For the Love of God

by Janet Dailey

  “There are a great many disadvantages to marrying a minister. Your weekends are never free. Come rain, shine, sleet, or hail, you’re in church on Sunday mornings. A lot of week-nights, your husband is gone attending church meetings. Everything you do is scrutinized by the good members of the congregation, from the clothes you wear to the way you fix your hair. You’re expected to join every charity, every social and church group, and attend every meeting, unless your children are sick. You—”

  “Stop it!” Abbie closed her eyes, unable to take anymore. “I’m fully aware I don’t qualify for the position, so you don’t have to give me a bunch of reasons why I wouldn’t want it anyway!”

  “You may not be applying for the position, Abbie,” Seth said quietly, “but I’m asking you to fill it.”

  She caught her breath at his words, but refused to believe he meant them. Her eyes were bright with tears when she finally opened them and turned an accusing glance at him. “I heard what you said in there, Seth,” she reminded him. “I don’t—”

  “If you had stayed to hear what else I had to say…” Seth interrupted, “…you would know I don’t care whether you’d make a suitable minister’s wife or not. You’re the woman I want to marry.”

  “I…” Abbie stared at him incredulously, daring to listen. “Is this a proposal?”

  “Yes.” A slow smile began to spread across his mouth. “I’d get down on one knee but Mabel has me in cramped quarters.” He hitched up his robe to reach in his pants pocket. “I was going to offer you this after dinner.”

  Dazed, Abbie slowly uncurled her fingers from their death grip on the steering wheel as she caught the sparkle of a diamond ring. When he reached out for her hand, she hesitantly offered him her left. She watched him slip the ring onto her third finger. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

  “Does that mean you’ll marry me?” Seth mocked.

  “Yes … if you’re sure.” Abbie qualified her acceptance.

  “I am very sure,” he insisted, and proceeded to prove it.

  His kiss was ardently possessive and demanding as his arm circled her waist to pull her across the seat to achieve a more satisfactory closeness. There was a wild singing in her ears, a rush of joy that was almost unbearably sweet. When he finally dragged his mouth from hers, she buried her face in the silklike robe covering his chest.

  “I never realized I could be so happy.” Abbie breathed out the words. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Not a chance.” His fingers tunneled into her auburn hair and lifted her head so he could study her love-softened features. “You are going to be my wife … Mrs. Seth Talbot.”

  Hearing it made her tremble with happiness. “I still can’t believe that you want to marry me, but I’m glad you do.”

  “Don’t you remember the second time we met, I told your mother that I hadn’t married because I hadn’t found anyone who was suitable for me,” Seth reminded her. “I was never looking for a suitable minister’s wife. I wanted a woman who would be right for me. You are that woman, Abbie.”

  “I had forgotten you had said that,” she admitted.

  “Maybe if you had remembered, you wouldn’t have run out of the church the way you did.” His mouth twisted in a wry line. “If you only knew how frightened I was at that moment—and how angry I was, too, because their unthinking remarks had hurt you.”

  “It wasn’t just what they said, but the remarks you made yesterday, too,” Abbie explained.

  “The remarks I made?” He quirked an eyebrow. “What did I say to give you the wrong impression?”

  “It was a lot of little things. When I wanted you to love me, you refused and told me not to ask that of you,” she remembered.

  “That’s simply because I didn’t want to anticipate our wedding night,” Seth explained, then shook his head in stunned disbelief. “I suppose you thought I was saying that I couldn’t love you.”

  “Not at that moment, I didn’t think it—only later when I began piecing things together,” Abbie admitted ruefully, because she had gotten the picture all wrong.

  “What things?”

  “Like when you said you didn’t know what you were going to do with me, I thought you were trying to find a way to break it to me gently that you didn’t love me.”

  “I love you,” Seth stated, so there would be no more question of that. “As for that remark, I’m not really sure what I meant other than that I’d been waiting for so long for you to finally recognize I was a man, that I loved you as a man. Because I was a minister you kept trying to put me above such things. Yesterday you nearly made me forget I was a minister, too.”

  “And I’ll learn to be a good minister’s wife,” Abbie said, tracing her fingers along his jaw and trailing them across the slashing groove to the corner of his mouth.

  “That’s the other thing I was trying to explain to you yesterday. I don’t want you to feel that because of me, it’s your duty to know the Bible, or attend church, or anything else. If you want to do it, then let it be for the same reason I have. Do it for the love of God, not because you feel obligated because you are the minister’s wife.”

  “I will,” she whispered. “I promise you that.”

  His arms tightened around her, gathering her against him as his mouth came down to claim her lips. It was a long and passionate kiss that rocked Abbie all the way to her toes. She felt him shudder and bury his mouth in her hair.

  “How I love you, Abbie,” he muttered thickly.

  “Seth.” When she opened her eyes, her glance strayed over his shoulder to the walls of the church. “Do you realize we are practically necking in the church parking lot?”

  A low chuckle came from him after a second’s stillness. He lifted his head, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Can you think of a better place? I love you. In the eyes of God and the eyes of man, I want you for my wife.”

  “And I want you for my husband,” she whispered, because she couldn’t think of a better place to love him either. Then suddenly she remembered something else and pulled back from him. “The roast!”

  “What about it?” Seth frowned.

  “It’s still in the oven.” Abbie glanced at her watch. “Dinner is going to be ruined,” she groaned.

  “There will be plenty of other Sunday dinners,” he assured her, and pulled her back into his arms where she belonged.

  © Bill Dailey

  JANET DAILEY is the author of scores of popular, uniquely American novels, including the bestselling The Glory Game; Silver Wings, Santiago Blue; The Pride of Hannah Wade; and the phenomenal CALDER SAGA. Since her first novel was published in 1975, Janet Dailey has become the bestselling female author in America, with more than three hundred million copies of her books in print. Her books have been published in 17 languages and are sold in 90 different countries. Janet Dailey’s careful research and her intimate knowledge of America have made her one of the best-loved authors in the country—and around the world.