“Okay.” Jonathan ducked out of the room.
Aside from sore muscles, the workout had given Mark a little more energy. Maybe, if he kept the exercise going and cut back on the fast food, he might actually feel like a thirty-eight-year-old is supposed to feel. At six foot two and two hundred-twenty pounds, he’d been able to maintain a healthy weight, thanks mostly to good genes. His father had given him that much, if nothing else.
Despite the appearance of health, though, Mark was well aware that his cholesterol and blood pressure levels were higher every year. Or in his case, two years—which is about how long it took for him to actually show up at one of the appointments Sharla made for him with their general practitioner. Mark much preferred to leave his health in the hands of the Lord.
Quickly, Mark threw his parallel Bible and the pages of the next day’s sermon into the front compartment of his rolling attaché. The laptop and charger fit perfectly into the second section. He gathered the rest of the papers on his desk and the surrounding counters into one stack. He still needed to review the notes, but he could finish it at home. If he made it there before midnight, he might actually get to spend time with Sharla before she drifted off to sleep.
How long has it been?
Another tap on the door. “Enter.” With his back turned to the door, Mark switched off his printer and locked the overhead cabinets containing confidential church information. He heard the door open slightly, then close. He pivoted, expecting to find Jonathan standing there.
But this was definitely not Jonathan. All that’s good and perfect comes from God. And He knew what He was doing when He made that woman. A form-fitting red silk blouse defining her full rack. White linen skirt so tight it bunched up across her hips. Legs that must have run track in high school, maybe even college. And a pair of heels that added a good five inches to her height, accentuating her lower half even more.
It only took seconds for Mark to process her body. His eyes made it up to her face in enough time to hide his intrigue. Hopefully. Respectfully, he stood. “How can I help you?”
“Pastor, I really need to talk to you.” She sat down in the chair across from him, blocking his view of the clock.
“Um…well, if you want to set up an appointment—”
“This will only take a minute,” she pushed past Mark’s safeguards.
He sat.
“A long time ago, I made a big mistake. And now I need to fix it.”
Her perfume wrapped around Mark’s face. Sweet, but not overpowering. The whole scene reminded him of those cartoons where a bull’s eye rotates around and around, hypnotizing an unsuspecting character.
She crossed one leg over the other, revealing a good six inches up the side of her thigh. Bare, taut skin. “I just don’t know what to do. I was hoping you could help me.”
Mark was no stranger to women’s advances. Another thing he’d inherited from Mark Wayne Carter, II was good looks. Deep brown skin, a head full of short but wavy hair, and a sharp goatee could pull a woman from a mile away. But the one thing Mark could say he’d done right in his marriage was to remain faithful to his wife throughout their sixteen years together. He wasn’t going to blow it on some misguided member who’d managed to outwit his new assistant.
Mark stood again. He’d played around with this fire long enough. “My sister, if you have accepted Christ as your savior, old things are passed away. It’s late. I’m going to have to ask again that you to speak with Jonathan on your way out. He can put you in touch with the counseling ministry.”
His abrupt end to their conversation obviously caught her off guard. “Um, b-but,” she stammered for words. “But you’re my pastor. Isn’t this what you’re supposed to do?”
Mark ripped the top sheet from the pad of sticky-notes on his desk. “The word of God is your counselor. Psalm one nineteen and twenty-four.” He scribbled the reference on the note and handed it to the woman.
She snatched it from his hand, a scowl on her face. Mark noticed that one of her fake eyelashes slipped out of place. He had to hold in his laughter. “Meditate on His word. Have a good night, my sister.”
Mark walked her to his office door, then past Jonathan and out to the door of the entire suite. “God bless you.”
The woman didn’t have a chance to respond before the weighted door shut behind her. With after-hours security on the church’s campus, Mark was sure she’d make it back to her car safely.
Mark turned sharply to face Jonathan, who sat at his desk with a bewildered look on his face. “Sir, I-I, she said she was a frequent guest of yours.”
Mark’s eyes turned to slits as he tried to decide if Jonathan was deranged or just deceived. Since the boy was still in his 90-day probationary period, Mark would give him the benefit of the doubt. “With the exception of First Lady Carter, I don’t allow women into my office alone, especially not women dressed like her, without one of the female ministers present. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, Pastor. I’m sorry. It’s just that my last supervisor had, you know, guests. I-it won’t happen again.”
“Jonathan, I don’t know what kind of pastors or preachers you worked with before me, but I’m not that man.”
Chapter 2
Mark was careful to watch the rear and side view mirrors as the garage lowered behind his eight-year-old Cadillac Escalade. Though his ride didn’t turn heads anymore, he still made it a habit to survey his surroundings in case somebody wanted to try him. Maybe he’d slack up a bit once they moved out of their quaint 2500-square-foot home and into the mini-mansion behind security gates Sharla had her heart set on. Until then, he would remain on high alert.
A side effect of being raised in one of the roughest areas of Houston was a keen awareness of his environment. “If you get caught slippin’, it’s your own fault,” his father had taught him during one of their rare free-world visits.
