скачать книгу бесплатно
I won’t be here, Andre mused to himself. “The brothers will be pleased.”
He heard her suck in her breath. “Good. Then I won’t keep you any longer. I need to get back to the office straightaway. Goodbye.”
She closed the file folder and put it under her arm. The action drew his attention to the alluring shape of her body beneath the yellow suit before she started out of the room.
Andre should have answered her, but the word stuck in his gullet. Rather than escort her outside, he remained behind the counter, as if it were his refuge.
One less memory to deal with.
Andre didn’t like Salt Lake and had no intention of coming back.
Fran might have had a dozen errands to run in preparation for her upcoming assignment to cover the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s tour to Los Angeles and Australia. But she’d been counting the minutes until the July issue of Beehive Magazine was off the press. She hadn’t slept all night waiting for this morning so she could take several copies to the monastery.
After her last trip out there, she’d made up her mind that she would send the magazines in the mail. It would be the right thing to do. The moral thing to do considering she’d been having fantasies about a Trappist Monk.
But some force beyond her will couldn’t or wouldn’t let it go at that.
I have to see the monk one more time. I have to.
Her mother would be shocked if she knew the truth. Fran herself was shocked by her own behavior.
If the pastor of her church knew, he would tell Fran the adversary was devious and knew how to get to people when they were at their most vulnerable. She’d heard it all before from the pulpit, but had never placed any credence in those words.
She still didn’t. But there was no doubt in her mind that going to see the monk this time was wrong.
“You’re not the first curious female to cross over this threshold, intrigued by a man’s decision to remain celibate. No doubt someone with your looks would find that decision incomprehensible.”
Fran’s face always went hot when she was embarrassed or ashamed. It was hot now just remembering those words.
The monk had known more about her than she had known about herself. Indeed he had very calculatingly revealed her to herself without batting an eye.
What was really humiliating was the fact that she was going back to the scene of the crime, possibly for more of the same treatment. Was she a masochist, or simply a twisted woman who craved this celibate monk’s attention though she would deny it to her dying breath?
Even though there were eighty or so monks in residence, she only brought a couple of dozen copies. The brothers weren’t allowed to keep any personal possessions, so an individual copy wasn’t necessary. But this way there would be enough to circulate and still keep several on hand in the gift shop for any visitor interested in learning more about the history of the religious shrine.
Now that it was the first of July, different trees were in flower on the monastery grounds. The brothers had to be worn out working in this intense ninety-degree heat. During her interview, she had discovered that there was no air-conditioning inside. Fran couldn’t imagine living without refrigeration.
She couldn’t imagine living at a monastery, period!
This time when she parked her car, she noticed other cars and a Greyhound touring bus. People were milling about. This meant there would be more tourists inside the gift shop.
A frown drove her delicately arched eyebrows together. She hadn’t counted on an audience when she delivered her gift.
You wanted to be alone with him.
Francesca Mallory, you’re a fool!
Without another moment’s hesitation she got out of the car and started for the chapel entrance, the magazines in her arm.
As she had suspected, the gift shop teemed with people in sunglasses, carrying cameras, buying everything in sight. Two elderly monks waited on people, but the one who haunted her nights was nowhere in sight.
Her heart dropped to her toes. She waited in the corner until most of the room had emptied before approaching the one closest to her.
“I’m Fran Mallory from Beehive Magazine. I told the monk who granted me the interview on Abbot Ambrose that I would bring by some copies for all of you.”
He gave a slight bow. “You’re very kind.” Then he reached for the magazines. This wasn’t going the way she had planned it. Now she had little choice but to hand them over.
“Would it be possible to speak to the monk I interviewed?”
“He’s no longer with us.”
Fran blinked in astonishment. “You mean he’s been sent to another monastery?” she cried before she could stop herself.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Her skin prickled unpleasantly. “Of course not. I only meant that I’m disappointed that I couldn’t thank him in person for all his help.”
“I’ll pass the message along.”
“Th-Thank you. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
Shaken by the news, Fran hurried out to the car but didn’t immediately start the motor.
The sense of loss was too staggering.
By the time she left for Los Angeles two days later, she was furious with herself for having allowed his memory to interfere with her work. As she boarded one of the two specially chartered 747s to carry the Choir and staff, she made up her mind to leave all thoughts of him behind and concentrate on her work.
This trip was not only going to be a great adventure, it was vitally important to her career. She wasn’t about to jeopardize her work because of a monk she had no business thinking about.
With her mind made up, she found the excitement contagious as she, along with the Choir, arrived at Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles by bus for their concert given to a sellout crowd.
Being a fan of the hundred-and-fifty-year-old Choir, Fran had attended dozens of their home concerts. For years she had listened to their international Sunday broadcasts, and was familiar with much of their repertoire. Certain songs thrilled her, others moved her to tears.
But there was one song in particular that always left her and the audience weeping. Afterwards, there would be this electric silence before the crowd rose to its feet in thunderous applause. To Fran, that awe-filled silence proved the greatest ovation of all.
Tonight she was ready with her camera to capture the enchanted expression of some attendee’s face. The right picture always told the tale.
She wanted to find that one photograph which exuded the magic of the night. Barney was counting on her. If she were successful, it would go on the front cover of Beehive Magazine, a coup she hadn’t yet accomplished, but maybe this time.
