The Happy Hour Choir (4 page)

Ginger and I looked at each other in surprise at this unexpected boon. Neither one of us was exactly rolling in money, but Sunday lunch was a tradition so deeply ensconced that we would often eat peanut butter and jelly during the week to keep our Sunday tradition.

“And no business?” Ginger said.

“No business.”

“Can't beat it with a stick,” she said. “You're welcome to join us at Las Palmas.”

He nodded stoically, those lips still pressed together tightly to keep all of the things he really wanted to say from spilling out. When we reached the parking lot, I couldn't help but look over my shoulder. He shrugged out of his robe slowly and draped it over one arm, keeping it balanced so it wouldn't touch the ground. Beneath he wore a crisp white shirt and mercilessly pressed pants. I expected to be disappointed by this last revelation but instead found myself admiring how well he filled out his pants.

Why did he have to be a preacher? Why not a plumber, a used-car salesman, or even a telemarketer? It seemed so unfair that a man that good looking would have to be a preacher.

He turned then as if he could feel my scrutiny, and I thought I saw a shadow of the man beneath the minister.

No, I would not worry about the preacher man, I would not. I wouldn't wonder about what happened with his wife or how he came to be stuck with what had to be a less-than-plum assignment in the hinterlands of West Tennessee. I would not marvel at how he could express such raw emotion and compassion in one moment and then want to chew me a new one in the next.

And I certainly would not dwell one moment more on how, for a single traitorous second, I'd wanted to kiss his cheek and tell him it'd all be okay.

Chapter 5

W
hen Luke ordered cheese enchiladas I did a double take.

“The burly man is ordering cheese enchiladas?”

“Vegetarian.” He flashed a wolfish grin before taking a savage bite of a chip.

“Oh, you really don't want to fit in around here, do you?”

“Fitting in is overrated,” he said as he scooped another chip into the salsa. How many times had I told myself that same thing? But the preacher man lived it. I hid on the fringes where it didn't matter.

“Afraid of hurting the wittle animals' feelings?” I taunted.

“Nope. Gave up meat for Lent one year, and I really didn't miss it.”

Having seen on the first night the guns he kept hidden under that dress shirt, I couldn't argue with his diet plan.

Then he had to ruin the moment by changing the subject.

“Beulah, I appreciate how your song may have inspired someone to join the church today, but you can't deviate from the bulletin.”

“Now, Reverend—” Ginger started.

“I thought I told you to call me Luke,” he said with a winning smile. That was an invitation he might want to rescind. After all, she had almost worn my name out.

“Luke,” Ginger began as she sat up as straight as she could. “I believe I told you we wouldn't discuss business at the lunch table.”

I put one hand on her arm. “We'll waive it for now. Go on.”

“Look, a lot of work went into picking out that song. You can't just waltz into my church and tell me—”

“How to do your job?”

I let that nugget sink in. Would he apologize? Doing so would require him to tell Ginger about our argument outside The Fountain, and he didn't want to do that, for some reason. His eyes narrowed, and for a minute I thought he'd tell all anyway.

As he shifted uncomfortably, his knee brushed against mine. I moved my leg to rest against his on purpose.

His eyes widened for the merest of seconds before his mask was back in place. “Fine. You choose your songs, but I have final approval.”

Not as magnanimous as I might have hoped, but it was probably the closest thing to an apology I was going to get. Of course, I wasn't above gently rubbing knees with a preacher while I did it. “And I'm sorry for most of those things I said.”

“Most?” he scoffed.

“What are you two carrying on about?” Ginger said as we all leaned back for the waiter to slide our plates in front of us.

“Luke doesn't care for my signature song,” I said.

“The song or how you play it?” she asked.

Great. A double dirty look.

“Well, it's a better song than that mess
he
picked out today.”

His fork bore down into his enchilada, and cheese oozed out. “And what's that supposed to mean?”

“It means the last time I checked—which was admittedly about nine years ago—County Line was an old church set in its ways. They happen to like the little brown books full of golden oldies.” And why was I discussing hymnals with this man?

Ginger took a bite of burrito and leaned against the wall. She'd decided to take in lunch and a show.

“And your little brown book of golden oldies is actually the young upstart from the twenties,” Luke said. “The songs I chose go back to the seventeen hundreds. It's my job to take County Line back to its roots.”

