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“I’m taking Gram into Woodstock to buy groceries. I’m sure we go right past the turnoff,” Tessa said.
Elisa liked Tessa’s voice, which was modulated and low. She was an attractive woman, with brown hair as long as Elisa’s own and a thin face with wide cheekbones. She looked tired, and as they stood in the lot, she put her palms against her back and swayed, as if to minimize pressure. For the first time Elisa realized she was pregnant. The sundress, which fell from a high yoke, had hidden it.
There was no time to say anything else. A car sped into the parking lot and pulled into a slot several spaces away. Elisa had never been interested in cars, and she was only rarely able to tell one from another. But this was a sports car, low-slung and elegant. The door opened, and a shapely leg appeared, followed by the body to go with it.
The woman who emerged was nearly as tall as Sam, with dark-red curls that fell past her shoulders, a carefully painted megawatt smile, and white shorts that stopped just shy of revealing. As she approached she was preceded by a scent that Elisa could only recognize as expensive. Nothing about the woman was cheap, although the overall effect flirted with it.
“Sam.” She went to him and kissed him. The kiss wasn’t long enough to embarrass anyone, but long enough to stake her claim. “I took a taxi to Chevy Chase and borrowed Jenny’s Viper so I wouldn’t have to rent some old wreck at the airport. You remember Jenny O’Donnell? Senator O’Donnell’s daughter? What do you think?”
She didn’t give him time to answer. She turned to the others. “I’m Christine Fletcher.” She held out her hand to Tessa, then to Helen. “Sam’s fiancée.”
“We’ve met,” Helen said dryly. “I’ve lost count how many times.”
“I am so bad with names and faces,” Christine drawled. She turned and thrust her hand at Elisa. “But I know I haven’t met you. I would remember that lovely hair. I’ve wished for hair like that my whole life.”
“Elisa Martinez.” Elisa put her hand in Christine’s and felt the strength of the other woman’s grip. She also felt something cutting into her fingers. When Christine withdrew her hand, Elisa noted rings, one on each finger except the little one, each with a different flashy gemstone. Her eyes flicked to Christine’s left hand, where a modest diamond resided on the ring finger.
Elisa wondered if the rings were a message of sorts. The English expression “on one hand” seemed to have been coined for the situation. On one hand Christine Fletcher was a woman of obvious wealth. On the other the fiancée of a man of moderate income.
“I’m here for the fiesta.” Christine pressed one hand against her chest and lifted the other in the air as she swivelled her hips. “Let the festivities begin.”
“Me, I’ll be home binding this quilt,” Helen said. “Let’s get to it, Tessa.”
Tessa inclined her head toward Elisa. “Are you ready to go?”
Elisa glanced over to see that Sam was watching her. From the corner of her eye, she noted that Christine was watching him.
Tessa said goodbye for both herself and her grandmother, then took Helen’s arm.
Sam spoke. “Elisa, if you have any questions tonight, just find me and ask away.”
“I will. Thank you.” Elisa followed Tessa and her grandmother, and gratefully escaped.
Chapter Three
“SO WHO’S THE Mayan goddess, Sam?”
Sam helped Christine out of the tricked-out Dodge Viper, the likes of which the simple brick parsonage had never seen. “Elisa has applied to be our new sexton.”
“Sex-ton?” She raised one shapely brow. “Are we getting right to the heart of the matter, honey?”
He pulled her close and kissed her hair. Her body was warm and soft against him, and his reacted accordingly. “It’s not like you to be catty.”
“Hey, I’m just marking my territory like a good pussycat. She’s a head turner. Even the preacher man noticed.”
“The preacher man is not immune to a beautiful woman, but he’s committed to another one.”
Christine lifted her lips for a luxuriant kiss, then she put her arm around his waist, and he led her up the flagstone walk. “She is beautiful, but I’m not worried. She’s not your type.”
“You could have fooled me.” Sam said it as a joke, but he realized he was still annoyed at his attraction to Elisa and concerned it might get in the way of his decision whether to hire her.
She punched him lightly. “You like a woman with education and plenty of style.”
“And you think those are the things that attracted me to you?”
“What else do I have to offer besides sex, and somebody else could deliver that? I’m not good minister’s wife material. You know God and I have an understanding. I don’t pay Him much attention if He promises to return the favor. We get along, but we’re not bosom buddies.”
“You’re a better person than you think you are.”
“And that’s why you want to marry me? The strength of my character?”
He didn’t have to answer. They had been engaged for almost four years, through better and worse times, the latter of which said enough about her character to impress him. She knew it.
