Red Hot Obsessions (191 page)

Stoppard braced his arms on the pulpit and pushed until his arms shook. Sweat beaded his nose and forehead.

Rae clutched her hands together. Just like always, she tried to open herself up to the love of Jesus and the fellowship of the congregation. All she could think about was Wulf’s leg pressing her thigh, his body next to hers, and that delicious smell that occasionally wafted from his clean, white shirt.

Minister Stoppard raised his head, and his crazed, black eyes filled Rae with dread.

Stoppard said, “Sister Enid Harding deserves to burn in Hell.”

Rae looked down at her hands in her lap. Her knuckles knotted together hard on her dark calico skirt. She knew where the sermon was going—that we were all sinners and only redeemed by Divine Grace and never by good works—but it seemed wrong to say that about the woman who, before dementia had taken her, had run the poor barrel and ferried everything that she could spare or beg down to the truly destitute people in Mexico. Enid’s life these last few years would have been more comfortable if she hadn’t tithed twenty percent of her Social Security income to this church and given more than that to the poor. She hand-knitted baby blankets that she took down to Mexico and smuggled starving kittens the other way across the Border. Everyone had at least one of Enid’s undocumented cats.

Rae stole a glance at Wulf. He had jinked up one eyebrow but hadn’t otherwise moved. She turned back to the sermon.

Stoppard railed for forty long minutes on Aunt Enid’s shortcomings: her sharp tongue, the paltry sums she contributed to the church and charity, her constant foisting of mangy cats on everyone, and anything else that he could make sound sordid.

Sweat dripped from Stoppard’s nose and flew from his black hair.

Wulf shouldn’t have seen this harsh side of Rae’s family.

From the back, someone shouted “Amen!”

From the front pew, Enid’s elderly son Amos sniffled and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.

After fifteen more minutes of Stoppard railing on Aunt Enid, if Rae hadn’t known better, she would have agreed with him that Aunt Enid was a miserable excuse for a human being and deserved to rot in Hell.

But Rae did know better.

Sweat trickled through Rae’s hair. Her fingers cramped around each other, and her heart constricted with anger.

Minister Stoppard said, “And yet, as sinful and black-hearted as Enid was, as much as she was caught up in worldly things, we are all sinners just as terrible as she was.”

He began to harangue the congregation for their sins: sins of deeds, sins of thought, sins of omission, and sins of spirit.

“And there are those among us,” Stoppard shouted, “those among us who go out into the world and acquire worldly things, to shovel offal into their minds so that they will not be as little children who come to Jesus as pure and innocent as a white sheep!”

The congregation rumbled around Rae, shifting in their hard pews. Overhead fans stirred the stifling air.

“And the worst of it is that some of these gatherers of excrement are the women among us, the women who are charged with raising up the next generation in fear of Lord!”

This was how it started when they had cast out Rae’s friend Guadeloupe last year after she got pregnant out of wedlock. No one talked to her now. None of the other churches would have her. Loupe had finally moved away to have her baby and live apart.

Beside her, Wulf leaned toward her, pressing his arm against hers, as near to a touch of support as could be offered in this church.

Stoppard thundered, “Women going out into the world! Women subjecting themselves to the advances of predatory males who would take their innocence and corrupt them!”

Rae heard a commotion behind her.

She turned to glance back there, despite her bonnet’s brim poking her cheek.

Aunt TracyJo had stood up, apparently about to witness. Her hand waved in the air like a palm frond in the breeze.

Beside her, Rae’s cousin Hester held her mother’s other arm and tried to drag her down, obviously pleading. Hester’s bonnet had slipped back and was in danger of falling off her tight bun.

Aunt TracyJo announced, “Reagan Stone is working in a tavern! She has been serving alcohol and associating with drunkards and persons of low morals!”

Gasps whooshed through the congregation.

Hester said, “Momma, no!”

Oh, no.
Rae shouldn’t have told Hester anything at all. Rae snatched up her purse from the floor to hold it in front of herself, as if that would ward off what her aunt accused her of.

Wulf frowned and glanced at Rae’s family, but they didn’t budge. Rae’s mother didn’t even turn her bonneted head to look at her.

“And that
man
with her!” Aunt TracyJo shrieked and pointed to Wulf. “That man is a
barkeeper!
He works at the same speakeasy as that tramp, and he serves the liquor to the predatory males who come to ogle the young women!”

Rae’s family stirred. Their necks loosened, and their heads bobbed as they decided whether to turn toward Rae or toward the accusing congregation.

Confusion shaped her brothers’ faces.

When Rae’s eyes met her mother’s, tears overflowed her mother’s eyes, and she buried her face in her hands.

Fury and hot blood filled her father’s face, and when his glance met Rae’s, anger twisted his mouth.

Beside her, Wulf stretched his leg to pull his cell phone from his pants pocket. His thumbs swiped the screen as he texted.

Aunt TracyJo screeched, “And she’s working there for money for college, which is all just a Godless way to justify sin!”

They were going to cast her out. When Guadeloupe had been disfellowshipped, Stoppard had started with Hell and moved on to women’s responsibilities with increasing venom, and then the congregation had joined in, condemning her. Rae kept her eyes down on her hands twisting in her lap.

Panic clamped her stomach. If Rae were disfellowshipped, no one in her family would talk to Rae for fear of being cast out, too. Not her brothers. Not even her mother.

Rae stood and called out, “It’s not true!”

Behind Aunt TracyJo and Hester, in the back row, Daniel flopped and grunted. His eyes rolled up, and his body spasmed off the pew. Alana tried to shush him, but he was locked in his autistic world, suffering.

