“Oh, hush you.” She playfully batted his arm. “I’m no rat. I’m happy for you. And happy I know a secret no one else knows. When you’re seventy you get your jollies anywhere you can. And if it makes you feel any better, I’ll be moving to Florida to live with my sister soon and I’ll take my secrets with me.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better at all,” Søren said. “I’d rather have you at church every Sunday. Who is going to tell me when my homily runs long?”
“I can take over that job,” Nora said.
“See?” Mrs. Maywood said. “It’ll be fine.”
“We’ll miss you very much,” Søren said. “It won’t be the same without you.”
“It’s too lonely out here without George.”
“Are you selling the farm?” Nora asked.
“Giving it to my daughters. They’ll probably sell the land and keep the house so you better swim now if you want to. Might be your last chance.”
“I’ve had this bathing suit giving me a wedgie all day so I might as well put it to use,” Nora said.
“I remember when you used to cannonball right off the end of the dock. One year you came up without your swimsuit on,” Mrs. Maywood said. “Gave the boys quite a thrill.”
“Think you for reminding me of that,” Nora said. “I had forgotten that humiliating experience.”
“This is why churches need old ladies,” Mrs. Maywood said. “We keep you kids humble. You two stay as late as you like. I’ll be in the house doing the dishes. And no, you can’t help me.”
Mrs. Maywood gave Nora a kiss on the cheek and patted Søren on the arm as she walked past him and back inside.
“Well,” Søren said.
“Well.”
“This has turned into an interesting day.”
“It has,” she said, nodding. “I guess there’s only one thing we can do now.”
He raised his eyebrow at her. “And that is?”
“Cannonball.”
“What?”
“Last one in is a rotten vanilla!”
Nora took off running off the deck and down the hillside toward the pond. She ripped off her shirt while running and kicked off her sandals. While she was yanking her jeans down, a blur of black sped past her and when she looked up, water hit her square in the face.
“You bastard,” she said, wiping water out of her eyes. Søren was in the middle of the small pond grinning fiendishly at her. “How did you beat me here?”
“Which one of us runs five mornings a week and which one of us does not?”
“Are you still wearing your clothes?”
“I’ll air-dry quickly on the bike,” he said.
“You riding a motorcycle soaking wet is going to cause an accident. You realize this, don’t you?”
“You suggest I ride naked instead?”
“That’s one way to clear a path in traffic.”
“Are you coming or not?”
“Yeah, I’m coming.” Nora kicked off her jeans, took a few steps back and then ran for it. With a running leap, she cannonballed into the water and landed a foot in front of Søren. When she came up his hair was hanging in his face.
“That was unnecessary,” he said, slicking his hair back.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” she said before kicking off to swim across the pond and back. She hadn’t been in water in a long time. She’d always love the water, the way it held her up and surrounded her at the same time. Nora rolled onto her back and stared up at the sun, inhaled deeply and smelled the living summer all around her. Wesley…he always smelled like summer to her, like laundry dried on the line in the sun. But Wes wasn’t here and Søren was and for once he smelled like summer too, like freshly cut grass and wildflowers and the evening heat on the pond.
When Søren swam to her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and he held her as they floated in the warm water. The sun hung low in the sky and everything from the white house to the shimmering water to Søren’s blond hair glowed.
“Did I tell you yet today how beautiful you are?” he asked.
“No.”
“I’ll try to remember to do that then at some point then.”
Nora pinched his shoulder.
“Thanks for your help today,” she said. “I feel better.”
“I’m your priest. You’re my parishioner. Helping you find a place in the church is my job.”
“You’re very good at your job, Father Stearns.” She kissed his cheek and he held her closer, tighter. But not close enough. Not tight enough. “Hold on. Now I have to do something.”
“What?”
She grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt, pulled it up, and yanked it off him. It landed with a splat on the dock.
“There. That’s better,” she said. “Much better.”
“Let’s hope Regina can’t see us from the house.”
“She already knows anyway,” Nora said. “She said she suspected something was up because you were suddenly a lot happier after I started coming back to church. You’re going to have to be less happy so people will be less suspicious.”
He shook his head. “Not possible. Unless you leave me again.”
