Donovan’s Angel (9 page)

“I’ve brought the preacher some scones, fresh
from the oven. Why don’t you come over and join us?”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Paul agreed
enthusiastically. “Just scoot up the tree, Martie, and I’ll help
you down on this side.”

Miss Beulah’s eyebrows shot up into the air
at that scandalous suggestion, and all attempts at subtlety
vanished.

“Reverend
Donovan
! I should think
that conduct is highly unseemly for a minister. What if somebody
sees? Word would get all over town before the day was out.”

A small muscle twitched in Paul’s jaw, the
only sign of his inward struggle. “I think you’ve underestimated
the good people of this town, Miss Beulah.”

Martie was furious and immediately charged
full tilt into battle.

“I don’t believe the Reverend Donovan’s
reputation needs any defense, Miss Beulah,” she declared loudly,
“but I’m going to put your mind and your tongue at ease. I have no
designs, either scandalous or otherwise, on the minister. The only
thing we have in common is a fence. And now, if you two will excuse
me, I’m going to clean my honky tonk.”

She whirled away from the peephole without
waiting to see Paul’s face. Covering her ears with her hands, she
ran into her house. Don’t look back, she told herself. She had
burned her bridges, and everybody was better off.

She didn’t stop running until she was
upstairs. Furiously she ransacked her closet, looking for a box.
The only thing she could find was a heart-shaped one that had once
held candy. Grabbing the mended shorts from the wicker rocker, she
stuffed them into the box and slammed the lid shut.

“I’m not going to cry,” she said to the small
wren sitting on her windowsill. Two fat tears rolled down her
cheeks, under her chin, and into the neck of her scarlet sweater.
She sniffed as two more followed. “I never cry,” she informed the
wrens.

o0o

On Tuesday Paul went to Baptist Hospital in
Memphis to be with a parishioner who was having open-heart surgery,
and Martie organized her first Jazzercise class.

If thoughts had been birds, a whole flock of
them would have been winging their way between Pontotoc and
Memphis. While Martie was talking to Jolene about the class, she
had a sudden vision of Paul shaking hands with Aristocat, and she
burst out laughing. And once when Paul went to the coffee machine,
he put his money in and stood for five minutes thinking about
Martie’s hair in the moonlight before he remembered to punch the
button.

o0o

It was after midnight when Paul returned to
Pontotoc, but even then he could hear music coming from Martie’s
house. It wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed as he was
getting ready for bed. He stood at the window for a long time,
smoking his pipe and watching the moon create changing patterns of
shadow and light on the backyard fence. After the music stopped he
went into his study to record a tape. At three o’clock, satisfied
with his labors, he finally went to bed.

o0o

The heart-shaped box lay open on Paul’s
kitchen table. He alternately sipped coffee and picked up the
mended shorts for another look. But mostly he smiled. Martie’s
sewing was about on par with her golfing, but it didn’t matter a
whit. The bright red thread, jumbled into knots and crisscrossing
the faded blue shorts, was just like the woman who jitterbugged in
the park and slid down the banister.

He put his coffee cup in the dishwasher,
lifted the shorts from the box, and carried them to his bedroom.
His jeans slid down his muscled thighs and landed in a heap on the
polished wooden floor as he solemnly tried on the mended shorts.
With their new proportions they had the fit and comfort of a
cross-cut saw. Paul looked down at himself and laughed until tears
rolled down his cheeks. After the laughter had subsided and he was
back in his jeans, he folded the shorts into the box and put them
on the top shelf of his closet.

“I guess I can scratch handmade gifts for
Christmas,” he said aloud. His smile lasted the rest of the
day.

o0o

Martie listened to the tape for the umpteenth
time. Paul’s rich voice filled the room as he read the poetry. She
sat in the middle of her bed and hugged her knees to her chest. She
wanted to laugh and cry and dance and sing. She wanted to run down
the street and kiss the postman who had delivered the tape. But
most of all she wanted to be in the arms of the man who had
recorded the love poems.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
His deep voice vibrated through her, and she knew that he was
sharing an intimate part of himself. Through the tape she was
seeing a sensitive man who recognized the beauty and music of
poetry and had the ability to translate it into magic. As the tape
ended, she pressed the stop button and lay back on her pillows. She
closed her eyes and pretended that Paul was lying beside her,
speaking the words of love as if they had been written especially
for her.

o0o

On Thursday morning when Martie awakened and
looked out her window, she was greeted by a most unexpected sight.
The smile that started in her eyes spread to her lips, then widened
until it swelled into laughter.