He returned to the subject of Elisa, hoping he could talk his way to a decision. “I’ve had four applicants for the sexton’s job, and we’re getting desperate. Two are men with questionable work histories. The other won’t take the job unless we raise the salary substantially. Then there’s Elisa, with good references and a willingness to work hard. She walked to the interview from her mobile home park, and that’s four, maybe even five, miles away. She’s determined.”
“She lives in a trailer?”
He imagined Elisa’s home, even new, had not cost as much as the Viper Christine had borrowed so carelessly.
He tried to tamp down a surge of annoyance. “She’s poor. So what? That means very little, Christine.”
She wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “I smell a sermon coming on.”
They had reached the front gate. He had installed a picket fence hoping it would keep Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in check whenever they escaped through the front door. Shad and Shack, canine mixtures that probably included Irish wolfhound and St. Bernard, sailed over it with enthusiasm. Bed, a tiny rat terrier, simply stood at the gate and barked incessantly. Now there was a chain link dog run in the back for those rare moments when the dogs weren’t under his direct control.
“No sermon,” he promised, “and end of subject.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve replaced the dogs with something a shade more refined?”
“Like a porcelain cocker spaniel?”
“You know me so well.”
“Not as well as I hope to again.”
She nudged his hip with hers. “Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder?”
He unlocked the front door. Their sex life, or lack of it, was no longer a subject of real debate. He was a heterosexual male with all the requisite urges. They had been lovers in the days when their wedding date was on the calendar and their invitations at the printer. But now that the date was long past and the invitations interred at a Georgia landfill, they no longer made love.
When he didn’t respond she settled her hip firmly against his, brushing it back and forth. “I’m always ready and willing.”
He closed his eyes, and for a moment, temptation was the only thing on his mind. His body responded exactly the way she had known it would. She was not as convinced of the need for abstinence as he was. “How can I talk to the youth group about controlling their budding sexuality if I’m not controlling my own?”
“You’re an old-fashioned man.”
“Who needs an old-fashioned commitment and a wedding date before he takes his woman to bed. And that’s pushing liberal as it is.”
She moved away, and they were no longer touching. “Just for the record, I wasn’t intending to lecture your youth group about our sex life. Or lack of it.”
It was time to change the subject. “Brace yourself.” He opened the door and stood in the opening to fend off his dogs. He thought they were relatively well-behaved for young, slobbering dogs. He loved the three of them unreservedly.
“Nice dogs,” Christine told them, screwing up her face. “Nice pen outside?” she asked Sam.
Christine’s parents, former Georgia governor and congressman Hiram Fletcher and his wife, Nola, had two spoiled shih tzus that Christine adored. Sam was astute enough to recognize the difference.
“I’ll be back.” He whistled for the dogs, who, having ascertained that Christine did not have food or affection to offer, covered the distance to the kitchen in great leaping strides. Or rather, Shad and Shack did. Bed, who weighed all of thirteen pounds, followed as fast as she could.
He returned a few minutes later to the sound of forlorn howls from the dog pen. The dogs were too well-behaved to continue for long.
Christine had made herself at home in his kitchen, and she flipped on his coffeemaker as he entered. He began to open all the windows. “Have you had lunch?” she asked.
“I’m not even sure I had breakfast.”
“I’m starved. I had to be at the airport at dawn. I’ve been up forever.” She opened the refrigerator. “Want an omelet?”
“That’s a lot of trouble. I have some leftovers. I did a stir-fry last night.”
She peeked over the top of the door. “You made it?”
He tried not to smile. “Uh-huh.”
Her eyes widened. “I’ll do omelets.”
He was perfectly satisfied with his own cooking and never understood why others weren’t. There had been a time in his life when the meals he now prepared for himself would have tasted like five-star cuisine.
“I’ll do toast,” he said.
She considered a moment. He could read her indecision. “Christine, I can toast bread, I promise.”
She shrugged and dove back into the contents of his fridge. Sam hoped she wouldn’t remove everything inside. From experience, he knew he would have to replace anything she took out, as well as wash and dry every plate, cup and frying pan. Christine liked to cook, but she did not clean up after herself. She had never needed to and couldn’t see why she should start now.
He thought of Elisa, who cleaned up after anybody who would let her.
Christine closed the refrigerator door, eggs, milk and cheese cradled in her arms. “I checked in before I came looking for you. I like the inn. Quaint and tasteful. I suppose it will keep people from talking.”
Mostly, as they both knew, Christine sleeping somewhere else would keep Sam from succumbing to his fiancée’s considerable charms.
