by Kim Amos
“I don’t know,” Betty said. She gestured to her jeans and work boots. “Have you met me? I don’t exactly do sexy.”
“Oh, I can help with that,” Willa said. “I have a closet full of clothes that could do the trick.”
“It seems overly complicated for something that’s probably quite simple,” Betty said. “I could just ask him, you know.”
What she didn’t add was how the simplest truth was almost always the easiest one. And in this case, she pretty much figured that Randall Sondheim had seen her goods up close and decided he wasn’t buying. Nothing more than friendship anyway.
“You could,” Willa acknowledged. “Or you could do something a little daring and see what happens.”
Betty chewed her lip. Outside the back room’s windows, golden light slanted through the trees, setting the leaves blazing with color. A dog barked in the distance. She wasn’t so sure about this. Dressing sexily to tempt a pastor seemed like becoming precisely the dark woman the townspeople were afraid she already was. Then again, maybe it would be fun to figure out where Randall stood with her. Once and for all.
“All right,” she said to Willa. “Maybe I’ll give it a shot. I have a meeting with Randall tomorrow at four o’clock. Can you work your magic by then?”
Willa grinned. The whole table leaned forward in anticipation.
“Honey, by four o’clock tomorrow, Randall Sondheim won’t know what hit him. Mark my words.”
Willa lifted her glass. The liquid looked magical in the low light—like a potion or a spell of some sort. What the hell, Betty thought, and clinked glasses in a toast.
To trying something new, she thought, and slammed back the rest of her drink.
Chapter Four
Everything was wrong. It was all terribly, horribly awry, and at five minutes to four o’clock, there was nothing to be done about it.
“I look like a hooker,” Betty moaned, pulling desperately at the hem of her skirt. “What have you done to me?”
Willa pressed her mouth into a hard, straight line. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I never took you for a drama queen, Betty Lindholm. You’re overreacting.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one standing here like you’re headed for a brothel.”
Betty turned in front of the full-length mirror that Willa had brought to the Knots and Bolts back room, craning her neck to make sure her ass wasn’t hanging out of the back of the skirt.
Oh, what had she been thinking? But an hour ago, with the windows thrown wide and the sun streaming in and the crisp breeze blowing up from the river, Betty had figured nothing could ruin this sparkling day. She was going to see Randall Sondheim! She was going to conduct an experiment! It was going to be exhilarating!
The idea of it had her feeling wild and reckless, and she’d let Willa have carte blanche with her wardrobe, her makeup, and her hair. And the result was mortifying. Worse than mortifying, even. It had Betty wanting to run out the back door and skip the meeting with Randall altogether.
“Betty,” Willa said firmly, “will you please just chill out for a second? I know this is more than you’re used to—”
“This is more than a pole dancer is used to!”
“But I’m telling you, you look good. Stop pulling on your skirt and listen to me.”
Willa joined her in the mirror. She put a gentle hand on Betty’s shoulder. “Breathe,” her friend said gently. “In and out, okay?”
Betty glared at her.
“Breathe,” Willa said.
Finally, she did as her friend commanded, and after a few moments her brain’s frenetic quaking lessened. Her muscles relaxed slightly. Willa nodded. “Okay, good. Now I want you to look at yourself as objectively as you can. Don’t compare yourself to how you usually look. Instead, just look at the woman staring back at you. Okay? Please?”
Betty lifted her chin as tried to do as she was told. She kept her breathing even. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them, vowing not to judge too harshly.
Her hair, usually a wavy mess, was now sleek and curling gently around her ears. She was wearing a black sweater that was form-fitting, yes, but not necessarily tawdry. She also had on a gray wool skirt that ended well above the knee, but perhaps not recklessly so. Willa had used enough makeup to bring out the apples of Betty’s cheeks and extend her eyelashes. It was more than she was used to, that was for sure. But it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t the train wreck Betty was making it out to be.
She needed to say at least that much to her friend.
“I—thank you, Willa,” she whispered, grabbing the other woman’s hands. “I’m sorry I got carried away there for a second. It’s just that…”
She swallowed. Her hands trembled slightly, and she pulled them away from Willa’s. How could she tell her friend she no longer wanted to do the experiment at all? What if she looked good—really good—and Randall still rejected her? She ran her tongue over her teeth. She had a long history of getting pushed to the wayside, and she wasn’t keen to revisit the feeling anytime soon. She felt her throat thickening with a sadness that went back years—far beyond anything happening here in this room. She swallowed it down, trying to be brave. But everything about this moment seemed sharp and dangerous, like staring down a bayonet on a battlefield.
A giant piece of Betty wanted to go back to just being friends with the pastor—to the time before the banner when they could talk together and there wasn’t an electric current flickering inside her every time he smiled or said something insightful. She groaned softly.
“If he blows you off today, then he’s a fool,” Willa said. “Besides, it’s just a silly experiment. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re not exactly following the scientific method here.”
But there was a method to their madness. And Randall would have a reaction—one way or another. She could feel herself frowning deeply.