The song she’d been waiting for came soon after the intermission. She’d obtained permission to set things up near the orchestra where she would be out of the way, yet obtain frontal shots with her telephoto lens.
The choir leader stepped to the podium and raised his baton. When everything grew quiet, the sopranos began singing their moving entreaty. The heartrending music pierced a part of Fran’s soul not reached in any other way. It happened every time, not just to her, but to everyone in the listening crowd.
Slowly she panned the audience, snapping one picture after another. By the time the full swell of male voices began, she happened on a face glowing with pure joy. There wasn’t another word to describe it.
A woman in her midsixties maybe, gray hair, a sweet expression on what looked like her Eastern European features.
The tears rolled down her rosy cheeks. Her eyes seemed transfixed by the music.
Fran swallowed hard and took a dozen pictures in succession. There was no need to look anywhere else. Something told her that this woman was the one she’d been hoping to find in the audience, the one who reflected the feelings of everyone around.
Maybe Fran could find a subject this perfect in Australia, but she doubted it. The moment was an illuminating one. She felt the hairs stand on the back of her neck.
Driven by a compulsion she didn’t understand, she was anxious for the concert to be over so she could approach the woman. There had to be a story behind that face. Fran wanted to get it, not only for the article, but out of a burning curiosity.
After the Choir sang their last number, the audience must have clapped for a solid five minutes. No one wanted the concert to be over.
With purposeful steps, Fran insinuated herself into the crowd and waited at the end of the row for the woman to exit. While everyone around was expounding on the remarkable performance they had just heard, Fran approached her.
“It was a beautiful concert, wasn’t it?”
The woman whose face glistened with fresh tears threw her head back. “It was as wonderful as I remembered it back in Germany.”
“You heard the Choir there?”
“Oh, yes. Many years ago. When I was a little girl growing up in East Berlin, my mother told me that if I ever got the chance, I should get away to a place where I could be free to worship God. I didn’t know what she meant.
“Then many years later came détente. I fled with my family to Frankfurt. It was there I heard this beautiful music for the first time. Later, when we moved to Zurich, in Switzerland, I heard the Choir again. That’s when I found God.” She shook her head. “You can’t imagine.”
But Fran could. She’d even captured the woman’s ecstasy on film. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” she whispered. “I work for a magazine in Utah and have been taking pictures tonight. I took some of you. Do I have your permission to use them and your story?”
The woman smiled. “I don’t mind.”
“Thank you,” Fran murmured as she watched the woman rejoin her family slowly making its way out of the row into the crowded aisle.
With her own eyes tear-drenched, Fran turned to go the other way and found herself face-to-face with a man who could have been the monk’s twin, except that his hair was longer and he wore a suit and tie.
Hadn’t she read somewhere that everyone on earth had a double?
There seemed to be an air of unreality about the entire evening. Her heart was really being given a workout. First the woman, now this haunting face from the past, a face she’d tried in vain to forget.
Angry with herself for staring at him, she averted her eyes and attempted to step past him.
“Ms. Mallory?”
Fran froze in place. That voice.
“If you’re afraid I’m an apparition, I assure you I’m not.”
She whirled around, confused and disbelieving. “When I took the magazines to the monastery, one of the monks told me you were no longer there. I had no idea you’d come to Los Angeles.”
“I left the day after your last visit.”
Her breathing had grown too shallow. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You didn’t seem to fit the mold.”
His lips twitched. “You’re right about that.”
Once again his honesty disarmed her. “Did you run away?”
There was an almost imperceptible nod of his dark head. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Can a monk do that?” she cried softly. “I mean, aren’t there certain formalities you have to go through if you want to leave your Order?”
“Endless formalities, including petitioning for a dispensation from the Pope in Rome.”
Fran had only seen movies about nuns and monks. She had no idea about the process, except through film. She doubted Hollywood could ever produce a performance that portrayed the true anguish involved in such a decision, if one had been devout.
“H-Have you already been excommunicated?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
By now most of the people were making their way out to their cars. It was a good thing. Her shock would have been visible to anyone watching or listening.
“Are you in torment over your decision?”
He cocked his head. “Are you worried about my immortal soul?”
She could stand anything but his mockery. “In a manner of speaking, yes!” She parroted his earlier comment. “After the unorthodox way you treated me when I first came to the monastery, I didn’t see how you would survive there.”
“So you did think about me.”
Her eyes flashed. “You’re twisting my words.”
“I’m touched that you cared.”
Fran couldn’t take any more. Obviously the man had to be in pain, but it was nothing to do with her. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’ve been too outspoken. It’s one of my worst faults.”
“I find that fault refreshing.”
She swallowed hard. “I had no right to say that to you. I don’t know anything about you or your life. I’m just surprised to see you here of all places.”
“Did you think I couldn’t appreciate a concert such as this?”
“Of course not. The Gregorian chant I listened to at the monastery was some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. But that isn’t what I meant. “
“What did you mean then?”
“Surely I don’t have to explain it to you. We both happen to be in Los Angeles at the same time. The odds of our running into each other like this must be in the millions.”
“I was thinking the same thing when I discovered you talking to Gerda.”
Fran gave a little gasp. “You know her?”
“We met a long time ago. When she found out I was going to be in Los Angeles, she and her family invited me to come hear the choir’s performance with them.”
He studied her upturned features with avid intensity. Fran’s trembling legs would hardly hold her up.