“Not planning on ever leaving you again.”
“Then I’m afraid I will be forced to remain very…” He kissed the side of her neck. “Very...” He bit the side of her neck. “Happy.”
She clung to him with all her might, running her hands up and down his wet back.
“Are you happy?” he asked softly, as if he were afraid of the answer.
“I’m…getting there,” she said.
“Are you still angry at me?”
Was she? It was a good question. After she came back from her year in hiding after leaving him, things hadn’t been great at first but eventually they’d learned to get along even though they were broken up. But then Søren had gone to Syria for three months and come home a different man. He’d always been a sadist but this was different. Something had turned him cruel. When she spent the night with him after he’d come back, he’d left bruises on her face which wasn’t a hard limit for her but something he’d rarely done. At The 8th Circle, he went out of his way to humiliate her. He’d even ordered her to never again write about him in her books even though the memories of what they’d shared together were as much her property as his. Out of spite, she’d written a book about her complicated feelings for Wesley instead. Oh the irony, it was that very book that had brought her back to Søren, that very book that had been the beginning of the end of her happy life with Wesley.
Oh yes, she had every right to be angry with Søren and yet she wasn’t. She didn’t have it in her. As hard as it had been for her the past five years, it had been far worse for him. She’d had Kingsley, she’d had Wesley, she’d had her writing career, her work. Søren had to survive their separation all on his own.
“No, I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at me. It’s not your fault. I mean, you didn’t make me…” She went silent. The knot was back in her throat, blocking her words. They backed up against that knot, a raging river pushing against a dam, and no amount of swallowing would ease the pressure.
“You can talk about him,” Søren said.
“I can’t…” Nora said, hot tears sliding down her cheeks.
“Then I’ll talk,” Søren said, cradling her head to his shoulder and she felt like a child in her father’s arms. “If there is anyone on this earth who knows what it’s like to love someone you shouldn’t, it’s me.”
“Kingsley?” she asked. She felt Søren nodding.
“Every day it hurts,” he said. “Some days worse than others. When we’re together, it’s easy to forget…”
“What?”
“It’s easy to forget that we aren’t together. It’s better to be apart if you can’t be together. I know you don’t want to believe that, but it’s the truth, and I speak from agonizing personal experience. And I would spare you that pain. I would give my own life
to spare you that pain, Little One. But I can’t. I can’t because I know that if you had to choose between loving him and the pain that love caused or not loving him and no pain…”
“I would choose the pain,” she said, but what she wanted to say was that she’d choose the love. Because she loved Wesley, and the love and the pain were like a flag planted in her chest, a banner saying Wesley was here. “Just like you have.”
Nora squeezed her eyes tight in the hopes of stemming the tide of tears. She couldn’t stop shaking. The water was warm and Søren’s body even warmer but she shook like she was freezing.
“It hurts,” she said. Trying not to cry had given her a splitting headache.
“God knows I know how much it hurts. I know sending him away was the hardest thing you ever did, but I promise you, it is better this way.”
“Gotta rip the Band-Aid off, right? The slower you go, the more it hurts.” She laughed and was happy to know she still could.
“And hurts and hurts and hurts…”
“I usually love pain, but this is different,” she said. “This isn’t my body. It’s inside, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
“No safe word can protect the heart,” Søren said. “If there was such a word I would have used it long ago, and then I would have given it to you.”
The tenderness in his voice was too much for her. She could hold back the river no longer. The dam burst and a strangled whimper escaped her lips. She wept. And as she wept Søren comforted her with his strong, large hands stroking her shuddering back, and his voice in her ear whispering consolation.
“You laugh as hard as you cry. And you give pain as beautifully as you take it. And when you love, you love harder than anyone I have ever known so it’s no surprise you hurt this much.”
“It hurts more than when I left you,” she said. “Somehow I always knew I’d come back to you. This feels so…so final. Like there’s no going back.”
“Have you read the book of Genesis lately?” he asked, pulling back to meet her eyes.
“Should I?”
“You should. I re-read it recently and noticed something interesting. Right after Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise for eating from the Tree of Knowledge, they never once ask God to let them back in.”
“They don’t?”
