“I’ll do my best,” she said in a huff. “But this is what I have, and there’s not much I can do about that. Especially on what you’re paying me.”
“Just think ‘baggy,’” he advised.
“We’re going to have a problem there,” she said. “I don’t buy my clothes baggy. Or ugly. Or dumpy. And you can bet your sweet a…butt I left behind the clothes Arnie thought I should wear.” She just shook her head in disgust. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You know how many guys would rather have something nice to look at than a girl in a flour sack? Guess you didn’t get to Count Your Blessings 101.” She cocked her head and lifted her eyebrows.
“I’m counting,” he said. But his eyes bore down on hers seriously. He was not giving an inch. “Just an ounce of discretion. Do what you can.”
She took a deep breath. “Let’s just get to work. Tomorrow I’ll look as awful as possible. How’s that?”
“Perfect. Why don’t you get started by sweeping up in the kitchen. It’s large enough for a dozen people to work in there together—it’s a big room. The appliances are all gone, but it’s going to have to be cleaned up before I can put down new flooring and paint. It’s accumulated a good ten years of dirt. Some of my household things are being delivered in a few weeks. After I get the walls patched, textured and painted, and put down flooring over the concrete, I can store my shipment and other things down here while we work on the upstairs.”
“Sure, fine. Are there supplies somewhere?”
“Already in the kitchen.”
“I’m on it, Rev,” she said with a salute, turning on her heel to march off toward the kitchen, treating him to a little skip and fanny wiggle on her way.
Noah grimaced. He looked down at Lucy, who lifted her head and wagged her tail—maybe in sympathy, so he gave her a pat on the head. That went well, he thought. He’d offended Ellie and judged her all at the same time. He already knew she was forced to pinch pennies and couldn’t buy new clothes for a job of cleaning and painting. Besides, the absolute truth was, she was a pleasure to look at. And frankly, you could see more skin and curves on prime-time TV. So what was he afraid of? That stodgy church ladies were going to get uptight, seeing her around town, knowing she was helping him work on the church?
The girl’s having a hard enough time, going up against a judge who is, himself, a patron of the very strip joint he condemns her for working in. She was taking a low-paying church job just to gain enough credibility to get her kids back—credibility she shouldn’t need. Any woman her age willing to work more than one job to afford the most rudimentary stuff of life, having never been separated from her children before except to work, should be plenty convincing.
For a second he wondered if he’d been sucked in by her lost soul. “Pah,” he scoffed aloud. Ellie didn’t seem at all lost. She was a fighter, and that impressed him. He barely knew her and he already admired her. Plus, it was good that she was sassy; she shouldn’t let anyone tell her what to wear.
He was right about one thing, however. She was distracting, even when she wasn’t in the same room. It wasn’t just the visible edges of her bra. Her thick, curly hair, pulled up and cascading down, her creamy skin, sultry, deep brown eyes, full lips, teasing smile, long legs, narrow waist, perfect hips and nice round booty—all that added up to an appearance that couldn’t help but bring sex to mind. And it reminded Noah that he’d been on a serious sex diet for the past few years. Not exactly a starvation diet, but still…
He climbed back up on his ladder and continued to patch the walls while Ellie worked in the kitchen. And while he worked he thought a lot about what had brought him here to this run-down church in Virgin River.
He thought back to something his mom used to ask him from time to time. “What are your goals, Noah?” she had asked.
“I will never be a minister, Mom. Never.”
After a long period of silence, she said, “I’m relieved. I think your father and I have thoroughly ruined you for that.”
As he continued to repair and patch the walls, Noah smiled at the irony—he was embarking on a career he never thought he would have. It was a shame that his mom and Merry weren’t here to see this. They had always supported him and he knew the irony of his current situation would not have been lost on them, either.
Even though it had been a few years since her death, Noah still missed Merry sometimes. Their couple of years together had been magic. She had been such a free spirit; she made him laugh, brought him wisdom and optimism. She was edgy and fun—she took chances and encouraged him to do the same. Merry was a committed soul who cared deeply and loyally about her “causes,” as he called them, and all the people in her life. After she was gone he made a point of remaining in touch with her family. Her parents and siblings were a great support to him even as they contended with their own grief.