Heat flooded my face. Damn if I didn't hate to be wrong.

When I shifted in my seat, his leg pushed solidly against mine. I looked up to see steely eyes and his lips quirked upward as if to say, “Turnabout is fair play.”

“County Line may be an old church set in its ways.” He looked at Ginger. “No offense, Miss Ginger.”

“None taken,” she said with a shrug. “Always been a fan of calling a spade a spade.”

“But the superintendent has told me that if we don't increase attendance the conference will close County Line and send members to the newer building at Deep Gap. We need a fresh start.”

“By switching books?” My nachos weren't as appetizing as I'd thought they would be. Either that or I was losing yet another religious argument, which brought nothing but nausea from the memory of a hundred Sunday dinner arguments with my father. At least I didn't have to worry about Luke making me repeatedly copy Bible verses as punishment.

“By getting back to the basics.”

I leaned over the table. “And yet you bagged a new family this morning with the song I chose.”

He winced at the word
bagged
but nodded in concession. “Yes, this morning. But are they going to keep coming if we don't have more of the programs and music most families like? Overall attendance was down by ten today—that's twenty percent less than the past six-month average.”

“And you seriously think a bunch of stuffy forgotten songs are going to do the trick?”

“This is ridiculous.” Luke pushed his plate away. “How can someone who loves music as much as you do not see the need for both traditional and contemporary songs?”

By now both sets of knees pushed against each other under the table, thanks to how he had to fold his tall frame into the tiny booth as well as from our argument.

“Well, if you see the need for”—and I broke out my air quotes—“ ‘contemporary songs,' then why can't I jazz up what I play? What we did to ‘Soon and Very Soon' was a disgrace!”

“Why is an artist like you so vehemently opposed to learning something new?”

“And by new, I really mean only new to you. I thought only the older folks resisted change.”

Ginger crunched loudly on a chip.

“Uh, no offense, Miss Ginger.”

“Oh, none taken, Luke. We old people are notoriously crotchety and set in our ways. It's common knowledge.”

“Nobody likes change,” I murmured. The words rolled off my tongue of their own accord, but I realized I'd spent the past nine years of my life in a rut. It hadn't been an unpleasant rut, but a rut nonetheless.

“Well, change has to happen. Without it, County Line will shrivel up and die.”

The idle chatter around us chose that moment to lull. The Powers family looked up from their booth across the restaurant to see who was going to die and what all the fuss was about. I held my eyes on Luke's. I was not going to think about anything or anyone shriveling up and dying.

“And that is why we don't talk business at Sunday lunch,” Ginger said with a sigh. “You'll be happy to know we also don't allow sermon dissection until suppertime. That gives us ample time to properly digest the message.”

Luke and I stared at each other, neither one of us willing to look away first.

Ginger put her napkin down on the table. “Come on, you two, that's enough fussing for one day. Let's walk on outside and let poor Jorge turn over his table.”

Luke snatched the bill and went ahead to the counter while I helped Ginger slide out of the booth. Even mad, he was a man of his word. For a moment I thought he would walk out the door and not look back, but he waited at the door and held it open for us.

Once outside, Ginger pointed a palsied finger first at him then at me. “You. And you. Sit.”

We both sat, next to each other, on a bench.

“Beulah, you are going to have to follow Luke's rules because he is, for now, your boss.”

“But—”

“No buts. Luke, you need to get together with Beulah and talk about hymns because she's right. You can preach like crazy, but you don't know jack about music.”

“But—”

“No buts from you, either, young man. Now, the only thing that's going to shrivel up and die around here is me, so you can just get it out of your head that the whole church is going to—to Hades in a handbasket if you don't ‘save' it. Besides, I have some news for both of you.”

She paused dramatically, daring either one of us to stop her.

“Beulah, Luke is right. The little brown book isn't full of old hymns. It's full of hymns that were new back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I simply prefer the songs of my youth,” she concluded with a sniff.

I looked over at Luke, who was entirely too smug.

“And you, young man, should realize that many of the songs in that book are popular because they're powerful. No need to ignore them completely and throw the baby out with the bathwater. And Beulah's right about the ‘Soon and Very Soon' massacre. I cringed.”

That wiped the smirk off his face.

