“Ah,” she whispered. “Now the foreplay.”
“Well, in your case, I think it’s afterplay. But I bet you’ll enjoy it.”
“Noah, you can talk to me anytime…But don’t you have an RV guest?”
“George is asleep. And even if he’s not, he wouldn’t interfere in my private life. He’s a grand proponent of private lives.”
“Good…old…George…” And she closed her eyes and let herself be stripped.
Noah’s hands were sweet on her body; his kisses were both tender, then not so tender. His touch was soft, then not so soft, causing her to rise off the bed to try to reach him. He was taking his time, though his breathing was becoming ragged and she knew he was struggling to wait for her. He filled his hands and then his mouth with her breasts, drawing on her until she felt she was going to fall over the edge again. He parted her legs gently, and found her slick inner parts.
When he took his clothes off, she found one of his many secrets—a tattoo of his own on his upper left chest. A fish, of course. Not that religious symbol, but more like a trout leaping out of a river. She ran her fingers over it; she loved it.
He was a talker. “I need you,” he whispered. “You’re beautiful, Ellie. And soft and sweet. I love the taste of your skin, I’m already addicted to your scent.”
She almost laughed out loud when she remembered swearing off men and realized that wasn’t going to work for her, not with Noah around. She hadn’t felt so much as a twinge of desire since long before Trevor was born; life was too hard and she couldn’t even imagine a man making it easier. That had been until Noah kissed her, then touched her.
“I can’t say no to you,” she whispered. “Noah, I didn’t think you’d do something like this.”
“I didn’t think I would, either. At least not yet.”
She put her hands against his bare chest and held him back. “Please,” she said. “If you do this, when you leave me, don’t be all guilty and sorry. Please.”
He touched her lips with his finger. “Ellie, I won’t be sorry. Didn’t you hear me? I’m in love with you.”
“No. No, you’re not. You’re in lust, that’s all…”
“That, too,” he said.
When he reached for his discarded pants and pulled a condom out of his pocket, her eyes widened. “You were planning this?”
“I was fighting this, but I knew better than to be stupid. The last thing we need right now is to be in trouble.”
Her eyes drifted closed while he suited up. And she said, “I think we’re already in trouble, but it’s too late. Fill me.”
Noah paused above her for just a second, because this was it, this was the moment. There would be no going back; this would bond them. He had certain values that had been set in stone for a long time. He didn’t take the act of love lightly. It wasn’t recreation, as it had been in his youth. It was more than just a part of life to him, it was a commitment. From this moment, he would belong only to her; he would be hers for as long as she would have him. And he was far past the point of regrets. He just hoped she wouldn’t be sorry.
He pressed his lips against hers while he entered her slowly. She inhaled sharply, rising against him, bringing him deeper. As soon as he began to move, she surrendered again. Another powerful orgasm shook her, causing her to tremble in his arms. And in a breath, he said her name twice. “Ellie, Ellie…” He held her still and deep, and when she was beginning to relax, he pumped his hips and let go with a deep, sexy groan.
He held himself above her so as not to crush her with his weight and he couldn’t even make himself leave her body. “Sweet Ellie,” he whispered, brushing her hair out of her face. “I think you’re saving my life.”
When he began to pull away from her, she tightened her arms around him. “No. Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” he said.
“Stay inside me. A little longer. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way before.”
“Sweetheart,” he answered, lowering his lips to her neck, her shoulder. “You’re heaven.”
“And here I thought ministers were probably boring in bed. Are you sure you’re a minister?”
His answer was a mere chuckle and a little squeeze.
“And how about the whole waiting-for-marriage thing? I mean, I realize you don’t want to marry me, but I thought ministers especially never messed that up. Isn’t that a real special rule?”
He put a finger under her chin and lifted it so he could look into her eyes. “I’m just a man, Ellie. I’ve had to learn to accept that and so will you.”
“Do you feel like you failed?” she wanted to know.
“This was not a mistake. This was supposed to happen,” he whispered. “Ellie, I’m not going to let you down.”
