“No.”
“It’s awful. Give me numbers. I can add them up. They always come up to the same thing. I love that about numbers. Ask me something about love, and I’m just baffled. You can’t quantify it in any way. There’s no definitive test for it. There’s no checklist. It has an infinite number of variables. You can’t even define the term. It means so many different things to people.”
“It is annoying in those ways,” he agreed.
She groaned aloud. “What am I going to do?”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said.
She stared at him and frowned. “You’re a really nice man.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“No, it’s not. It’s just…I don’t know what to do.”
“And you’re the only one who can decide.”
She looked hopeless then, like she might cry sometime soon.
He stiffened his spine, tried to strengthen his resolve. He had to get away from her. Nothing else would save him.
“Okay. I’ll stop talking now and go sit on the other side of the room, in case I’m tempted to do more harm than I’ve already done. It was nice to meet you, Kate. You’ll do the right thing, whatever it is.”
“I’m not so sure of that.” She looked as if she might cry at any minute. “I’m not very sure of anything right now.”
Oh, great. Make her cry. Way to go, Ben.
“Kate, sorry to have kept you waiting,” Charlotte Sims said, saving him from whatever he might have said by choosing that moment to walk into the reception area and place herself directly in front of him and Kate.
Kate looked panicked and guilty. Very guilty.
Ben finally noticed that her friend, Melanie, was staring at them both with rapt attention.
Charlotte looked puzzled. “Something wrong?”
“No,” Ben said. “Not at all.”
Things were right. Very right. She had saved him from saying something he would definitely regret and stepping across a line he had no right to cross.
“And it seems I’ve double booked myself. Again,” Charlotte said, still studying all three people in the reception area to see what she’d missed.
“No problem,” Ben said. “Kate can go first.”
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“Positive,” he said, thinking, Please, just go.
“We won’t be long,” Charlotte assured him.
Kate stood up and followed the woman, turning briefly to shoot a puzzled look at Ben that he couldn’t begin to decipher.
Was she mad at him?
He was mad at himself.
And too curious for his own good.
“Well,” Melanie said. “That was interesting. How do you two know each other?”
“We don’t,” Ben insisted. “We just met at the front door to your office five minutes ago.”
“Oh.” She sounded terribly disappointed.
He wondered if he could ask her not to say anything about this to anyone, particularly Kate’s kind-of-fiancé, but that would probably make them look even more guilty. He wondered if Melanie liked to gossip and how well she knew Joe, whom Kate might or might not love. He’d feel really guilty if the talk he and Kate had had caused any trouble between her and her fiancé.
Ben, you should have slept in today, maybe not gotten out of bed at all. But Mrs. Ryan would have been horrified, and someone had to do the morning prayer service. Staying in bed really wasn’t an option.
Keeping his mouth shut with Kate and staying out of her relationship with Joe…now, that was an option. He clamped his mouth shut, glanced at Melanie, only to find her grinning at him and staring right back.
“So,” Melanie said. “Want to know about Kate and Joe?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
He bit his tongue and sat there, stone-faced. Now, she had him lying. Him…a minister.
But, if he’d told the truth, Melanie would have told him all about Kate and Joe, and it was definitely none of his business.
No way to win this one, Ben.
Melanie laughed at him and told him anyway. “They’ve been together forever. Five years now, I think.”
Which could mean anything. That they were perfectly suited for each other or that they’d simply let things run on, with no inclination to take that final step, because they simply had no desire to actually be married.
“Supposed to get married this summer, but Kate’s mom’s cancer came back in the middle of planning the wedding, and then she died this spring, and… Well, I’m not sure what’s going on now.”
“Melanie—”
“But Joe really is a great guy.”
So he’d heard.
“Still, you’d think if they were going to get married, they’d have done it by now,” Melanie proclaimed.
Please, please, please, please, please, Ben begged silently. Get me out of this. I’ll be good. I promise.
He closed his eyes, closed his ears as best he could, refusing to listen anymore. Melanie got a phone call, thank God, and then another one. She hadn’t said one more word about Kate and Joe.
Charlotte Sims’s office door opened, finally, and she and Kate came out. Ben stood up, thinking he would slide on into Charlotte’s office and not have to say anything but a polite goodbye to Kate, and he’d have escaped relatively unscathed.
But then Melanie, who’d been on the phone again, put it down and said, “Hey, wait a minute. There’s a really annoyed older woman on the phone who’s lost a priest named Ben Taylor.” She glared at him, looking at him like he was a snake. “Are you a priest?”
Kate’s head whirled around, and she stood there, openmouthed, waiting for him to answer. Charlotte Sims was staring, too.
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
Melanie held out the phone. “Pastor? If this is you, it’s your secretary. She’s saying something about you slipping past her and going AWOL.” Then she said into the phone, “He’s not dangerous is he?”
Ben groaned and took the phone, hoping Mrs. Ryan had the courtesy to say that no, he was not dangerous and that no one called the police. Obviously, he’d been right to worry this morning about being arrested and defrocked.
Kate was certainly looking at him as if he was a criminal.
Which was probably the punishment he deserved for flirting with her—had he really been flirting?—without his collar on and without saying he was a minister.
He held the receiver to the side of his face and said, “Mrs. Ryan, you found me.”
Chapter Three
Kate was surprised her lower jaw hadn’t hit the floor. Her mouth had already been hanging open ridiculously at the idea that she might have been both flirting with and getting advice from a priest! And to have him confirm it like that—
She