The whole idea of considering going back to the seminary came from George, who described it as a combination of dredging the soul for the innermost spirituality, personal faith, teaching, counseling, community and theater. Only George could come up with a combination like that. “You’ve had those leanings anyway,” George had said. “Just check it out.”
“But I will never preach,” Noah said.
“Not that many ordained ministers do,” George said with a shrug. “They’re therapists, minister to sick and needy folk, teach—there are more options than I can list. But along the way you might find out a thing or two about yourself. No harm there.”
In short, Noah was convinced. During his studies, he found out he was meant to try to hold a group of believers together in faith, to lend a hand, to communicate, to educate, to bring hope. To be a friend. There was only one thing that was required of him that he could not do—and that was to forgive his father.
Just last year his mother passed. She had slipped away in the night, having had a stroke at the age of seventy. Noah attended the funeral, even though he hated the idea of seeing his father. But it was the only time in Noah’s life he could remember having the last word with his dad.
Jasper said to him, within the hearing of many others, “Do you see what leaving the family and the faith did? It killed your mother.”
Without missing a beat, Noah replied, “You should be aware that Mother and I have been in touch ever since I left home. She visited twice even though I wouldn’t come back. She was always there for me and we loved one another profoundly. The truth is, I think staying with you was what killed her.”
The shock on his father’s face was priceless; and the insult bit Jasper deep. It had obviously never occurred to Jasper that his wife would keep secrets from him. Maybe it was just that he paid so little attention to her, he was unaware that she kept a close relationship with her son. The reading of the will hammered Jasper with a few more home truths—Inez Kincaid had brought a trust fund to her marriage to a poor preacher who was ten years her junior. Her personal wealth had helped Jasper build a big following, televise his services, evangelize and collect members. She willed half of the fund to Noah. Jasper had expected to receive all of it.
And now Noah was going to run through a great deal of his inheritance fixing up this old church.
He looked in the direction of the kitchen. Another free spirit, he admitted to himself. In a completely different form.
There was a crash, a splash, and Ellie said, “Fuck.”
Lucy came to her feet and Noah looked up. “Very funny,” he said to God. “That kind of thing isn’t going to go over well.” Then he walked to the kitchen, Lucy beside him.
He stood in the doorway and watched as Ellie used the rag mop to try to capture the flood that resulted from a tipped bucket. But that wasn’t where his focus was—he frowned and looked at his watch. The morning had passed without him even realizing it. He’d been completely lost in thought. And while he’d been thinking of his past and patching wall cracks, Ellie had been working like a demon.
The huge, restaurant-size kitchen almost glowed. The floor had been swept, mopped, and was being mopped again. She’d done some things that had made an enormous difference—the high windows were cleaned and spotless, the frames scrubbed of dust, spiderwebs and dirt. The countertops were scoured and disinfected. The cupboards were washed out with their doors standing open. The few remaining kitchenware items that had been abandoned were washed and drying in a dish drain she’d found; all four deep sinks were scrubbed clean, the faucets shining. The room didn’t look like new, but it was clean and fresh and ready for painting and flooring.
She squeezed her mop, straightened and wiped a hand across her forehead, pushing up a curl that just bounced back to hang over one eye. She blew out of her lower lip to cool her face, making that curl flutter in her breath. “Let me guess,” she said. “You heard me say fuck. Sorry. I’ll try not to say it. But I bet if you’d dumped a big pail of nasty mop water on your clean floor, you would have said fuck, too.”
He laughed and just shook his head. “Maybe. It looks good in here, Ellie. Who knew you could do something like this with long, blue, sparkly fingernails.”
“I figured you meant for me to clean it, so I cleaned it.”
“It’s fantastic. I bet you’re hungry. It’s after one.”
She got a very strange look on her face, as though a thought just came to mind or she’d forgotten something. Then she just continued mopping. “Nah, I don’t think I could eat. I really pigged out on pizza last night and I’m still stuffed.”
“I’m going next door for a sandwich. Come with me.”
“Nah, go on. I’ll just finish up here. If I do a good job, maybe you’ll let me out of here early or something. I have to get looking for a new place to live.”
“You can leave whenever you’ve had enough—you’ve done an incredible job. I’ve been chipping away at the dirt in this place for weeks and it looks like you conquered it in no time at all.”
