Donovan’s Angel (15 page)

Through a fog he heard her knock at the
bathroom door. “I’m finished, Paul. It’s all yours now.”

The first thing he saw when he stepped into
the bathroom was her black silk teddy. It was draped carelessly
across the towel bar, a minuscule bit of silk and lace designed to
drive him crazy. As if that weren’t enough, her fragrance of summer
flowers, intensified by the steam, assaulted his already reeling
senses.

“Lord, help me,” he groaned softly as he
picked up the black teddy and let the silk caress his fingers. If
she had left the teddy behind, what was she wearing to bed?

Suddenly he recalled his early morning visit
to her house and the sheets trailing behind her as she’d met him at
the door. She slept in the nude! That perfect body, uncluttered by
a single stitch of clothing, was curled beneath the sheets; and
only a door separated them. He put his hand on the knob and drew it
back. Only a door and his scruples, he amended.

Carefully he hung the silk teddy back on the
towel bar and stepped into the shower. The cold water took the heat
off the outside of his body, but it did nothing to cool the fires
raging inside.

He finished his shower, dressed for bed, and
stood uncertainly in his bedroom. Finally he called through the
wall, “Good night, Martie.”

“Good night, Paul.”

o0o

He paced the floor, and she punched her
pillow until it was limp. Finally she got out of her bed, and he
crawled into his. She stared out the window, and he tossed about
until his sheet was so tangled he thought he’d have to cut his way
out with scissors. He snapped on his light and tried to read, and
she cut hers off and tried to sleep. Finally they both gave up and
sat on their separate beds, staring at the wall.

At precisely six o’clock the next morning.
Baby stood at the parsonage door, barking to be let in.

Two bleary-eyed people sat up in their beds.
Paul hastily donned his pajama bottoms and Martie draped herself
with the flowered percale sheet. “I’m coming,” both shouted as they
rushed out their doors and collided in the hall.

Paul gripped her bare shoulders to keep from
knocking her over.

“We forgot to move Baby,” Martie said. She
looked up at him through her tousled silver hair and thought that
if he didn’t remove his hands, she would attack him in the hall.
That bare chest looked too good to be true, better even than it had
in his office, more delicious than she had imagined in her dreams
last night.

“I thought she would move herself. Don’t tell
me she has a suitcase.” He didn’t know if his voice sounded that
way from lack of sleep or from knowing she was naked under that
sheet. His blood pressure shot up to about stroke level.

“No,” Martie replied. “But she always sleeps
in at night.”

“I’ll remember that.”

His hands still tingled after he removed them
from her shoulders. He followed her down the hall, and watching her
hips move under that sheet jacked his pressure up still higher.
Leaning against the wall for a moment, he took a long, steadying
breath.

He needed it. Baby bounded through the door
and pounced joyfully on Martie’s sheet for a tug-of-war.

“Baby, stop that!” She clutched the top of
her sheet as her pet happily ignored her command.

Paul watched, spellbound, as the sheet came
unknotted and slowly began to slip down her body. Her breasts
emerged, perfect golden-tan mounds with dusky-pink nipples that
hardened into tight points as soon as she saw Paul’s eyes on
her.

Baby gave another tug and the sheet slipped
farther down, revealing a golden torso and tiny nipped-in waist.
Holding the sheet between her teeth, Baby sat on the floor, her
tail thumping softly against the floorboards as she watched the two
people standing before her.

Paul and Martie remained motionless in the
electrifying stillness, scarcely breathing. If they had been able
to read minds, they would have closed the small space between them
and melted in each other’s arms. Instead they struggled with codes
of honor and warped truths, standing riveted to the floor like two
kegs of dynamite waiting to explode.

It was her eyes that finally galvanized him
into action: they were wide with mute appeal. As lovely, he
thought, as dew-kissed pansies. Quickly he crossed to her and
caught the edge of the sheet. The blood thundered in his ears as he
jerked the fabric out of Baby’s teeth and pulled it back up to
cover Martie. As his hands touched her bare breasts he had
kaleidoscopic impressions of silk and flames and a sweetness almost
too much to bear. His hands shook as he retied the knot, and he was
certain that he deserved some type of medal for this uncommon act
of bravery.

