скачать книгу бесплатно
In the time since he’d been hired at Community Christian he’d had the opportunity to see her eyes flash with anger, frustration and mischief. The latter, of course, not directed his way. He just got the glares. But that, he knew, was a good thing. Though she sported no ring, she’d seemed the hearth-and-home type, all-American, apple pie and lots of kids at her feet. He’d already found out that she wasn’t married, so a boyfriend or fiancé who’d give her all her heart desired had to be lurking somewhere. Matt just hadn’t met the paragon yet.
“Didn’t your mother teach you it’s not polite to stare?”
A slow grin lifted the corners of his mouth. “As a matter of fact, she didn’t. She died when I was two.”
Haley’s mouth dropped open, mortification filled the eyes he’d just been admiring. She came around the table and reached for his hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said gently pressing her hand to his. “I didn’t mean to be snippish or rude. I didn’t know.”
In the face of her genuine regret and concern, he was sorry he’d been so blunt. She truly looked contrite and sympathetic, as if she hurt for his loss, even though he’d been too young to understand it at the time.
“Matt, we’ve gotten off…”
“Ah, there you are,” Cliff said. “Thanks for waiting.”
Haley dropped her hand and clutched her folders. Matt wondered what she’d been about to say. It had almost sounded like the beginning of an apology, an olive branch offered. In a way, he was sorry the minister had intervened at that moment. Matt found it curious that mention of a deceased parent had triggered a turnaround in Haley’s attitude toward him.
“I know you two don’t get along very well,” the minister said. “That’s one of the reasons I put you together to come up with a compromise. You’ll find common ground. I know you both have very strong opinions about this, and I know you also have the best interests of the church at heart.”
“Thank you, Reverend. I won’t betray that trust.”
Matt cut a glance at her. “Neither will I. We’ll work out our differences. One way or another,” he added in a barely audible mutter.
Haley’s quick intake of breath told him she’d heard though.
“Excellent.” The minister patted Matt on the shoulder and did the same as he passed by Haley. “Have a good day.”
Matt looked at Haley. The day had been just fine until he’d been tasked to spend time with her. As long as he remained focused on his ministry, though, everything would be fine. Just fine.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” she told him. “I didn’t know about your mother.”
He shrugged, then gathered his own papers before standing. “Not a problem. Look, when’s a good time for us to meet? The sooner we get this over with, the faster we’ll be done with each other.”
“Our task is very important, Mr. Brandon.”
He sighed. “Call me Matt.”
“You make light of it, but we can’t have tambourines and guitars in service. I can understand if it were during some sort of special program, but not in the regular service.”
“Too much like having fun in church?”
“Yes!”
His eyes speared hers. “Then we really have a ways to go before we reach a compromise on this committee,” he said. “The God I serve says make a joyful noise. Do you even know how?”
He walked out of the room before she sent a scathing reply his way.
Haley seethed.
“He’s the most conceited, self-absorbed, egotistical lout I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.”
“Lout?” Haley’s cousin Amber grinned. “Now that’s a word you don’t hear very often.”
“Whose side are you on?” Haley said as she snatched a saucepan from a cabinet in Amber Montgomery’s tiny but well-appointed kitchen and banged it on the counter.
Amber winced. “I think I’m on the side of those very expensive pots and pans you’re slamming all over the place. Those are my work instruments, you know.”
“Sorry,” Haley said. Amber was such a terrific cook that she carved a living at it.
Amber put down the knife she’d been using to chop celery and took the saucepan from Haley’s hands. “Why don’t you sit down? I’ll finish this.” She drew a bit of water, put the pan on a burner, then returned to a waiting pile of fresh broccoli and grated carrots.
Haley stomped through the small kitchen and plopped into a chair at the drop-leaf table Amber used as both eating surface and desk in her studio apartment.
“He sounds like a dreamboat.”
“You’re taking his side again.”
Amber adjusted the flame, then dumped all of the chopped veggies in the saucepan with the now boiling water. After a quick blanching they’d go into the salad.
“Well, from what I remember, the Bible does say something about making noise in church.”
One of Haley’s missions in life was to get her cousin back to church. She couldn’t make the faith decision for Amber, but she could try to get her back to a place where she’d be exposed to the Word.