“Now, it's not really about what songs you sing,” Ginger continued. “You had a nice new family join this morning, and they joined because your words spoke to them. So did Beulah's music. Imagine what would happen if the two of you ever learned to work together.”

Luke and I looked at each other, two kids who'd been called to the side of the playground for fighting. I didn't want to work with him, and he sure as heck hadn't asked to work with me. I was about to tell Ginger that, but Luke spoke first.

“All right, Miss Ginger, what do you propose?”

On the one hand, I liked the fact that he was willing to listen to Ginger. He certainly didn't have to. He draped an arm over the bench behind him, clearly relaxed. He wasn't going to do a thing he didn't want to, but he also didn't see the need to tick off an old lady.

Her mouth turned upward a hair, and I felt a twinge of jealousy for how quickly he'd wormed himself into her good graces. “I'd say Wednesday would be a good day to compare notes with Beulah, don't you? You do have your sermons done by Wednesday, don't you, Luke?”

“Yes, ma'am.” The look in his eye said he was no stranger to procrastination, but he wasn't about to admit it.

“Beulah, think you can hop on over and see the good Reverend Daniels since The Fountain is closed on Wednesday?”

I had trouble forcing out the words. I reminded myself I was twenty-five, for crying out loud. “Yes, ma'am.”

“I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.”

“Yes, ma'am!”

“Good. Now, Beulah Lou, take me home. It's time for my nap.”

I stood, but turned to Luke first. “Thank you for lunch.”

Luke stood and shuffled from one foot to the other. “You're quite welcome.”

Interesting. A vegetarian with muscles, a generous man not used to gratitude, and a squeaky-clean minister who hadn't been afraid to press his legs against mine. Obviously, there was more to Luke Daniels than I'd thought.

 

I kicked at rocks in the church parking lot for a good ten minutes the next Wednesday. I'd already proven I wouldn't catch fire upon entering the church, but that didn't mean I wanted to go inside. Of course, the afternoon sun and several persistent gnats made the idea much more appealing.

Once inside, I waited for the cool air to hit me, but the sanctuary was too hot for anything holy. Walking through the church back to Luke's office felt like pushing my way through invisible blankets, damp with steaming heat.

“Have mercy, Preacher Man, why is it so hot in here?”

He looked up from his desk, and I sucked in a breath. There he sat in one of those sleeveless undershirts, the last thing I would have expected to see him wearing. Stubble had taken over his jaw, and he wore a pair of glasses. He looked both domestic and dangerous in a soap-opera hero sort of way. “Beulah, I'm sorry. I lost track of time. I'm almost finished. Have a seat.”

There were so many questions I wanted to ask him. What was going on with the heat? Did he really need glasses? Where
did
he get those muscles? Nope. I wasn't going to think about Luke doing push-ups so I looked to the wall. A poster of the
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
had joined Abbey Road as well as a framed sketch of a pretty woman.

“Beatles fan?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering who the woman in the sketch could be. “I don't play them much, but I like to listen.”

He grinned. “Good. If you'd told me you preferred the Stones, I would have had to fire you.”

“I prefer the Stones.”

“Nice try,” he said pointedly before looking down at his desk to finish writing notes in the margin of the typed page in front of him. It was easy to forget Luke was a minister when he looked like this, rough around the edges with an easy smile.

“So, why is it such an inferno in here? It wasn't this hot last week.” I swiped at the sweat that had beaded up on my forehead and leaned away from him.

“Oh, yesterday I got our new budget, and I had to crunch some numbers. Excess air-conditioning had to go.” He capped the pen he'd been using and took off his glasses.

“
Excess
air-conditioning? But you work here during the week.”

“Well, it's either this or let Joleen go because the conference didn't bother to tell me about a shortage of funds until
after
I had ordered handbells.” His eyes met mine to see what I'd make of that.

Ginger once told me Joleen had been contracted to clean the church at some point before the civil rights movement. I averted my eyes. Curse him for making it so hard to dislike him. Wait, handbells?

“Then why don't you send the handbells back?”

“Handbells are a great way to get people involved in the church, and one of our members generously funded half the purchase.” He leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers over the stubble on his chin, daring me to contradict him. “Besides, I'll be able to include AC again in a couple of months.”