The Angel (The Original Sinners)

by Reisz, Tiffany

  “Nora’s the strongest, smartest, toughest person I know. She rebuilt her life, re-created herself. She’s like her own sun, and we all just revolve around her. That’s why the Pope loves her so much. Topping someone that dominant has got to be a turn-on for a sadist like him. But me? If I’m going to be in a relationship with someone, I want that person to need me. I want someone to take care of, to spoil, to protect. Nora takes care of herself. I’d be useless to her.”

  Griffin ran a hand through his dark hair before laying it casually on Michael’s stomach.

  “I don’t think you’re useless,” Michael said, his voice coming out in a whisper for some reason. Griffin looked down at him and didn’t speak. “I think you’re awesome. Anybody would be lucky to be with you.”

  “They’d be luckier to be with you.” Griffin lowered his hand and let it rest lightly on Michael’s hip.

  Michael shook his head.

  “Anybody in their right mind would run the second they saw these.” Michael held out his scarred wrists. “They’re hideous.”

  Griffin’s other hand reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair off Michael’s forehead.

  “Mick,” Griffin began in a low voice, “there’s nothing, absolutely nothing about you that’s hideous.”

  “Who’s hideous?” Nora asked as she swept into the room, catching both Michael and Griffin off guard.

  Griffin winked at Michael as he moved from the bed back to the chair.

  “Søren is.” Griffin grabbed Nora and pulled her into his lap.

  “I know. He’s gross,” she said. “How’re you feeling, Angel?”

  Nora wiggled off Griffin’s lap and slid into bed next to Michael. Michael laughed as she wrapped herself around him and bit his neck.

  “Sore. Happy,” he said, flashing back to last night and the incredible ways she gave him both pleasure and pain and then more pleasure.

  “Both are perfectly normal. Unlike the three of us.” Nora tossed her bare leg over his calf. She too wore only boxer shorts and a T-shirt that read University of Kentucky. Weird. He thought she’d gone to NYU.

  “Normal never got me laid.” Griffin sat back in the chair and kicked his shoes off. He put his feet on the bed and crossed his legs at the ankles. Griffin had really big feet, Michael noticed.

  “Speaking of getting laid,” Nora began as she sat up and looked at them both.

  “Great way to start any conversation,” Griffin said.

  “Søren called,” she continued.

  “A horrible way to start any conversation.”

  Nora reached out and swatted the bottom of Griffin’s feet. He flinched and pouted at her.

  “What’s up with Father S?” Michael rolled up and pulled his T-shirt on. He caught Griffin watching his every move.

  “That reporter bitch came by the church last night and interrogated him,” Nora began. “She asked him point-blank if he and I were sleeping together.”

  “Shit.” Michael pulled a pillow to his stomach in nervousness. “That’s bad.”

  “She’s smart and she’s hot on our trail. We need to get her off our trail.”

  “Suggestions?” Griffin asked.

  “We need a diversion. Let her see me with you. Make her think we’re together.”

  “I like it. Could work.” Griffin shrugged. “Just don’t drag me to a Broadway premiere,” he said with such disgust Michael laughed.

  Nora looked at Michael and smiled. Nora looked at Griffin and smiled. Griffin looked at Michael, and Michael looked at Griffin. Neither of them smiled.

  “Let’s go to Sin Tax.”

  Griffin whistled, sounding both dubious and impressed.

  “I don’t know, Nora. We’re in Kingsley’s circle. Will they let us in?”

  “Of course they’ll let us in. Well, they’ll let me in, and I’ll bring you with me.” Nora breathed on her fingernails and playfully buffed them on her T-shirt. “I have a friend there.”

  “Wait, what’s Sin Tax?” Michael asked, utterly lost in Griffin and Nora’s shorthand yet again.

  “It’s the one BDSM club in the city that Kingsley doesn’t have his fingers in,” Nora explained. “It’s more public than King’s clubs. Sin Tax is where celebs go if they want to look dark and cool. The famous people who go to Kingsley’s clubs actually are dark and cool.”

  “Like us.” Griffin winked at him. “So we go, get some attention, get some pics taken, show up on Page Six, reporter thinks you and I are together. That’s the plan?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What about Bruised over here?” Griffin glanced at Michael with a grin.

  “Oh, don’t worry about Michael,” Nora said as she crawled out of bed and headed to the door. “We’re taking him with us.”

  “And Søren will be okay with us going out in public together?” Griffin called out after her.

  Nora called back in a voice dangerous with feigned innocence.

  “Who?”

  13

  Wednesday evening at five, he’d said. Mary Queen Junior High, two blocks from Sacred Heart. If Suzanne showed up she would see Father Stearns without his collar on. And although she knew this was a really bad idea, Suzanne couldn’t stop herself from going.

  Parking in the main lot, she wandered around the outside of the school. He hadn’t given her any specific information, no doubt wanting her imagination to do all the work. As she neared the rear of the school—all too similar to the Catholic schools of her youth, with its careworn exterior and chipped Mary statues everywhere—Suzanne heard shouting followed by clapping.