“Hmm. You haven’t so far.” She laughed softly. “I thought you’d make love in black socks,” she said softly. “Badly. I thought you’d do it badly.”
“I guess you’re okay with it so far…”
“Ohhhh.” She sighed. “Oh, Noah.”
“Listen, I have to tell you something.” Her drowsy eyes opened. “I don’t want to push you into anything, take your time about me, but you have to know—I feel pretty strongly about monogamy.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t think I’d be with another man! I wasn’t even going to be with you! But there is one thing you have to do for me,” she said.
“Anything that makes you happy,” he promised.
“I want this to be only between us.”
“Sure. Of course. It’s personal. I agree.”
“I don’t want anyone around here to know it’s like this between us. I just work for you, that’s all.”
He frowned. “We don’t have to share our personal lives with anyone, but we don’t have to hide the fact that we care about each other.”
“Yeah, we do, Noah. No one can know about this. About us.”
“Ellie, why? Are you embarrassed to find yourself attracted to a man who’s a minister?”
She laughed a little bit. “No. But no one would ever believe you seduced me. And you did, Noah. You did and I loved it. Not only are you the sexiest minister alive, you might be the sexiest man alive. But people will think I trapped you. They’ll think I ruined your purity and dirtied you up. And I don’t need that right now.”
“Come on, you’re wrong…”
“I’m right,” she said. “No matter how much I try to do the right thing, no matter how determined I am to do the right thing, everything that happens ends up being my fault. And when people around here find out you like me…they’re going to think I cast an evil spell on you and made you break your vows.”
“Honey, I didn’t take a vow of chastity. I didn’t promise not to love a woman. I never said I wouldn’t have a perfectly normal sex drive. I’m not fifteen, Ellie, I’m thirty-five and I’ve missed passion. Passion and intimacy, two things that are really healthy for a normal man. Don’t argue with a man with seven years of theological training.”
“People don’t get that about you like I do. They think of you as different. As a minister. Please, Noah. Let’s just act like I work for you, and that we’re casual friends.”
“We can do that, if that’s what you need. Or we could change the way things have been for you. We could be honest without being indiscreet. We could hold hands, you could let me put my arm around your shoulders, smile at you like you’re special. Treat you like the woman of my choice while I enjoy being the man of yours.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Noah?” she asked, shaking her head. “Don’t you see how fragile this is? How much hangs in the balance for both of us? At some point—maybe sooner, maybe later—the people here are going to figure me out. They’ll know I come from a dirt-poor background, that the men who gave me my children didn’t marry me, that I was a stripper when you hired me. What if they hate me? What if they treat my kids like trash because of me?”
“I won’t let anyone—”
“Don’t you see it’s your future in this town, too? What if they ask themselves what kind of minister you could be if you’d choose a woman like me? Oh, Noah,” she said, running her fingers through his thick, dark hair. “We’d get along okay in a bigger town where no one knows us all that well, where I’m not hooked up with the local preacher. But here—you and me? It could ruin us all.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not going to be that way.”
She smiled at him. “You’re just a fool,” she said. “It usually is that way.”
He gazed into her eyes for a long moment, then he covered her mouth with his for a long, deep, luxurious kiss. He began to grow firm, still inside her. “You’re wrong,” he whispered. “And it won’t work. It will show in my eyes. Everyone will know, even if I never touch your hand.”
“Promise me to try, Noah. Please, promise me.”
“I’ll try, if that’s what you want. But, Ellie, one of the best parts of you is that you never have shame. You make your choices, you do your best, and guilt and shame—the two most useless, negative emotions on the books—just aren’t part of you.”
“I’m not ashamed of loving you, Noah,” she said. “I’m afraid. For both of us.”
Afraid yet one more thing in her life would go badly? Wouldn’t turn out? Would punish her rather than bringing her joy?