Mark had tried to teach his own son, Amani, how to look out for danger, but being raised in a fairly safe, middle-class world had distanced Amani from the lessons of living in survival mode. The boy had grown up in a world where kids left their bicycles on porches outside at night and people actually turned in lost wallets to the police.
Much to Mark’s dismay, Amani hadn’t been in a fight in all his thirteen years. Mark had been in at least ten brawls by the time he was Amani’s age. He’d won some and lost some. Gave and took black eyes and busted lips with the best of ‘em. No matter, he’d walked away each time knowing he could throw down when pushed to the brink.
This comfortable lifestyle Mark provided for his family had come at a cost.
Mark took his key from the ignition, clutched his bag from the passenger’s seat and made his way around Sharla’s bright red Benz toward the doorway of the laundry room.
The scent of fabric softener greeted him upon entrance. He wanted to be glad about the pleasant odor, but he couldn’t. Sharla didn’t do the laundry. She’d hired some older, foreign woman to do their cleaning and washing. The woman, whoever she was, did an excellent job. But Mark had to wonder exactly what Sharla did all day that warranted paying someone else to take care of the home he’d provided for them.
Sharla didn’t work. She hadn’t homeschooled Amani since he started junior high school. She’d delegated most of her previously held duties as First Lady to other women at the church, claiming that she needed to concentrate on home. Somehow, “concentrating on home” got translated to finding someone else to clean the house.
But Mark knew better than to question Sharla. The house was her jurisdiction. So long as she stayed within the family budget, he’d keep his mouth shut unless he wanted to handle the laundry himself.
“I’m home,” he announced, not really expecting a response. Just seemed like something men on TV did.
He hung his keys on one of the hooks magnetically attached to the stainless steel refrigerator. He took off his tie and hung it on a bar chair, pried his shoes off and left them under the kitchen table.<
br />
Sharla would fuss. What else was new?
Mark traipsed through the family room and up the staircase to his home office to drop off the materials he’d comb through later. Down the hallway, he noticed the blue glow of the big screen television coming from under the door to the media room. He opened the door and found Amani stretched across the sectional sofa.
“’Mani, go to your bed,” Mark ordered softly, shaking his son’s shoulder.
Amani gave a loud snort, scratched his head a few times, stretched, and then obeyed his father’s directive. “Night, Dad.”
“Night, man.”
As Amani brushed past, Mark noticed that they were nearly the same height. Another six months of this growth spurt and the youngest person would also be the tallest person in the house.
Mark grabbed the remote control and switched off the TV as his son trudged away to his own bedroom.
Back downstairs in his own space, Mark was surprised to find Sharla still up. She was seated in their bathroom, fooling with her hair.
Well, the hair that somebody put on her head. Granted, her style was always on point, but Mark couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his wife’s real hair.
“Hey, babe,” he said.
“Mmm,” she moaned. To be fair, she did have several hairpins in her mouth. Apparently, the current style required her to position her mane a certain way before lying down on the satin pillowcases she dared not sleep without.
Mark stood in the bathroom’s entry admiring his wife. He loved to see her like this—no makeup, hair swept off her face, a T-shirt and loose shorts. Her skin had always been a pool of caramel beckoning him to dive in when he studied her for more than a few minutes. Though she had gained some weight over the years, a part of him actually liked the fact that there was more of her to love.
Watching her breasts jiggle as she struggled to shove the hairpins in place reminded Mark that he was indeed a lucky man.
“What?” Sharla piped up.
“I’m just looking at you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
She smacked her full lips. “Not beautiful enough for you to come home before midnight, though.”
Why does she always have to ruin a good thing? Mark stuffed both hands into his pockets. As a matter of habit, he checked his phone’s screen to see if there were any new texts or email messages.
Sharla rolled her eyes and carried on with the business of securing her hair. “That’s what I thought.”
He decided to backtrack. “Sorry I’m so late getting home.”
“I’m not surprised,” she quipped.
Mark leaned his weary body against the doorframe, trying to decide whether or not he had enough energy left to wiggle through his wife’s brick-hard attitude and find out what was really bugging her tonight.
He gave himself the benefit of the doubt; maybe her problem had nothing to do with him. Anyone in her family could have put her in a bad mood. Amani might have said something crazy, something he’d been doing a lot more lately.
For the record, he’d give her a chance to vent. “What’s really going on, babe?”
She shook her head. “If you don’t know by now, I can’t help you.”
He racked the last bits of his brain. Nothing out of the ordinary. “I’m too tired for guessing games tonight.”
“And I’m too tired to repeat myself.”
She wrapped a black mesh thing-a-ma-jig around the base of her head. Somehow, it kept its place.
Mark figured there must have been some kind of Velcro strip holding it in place. Sharla was right up there with the best of them when it came to keeping herself up. As he understood it, this was something the women in her First Wives’ Fellowship taught her she needed to do.
Mark remembered now. “The church?”
“Bingo. Mark, when are you going to start delegating more?”
“I do,” he barely answered. “I delegate what I can. But some responsibilities at New Vision can’t be pawned off on other people.”