She straightened again. She pushed that curl back. Her neck and chest were damp with perspiration, which made her look even sexier. She smiled almost shyly. “I cleaned office buildings and sometimes houses for cash—under the table. One of my many second jobs. I don’t think it was listed on that sheet of jobs.”
“Résumé,” he corrected, then damned himself for being so uppity. Why couldn’t he just accept her the way she was?
“Résumé,” she agreed. “I got some great tips from the girls who had more experience than me. Clean is good. Fast and clean makes more money.”
He laughed with genuine pleasure. “You’ve been in the trenches,” he said with appreciation. Admiration. “Come on—let me buy you a sandwich. If you’re not real hungry, Preacher will make you half, but it’s your first day working for me. My treat—come on.”
For someone who had stuffed herself on pizza the night before, Ellie seemed to have no trouble packing away a very large chicken-salad sandwich and some of Preacher’s potato salad. Noah doubted the pizza story. He picked up their plates and carried them to the bar, and when he returned he said, “Jack’s bringing chocolate cake.”
Her hands were on her flat belly. “Oh, man, I couldn’t…”
“Just a bite or two,” he said. “So—you said you were raised on hymns. Tell me about that. I mean, if you want to.”
“Sure, I’ll tell you. I grew up with my gramma. What a peach—you’d have liked her. My mother wasn’t…isn’t…very stable. When I was born, she was clueless, so my gramma took over and my mother left and I stayed. When I was seven, Gram started teaching me to play the piano. It was a real old piano and about the only thing worth a dime in the house, but we had a neighbor guy who kept it tuned. Gramma hummed gospel tunes all day long and she loved it if I could figure out one of those old-time hymns. ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’ ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness…’ ’Course, I would have rather played Elton John, John Lennon or Billy Joel, but for her I tried.”
“Where was your mother?” he asked just as the cake arrived.
“Jumping from man to man,” she said, lifting her fork.
“Were there more children?”
“No.” She laughed. “She figured out that much. When I got pregnant in high school, my gramma must have been scared to death that I was just following in her footsteps. I wasn’t really, but it must have looked like I was.”
“Well,” he said patiently, “what were you doing?”
She sighed. She shook her head. “Trying,” she finally said. “Trying my hardest. I got pregnant at sixteen. I was three months pregnant with Danielle and trying to throw together a fast, cheap wedding to my nineteen-year-old boyfriend when he was killed. It wasn’t his fault, either. His family sued the driver of the car that killed him, and they won. They were supposed to set something aside for Danielle, but I guess it slipped their minds.” That last was delivered with a dubious look on her face. “By the time she was three, I’d gotten my GED and had finally stopped feeling sorry for myself long enough to meet someone I liked—a guy who made nighttime bread deliveries to the convenience store when I worked there. Like some kind of curse, I was three months pregnant when he pulled that stupid robbery stunt.”
Noah chewed on the cake and this history for a second. He had a million questions, but the one that popped out was, “You didn’t have any intuition about him, that he was capable of a felony?”
“Ha, he wasn’t. He was an idiot. He was out with his friends, drinking. Twenty-two, drunk, and he thought he was funny—putting his lighter that looked exactly like a revolver—into the hardware-store owner’s chest and saying, ‘Hand over the money.’ The store owner was going to drop off his deposit for the night when my dipshit boyfriend decided to be cute. Didn’t quite work out for him, though. I guess the judge had no sense of humor. He was convicted. Did time.”
“Did?”
“He’s either out by now or due to get out.”
“Can’t he help you with his son? With the kids?” Noah asked.
“Oh, please. No, he can’t. And besides, I’m not going back that way. In fact, I’m not going back. Period.”
He smiled at her. “Have you always been this stubborn? This strong willed?”
“Uh-huh. For all the good it’s done me.”
“So—where did the husband come in? If that’s not too personal?”
“Nothing personal about it, Rev. I was a working mom with two little kids and two jobs. He was new in the area and came into the real estate office, looking for something to rent or buy. I was the office manager. Our agents didn’t find him anything, but he kept coming back, was real nice, real friendly. I thought he was a stand-up guy. Trevor was only two, my gramma had died a year before, and I was having a real hard time holding everything together. I didn’t rush into anything—I made him act nice for six months. I didn’t have much time to date, but I never had a single date alone with him—if he asked me out for dinner, I told him the kids went where I went, and that wasn’t a problem for him. He did a lot of talking about wanting to be a family man and just hadn’t found the right woman yet. I took that as a good sign.” For a moment she looked away and couldn’t connect eyes with Noah. “I knew I didn’t love him, but I was so tired,” she said softly. “So scared I wouldn’t be able to take care of my kids with my gramma gone. My kids saw more of the babysitter than they saw of me.”