Loving him? Was she talking about her feelings or her actions? he wondered. Both, his inner voice told him. She was hardheaded and sure of herself; she wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want to do. She loved him. And they had come further than they had planned, but she still wouldn’t say it. She wouldn’t say, Noah, I love you.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you’re not afraid,” he said gently. He pressed his lips against her temple. “But first, I’m going to make love to you again, before I have to start pretending I barely know you.” He smiled at her.
“Excellent,” she said with a heavy, yielding sigh.
It was after four in the morning when Noah kissed Ellie goodbye and made the walk back to his RV. He saw the lights were on inside and wondered if he’d forgotten to turn them off when he left, but once inside he saw that George was up, sitting at the table with coffee and his laptop open.
George looked up, lifted a brow and gave a half smile, but he didn’t say anything. Noah poured himself a cup of coffee and sat across the small table from George. Lucy rose slowly, wandered to Noah and put her head in his lap, looking up at him with those big, sad brown eyes. She looked incredibly sympathetic.
“This is a little awkward,” Noah said.
“Because an old man twice your age caught you coming in at almost five in the morning?” He chuckled. “Relax, Noah. You know I approve of you getting on with your life. You’re overdue.”
Noah took a sip, swallowed and said, “I’m not sure if you’re going to approve of how I’m going about it.”
“You don’t need my approval. I’m happy if you’re happy.”
“It’s not the spending-the-night part,” Noah said. “I know you’re not going to give me a hard time about that. It’s that I’m not sure Ellie is ready for all I’m willing to commit to. And I pushed her anyway.”
“What a shame,” George said. “Because it’s up to you to make sure no one is hurt by your actions.”
“I’ll do my very best,” Noah said. “I haven’t felt this way in such a long time, I barely recall how it’s supposed to feel. Ellie has a lot of doubts—about me, about everyone I hope to welcome into a church losing all respect for me when they find out I’m in love with her….”
“Obviously not everything is in doubt,” George said. “I know you, Noah. You’re not careless or impulsive. You plot. You think too much, actually. If I’m right, you left here with her thinking you might spend the night, or at least that you’d try to.”
“I was prepared. If it came to that.”
“Thank God. Listen, son. I think Ellie surprised you. You weren’t ready for a beautiful, bright and sassy young woman to make your world light up. And poor Ellie, she wasn’t ready to fall for you. I’d venture a guess that you’re not her type at all. Now, while you two work through whatever issues you have, try giving thanks and being happy. Gifts don’t come banging at the door every day. In a push-up bra, yet.” George peered at Noah. “It is a push-up bra, isn’t it?”
“Answering that would be indiscreet,” Noah said.
“I suppose,” he muttered in disappointment.
“She doesn’t want anyone to know about us. Not just that we’re intimate, but that we’re interested in each other. She doesn’t want a whiff of romance to be obvious between us. She said people will blame her, especially after they learn all about her past, which they inevitably will. She believes they’ll think she threw her evil web around me and trapped me. But, George, nothing could be further from the truth. There’s not a mean or insincere bone in her body. And I was on her like a duck on a june bug.” Noah shook his head. “It puts an ache in my chest that she would feel undeserving. God, I’ll have to work my whole life to deserve her.”
George looked down briefly. “I hate that she should have such self-esteem issues. With you, I’m used to that. But Ellie has too much joy despite her problems to do that to herself.”
“What do you mean, with me you’re used to that?” Noah demanded.
“You remind me of the man in the flood. The flood swamps his house and he stands on the roof. A boat comes along and he says, ‘Don’t worry about me, God will take care of me. Go save others.’ Not long after, the waters rising, a second boat comes along and he says the same thing. Soon enough, he’s perched on top of the chimney and a helicopter lowers a rope. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he shouts. ‘God will take care of me.’ Well, of course the silly ass drowns. When he has his first meeting with God, he rails, ‘I believed in you, I trusted you, why didn’t you save me?’ And God says, ‘I sent two boats and a helicopter? What more do you want?’”
Noah just stared into his cup. He knew the joke; it came up regularly.
“Struggling is mandatory. Suffering is optional.”
Noah knew that, too.