“I’m glad you decided to come.” He took a loaf of bread from the cupboard, a knife from a drawer and a butter dish from the counter. Then he made himself comfortable at the small kitchen table and started spreading butter from one crust to the other.
“I didn’t want to.” Christine began breaking eggs into a bowl. “But I missed you. I don’t see why you haven’t been able to get away and come home.”
He didn’t remind her that Atlanta was not his home and probably never would be again. He didn’t remind her that he had a job that required his presence on weekends. She knew both and chose to forget them whenever the facts got in the way.
“I’m coming to see you next month,” he reminded her. “For Torey’s wedding.” Against his better instincts, he had agreed to help preside at a ceremony in his former church for one of their friends.
“Well, I’m here now. But the whole time I was packing, I thought about that fundraiser Savior’s Church did in the last year of your ministry there. Do you remember?”
He remembered all too clearly. At the time he had been the assistant minister of The Savior’s Church, one of Atlanta’s oldest and most influential congregations. He had given an invocation that had prompted the wealthiest members to fund a fledgling television ministry. Just two months later, they had begun televising their early-morning service, at which he almost always presided. The church’s membership had increased substantially because of it.
In case he didn’t remember everything, Christine hit the high points. “City Grill catered the dinner. We had Kobe beef and smoked trout. We flew in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for entertainment.”
He remembered that part too well. The African-American members of the band had been in a distinct minority that night.
She flicked on a burner and reached for his one and only frying pan on a rack above the stove. “I wore an outrageous red dress by Zac Posen. He was brand-new on the runways back then, and I knew he was going places. The air reeked of politics. Daddy introduced you to Sam Nunn during dessert. Daddy told him that one day you would be the next Georgia senator named Sam.”
He waited until she was clearly done, using that time to slip the bread onto the rack of the tabletop toaster oven. “I suppose the point of this trip down memory lane is to draw a contrast between that night and the one to come?”
She faced him, her back against the stove as the pan heated. “A Mexican fiesta, Sam? In some damp field in the middle of nowhere? To raise money for what? Books and crayons for immigrant kids? It’s a noble cause. I hope you get enough money to buy crayons in every color of the rainbow. But this isn’t where you belong, and you know it.”
“Don’t you mean it isn’t where you belong?”
She didn’t deny it. “That, too.”
“You didn’t have to fly in for this. I didn’t expect it.”
“Sometimes I want to shake you silly. Are you trying to misunderstand?”
“Chrissy, I may not have left Savior’s Church of my own accord, but I have a job here, and I’m grateful after everything that I do.”
“And I’m not.” She turned back to the stove and poured the beaten egg mixture into the pan. From this angle her wild red hair hid her shoulders, but he knew they were hunched in frustration.
He rose, went to her and put his arms around her, resting them just below her generous breasts. For a moment all he wanted was for things to be the way they once had been.
* * *
Elisa appreciated honesty, even if she no longer practiced it. Two minutes into the trip back to the trailer park, she knew she liked Helen Henry. Some people decided late in life that pretense was too much work. They simply said whatever they wanted in the short time that was left them. Elisa suspected this was not the case with Helen. Helen had probably been truthful her entire life and scared away a lot of people in the bargain.
They were only half a mile up Old Miller Road when Helen started expounding on Christine. “Maybe that Christine Fletcher is pretty, if you like women who make ‘pretty’ their life work. She dyes her hair, you know. Nobody’s hair is that color.” Helen said the last in a tone that brooked no resistance.
Tessa, who was driving, resisted anyway. “No, her hair is natural, and she’s stunning. And you were not very nice, Gram. Do you really expect her to remember everybody’s name in between trips?”
“I expect her to try. She doesn’t like us, and that’s a fact. I’m not sure I cotton to Sam Kinkade, you understand, but I did expect better from him.”
“You adore Sam, and she seems pleasant enough.”
“I won’t ask Elisa what she thinks. You can hardly say, can you, girl, when you’re hoping to get a job there.”
Elisa tried not to laugh. “I have no opinions about anything.”
Tessa laughed for her. “We’re going to leave poor Elisa out of this.”
Helen shook one finger at her granddaughter. “You just mark my words. Either Christine will take Sam away from us, or he’ll tell her to hit the road. But there won’t be a wife in that parsonage anytime soon, at least not one with dyed red hair.”
Tessa changed the subject. “Elisa, have you been in the area long? Are you from the valley?”
“No, I’ve only been here six months.”
“What brings you here?” Helen asked.