“How about the responsibility of being a husband to your wife and a father to your son here at eight hundred Evanshire Street?”
“What do you want me to do, Sharla? Ignore my calling?”
She pouted, “I know you have to do God’s will. But I also know that I did not sign up to be a pastor’s wife. I married a businessman, not a preacher.”
With that, Mark dismissed himself and made his way back upstairs to the office. They’d had this conversation too many times in the past few months for him to count, and it never ended with compromise. Eventually Sharla would take a look around and see that she had it pretty good. Once she came back to herself, she’d offer to make him a red velvet cake—a most welcomed apology. He would have to wait out her current tidal wave of attitude issues.
In the meanwhile, all Mark could do was pray that the Lord would mature his wife in Christ to the point where she could appreciate what God was doing with New Vision. He’d keep praying for her until then, because it wouldn’t be fair for him to have to choose between his God and his wife.
Mark set aside what had just happened with Sharla in order to finish reviewing his canned sermon. But the tension resurfaced as soon as he turned off the light in his office and headed back downstairs again.
Part of him hoped Sharla was sleep already. At least she wouldn’t be awake to give him the cold shoulder. He always found it much easier to drift off with the comforting idea that Sharla didn’t realize he was in bed than to think she was ignoring him.
Mark showered and climbed into their King-sized sleigh bed for what might as well be considered a nap. A captivating glow from the pool’s lighting system streamed in through the window.
When he and Sharla spent their first night in the house, they had both been so spellbound by the blue radiance, they’d stayed up nearly half the night in the hot tub section drinking virgin strawberry daiquiris and enjoying sensual pleasures.
Memories of how much they used to enjoy spending time with one another kept Mark from sleep. Really, how long has it been?
He listened closely for Sharla’s breathing pattern. Shallow and fast. She was still awake.
Slowly, he slipped his left hand across her waist. Rubbed his foot against her leg. Waited for some reciprocity.
Since she didn’t show any sign of resistance, Mark nudged his chin against her neck. Kissed her ear the way he knew she liked it.
“Mark, if you want to make love, why don’t you just say it?” Sharla blared.
“Because I’m trying to show it,” he nibbled on her ear.
Sharla shot up straight in bed. “What I want you to show me is that you care about me and our son. You didn’t even ask about the conference with Amani’s counselor yesterday.”
Finally, Mark had a clue about his wife’s extended attitude. “Did you tell me about it?”
“Yes. I sent you a text, since I didn’t see you Thursday at all.”
Mark vaguely remembered seeing Sharla’s text flash across his screen, but all it said was, “call me.” He hadn’t seen the message until after the YoungLife fundraiser at the community center. By then it was almost ten o’clock and he was on his way home. Sharla was sleep when he got back, so he guessed it must not have been important enough for her to wait up. Maybe she’d figured out whatever was on her mind earlier.
“Amani’s grades are ridiculous. Four C’s, a B, and only one A. And I had to sit there and let her tell me all this without you,” she stabbed at him with words.
How the heck did we go from almost making love to discussing report cards? “I didn’t even know, Sharla. I’m sorry. But can we talk about this later?”
“Like you’re going to actually be awake and ready to talk when you finish doin’ your business? Yeah, right,” she gave a sarcastic laugh.
“How is it my business? This is our business,” Mark corrected her.
“You can’t just spend all day at the church, come h
ome after midnight, spend another hour in your study, and then expect me to roll over and play lovey-dovey with you,” she snarled, her delicate face marred with anger.
With his heart rate still slightly elevated, Mark tried again. “Look, I’ll talk to ‘Mani tomorrow. But right now, baby”—he ventured to kiss her shoulder again—“it’s about me and you.”
Sharla balled a handful of covers into her fist and yanked the mass over her head as she resumed her face-down, off-limits stance in bed.
It took every ounce of godliness in Mark to keep from entertaining the irony of refusing advances from a stranger only to come home and face rejection from his wife.
Order Stepping Down for Kindle Now!
Other Books by Michelle Stimpson
Fiction
A Forgotten Love (Novella) Book One in the “A Few Good Men” Series
A Shoulda Woulda Christmas (Novella)
Boaz Brown
Divas of Damascus Road
Falling into Grace
I Met Him in the Ladies’ Room (Novella)
I Met Him in the Ladies’ Room Again (Novella)
Last Temptation (Starring “Peaches” from Boaz Brown)
Mama B: A Time to Speak (Book 1)
Mama B: A Time to Dance (Book 2)
Mama B: A Time to Love (Book 3)
Mama B: A Time to Mend (Book 4)
Someone to Watch Over Me
Stepping Down
The Good Stuff
Trouble In My Way (Young Adult)
What About Momma’s House? (Novella with April Barker)
What About Love? (Novella with April Barker)
What About Tomorrow? (Novella with April Barker)
Non-Fiction
Did I Marry the Wrong Guy? And other silent ponderings of a fairly normal Christian wife
Uncommon Sense: 30 Truths to Radically Renew Your Mind in Christ
The 21-Day Publishing Plan
About the Author
No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) Page 24