  Okay. She’d been right. This was a really bad idea. Out on the soccer field, two dozen teenagers and twentysomethings and one tall blond man in his forties played a hard-core game of soccer. Although older than the other players by a couple decades, Father Stearns wasn’t only keeping up, he seemed to be wiping the floor with them. He wore a fitted black T-shirt that showed off his miraculously toned biceps and broad chest and black track pants that no doubt hid equally toned hips and legs.

  She stood at the edge of the field and watched the game. No, not the game. She watched only Father Stearns—his blond hair like a halo in the evening sun, his eyes hidden behind black wraparound sunglasses, the slightest hint of sweat staining the shirt around his neck and lower back.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed. She’d seen naked men less visually arresting than this one soccer-playing priest.

  “None of that,” came a voice from a few feet away from her. A young man with sun-streaked hair sat on the sidelines with an ice pack on his thigh. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Blushing, Suzanne sat next to the young man and put on her own sunglasses.

  “Think about what?” she asked.

  “Him. Father S. My priest. I’m Harrison, by the way. And you’re…”

  “Suzanne.”

  “Suzanne, lovely to meet you. You’re that reporter chick, right? He warned us you might be stopping by.”

  “That’s me. Just working on a story.”

  “For Playgirl?”

  Suzanne laughed a little as Harrison adjusted his ice pack.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Strained a groin muscle.”

  “Poor you. Rough game?”

  “Wasn’t during the game.” He wagged his eyebrows at her.

  “You’re flirting. And I’m ten years older than you.”

  “He’s twenty years older
than you and that’s not stopping you from throwing the bedroom eyes at him. Best priest on the planet, and I have to tell my own damn girlfriend to stop drooling all over him.”

  Suzanne caught Father Stearns looking in her direction during a pause in the play. She gave him a quick wave, which he returned before heading down the pitch with remarkable grace and speed. The ball careened toward the goal and he intercepted it with a hard kick that sent the ball halfway down the field.

  “Best priest on the planet? That’s high praise.” Suzanne wished she’d brought her notebook with her. A flirtatious teenage boy could be a wellspring of information. Reluctantly she pulled her eyes away from Father Stearns and cast them on Harrison. She remembered guys like him from high school—cocky, gregarious, always the center of attention.

  “It’s true. He speaks like twenty languages, has two or three PhDs…and kicks ass on our church league team. So don’t go after him because you’re pretty enough to tempt even him.”

  Suzanne shook her head.

  “A teenage boy defending the unsullied virtue of his Catholic priest—interesting,” she noted. “Do all the kids like Father Stearns?”

  “Yeah, of course. He’s really laid-back.”

  Suzanne’s eyes widened. Father Stearns, the couple of times she’d talked to him, seemed intimidating and rigid.

  “Laid-back?”

  “Doesn’t lecture, doesn’t bitch at us for swearing, treats us like people. It’s nice. Blake over there—” Harrison pointed to Father Stearns’s goalkeeper “—goes to St. Mark’s. His dad’s a deacon there. Hates it. They’ve been through three priests in three years. One went to rehab for booze. The other got transferred for ‘reasons,’” Harrison said, putting the word reasons in scare quotes. “And the new guy is sixty going on one hundred and sixty. Father Stearns rocks. So if you put the moves on him, you and I will have words.”

  “Have words? That’s cute.”

  “I’m cute. And I’m not a priest.”

  Suzanne turned back to the game for a second. Father Stearns and his goalie seemed to be plotting. The goalie had a water bottle in his hand. He took a swig before pouring some into Father Stearns’s hands. He took the water and swept it through his hair, slicking it back. At that moment Suzanne realized she’d never been so attracted to someone in her entire life. Need pooled in her stomach like a simmering fire. Priest or not, enemy or not, asterisk or not…she wanted him.

  Adam, she whispered to herself. Remember Adam.

  “So no rehab trips for Father Stearns? No weirdness?”

  “Only weird thing is what’s he doing here with us in the suburbs? He should be pope.”

  Suzanne leaned back on her elbows and crossed her legs at the ankles. She wished she’d worn shorts or a skirt, something to show off her legs to Harrison.

  “Maybe he’s got a reason for sticking around here.” She looked at Harrison out of the corner of her eye.

  “Like what?”

  Suzanne shrugged. “I don’t know—Nora Sutherlin?”

  Harrison clamped his hand to his chest.

  “God, Nora. Be still my heart. Be still my groin.”

  “That hot, is she?”

  Harrison turned wide eyes at her and slowly nodded.

  “You’re a fan?” Suzanne asked.

  Again he nodded.

  “Father Stearns also a fan?”

  Harrison rolled his eyes.

  “He’s male and straight. I’d worry if he wasn’t a fan.”

  Suzanne pulled a dandelion from the grass and caressed her bottom lip with it. Flirting with a teenager to get answers? How low could she go?

  “Think they’re together?”