“If God rescued you, if God gave you a gift, do right by it.” George got up and refilled his cup. “I talk to you only because you want me to, Noah. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said a word and I’m definitely not asking questions. I hope you don’t mind that I’m an early riser, because I don’t want to stay away. I’m leaving on Wednesday morning as planned, but I want to come back very soon. I want to see how this turns out. Stay out all night as often as you want—I don’t care.”
“You’re disturbed,” Noah said.
George laughed at him. “I remember being your age. I believe my wife was leaving me about that time and everything in my life was chaotic. So melodramatic. You’re going to like being seventy. Things change, especially where you choose to expend your energy. I probably have as many problems as I ever did, but I wake up every morning thinking all is right with my world. I couldn’t seem to do that at thirty-five.” George sat down and opened his laptop again. “Get a shower, have another cup of coffee, get right with the world. You’re a good man, Noah. You have a good and faithful heart. God isn’t mad at you about anything.”
When Noah got out of the shower, George had scrambled some eggs for the two of them. It was barely after six when he decided to head for his office in the church, only because it would give him a little quiet time before the work crews arrived and began pounding and whirring.
He wasn’t being deliberately quiet when he entered and climbed the stairs, but he’d left Lucy with George, and his entry must not have made a sound. He looked into the sanctuary and saw a most beautiful thing. Ellie knelt before the stained-glass window and, hands folded and looking down, she appeared to be praying. It made him smile to himself—he had so many assumptions about her, so much he took for granted. He leaned in the archway to the sanctuary and just watched. He felt as if he was eavesdropping, though she didn’t pray aloud. Her lips moved, however.
A few minutes passed before she raised her eyes and got to her feet. When she turned and saw him, she jumped and grabbed her heart.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was such a beautiful image, I couldn’t look away. I didn’t know you prayed.”
She took a breath to steady herself. “You never asked.”
“I never did,” he admitted. “Were you brought up in the church?”
“Now and then.” She shrugged.
“Any special denomination?”
“All,” she said. “My gramma used to think that passage when Jesus said, ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms,’ didn’t mean there was a big hotel in heaven. It meant there were lots of different ways to worship. We dropped into different churches for the occasional sermon.”
“Interesting. And you weren’t confused?”
“We were never at one long enough for confusion to settle in,” she said.
“So, this wasn’t a special occasion?” he asked.
“Noah, I’ve spent so much time on my knees, they should be callused. That’s figurative—I usually pray in the shower. My gramma taught me that—if you pray naked, you don’t try so hard to hide things from God. She said, the Old Testament aside, God is our friend. He had a real short fuse in the Old Testament. Oh, and she also taught me that more important religion happens over the back fence with a good friend than anywhere else, so poo on your seven years of seminary training.”
He laughed. “I’d have to agree with that. What else? I live for her sayings.”
“I’m afraid Gramma didn’t have one for the morning after you spent all night having wild monkey sex with a minister—” she grinned “—that I know of.”
He lifted her chin and looked into her beautiful brown eyes. “Why do you look so rested? I’m exhausted and I look like I worked on a term paper all night.”
“I feel fine. Finer than I’ve felt in a hundred years. I’m going to see Brie when I think she’s got her office open. Then I’m off to Vanni’s to help her out.”
“Were you praying for forgiveness? For trapping me in a secret affair?”
She smiled at him. “I was saying thank-you, for everything. For my gramma and her good years, for my kids, for this little town that’s working out. And for you, but don’t let it go to your head. Gramma didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but she was always grateful. And happy.”
“Ellie, I wasn’t sure you even believed, much less practiced.”
She shook her head. “Noah, everyone prays in a foxhole. I’ve been in one foxhole or another for the past nine years. I don’t even count growing up poor—I just count since Jason died. Gramma always said to trust that things would be as they should be. I just can’t figure out why they shouldn’t be easier.”
He gave her a little kiss. “Did you ever hear the story about the man in the flood?”