Her fence was festooned with marigolds.
Peeping through every crack and crevice was a bright golden
flower.

Still laughing, Martie ran toward the door,
remembered that she wasn’t wearing any clothes, scooted back for a
robe, and flew down the stairs.

“Marigolds!” she shouted with glee. “That
crazy, wonderful man has decorated my fence with marigolds!”

She tugged at one of the flowers, pulling it
through the fence. Masking tape dangled from the stem. Martie
tucked the flower behind her ear, tape and all, and wondered how
long it had taken Paul to create such an elaborate surprise.

“Paul Donovan, you idiot,” she whispered. “I
think I’m falling in love.” With light, jaunty steps, she walked
back to her house. “I really must remember to patch those holes,”
she told herself. “This just won’t do. It won’t do at all.”

But she was smiling.

o0o

On Friday morning when Paul awakened and
looked out his window, he, too, was greeted by a most unexpected
sight. Grinning hugely, he erupted into a boom of laughter that
bounced off the parsonage walls.

His fence looked as if it had sprouted roses.
Bunches of bright red floribundas nodded in the cracks.

“My love is like a red, red rose,” he quoted.
“Thank you, Martie, for ‘not speaking’ so eloquently.” Whistling he
went outside and gathered the roses. One of the last flowers he
plucked off the fence had a note attached:

This is positively my last communication
with you, since I am still in the process of forgetting you forever
and ever. Tomorrow I’m patching this fence.

He put the roses in a jelly glass and set
them in the middle of his kitchen table, and then he got into his
reliable brown Ford and drove to the hardware store.

o0o

Martie pounded the nail home and reached
behind her back for another. Her hand came up empty. “Baby, you’re
a big help,” she scolded her unpenitent pet. “This is the third
time you’ve stolen my sack of nails. How do you expect me to ever
finish patching this fence?” She found the sack under the rosebush
and continued her lopsided carpentry.

The noonday sun beamed down, too hot for
October, and a trickle of sweat ran down the side of her face. She
pushed up her shirt sleeves and knotted her shirttail around her
midriff.

“On the whole, I’d rather be in
Philadelphia,” she told her rambunctious puppy.

She put her hammer on the ground and sat down
to rest, but her respite was soon interrupted by a thunderous
banging on the other side of the fence. Jumping up, Martie put her
eye to a large crack. She couldn’t see a thing except the empty
parsonage yard.

“Paul, is that you?” she yelled, but the
enthusiastic carpentry drowned out the sound of her voice.

“What is that man up to?” she muttered, and
moved to another crack in the fence, but she still couldn’t see a
thing.

Racing to the tree, she put her foot on the
lowest limb and started to climb up. She had reached only the
second branch when a section of the fence crashed into her yard and
the Reverend Paul Donovan strolled through the opening.

“What in the world are you doing?” she called
from the tree.

“Building a gate.” He picked up the section
of fence and propped it against the tree.

“Why?” She looked into his upturned face and
had to clutch the branches to keep from falling. In the week since
she’d seen him through the fence, she had almost forgotten how
incredibly good-looking he was.

“So that I won’t have to walk around the
block when I want to visit you.”

“You’re not supposed to visit me,” she
reminded him. “We’re not speaking.”

“Those were your rules, not mine.” His smile
made her want to wrap around him, Aristocat style, and purr. “I’m
speaking and I’m visiting,” he continued, not altogether unaware of
his effect on her. “Call it a pastoral call if you wish.”

“Oh, dear!”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Both I think.”

He chuckled. “Are you going to sit in the
tree all day while you decide?”