As he bent over the knot Martie fought the
waves of passion that threatened to swamp her. She felt as if she
were seeing everything through a magnifying glass—the part in his
hair, each tiny stubble of his early morning beard, the dark lashes
covering his quicksilver eyes.

His face was so close that his breath warmed
the supersensitive skin. Under the thin sheet, there was no way she
could disguise her desire. She clenched her hands into fists to
keep them from pulling his head a fraction of an inch closer. She
wanted to cradle his head and run her fingers through his
night-dark hair and hold him there until the scorching heat inside
her burned down to a quiet glow.

Hating nobility and honor and self-denial,
she bit her lower lip and tried to focus her attention away from
Paul’s face. Her eyes wandered down his back. The muscles were
tense, bunched and corded under his smooth tan.

She was no better off, she decided. Heat,
intense as the breath of a volcano, still coursed through her, and
she thought she might never be cool again.

“There.” Paul straightened up. “That knot
should prevent future mishaps.”

“Thank you, Paul.” Old habits of flamboyance
and pizzazz came to her aid. “The next time I wrap myself in a
sheet, I’ll just tap on the wall and let you come in to tie the
knot.” She commanded her wobbly legs to take her back to her
bedroom. “Come, Baby,” she called over her shoulder. “You and I
need to have a talk.”

Paul sank into a chair as she swept grandly
down the hall. Lifting his eyes upward, he gave thanks for the
small miracle that had kept him from making love to her on the
kitchen floor.

o0o

During the next few days they tried to act
normal, but under the circumstances it was impossible. Paul went
through a private hell every time he went into the summer
flower-scented bathroom they shared, and his habit of having his
morning coffee without a shirt on drove Martie to abusing her
bedroom vanity with frustrated kicks and muttered tirades.

Forced into the marriage for the sake of
appearance, they tried to compensate by adopting habits foreign to
their natures, seeking desperately to please each other and lighten
the burden.

o0o

Miss Beulah spotted Paul in Michael’s
Department Store buying a wild print shirt. “I declare,” she later
reported to Essie Mae, “you could see that shirt a mile away. It
was one of those Hawaiian flowery jobs with big purple parrots and
jungle trees all over it. I’m telling you, Essie Mae, there’s just
no telling what the preacher’s wife will have him doing next.”

Essie Mae called the Bishops, who called the
Rodneys, who called the Grimsleys. Paul was unaware that before he
ever reached home his shirt was already the center of a swirling
controversy.

He unwrapped it, put it on, and went over to
Martie’s house to surprise her.

She had just finished a Jazzercise class and
was bent over, picking up exercise mats.

“Hello, angel.”

She looked up, saw him standing in the door,
and dropped the mat on her toe.

“Paul!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t hear you
come in.”

She tried to look somewhere besides that
terrible shirt, but she couldn’t. It was as out of place on Paul as
a neon billboard in a church sanctuary.

“I’m surprised. This shirt is so loud I
thought it would announce my presence clear to the other end of the
hall.” He turned around for her inspection. “What do you
think?”

“I think . . .” She stopped and ran her hands
over her mouth, trying to make it behave; it kept wanting to burst
open with laughter. “I think that if you like it, you should wear
it.”

“I can’t say that I’m overly fond of it.” He
smiled ruefully down at the purple parrots decorating his chest. “I
guess it’ll grow on me.”

“Lord, I hope not.” The truth just popped
out. Martie had never been a successful liar.

He grinned at his irrepressible pretend wife.
“You don’t like the shirt?”

“I think it has its merits,” she said
carefully.

“Tell me what they are. When I saw this thing
in the store I couldn’t think of a single merit except that it’s
the sort of colorful dress you’re fond of.”

She felt as if a shower of stars had fallen
over her, and she sparkled with the wonder of it.