After a little private churchgoing, and a little chaste kissing, Ellie’s next stop was Brie’s office. Brie was incensed by what she heard on Ellie’s answering machine tape.
I know you did this, you bitch, and you’re not going to get away with it.
What are you talking about, Arnie?
Child Welfare Services paid a visit, while I was at work! Asking a lot of questions, talking to the kids without me present. Got the staff all worked up and curious. I know you—you told those little bastards what to say! But it’s not going to work!
I don’t know anything about this. Maybe it was something the court wanted…
You’re going to pay for this, and pay big. I hate you, you skanky bitch, and I’m going to fix you good. You think losing the kids because you’re just a low-life slut was hard? Wait! I’m just getting warmed up!
Brie had to take a couple of deep breaths before she could even respond. And then she said, “I’m going to file a motion at once. We have to revisit the custody issue now, in light of his refusal to let you visit or talk to your children, and his threats, one of which is recorded. Be warned, this will require a court appearance. If the judge doesn’t dismiss my motion, he’ll schedule a hearing where all parties can be present. The scumball will have a chance to defend himself and level his own accusations. So, tell me now, Ellie—is there anything he’s going to bring against you that we should be prepared for?”
Ellie felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She had told Brie the entire story, including her work as a stripper, all in confidence. “I don’t think so.”
Brie took a breath. “Just lay it on me. Have you been dancing for extra money? Writing bad checks? Missing deadlines to return the kids? Using drugs or getting drunk? Anything you can think of?”
Ellie swallowed. Her voice was very small when she said, “No, nothing.”
“Somehow I think there’s something. Listen, we have confidentiality, just don’t let me be surprised. It’s critical that I be prepared for the absolute worst possibility.”
She gulped. “The pastor. We have kind of a…thing. I asked him to please not let it show in public. I don’t want people thinking I tricked him. And I know some people would think that—but I didn’t make the first move. Honest.”
“A thing?”
“A very, very new thing. Last night I was upset about the phone call and went to him. He walked me home.” She looked away. “He stayed.”
“Oh. Well, that’s interesting.” One corner of Brie’s lips turned up with the temptation to smile.
“It’s been heading there, I let Noah kiss me.”
A slow smile grew on Brie’s face. “Is that it?”
“It was a very good kiss. A couple of them, in fact. Believe me, after all I’ve been through with men, I sure wasn’t about to get involved with another one, but I admit it—I wasn’t exactly put off. And then…Well, I just couldn’t help it. He’s so wonderful.”
Brie laughed. “Ellie, adult relationships are not against the law. They’re not considered indecent. You’ve been divorced for almost a year and unless you’re rolling around in bed under the same roof with your children, where they could see things they’re too young to see, you’re within your rights to date. You’re single, you’re young and healthy, and it’s not a factor in custody agreements. And if you had to pick someone, gee, a lily-white pastor isn’t a bad choice. Just the same, take no chances with that—don’t find yourself in a romantic situation with anyone while the children are present. We don’t want any unnecessary trouble.”
“Lawyers have said the judge should never have taken them away from me because of my dancing, since it was legal. I wasn’t abusive, neglectful or doing icky things in front of them. The judge should have at least warned me, had me investigated to see if I was a bad mother, not made his decision like that, so fast.”
“But that ship has sailed,” Brie said. “We could appeal his decision, and before it got to the court of appeals, not only would the period of your ex-husband’s temporary custody be long past, your kids would be in junior high. No, the way to go is to do everything his way, and promptly. It often means kissing some unworthy butt, licking dirty shoes, but the goal is reversing the custody order based on this new information. Or, failing that, getting them out of his house.”
“Even though the judge is wrong?” Ellie asked.
“He’s wrong, but he’s safe. You’re not. He could retire before you get an appeal. Trust me, Ellie—we just want this to go away. If the motion is denied, the best thing to do is serve the time, circle the wagons, load court up with solid citizens who can vouch for you and get this over with. Believe me, I know this judge. He goes his own way. We just say, ‘Yes, sir, very happy to please you, sir.’”