She looked back at Noah and said, “I married him and quit my job because he wanted to take care of us. It didn’t take two days before I knew I’d made a big mistake. He insisted I dress real dowdy and awful. He had rules. He needed to be right about everything. Ridiculous demands. He started trying to get me to give up my independence on the first day! He wanted me to sell my car, and he took his computer to work, out of my reach. He doled out money for food…It was terrible. And I wouldn’t play along, which made him so frustrated and angry. I mean, I knew in two days it was a bad deal, but I gave it almost three months. Then I packed up our stuff while he was at work, picked up Danielle from his private school, and we were history. I went back to an old boss, the lawyer, to draft a divorce petition. That gave poor old Arnie the impression I had a rich, classy lawyer. I didn’t ask for anything, so he couldn’t contest it. I just wanted out.”
“He didn’t fight it, then,” Noah said.
“Not legally. But he threatened me. He said if I went through with it, he’d be my worst nightmare. We had been divorced for about nine months when he made a case for custody. There’s where I wasn’t too smart—I couldn’t see how he had a leg to stand on. He wasn’t their father, we’d lived with him less than three months, and I didn’t think I needed any help keeping my own kids. And, like I said before, I’d never done better for myself workwise. I had a good job, made good money, was taking good care of my kids. That club is totally legal. Maybe it’s not tasteful, but it’s legal. Most of the women dancing in there are single moms. That judge—he had it out for me. Maybe I should’ve let him buy me dinner.”
Noah’s eyes narrowed and he glowered. “He didn’t want dinner.”
“Yeah, that’s why I said no,” she said.
“You were blindsided,” he said.
“Yeah. There’s so much I don’t know. I should have called my old boss again. I did call him afterward. What a nice guy. He said there wasn’t much he could do for me, but gave me the name of a friend of his who worked for a legal-defense office that did charity work. He called them for me, and that brings us to today. Hey,” she said, “this is still part of the silence pact, right?”
“Absolutely, Ellie. I don’t gossip.”
“Because I’m not ashamed of anything, but I’m not stupid. All the stuff I’ve screwed up? I’m bound to be judged pretty hard by people who don’t know me. But it’s not even that—it’s the kids. I don’t want them judged because I—”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Our conversations are private.” He concentrated for a minute on the chocolate cake, which didn’t get as much appreciation as it deserved.
Noah had a lot of experience counseling people who were down on their luck, many of them actually in need of food and shelter. He’d seen worse than what Ellie was going through, but just the same he was mighty impressed by her toughness, her fearlessness. She wasn’t dependent on him for anything. All she needed was a job chit to take back to that crooked judge in eighty-one days, collect her kids and get on with her life. Meantime, he’d help her any way he could. He was glad he’d taken a chance on her.
“I’m not embarrassed I had that job, you know,” she said, lifting a bite of cake to her mouth. He lifted his eyes to hers. “The owner of the club—he’s a great guy who liked to take good care of his girls. And the funny thing was, the ones who didn’t mind getting right down to cracks and nipples weren’t always the most popular ones….”
One end of Noah’s mouth lifted in a half smile. Ellie laughed.
“I guess I’m a little too straightforward for you, huh?” she asked. “Thing is, all I had to do was wiggle around with those pom-poms or the white nurse’s hose held up with a garter belt and I did just fine. I think Madonna wore less on stage half the time than I did in that club. The people were usually nice, the customers didn’t give us any trouble. ’Course, we had a plus-size bouncer, just in case. It was just work. It paid the bills. It’s not something I wanted to do forever. I was always on the lookout for something better.”
“You shouldn’t have lost your kids over that job,” he said. “Worst case, they should have been left with you with visits from Child Welfare. They would have seen in no time that the job wasn’t damaging to the children. That was crap, what happened to you.”
She just looked at him for a long moment. Then very quietly she said, “Thanks. I guess coming from you, that’s saying something.”
