“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.
Thirteen
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.