Rae spun back around, and her mouth set a grim line. She wasn’t going to drop out of college,
damn it.

A man’s voice shouted, “She’s not a waitress!”

Rae spun.

Jim Bob Mulligan stood among the crowded pews and pointed over all the aghast faces at her. His triumphant face was crimson with shouting. “It’s worse! She’s not working in a bar! She’s a whore!”

Rae glanced at Wulf. He was holding a different cell phone than his usual one and thumb-tapping the screen. Three texts were typed in the bold font that meant they were just-sent, all to different phone numbers.

Jim Bob’s phone chirped, but he ignored it. “Rae Stone is a prostitute! That’s how she’s getting the money for that fancy college! She’s an abomination to this church and her family!”

A phone fweeped near the front of the church.

Jim Bob yelled, “Shun her! Shun the whore!”

At the front of the church, Mayor Harding stood up like a flagstick jutting out of a crowd. He stuck out his long, skinny arm. “You shut your mouth, Jim Bob!”

Everyone gasped and turned back to the front to look at the mayor. Around the edges of the church, some people stood for a better view of the chaos.

Mayor Harding said to Mulligan, “You are a lying sack of bull hockey and deserve no less, yourself!”

Minister Stoppard, up front, waved his hands, trying to restore order. “Brothers and sisters!”

More people stood, and the muttering became shouting. People moved into the aisles, blocking any way for Rae to leave. She held her purse and her arms across her chest.

Mulligan shouted, “She’s a whore!
Shun the whore!”

Mayor Harding yelled, “Mulligan, I will not do business with you! Stop this now! Tell them, Brother Horace, how we saw Rae waitressing at the pancake house.”

Angry people came to their feet. Rae heard conflicting shouts of “Stop this!” and “Shut up!” and “Expel her!” and
“Whore!”

They would believe the worst accusations. They always did. Her legs trembled.

Horace stood on shaky legs and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Yes. We had breakfast at the pancake house near the university and gave Reagan Stone a nice tip.”

Near the back, Craigh’s dad stood up. His knuckles were white where he clenched his cell phone. “They are right. She works at a pancake house. I saw her last week when I was up in the city. She spilled coffee on me.”

Wulf was still texting, and Rae could almost see the lines of force that he wove even through her congregation, wielding Mayor Harding and Craigh’s father as if they were weapons.

Mayor Harding texted something on his phone. Another phone in the back of the church played
Hallelujah,
and one on the side barked like a dog.

If her family stood and defended her, they might tip the balance, but they just muttered among themselves. Zeke bounced, almost standing, but Rae’s father reached behind her mother and pressed his shoulder down.

Jim Bob yelled over the commotion, “She is a
whore!
The Whore of
Babylon!
The whore of The Devilhouse! And that man Dom with her is
the Devil himself!”

Mayor Harding yelled at Jim Bob, “You are only accusing her to distract us from your
perversions
and business with
drug dealers!
I cut you off because I will not do business with
criminals!”

Wulf stood.

Rae looked through the crowd.

The congregation and her family were all looking between Mayor Harding and Jim Bob, but all the security guys had their eyes trained on Wulf.

She looked up at Wulf just in time to see him nod to them.

The five other black-suited men broke into the aisles, clearing the way. Beside her, Dieter took her arm and propelled her through the men. Wulf held her other elbow as they jogged through the space.

They crashed through the door at a sprint. Sunlight lanced straight across the desert and blinded her. Her eyes teared.

In the parking lot, Rae wrenched herself away from them all and ran to her father’s truck. She snatched the keys from her purse and clambered in. Wulf stood with the other men and, with a hand gesture, sent them running to the SUVs.

She didn’t blame Wulf at all. He had only tried to help her.

She didn’t blame her family. They had done exactly this type of thing in the past and she knew what they would do if they ever found out.

Rae had made every wrong decision that led to this day of her own free will.

She
chose
to work at The Devilhouse to stay in college.

She
chose
to come home for the Celebration of Life even though Jim Bob would be there. She could have made some lame excuse, even though everyone would have called and pressured her to go.

Everything was her
choice
, and she had tried to gobble up all those worldly pleasures in an attack of gluttony—to have more money than she should
and
stay in college
and
open her clinic
and
no one would find out
and
no one would judge,—instead of doing the
right
thing, which would have been to
go home
and figure out how to do it
right
.

She needed hot, dry desert air to clear her head so she could figure out what to do.

Wulf stood in the parking lot for a moment, shining in the gold sunlight, as Rae cranked the truck’s engine. The truck belched black, oily exhaust that streamed in the open window and burned Rae’s throat.

The congregation would believe all those shameful accusations and make up other hateful stuff besides, and they would formally strike her name from the book and disfellowship her, leaving her entirely alone.

She had lost her family. They would go along with the disfellowshipping or be cast out, too. If no one from the church would do business with them, they would lose the ranch. She didn’t want them destitute, too.

Wulf was leaving the country to get away from her, which was the deepest cut of all.

The dirt parking lot stretched out in front of her, leading to the small road that ran out of town.

Rae spun the steering wheel, jammed the truck in gear, and sped out to the road.

~~~~~~~

*

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Billionaires in Disguise: Rae
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Author Page for Blair Babylon

Blair Babylon is the nom de plume of an award-winning author who regularly publishes literary and suspense fiction. Because professional reviews of her other fiction usually included the caveat that there was too much deviant sex, she decided to abandon all literary pretensions, let her freak flag fly, and write hot, sexy, erotic romance.