  Harrison shook his head. “No way. Why would he still be a priest getting paid peanuts, putting up with us losers, if he had her waiting for him at home? Besides,” Harrison said, dropping his voice to a whisper. Out on the pitch, Father Stearns blocked yet another attempt at a goal. The teenagers on the team looked tired and thirsty. He’d barely broken a sweat.

  “Besides what?”

  “I think Nora has a thing for younger men.”

  Suzanne raised her eyebrow at him.

  “Got any evidence? Or just wishful thinking?” God, now she sounded like Father Stearns.

  “Now I’m not one to tell tales out of school,” Harrison began. “But there’s this guy at church—Suicide Mike.”

  Suzanne’s hands went cold at the mention of suicide. But she kept her face neutral.

  “Suicide Mike?”

  “I know. It’s horrible. I never call him that,” he said although he just had. “Michael Dimir.”

  “The boy who tried to commit suicide in the sanctuary?”

  “The same,” he said, nodding. “Here’s the thing about Suic…about Michael. Michael, he’s glass, breakable. Kid is scared of his own shadow. Barely talks. You say hi to him and it takes a year off his life.”

  Suzanne’s stomach dropped in sympathy. Withdrawn? Anxious? Constantly on the alert? Michael sounded like a classic abuse victim to her. But where had the abuse come from? Home? Or church?

  “So?” Suzanne prompted, not wanting but needing to know more.

  “So Nora’s a little on the intimidating side. Famous, rich, beautiful…you’d think if she said hi to him, he’d die on the spot. But no. I’m sitting there two weeks ago, Sunday morning, staring at Nora like usual. And she looks at Michael and winks at him. I thought, ‘Oh, shit, call 9-1-1—Mike’s going to have a heart attack.’ But no, guess what he does?”

  “What?”

  “He stuck his tongue out at her like they were old buddies or something. She stuck her tongue out back at him, and the temperature in the sanctuary shot up twenty degrees from the heat of those two eye-fucking each other.”

  Suzanne didn’t say anything at first. Father Stearns seemed rather defensive about both her and Michael Dimir. If he acted as confessor to both of them, then no doubt he knew the thirtysomething author was having an affair with a teenage boy. Together she and Harrison watched the game for a few minutes in silence. Or almost silence. Despite being sidelined, Harrison couldn’t seem to stop yelling advice and encouragements at his own team.

  She didn’t know much about soccer, but she could tell that Father Stearns owned the field. His team responded to his every quiet command like well-trained soldiers. And he seemed indefatigable, running up and down the field with the fearsome long-legged agility of a jaguar.

  “God, he’s good,” she said, as he weaved in between two players and scored a goal from the center line.

  “Of course he’s good,” Harrison said, taking off the ice and rubbing his inner thigh. “He’s one hundred and fifty percent pure European. Got the soccer gene on both sides.”

  “How can somebody be one hundred and fifty percent European?” Suzanne asked, recalling what little she’d discovered about the priest’s past.

  “His father’s British, was British. Dead now. His mother’s Danish. And he went to seminary in Italy.”

  Danish mother? That would explain the hair and eyes. And the inscriptions in the books and on the photo—must be Danish.

  “Thought his mother was from New Hampshire.”

  Harrison scoffed.

  “Does that,” he said, pointing at Father Stearns, “look American to you?”

  “No,” she admitted. He looked spectacular to her—masculine and handsome and so incredibly attractive. But not particularly American. “European genes—guess t
hat’s why he’s your best player.”

  “Second best.”

  “Second? Let me guess—you’re the best.”

  Harrison shook his head.

  “No. Father Stearns’s brother-in-law comes and practices with us sometimes. He’s even better. But don’t tell Father S I said that. They’re really competitive.”

  Suzanne furrowed her brow. She knew Father Stearns had a sister, but the older sister, Elizabeth, didn’t live in Connecticut.

  “Brother-in-law? One of his sisters is married—”

  Harrison shook his head.

  “Father S was married.”

  Her heart shuddered a little in her chest.

  “Father Stearns was married?”

  “Yeah, when he was my age—eighteen. Legal adult,” he reminded her. “Apparently didn’t last long. She died. Some kind of accident. If I was an eighteen-year-old widower, I’d probably join the priesthood too.”

  Suzanne could barely speak.

  “Married…” I’m not a virgin…I wasn’t born a priest… “Eighteen…that would have been a long time ago. He and the brother are still friends?”

  “They’re either best friends or they want to kill each other. Hard to tell sometimes. They constantly swear at each other in French.”

  “French?”

  “Yeah. Brother-in-law’s French.”

  Harrison said something else but Suzanne had stopped listening. She looked out across the field and saw the practice coming to an end. Father Stearns’s team had won 2–1. Standing up, Suzanne brushed the grass off her jeans and walked toward him.

  As she came to him, he pushed his sunglasses up on his head.

  “Good game,” she said. “You were married?”

  Father Stearns looked over her shoulder and shot Harrison a death stare. Harrison blew a kiss at Suzanne.

  “Every Thursday I devote to praying for vocations for the church,” Father Stearns said. “I pray Harrison will be called to become a Cistercian.”