Donovan’s Angel (11 page)

He felt the fence go up between them and knew
that he would have to cut another gate. “I would like to explore
the difference between friendly touches and romantic touches,” he
replied softly.

Her mind returned to their wild embrace in
her hallway. She had already explored that difference, and it was
far too hot for her to handle.

“If we do any more exploration, I’m afraid
that I will start a scandal. I’m not as strong as you are, and
besides that, I can’t take refuge behind a black robe and a
clerical collar.”

Paul’s hand tightened on hers, and he walked
in silence until they came to the gate that separated their houses.
Then he gripped her shoulders, forcing her to look up at him.

“Ministry is a choice, Martie, not a refuge,”
he said, holding her gaze with his.

“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry,
Paul.”

“Don’t be. You’ve always been candid with me.
That’s one of the things I like about you.” He pulled her into his
arms and cradled her head against his shoulder. “You keep erecting
barriers where there should be none. Let it go, angel. Forget my
profession and just let there be the two of us.”

“I can’t, Paul.” She nudged her head against
his shoulder, inhaling the tobacco fragrance that clung to his
shirt. “I know myself too well.” Tipping her head back, she flashed
him an impish grin. “And if you don’t let go, I’m liable to do
something scandalous right here in the parsonage yard. In the
public view, as Miss Beulah would say.”

He released her and swung the new gate back
on its hinges. “Until another time, Martie.”

“Never, Paul.”

He stood in the gateway until she had
disappeared into her house.

o0o

Walks home together after pageant rehearsal
became a nightly ritual for them, but there were no repeat
performances of serious conversations and near dangerous embraces.
Paul patiently respected the fence Martie had erected between them,
and she unwillingly fell in love.

o0o

On Friday night it was she who stood in the
gateway watching him walk back toward the parsonage. At the
realization that tomorrow was Saturday, with no rehearsals and no
walks home in the twilight, she was overcome by a sense of
loneliness. She wanted to run after him and say, “I’ll change. I’ll
be proper and suitable and conventional. I’ll fry chicken and
retire my baseball bat. I’ll even give up juke music and climbing
trees. I’ll do anything just to be in your arms.”

But she didn’t run after him and she didn’t
say those things. She could never change—not really. And even if
she did, it would only be temporary. She had to be true to herself,
and so did he.

The gate squeaked on its tight hinges as she
swung it shut and went into her own backyard.

o0o

Martie held up the shorts and giggled. She
hadn’t meant to buy them. She had been browsing through Michael’s
Department Store looking for a birthday gift for her dad when she’d
spotted them. They were holdovers from Valentine’s Day, the clerk
had said. A marvelous pair of white shorts, Medium, 32-34,
decorated with bright red hearts.

She tossed the shorts onto her bed. Of
course, she couldn’t give them to Paul; it was absolutely out of
the question. Maybe the purple socks, but not the shorts with red
hearts. She took the socks out of the bag and examined them. They
had been an impulse, too. Well, after all, Baby had mutilated his
purple socks. It was the least she could do.

She put the socks back in the bag and went
downstairs to create a sensational yogurt and tangerine shake. She
sat beside the window, sipping her shake and looking out at the
shadows deepening across her yard. The really sensible thing to do
would be to put the gifts into a bottom drawer of her dressing
table and forget about them. But then she would miss seeing Paul’s
smile and hearing his laughter when he opened the package. Besides,
she was hardly ever sensible.

She sat at the table, arguing with herself.
What she needed was a brilliant plan, one that would allow her to
deliver the gifts casually as if Paul had not been uppermost in her
mind for days and days. Plucking a piece of tangerine from her
yogurt shake, she popped it into her mouth. She needed to be both
casual and removed, she decided, out of touching distance.

Suddenly she sat up straight. The tree! Why
hadn’t she thought of it sooner?

Martie flew up the stairs and rummaged
through her closet for wrapping paper. Frosty the Snowman would
have to do. Heck, she would sing “Jingle Bells” when she delivered
the gift. She wrapped the socks, changed her mind, tore off the
tape, and added the shorts.