“In the Hebrew Bible there are two verbs that are translated as ‘repent’. One is ‘nacham’ which means ‘to be sorrowful.’ The other is ‘shuv’ which means ‘to return.’ Eve blames the serpent and Adam blames Eve, but never once do they simply ask to be let back into the garden, they don’t ask to return so they never do. And then in the New Testament we have the Parable of the Prodigal Son which shows us how the story should have ended—with Adam and Eve returning to Eden and God celebrating. That’s why I never believed the concept of the ‘fortunate fall.’ Because in the past five years, if you had come to me and asked me to let you back in, I would have done so in a heartbeat. I can’t accept that an infinite God loves his children any less than I love you.”
“You did let me back in a heartbeat,” she said, remembering that moment in Sacred Heart’s sanctuary when she put her collar into Søren’s outstretched hand, that moment when his fingers curled over the white leather and he held it with the same reverence he held his rosary beads. One heartbeat. That was it. She was his again.
“Mrs. Maywood said her husband believed Paradise was ours to make, not something out there waiting for us.”
“We put each other through Hell,” Søren said. “And it was a Hell of our own making. Perhaps Paradise is of our own making too. Maybe nothing is final, even when it seems like the very end of the world.”
She rested her chin on his bare shoulder again. The water was warm and clear and the sun orange and lovely at the edge of the sky. She saw a sign in the reeds on the bank and at first thought it said “Paradise Found” but when she squinted saw it was “Paradise Pond.”
“New game now,” Søren said. “You do something nice for me and I’ll do something nice for you. This time I decide what nice thing I’ll do for you and what nice thing you’ll do for me.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“All is fair in love and sadism,” he said.
“Okay, I’m in,” she said. “What something nice am I doing for you?”
“You’re going to make me a promise—a promise that you’ll always come back to me,” he said.
Nora shrugged. “Easy. Especially since I don’t plan on ever leaving you again.”
“But if you do, you will come back?” He met her eyes. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t teasing. He was serious.
“Yes, Søren, my Sir, owner of my heart, master of my body, and keeper of my soul—I promise that I will always come back to you.”
“Good.”
“So what’s the something nice you’ll do for me in exchange?” she asked.
Søren held her tighter, held her closer, kissed her temple, and she closed her eyes, at peace once more. She could feel this strong steady heart beating against her chest and for a single moment she was back in Paradise.
“If and when the time comes,” he said softly. “You’ll know.”
About the Author
Tiffany Reisz is the author of the internationally bestselling and award-winning Original Sinners series for Mira Books (Harlequin/Mills & Boon). Tiffany’s books inhabit a sexy shadowy world where romance, erotica, and literature meet and do immoral and possibly illegal things to each other. She describes her genre as “literary friction,” a term she stole from her main character, who gets in trouble almost as often as the author herself.
She lives in Oregon. If she couldn’t write, she would die.
Follow on social media, or visit Tiffany’s website for free short stories and to subscribe to the Tiffany Reisz e-mail newsletter:
@tiffanyreisz
littleredridingcrop
www.tiffanyreisz.com
Books by Tiffany Reisz
Novels
THE BOURBON THIEF
* * *
Original Sinners Novels
THE SIREN
THE ANGEL
THE PRINCE
THE MISTRESS
THE SAINT
THE KING
THE VIRGIN
THE QUEEN
* * *
Novellas
THE GIFT (previously published as SEVEN DAY LOAN)
LITTLE RED RIDING CROP
IMMERSED IN PLEASURE
SUBMIT TO DESIRE
THE MISTRESS FILES
MISBEHAVING
THE LAST GOOD KNIGHT (PARTS I—V)
THE CONFESSION OF MARCUS STEARNS
THE HEADMASTER
SEIZE THE NIGHT
THE CONFESSION OF ELEANOR SCHREIBER
SOMETHING NICE
Something Nice
Copyright © 2016 Tiffany Reisz
All rights reserved. No part of this publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, 8th Circle Press, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living, or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Andrew Shaffer
Front cover images used under license from Shutterstock.com and iStock.com.
www.8thcirclepress.com
First Edition
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Something Nice: An Original Sinners Novella Page 6