“I don’t know.” She wondered how she could
decide anything with him standing under her tree looking so
impossibly sexy. His jeans clung to his muscular thighs, and she
had a sudden vision of his shorts, Medium, 32-34. It was quite
possible that the thundering of her heart could be heard all the
way to Tupelo.

“If you do, you’ll miss the hamburger,” he
told her.

She hesitated. “It’s cruel to tempt a
starving woman.”

“And the banana split,” he continued
blithely, “oozing with chocolate syrup and heaped with whipped
cream.”

“Paul, that’s mean.” As she sprang lightly
from the tree, he caught her against his chest. His face was so
close she could see a tiny crescent-shaped scar in his beard
shadow. “I still haven’t decided, you know. I’ll think about it
some more over the whipped cream.”

His voice was husky as he pulled her closer.
“I should have built that gate last Monday.”

“But then I would have missed the
marigolds.”

“Did you like them, Martie?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’m glad.” He rubbed his cheek against her
soft hair before he lowered her feet to the ground. “We’ll go in my
car,” he said, surprised that his mouth could speak sane and
sensible words while his heart was pounding and his mind was
joyriding through fantasyland. He almost tripped over the sack of
nails as one particular fantasy involving Martie in her hot pink
leotard skittered through his brain.

o0o

They went to The Sledgehammer, and it was
hard to tell whether the banana split or the minister claimed more
of Martie’s attention. When she had finished eating she patted her
mouth with a napkin. “This is bribery, you know,” she told him.

“Guilty.” He leaned across the table and
brushed her mouth with the tip of his finger. “You missed a
spot.”

“Yum. Good to the last drop.” Impulsively she
grabbed his finger and kissed the whipped cream away.

Then, with his finger still in her mouth, she
looked into his eyes. They were the turbulent gray of a storm-swept
sea. The tightly controlled passions she saw mirrored there made
Martie want to leap across the table and take him in her arms. She
wanted to caress the tension out of his shoulders and croon soft
love words in his ear. Reluctantly, she released his finger.

“I’m sorry, Paul.”

“Don’t be. It was my pleasure.” He wondered
if The Sledgehammer had ever been the scene of a scandal. Even if
it had, what he was thinking would be one for the records.

o0o

The drive back to Martie’s house was quiet as
they struggled with their separate passions. She invented pressing
business in the house while he finished building the gate. Every
ten minutes her pressing business carried her past the kitchen
window, where she could look out and observe Paul. More often than
not she discovered him gazing toward the house with a
heart-tugging, little-boy-lost expression on his face.

In an unaccustomed burst of domesticity, she
made market basket soup, her specialty, which consisted of
everything she could find in the kitchen cabinets. But the small
task didn’t take her mind off the man in her yard. She stood at the
window while the soup bubbled in the pot, filling the kitchen with
an enticing aroma. She watched the way he moved, graceful for such
a large man, and the way he stopped hammering every so often to
bend down and chat with Baby.

“If I can’t have him, at least I can give him
a sendoff that he’ll never forget.” Somewhere inside Martie banners
unfurled and trumpet fanfares sounded, and she marched out the door
to the tune of her own band.

Paul looked up from his work when he heard
the screen door bang open. He started to say something, and then he
saw Martie’s face. He couldn’t decide whether she was a David going
after the giant with a stone or a Goliath laughing at the stones.
Either way, he thought, she spelled excitement.

She marched straight up to him and took his
hands. “Come with me,” she ordered, tugging him back across the
yard.

“I enjoy your surprises,” he said as he
followed her, “but I hope this one doesn’t involve another wild
ride in your little red car.”

“It’s going to be a wild ride all right. But
not in my car.” She shoved open the screen door and pulled the
minister into her hallway. “This is soup and goodbye.”

For the first time since she had commandeered
him, she looked into his face. Tipping her head back, she
challenged him to deny the goodbye.

“I accept the soup.” His hands moved slowly
up her arms, savoring the feel of her. “But not the goodbye.” He
gripped her shoulders and gazed fiercely into her eyes. “Never the
goodbye.”