It would be foolish to leave them on the bed.
She certainly couldn’t wear them, and who else did she know who
wore mediums? It was only fair that Paul have the shorts with the
valentines. After all, Baby had torn up his raggedy old blue
ones.

Her turquoise bracelets jingled as she tied
her denim western skirt between her legs. Forgetting that her
cowboy hat was still on her head, she bounded down the stairs, out
the door, and across the yard to her tree.

Her cowboy boots dangled from the limb as she
sat forlornly in the tree and looked at the empty yard. Paul was
not outside enjoying the twilight. He wasn’t even home; his car was
gone.

Disappointed, she started to inch back across
the limb, but the tree had other ideas. Her skirt was caught in one
of the branches. She reached to pull it loose, and the gift tumbled
to the ground.

“I’m not sure whether it’s Santa Claus or the
Lone Ranger.” Paul picked up the gift and smiled up at her.

The minute she saw him,
casual
flew
out the window.

“Paul!” she cried happily. “I thought you
weren’t home.”

“My trusty brown Ford is in the garage. The
mechanic gave me a lift home.” His smile widened. “Are you coming
down or are you being Baby’s messenger again?”

“Neither. I’m caught.” Looking down into his
quicksilver-gray eyes and hearing his deep, melodious voice, Martie
abandoned her
not touching
resolution. Just one more time,
she told herself. She had to be in his arms just one more time. “I
think if I jump, the tree will let go.”

“Wait, Martie!”

But it was already too late. The tree didn’t
let go; it held tighter, and a great tearing sound accompanied her
descent to the ground. Paul tried to catch her, but the jump had
been too unexpected and he wasn’t prepared. She glanced off his
chest and they both crashed into the marigold bed.

His arms wrapped around her as they rolled in
the dirt. Her cowboy hat and the Christmas-wrapped gift skittered
across the ground, forgotten. With legs entangled and lips only a
kiss away, Paul and Martie had thoughts only for each other.
Skyrockets exploded inside them as their bodies made intimate
contact in the dirt. Her silk-clad hip, exposed through the torn
skirt, pressed against his groin.

A half-strangled sound escaped his lips as he
raised himself to his knees and looked down at her. “Are you all
right?”

“Yes,” she said, but her mind was screaming
No
! She would never be all right until she had Paul. All
of him—not just a hungry embrace in a hallway or an intimate tumble
in the dirt, but every glorious inch of him, without
restrictions.

He scooped her into his arms and carried her
inside the parsonage. “Let’s brush away all that dirt,” he said,
but what he meant was “Let’s get inside before I lose control of
the situation.”

Still keeping his arm around her waist, he
set her down beside the kitchen sink and reached for a towel,
turning on the water with one hand. “This will only take a
minute.”

“I hope it takes a year.”

“Martie?” He turned and saw her eyes, naked
with desire and dark as the velvet throat of pansies.

The towel dropped to the floor and the water
gurgled down the sink drain as he pulled her into his arms. His
hands tangled in her hair, and he crushed her against his chest as
if he would never let go. They stood this way for a moment, swaying
to the combined rhythms of their runaway hearts.

In slow motion they inched apart so that
their lips could meet. The kiss was a blending of drugged sweetness
and honeyed desire. It was a Fourth of July parade and a homecoming
celebration. It was passion and joy and burning need. And it was
perfection because they loved.

Trapped in their mistaken notions of barriers
and suitability, they let their bodies speak what they dared not.
He pressed her hips against his, marveling at how right it felt,
while his tongue plied its urgent message inside her mouth. She
writhed in his arms, moist and open with undisguised longing. The
fever that possessed them raged unchecked, and they gasped with the
heat of it.

His mouth moved away from her lips and seared
down the side of her neck. She threw back her head to accommodate
his questing mouth, and her hair fanned out in a bright curtain
against his arms. Her pulse tore at her throat as one of Paul’s
hands moved inside her open-necked shirt. A thousand stars burst
inside her at his touch, and she was Aphrodite and Earth Mother
rolled into one.