“Come with me Sunday, you’ll see.”
Amber glanced up. “Nice try. But I’m running in a 5K in Portland on Sunday. You should come with me. You hardly ever go into the city. We could have brunch and then stop at Powell’s.”
Haley considered for a moment, the bookstore a temptation. “No. This situation with Matt Brandon is tenuous enough. If I’m not there, Lord only knows what he’ll do.”
“So, when’s your date with him?”
Haley leveled a heated look at her cousin. “It’s not a date. It’s a committee meeting.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Amber said as she nibbled around a leftover carrot. “I think you object too much. You haven’t even heard any of his music.”
“I heard what he played during his interview and believe me it’s not at all church music.”
Amber shrugged. “Maybe your definition of church music is too narrow.”
That offhand comment stayed with Haley throughout the evening. As she readied for bed that night she wondered if she was being overly critical without giving Matt Brandon a fair hearing. It didn’t sit well with her at all that she had to question herself. If nothing else, Haley had a reputation for being fair, scrupulously so.
So, she reasoned, her visceral objections sprang from elsewhere. Too bad her friend Kara Spencer was out of town. As a therapist, Kara would have some definite ideas about this. Most likely the attraction she’d felt when she’d touched his arm, the awareness she’d been trying to feign indifference toward from the moment she’d laid eyes on him. Not since Timothy had she been so aware of a man’s presence.
“And look where that got you,” she muttered.
Matt and Timothy were nothing at all alike. She and her ex-fiancé, both tall blondes, had been the golden couple in Wayside. Timothy, an up-and-comer at the town’s branch of Portland’s largest bank, was perfection and propriety—which made them a matched set. Matt on the other hand put her in mind of James Dean in his rebel without a cause persona. Where Timothy had been solicitous of her opinions and feelings, Matt’s attitude in the church council meetings put her teeth on edge. She’d seen every one of the weary sighs and rolling eyes that he thought he’d hidden so well.
Of course, to have noticed those things, she had to have been studying him pretty intently. She told herself it was the welfare of the church and the integrity of the council’s mission that had her watching his every move. The fact that he carried himself with an easy confidence that was both appealing and refreshing had nothing to do with it. Neither, she told herself, did the fact that when he smiled, tiny laugh lines at his eyes made her want to smile in return.
But watching him in a meeting and working with him on a committee of two were entirely different issues. In the meetings at church, she could hide her feelings behind the shield of the others present. In a one-on-one situation, she had no protection—not that she feared for her physical safety around him. Sparks seemed to fly whenever they were together, and those sparks could prove dangerous to her on a variety of levels.
“And so you’re stuck,” she muttered.
Reverend Baines was determined to have them together on this committee. Realizing it was futile to hope that the pastor might offer another solution to the music issue, her prayer that night was for tolerance and understanding. She ignored the other part of her problem, the awareness of Matt Brandon, an awareness that left her in a decidedly uncharitable mood.
The next afternoon, Haley struggled with a box jammed to overflowing with colorful cutouts and posters. As usual, she’d been the last teacher at Wayside Prep to clear out her room for the summer. Thank goodness, this was the last load. She’d store everything in her garage until she had time to sort through it all and figure out what she wanted to keep for the new group of fourth-graders she’d greet in the fall.
She fumbled for car keys that tangled somewhere under the box.
“Here, I’ll lend you a hand.”
Haley yelped and dropped the box—straight onto Matt’s foot.
“Ow.” He hopped out of the way, too late to protect his toes, though.
“What are you doing creeping up on me like that?”
Even as she said the words and her heartbeat slowed down, her mind registered running shoes, jeans, white T-shirt and a sport jacket, the same uniform she’d seen him in the day before. And the same objectionable thin gold hoop remained in his left ear. “And what are you doing here?”
“I came by so we can have our meeting.”
She reached for fallen posterboard apples and egg crate lions, remnants of the bulletin boards she’d designed and created that year. Their hands met when both sought the same fruit cutout. Heat raced through Haley. Rather than maintain even that minimal physical contact, she surrendered the cutout to Matt.