“Paul! You did this for me?” She catapulted
herself at him and, standing on tiptoe, threw her arms around his
neck. Her brain reeled with his intoxicating nearness. He smelled
like pipe tobacco and aftershave and November wind. “You bought
this outrageous shirt because you thought I would like it?”

As he folded her close to his chest, he
decided that he would buy a shirt like this every hour of every day
if the result was having her, all sparkling exuberance and soft
warmth, in his arms.

“Yes. I guess I was trying to show you that
I’m not as conventional as I seem. That we really aren’t as far
apart as you believe.” He smiled gently into her upturned face.
“And I wanted to please you.”

Martie rubbed her face against the garish
shirt.

“You please me, Paul,” she murmured. “More
than you’ll ever know. You don’t have to buy Hawaiian shirts for
me. I like you just the way you are.”

She could hear the wild thundering of his
heart as he tangled his hands in her hair and pressed her head
against his chest.

“And you please me, Martie. Just the way you
are.”

They stood for a long while, holding each
other and wondering how something that felt so right had become a
forbidden pleasure. At last he pushed her gently from him.

“Have you finished your Jazzercise classes
for the day?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then get your sweater and I’ll walk you
home.”

“I didn’t bring one. It was warm when I left
the parsonage.”

“In that case. . .” He scooped her into his
arms. “I’ll keep you warm.”

She laughed as he carried her outside and
kicked the door shut behind them.

“Did anybody ever tell you that you make a
wonderful sweater?” she asked, squeezing her arms around him and
burying her face in his neck.

“Maybe I should give up preaching and go into
this line of work full-time.”

“As long as I’m your only customer. I think a
wife should have exclusive rights to a discovery like this.” She
was so enamored of her current mode of transportation that she
didn’t notice how naturally she had spoken of her new title.

But Paul did. Her words pleased him so much
that he couldn’t stop smiling. He smiled through dinner, through
the late night television news, and into the wee hours of the
morning.

o0o

Martie looked at the chicken thawing in the
kitchen sink and tried to be optimistic. Look at it this way, she
told herself, she would try anything once. Heck, she might even
enjoy frying chicken.

It was the least she could do after that
disastrous luncheon with the district ministers and their wives.
How was she to know that preachers’ wives are supposed to be seen
and not heard? She had merely said that she thought God would want
all His servants to have dryers that worked and that replacing
defunct dryers should be a simple matter since appliances are
furnished with the parsonage.

The stunned silence that had met her remark
was nowhere near as bad as the private lecture she’d been treated
to later by a well-meaning old pro in the business. Reverend
Clarke’s wife had told her that sweaters with beads and feathers,
not to mention gaudy turquoise jewelry, were detrimental to Paul’s
career. She had further said that ministers’ wives should strive to
be discreet and demure.

Martie picked up a butcher’s knife and
attacked the chicken with unnecessary vigor. Maybe she had gone a
little too far with Mrs. Clarke, but shoot, she fumed, Paul was a
wonderful minister! It shouldn’t matter whether she wore beads and
spangles or sackcloth and ashes. And she had told Mrs. Clarke
so.

Thank goodness Paul had not been there to
hear it. He’d already gone to his afternoon session.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. He
should be home in another hour. By that time she would have a plate
of golden fried chicken to smooth over the disappointment he must
be feeling because of her. He was probably sitting in his meeting
right this minute trying to think of a graceful way out of his
five-day-old marriage.

She gave the chicken a vicious whack. Of
course, that was the only thing they could do—think of a way out of
this mess— but why did the thought make her so mad?

“I’ll tell you why,” she said to the
thoroughly mutilated chicken on the cutting board. “Because I love
the man, and I’m tired of being on parade like a horse at an
auction. I’m tired of being subject to everybody’s approval. I just
want to be myself without being tagged and labeled and judged
simply because I’m the minister’s wife.”

She picked up a handful of slick meat and
sighed. “I thought you had drumsticks. Where are they?”

By the time she was ready to put the chicken
in the hot oil, she had talked to it so much that she felt as if
she were parting with a friend.