And when there was nowhere else to go except
the over the edge, Paul gently released her. “I think I took care
of all the dirt.” His breathing was still ragged and his smile was
lopsided.

Martie lifted her hair away from her flushed
face. “I don’t know how this keeps happening,” she whispered. “It’s
not supposed to.”

“We can’t prevent it, angel.”

“We must. I won’t play Delilah to your
Samson.”

“My career and my professional reputation are
my responsibility, Martie, not yours.”

“Then why do I feel like a temptress?” she
asked.

“Perhaps it’s because you think of me only as
a minister and not a man.”

She waved her hands in the air, setting her
bracelets to jingling. “I can’t think of all that right now.” She
paused and a small grin lit her face. “The water’s still
running.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You forgot to turn off the faucet.”

Paul grinned sheepishly as he twisted the
faucet handle. “You made me forget.”

“So did you.”

“What?”

“Make me forget. I brought you a
present.”

“The Christmas package?” he asked.

“Call it a going away gift.”

“I’m not going anywhere, angel. Are you?”

“Yes. I’m going across the fence and out of
your life.” She cocked her head to one side in thought. “At least,
after Halloween I’m going out of your life. Goodbye, Paul.” It was
one of her most flamboyant exits, mainly because of the great tear
in the back of her skirt.

Paul thought he was just about under control
until he saw the long, lovely tanned legs and firm bottom encased
in a black silk teddy. As the screen door banged behind her, he
rushed to the sink, turned on the faucet, and stuck his face under
the cool water.

o0o

Martie shut her mind to everything until she
was across the parsonage yard, through the gate, and back in her
own house. And then it all came pouring over her—Paul and the
marigold bed and Baby’s shenanigans and the whipped cream and the
gate. But most of all the kisses. She leaned her forehead against
the cool windowpane and looked back toward the parsonage.

There was no use denying it. She was in love
with the Reverend Paul Donovan. She, Martie Fleming, fun-time
honky-tonk girl, had fallen for Pontotoc’s pillar of faith and
strength, the spiritual leader of Faith Church. If there were only
the two of them, perhaps the love might work. But there were also
the Miss Beulahs and the Essie Maes, not only in this town, but in
every other town that Paul would serve. There were the people who
never looked beyond appearances, people whose world was black and
white with no shades of gray, people who saw and judged.

She banged her fist against the kitchen
table, scraping the skin on a knuckle. Why was life so unfair? Why
couldn’t she have moved next door to a plumber?

She went upstairs, removed her torn clothes,
showered off all the dirt, and went to bed. But she didn’t sleep.
She thought she might never sleep again as long as she lived.

o0o

A loud clamoring at her back door awakened
Martie. Her usual bounce was missing as she climbed out of bed, and
she was halfway to the bedroom door before she remembered that she
didn’t have on a stitch of clothes. She reached for her robe and
grasped emptiness.

“I’m coming,” she called as she walked back
to the bed and pulled off the sheet. Knotting it just above her
breasts, she swept out the door, trailing four feet of red and
white striped percale.

“You’re not dressed,” Paul said when she
opened the door. Seeing her tanned shoulders and the swell of
breasts above the sheet, he almost forgot why he had come.

“I wasn’t counting on a tea party at this
hour,” Martie replied, struggling to keep from wrapping him in her
sheet and whisking him up to her bedroom. “Did you come to return
the gift?”

“No. I came to hitch a ride to church.” He
grinned. “I’m wearing the gift.”

“The socks or the shorts?”

“Both.”

“I wish I could see.”

“So do I.”

They stood in the doorway in the wash of
early morning sun and almost forgot about all the reasons they
couldn’t be together. His knuckles turned white on the door frame,
and her hand clung desperately to the door handle as they fought
the urge to embrace and never let go.

Martie was the first to break the
silence.

“I’m not going to church this morning.”
Unable to look at him without capitulation, she averted her gaze.
“I would be going for all the wrong reasons, and I don’t want to
torture myself by looking at something I can’t have.”

“All we need is time, Martie.”