“Look,” Willa said gently, “you’re the smartest, boldest woman I know. You single-handedly helped me craft a business plan for my bed-and-breakfast. You don’t take crap from anybody, and you tell it like it is. In a word filled with bullshit, you’re the real deal, Betty. So if this guy can’t see how amazing that is, then screw him. Okay? Not literally, I mean. No screwing physically. Just screw him emotionally. Except that’s not—oh, never mind.”
Betty laughed in spite of her sinking insides. She hugged Willa, determined to remember that she had a good life in White Pine. Willa was a prime example of that. She didn’t need Randall in order to take pleasure in the everyday. She didn’t need Randall, period.
Well, except for the part where she let the Lutheran church accept a hunk of her proceeds for a bit. But that was just business.
“All right,” Betty said, “he’ll be here in a second. I should get out to the front of the store.”
“I’ll pack up and let myself out the back. Just know, you look good, Betty. Really good.”
“Thanks,” Betty said. “Whatever happens, this was nice of you.”
Betty gave herself one last glimpse in the mirror, told herself everything was going to be fine. But her pulse was humming to an anxious beat nonetheless. Because if Randall rejected her, she could tell herself it would be fine, but she knew her heart would be torn up into small bits until she could summon the strength to put it together again.
And who even knew when that would be.
* * *
There was no way to concentrate. The room was suddenly stifling, and Randall Sondheim could feel sweat making his shirt stick to his skin. Betty stared up at him, blinking through long lashes, and his mind went blank. Except for one staggering thought, over and over: Betty Lindholm looked scalding hot.
Her everyday shirts and jeans were fine, but they never showed off her curves the way her current outfit did. He deliberately averted his gaze from the place where her black sweater stretched against her breasts. But then his eyes fell on her hips, on the way they filled out the skirt just perfectly below her small waist. And t
hen there were her legs, clad in some kind of tights, that looked strong enough to wrap around his waist and tighten against him until—
“Pastor?”
Randall jerked his eyes up to meet Betty’s gaze. Had she known what he was staring at, and what he was thinking? He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw laughter in her blue eyes. He cleared his throat.
He had to be careful. He had to proceed with extreme caution.
He stared at her soft skin and her perfect lips, itching to touch both.
Maybe he just had to proceed. Period.
“I have a draft of the Sunday bulletin,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his sport coat to pull out a wrinkled sheet of paper. “I wanted to show you the verbiage. I wrote it yesterday, and Celia, my secretary, just laid it out. You can see we’re showcasing the partnership with Knots and Bolts prominently.”
He passed the paper to her across the checkout counter. Around them, fabric lined walls and shelves in an overwhelming array of colors and patterns. He wondered what it would be like to push Betty into one of the padded displays, to put his hand underneath the skirt and feel the heat between her thighs. He watched her fingers unfold the paper and imagined them twisting through his hair. He had to glance away.
“You need some water or something?” Betty asked, looking up from the paper. “You seem—rattled.”
That wasn’t the half of it, he thought. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, dabbed at his forehead. “Sorry,” he said, “just a warm day out there is all.”
“Certainly is,” Betty said, smiling again like she knew precisely what was bothering him, and went back to the text.
The seconds ticked by slowly. The air in the shop hardly moved. Sunlight seared bright squares on the floor, heating up the space even more. He caught a whiff of Betty’s scent—it reminded him of whipped cream and lavender—and his body temperature ratcheted another few degrees. Without thinking, Randall pushed up the sleeves of his sport coat. Betty lifted her eyes from the bulletin text as he did so.
“This is wonderful, really perf—” She stopped, staring at his forearms. For a moment, everything in the store was frozen, including Betty. “Are those tattoos?”
She stared openly at the brightly colored ink etched into his skin that he had, momentarily, forgotten.
Only he never forgot.
He never showed his markings to anyone. It could be a hundred and ten degrees out, and he’d still find a way to cover them.
Shoving down his sleeves, he stepped away from the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said, “you weren’t meant to see that.” His heart was pounding. No one in this town knew he was tattooed.
That is, no one until now.
He immediately asked God to forgive the string of curse words coursing through his mind.
Betty walked from behind the cash register to stand next to him. “I never knew you had those,” she said, staring at his now-covered forearms.
“That was the point,” he said, looking over her head so he didn’t have to see the curiosity in her eyes. The tattooed pastor. He clenched his jaw, knowing what was coming next.
How did you get them? Why do you have them? What do they mean?
A picture of his brother flashed through his mind, and he grimaced. Betty must have seen the motion. She stepped closer.
“Hey, easy there. I’m not going to tell anyone if you’re worried about the whole town knowing about your ink. It’s no big deal.”
Instead of plying him with questions, she inched closer still. His chest tightened as she placed her fingers on his forearm. He felt the searing contact, even through his clothing.
Her head came just above his shoulder. Her golden hair was so close. He could rest his cheek on top of it if he wanted to, and feel the silken softness of it. Instead, he stayed rigid and unmoving, terrified of what would happen if he allowed himself an inch with this woman. He would take her for everything she was worth, and ruin them both in the process.
