Mixed Signals (50 page)

Slipping through the door with a nod to the greeter, she made a beeline for her favorite seat near the front, blinking hard as her senses were overwhelmed with awakened memories. The lump in her throat felt like an orange stuffed in a Christmas stocking. She sank onto a much-worn padded pew and tucked her small purse beside her, careful not to disturb the couple to her left as she made a nest for herself with her cashmere dress coat.

It seemed that every minute of eighteen years had passed since she’d sat in that exact spot.

Not true
. It seemed like yesterday.

Letting her eyelids drift shut, Emilie drew in a quiet breath, savoring the spirit of Christmas past that hovered around her. The lingering scent of beeswax candles—snuffed at the close of the earlier vigil service—still tinged the air. Behind the wide door to the old parsonage, aromatic coffee and sweet buns waited for the final love
feast of the season, soon to be served to the chosen and the curious who filled the pews of the Lititz Moravian Church.

Home
.

Eyes still at half-mast, her ears tuned to the faintest traces of Pennsylvania German in the voices murmuring around her, Emilie didn’t see the man preparing to sit down next to her until he landed with a jarring thump, flattening one side of her cashmere nest.

Good heavens
. Didn’t he realize he was sitting entirely too close?

Not lifting her head to acknowledge him, she merely shifted to the left and whispered, “Pardon me,” while she tugged at her coat sleeve. The black jeans plastered on top of it were the sorriest excuse for Christmas Eve attire she’d ever witnessed.
Obviously not a Lititz man
.

When his response wasn’t immediate, she turned her whisper up two notches. “Sir, if you would, please. You’re sitting on my—”

“Really? No kidding.”

His full-volume growl sounded like a muffler headed for a repair shop. Young and old in a three-pew circumference turned to see who was disturbing the peace. When Emilie’s gaze joined theirs, she found herself face-to-face with something even more disturbing.

The man—and he was definitely that—had impossibly short hair, enormous eyes with brows covering half his face, and a five o’clock shadow that darkened his chin line to a slovenly shade of black.

Before she could stop herself, Emilie grimaced.

Ick
.

A lazy smile stretched across the field of dark stubble, at which point his narrow top lip disappeared completely. “Sorry, miss.” He leaned slightly away from her, keeping his eyes trained on hers as he released her coat. “My mistake.”

She snatched back her sleeve, chagrined to feel the crush marks in the fabric and the warmth of his body captured in the cloth.
Men!
Flustered, she fussed with her coat, trying to rearrange it just so without brushing against those tasteless black jeans of his, the ones that matched his black T-shirt and black sport coat, which, Emilie couldn’t help noticing, displayed an unseemly number of blond hairs.

A masculine hand thrust into view and the muffler rumbled again. “So. I’m Jonas Fielding. And you are …?”

Blushing is what you are, Em!

She swallowed, hoping it might stop the heat from rising up her too-long neck, and offered her hand for the briefest shake. He was so … so
not
like her professorial peers at Salem College, buttoned up in their conservative shirts and ties. This man was—goodness, what was the word for it? Earthy. Masculine.
Something
. Whatever it was, it unnerved her.

Still, she really ought to be polite. They
did
have an audience, and it
was
Christmas Eve.

Pale fingers outstretched, she nodded curtly. “Dr. Emilie Getz.”

He didn’t shake her hand—he captured it. “New in town, Dr. Getz?”

The oldest line in the book!
And he couldn’t have been more wrong. She jumped at the chance to tell him so as she slipped her fingers back through his grasp and stuffed them in her dress pocket.

“Not new at all. I was born and raised in Lititz. Graduated from Warwick High School, in fact.”
Valedictorian, in fact
. She didn’t mean to jerk her chin up, it merely went that way all by itself. “I’ve been … ah, gone for a few years.”

His gaze traveled over her longer than necessary before his eyes returned to meet hers. “I’d say more than a few years, Emilie.”

“Why … I … !” She was sputtering.
Sputtering!
The warmth in her neck shot north, filling her face with an unwelcome flush even as a sly grin filled his own devilish countenance.

An arpeggio from the pipe organ provided a blessed means of escape from his boyish wink and the chuckle that followed.
Heavens, what an ego he has!
With his dark features and all-male charm, he was undoubtedly the sort of fellow other women found drop-dead handsome. Emilie hoped he would simply drop dead. Or, at the very least, vanish at the end of the service, never to sit on her coat—or step on her toes—again.