. She couldn’t face him, not yet—maybe never.
Wiping at the tears running down her cheeks, Abbie yanked open the car door and scrambled behind the wheel. Her shaking hands dived into her purse for the key and fumbled in their first attempt to insert it into the ignition lock. She glanced frantically out the front windshield. Seth was nearly to the car, a forbidding grimness etched into his rugged features.
“Don’t fail me now, Mabel,” Abbie pleaded with the car as she turned the key in the switch.
The motor grumbled in protest but its slowly turning noises were encouraging. Abbie pumped on the pedal to give it more gas and the grumble became a constant complaint. The gears ground
together as she shifted into reverse, but it was too late.
Seth was opening the passenger door and reaching across the seat. Abbie pressed herself against the driver’s door to elude him, but he wasn’t intending to grab her. He was after the key. By the time she realized it, he had already turned the motor off and extracted the key from the ignition.
Cornered, Abbie squared around to face the front and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. She held herself rigid, refusing to look at him, not wanting to see the pity in his eyes.
“Will you please give me the keys?” she requested stiffly. Her jaw was white with the effort to contain her emotional turmoil.
There was a rustle of material as Seth climbed into the passenger side and shut the door. Tension screamed through her nerves when he leaned over and inserted the key into the ignition switch.
“There’s your key,” he challenged.
Her chin started to quiver. Abbie had to grit her teeth to control it. “Will you please get out of my car?” she insisted, still without looking at him.
“We’re having Sunday dinner together, remember?” Seth replied evenly.
“The invitation is withdrawn,” Abbie retorted wildly, and blinked quickly to keep back the tears.
“That’s too bad. I guess I’ll just have to sit and watch you eat,” he countered. “But we’re going to get this misunderstanding straightened out.”
“There is nothing to straighten out.” She lifted her chin a little higher. “The situation has been made perfectly clear to me, so we have nothing to discuss. I understand completely.”
“Do you?” he murmured dryly.
“Yes, I do,” Abbie stated. “There’s nothing you have to explain.”
“Whether you want me to or not, I’m going to do just that,” he stated. “You obviously overheard my meeting with the representatives from the church board.”
“Obviously,” she admitted on a bitter note, and flashed him a brief glance that was almost her undoing. The brooding intensity of his gaze seemed to reach out for her, but she succeeded in avoiding it.