He watched as she gently pushed up his sleeve. Her movements were slow and deliberate, as if she was trying to get close to a wild animal. Nothing quick, nothing startling.
He wanted to pull away. He wanted to rip his arm free and tell her this was his secret, his past, his story, and she had no right to it. Only he couldn’t. He was immobilized from her touch, from her gentleness.
She slid his sleeve almost up to his elbow. With one hand holding his wrist, she used her other hand to trace the outline of his markings. She touched the feathered wings of his Phoenix, its tail ending in flickering flame. She followed the creature’s path with her finger as it reached for the branches of a knotted, gnarled oak tree. Her touch was both agonizing and wonderful. It burned through him like wildfire as she outlined the rough bark of the oak, the twisted branches, all the way to the tips, which eventually became wrenches and bolts and drill bits. His breathing had turned ragged. He never wanted her to stop.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. She looked from the ink to his gaze, and he was surprised to see wonder there. Not amusement or, worse, distain for the bawdy design on a Lutheran pastor. “It’s stunning,” she said, “truly.”
Now, he told himself. Now he would rip his arm from her grasp and stalk out of the room, hoping to avoid her until at least Sunday. Instead, he lifted his arm—her fingers still touching his skin—and placed his palm against her face. He exhaled at the rightness of it. He had wanted to touch Betty Lindholm for months.
She leaned into it and closed her eyes. She clutched him harder, as if trying to stay upright.
He watched her, tensing. His body was warning him all over again that his secrets were dangerous because he was dangerous. His heart couldn’t be trusted.
Except right here, touching Betty’s face, he didn’t feel dangerous. He felt as much at peace as he did in the sanctuary, when he delivered his sermons and prayed to God.
“Betty,” he said. It came out sounding like a plea—but whether to stop or keep going, he wasn’t sure.
She licked her lips and he was instantly hard. He wanted to taste her, to rip off her skirt and do untold things to her. He held back, though. He couldn’t let himself have all that.
He was a pastor, after all. And he wouldn’t take those things without love and commitment—and God help him, honesty—underscoring all of it.
Would he?
Oh, but she was right there. She was so close.
He leaned forward and her eyes flew open. There were scant inches between them. He could feel her breath on his skin, sweet and warm. He inhaled, moving his hand from her cheek to the back of her neck. Her eyes dropped to his lips.
“My brother and I had matching tattoos,” he said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. Something about her had him determined to speak the truth. He pulled her body closer to his. He wanted her to feel his heat, to feel his desperation and the darkness of his past. He wanted her feel it and know the visceral facts of it and run far away from him.
She should run.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her gaze unflinching.
“What happened?” she asked.
He let himself feel the fire of hot want for her. He let the past come back so that its blackness could cover them both, and so she would know the truth of who he was. And leave him alone—forever.
“We repaired old cars together,” he said, his voice low and full of an edge that sounded like pain, “and called it Phoenix Autobody because we said it was like getting old junkers to rise from the flames again. And my brother, Shawn, he was good at it. So was I. We got the tattoos because that business—that was what we were going to do. The two of us, working side by side as brothers and as best friends.”
He took a breath. Betty tightened her arms around him. “And?” she asked.
“And the only problem was that we didn’t just fix cars. We drank. Hard. We partied and we lived life like it was something we had to conquer. We were young and full of ourselv
es, and for a second there, it was glorious.” He could still feel the wild, reckless abandon of it, and the joy that had come from living life hard, with no restraints.
He shifted. Betty held on. He inhaled her scent and forced himself to go on. To tell her all of it.
So that when he was done, she could get away from him.
“Until,” he said quietly, “our older brother Gus held an intervention. He was in med school at the time, he was always such a good kid, and he wanted to help us. I blew him off, but Shawn listened, and he decided enough was enough. He started to go to some AA meetings with Gus’s help and it was like—well, I wasn’t there yet. I wanted to keep going, to keep partying and never stop. I wanted us to be wild brothers together. I didn’t know how to be anything else. I loved him, and I loved our reckless life. We were—this sounds nuts—but we were like legends in our hometown up on the Iron Range.”
“Tell me,” Betty whispered, her lips nearly grazing his. “Tell me what happened.”
He almost took her then. He almost brought his hot, searing lust down on her and ripped at the tights on her legs to put something between them besides this story. To distract them both with lust and desire. But he steeled his resolve and forced himself to finish the story.
“There was a Camaro,” he said finally, “that we’d been working on. We’d just about finished up on it, and I took it for a spin. I’d had, I don’t know, five or so beers by then. I was eating up the back roads, blasting the stereo, and feeling like a king. I was thinking, screw Shawn, and I was wondering if maybe I should go into business for myself. I knew I was good, but more than that, Shawn was ripping me up inside. He was nagging me about things constantly once he started AA—about my messes, about being on time and not hungover for things—and I was sick of it. More to the point, I was hurt by it. Like he suddenly thought he was better than me or something. And honestly, at that time, I couldn’t find any middle ground when it came to him. Like either we were two halves of the same person, or he was a stranger to me and I hated him.