“Coming from me?” he said, lifting one dark brow.
“You being a minister, and everything. I know you don’t approve of that kind of place—or of the women in it.”
He gave a shrug. “Ellie, I don’t have an opinion about your last job. There’s plenty about it to admire,” he said.
“Like?”
“Like a mother who would do just about anything to take care of her kids.”
“Well, be real clear about that, Rev. If I hadn’t lucked into that job, I would have done just about anything. When it comes to the kids, I’m all out of false pride.”
Soon, he thought, I’m going to see her kids. And I bet I see something remarkable.
“Do you ever want kids?” she asked.
“I did,” he said quietly. A bunch of them, if possible. And so did Merry—she wanted them right away. “I think this little town church is going to be my kid for a while.”
“Sometimes I think the deal I got with Arnie was just what I deserved. I married him because I thought he was safe for me and the kids. He seemed all right, he made a decent living, he was okay that I had children while a lot of guys run for their lives when they find out you come with kids. I wasn’t attracted to him, I wasn’t in love with him. So maybe that’s what I deserved, huh?”
Noah didn’t have to consider it. “Never think that,” he said. “No one deserves cruelty of any kind. Not on their worst day.”
Just then, the door opened and Mel came into the bar. She went first to Jack, lifting herself up to lean over the bar and give him a kiss. Then she turned and looked at Noah and Ellie. “Mel,” Noah called. “Got a minute?”
She walked over to their table. “Mel Sheridan, this is Ellie Baldwin. She’s helping out in the church for a while.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mel said, putting out her hand. “Jack said there was someone new in town. How’s it going over there?”
“It’s my first day, so it’s looking pretty ugly,” Ellie said honestly.
“Well, it’s not my first day, but Ellie got more done this morning than I’ve managed in the last week. She’s a whirlwind.”
“Good for you. Very cute top, by the way.”
Ellie looked down, then lifted an eyebrow toward Noah before she said, “Thanks. Target. Under twenty bucks.”
“Really? I need to get over there one of these days. They usually have good buys. So, Ellie—where do you live?”
“I’m in Eureka now, but I have to find something closer—I can’t afford the gas. Would you happen to know of anything? Nearby?”
Mel pulled up a chair. “I can sure ask around. What are you looking for?”
“My kids are with my ex-husband right now, so all I need is a bed and a roof. Really, one room would do it for me. Something cheap, but not scary. His Holiness here doesn’t exactly pay a lot.”
Mel laughed. “I know one thing that qualifies as cheap and real nice, but I think it might flunk the scary test. Right at the end of the block, nicest house down there, Jo Ellen and Nick Fitch have a great one-room efficiency over the garage. I don’t think they’ve rented it out in a long time. Jo Ellen’s a doll, a very nice lady. But she’s married to a groper.”
“Is that so? How serious a groper?” Ellie asked.
“The first time I met him, he treated me to a major butt grope while I had my back turned.”
Hearing this exchange, Jack put a cup of coffee in front of his wife and used the pot to refill Ellie’s and Noah’s cups. “Mel drop-kicked him,” Jack inserted. “It was a beautiful sight. I think that’s when I really fell in love with her.”
Ellie grinned widely. “What did you do to him?”
“I got lucky, that’s all. I took a little self-defense course in college, I didn’t think I even remembered any of it. But he snuck up on me and I just reacted. I threw him an elbow in the gut and then under the chin. One little swipe behind his heels and he was flat on his ass. Sorry, Noah—I meant to say butt. Butt’s okay, right?”
Noah looked up at Jack. “The women in this place are rougher on the language than the men.”
“Tell me about it,” Jack said. “We now have a swear jar at home. David’s college education will be paid for and we’ll have a trip to Bermuda by the end of the year.”
“I might have to put a swear jar in the church,” Noah said.
“I could teach you that move,” Mel said to Ellie, taking a sip from her cup.
“Thanks. I have some moves of my own, too. So, this guy—is he dangerous? Or just frisky?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t think he’s dangerous, but I couldn’t guarantee it,” Mel answered. “I’d hate myself forever if you came to any harm from him. But, as the gossip goes, he’s been slapped down by several women in this town. Too bad Jo Ellen hasn’t hit him over the head with a big club. I can’t believe she puts up with that behavior. Really, she’s such a nice person.”