While he appeared nonplussed, she found herself totally flushed and flustered. “H-How did you know where to find me?”
“Eunice told me you were probably here. I thought you’d be at the church so I went there first.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Jamming her key in the latch of her Honda, she unlocked the trunk and turned to get the box. She crashed into it and Matt instead. Again the box tumbled to the ground, this time most of its contents scattering.
“What are you doing?” she snapped at him.
“I thought I was helping you. Since that doesn’t seem to be the case, why don’t I just leave? Meet me at the church at six and we’ll go over some things.”
Haley lost her patience and her temper. “You’re just going to walk away? You destroy my bulletin board material and you’re leaving.”
He turned to face her. “Look, lady. What do you want?”
At the tone and the words, she stood tall and proud, ready for battle. Her fierce positioning must have convinced him she didn’t cower to anyone, least of all an upstart choir director. Without a word he bent down and started filling up the box.
Careful to put lots of space between them, they picked up the assorted decorations that during the school year illustrated the parts of speech and new vocabulary words.
“You just make me so…ugh!” She shook her head, apparently unable to think of a despicable enough word.
“The feeling’s mutual.”
They completed the rest of their task in silence, though Matt paused every now and then to read the words and descriptions on some of the illustrations. He handed her a piece of white construction paper with a blue sailboat drawn on it. “So, you’re an English teacher.”
“Language arts.”
“Why don’t you like me?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came. Haley swallowed, glanced away and then tried to meet his direct gaze. “Excuse me?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’ve hardly rolled out the red carpet to make me feel welcome here. Do I look like a boyfriend who dumped you or is it just the music you hate?”
Haley found herself flustered. She’d never met a man who was so straight to the point.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t hate anyone or anything.”
“You’ve made no secret about what you think of me. I was just wondering why.”
“Mr. Brandon.”
“Call me Matt.”
She ignored that. But she did decide to level with him. It was the right thing to do. She could be honest with him without revealing that it wasn’t just the style of music he preferred that disturbed her.
“I joined Community Christian because it was a small conservative church with traditional values and services. If I had wanted to be affiliated with a congregation that had rock bands, hip-hop artists and jazz ensembles as part of the so-called worship experience, I would have joined one of the churches in town that feature that sort of…” She waved a hand as she floundered for an acceptable word. “Sound,” she finally said.
“So if you expect me to turn cartwheels down the center aisle because you’re here, I’m sorry. That’s just not going to happen.”
She lifted the box, placed it in the trunk next to several other boxes and closed the hatch with a hearty thwack.
He glanced at the trunk. “Something tells me you were wishing that was my head.”
She ignored that, too, and resisted the smile that threatened.
“There’s no way we’re going to be able to work together.”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s looking like that. But listen,” he said, reaching for her arm when she would have walked away. “We can work this out.”
His thumb grazed her skin, but whether deliberately or as a result of him simply touching her as she pulled away, Haley couldn’t say. Frissons of something very like pleasure raced through her, causing her to catch her breath and feel even more wary of him.
“Let me go, please.”
Instantly, he dropped his hand and stepped away from her. She saw something flash in his eyes, but it was gone before she could determine if it’d been anger or something else entirely.
He reached in his jacket pocket, pulled out an envelope and handed it to her. “When you decide to stop playing games and being Miss Holier Than Thou, call me,” he said.
Haley watched him walk to a motorcycle parked not far away. He slipped a helmet on and a moment later the bike’s engine revved and he peeled out of the school parking lot.
Instead of being angry, she found herself even more curious about him.
She tore open the envelope he’d given her and pulled out two sheets of paper. The first was the order of worship for the Sunday morning service with two songs penned in where traditional hymns were normally sung. The other held lyrics to a song labeled “Acceptable.”
Standing in the parking lot, Haley read the words of the poem, a praise song about Jesus’s love and sacrifice. By the time she finished reading, her eyes were filled with wonder and with moisture that she furiously blinked away.
Surely he hadn’t written such an emotional song. But there, at the top of the page, under the title was “By Matt B.”
“Where is Mr. Brandon?” Haley asked Eunice. She had to find him. She’d gotten her emotions in check by the time she arrived at the church. The pages, though, remained clutched in her hand.
