Maxence pulled on his suit jacket, ever careful about first impressions, and brushed the front of it for travel dust before he opened the door to the front garden.
Two women stood in the early evening’s fading sunlight.
One was Sister Mariam, a religious sister whom he’d met on a previous mission in India where they had worked together on girls’ education in Kerala. She was a lovely young woman, kind and funny. She had excellent taste in tea shops.
The other woman was facing away from him, looking over the careful landscaping in front of the rectory, and she was a curvy, feminine figure. Her short blond hair swirled around her head in the evening’s cool breeze.
Before she turned, he knew she was Dree Clark, the sweet and lovely woman whom he’d left in Paris in a bed rumpled by their lovemaking just the previous morning.
As she turned, golden sunlight glowed on her creamy skin, and her wary glance told him that she was just as surprised to see him as he was that she was there.
Sister Mariam introduced them, “Andrea Catherine, may I present Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi. Father Maxence, this is Miss Andrea Catherine Clark, our new nurse practitioner for the premature infant project.”
Dree’s expression changed from wide-eyed wariness to the faint gasp of a gut-punch and downward fall of her eyes and mouth, outward signs that she recognized the depth of his deception. She asked, “Augustine?”
Yes, he was Augustine, praying to God to not yet grant him sobriety and chastity but instead to allow him to resume his life of hedonism and the indulgence of everything he wanted, which at the moment was her, her, her.
Maxence reached his hand forward, palm up, beckoning, beckoning her.
Dree didn’t touch him, and she didn’t smile.
He should welcome her off-handedly, and most of all, he should not reveal to Sister Mariam that they were far more than casually acquainted.
And yet he couldn’t.
His intensity sharpened.
The sight of this beautiful woman shattered the quiet in his soul that came from prayer.
Appetites raged in him: hunger for her skin, her scent, her touch, and the sweetness of her taste in his mouth.
He was a dark thunderstorm, and his desires formed words. “Dree, chérie.”
Chapter Three
Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi
Dree
Dree sat on the sumptuous sofa in the rectory’s living room, her ankles crossed, her knees together, and her hands clenched in her lap. “This is not my fault.”
She wasn’t sure that they should have told Sister Mariam that it was okay to go back to her convent quite so quickly. Having some female moral support and a chaperone would have been very welcome just then, especially when she was confronted with her one-night stand who turned into a half-week stand, and who turned out to be a freaking Catholic priest.
Or, you know, close.
He was a deacon, which meant he had been ordained and had taken the first sacrament of Holy Orders, the Roman Catholic rite that consecrates someone as a priest or a deacon.
He might as well be a priest. Unmarried deacons were supposed to be celibate, too.
Augustine—who Sister Mariam had called Deacon Father Maxence—stood by the fireplace and rested his elbow on the high mantle. He had combed through his thick black hair with his fingers, leaving it curling around his face, and was still hanging onto his hair on the back of his head like he thought the top of his skull was going to blow off.
Hers might.
The top of her head might actually hit the ceiling if somebody didn’t tell her what was going on immediately.
The man she’d formerly known as Augustine said, “I do not believe this is your fault. Indeed, I do not think anyone is at fault. I should thank you for volunteering to go on a rigorous mission into the interior of Nepal. That was the first thing I had planned to say, but I don’t understand how you came to be here.”
Dree was still holding her hands clasped in a tight knot on her legs. Adrenaline coursed through her body, screaming at her to fight, flee, or freeze. Freezing seemed to be her best option right now, and yet she had to talk to the man. She would rather blend into the soft, royal blue velvet under her legs and hide.
Her throat was nearly too tight for words. She forced out, “It’s not safe for me to go back to Phoenix. I told you everything that happened with my ex, Francis. There is some weird stuff going on there with the police and, I think, other drug dealers. So, I called up Sister Annunciata, the principal of my Catholic high school that I went to in New Mexico, and she called up a friend of hers, Father Thomas—”
“Father Thomas Aquinas from Immaculate Conception in Phoenix,” he said with her, in unison. “The Catholic Mafia strikes again.” Augustine shook his head.
Not Augustine, Maxence.
And yet, he was still the astonishingly tall, ripped, beautiful specimen of a man Dree had met in Paris.
But, he was named Maxence. She had to remember that.
Deacon Father Maxence.
The white tab of the Roman collar on his shirt shone in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, accusing her.
He had not been wearing that in Paris, and he should have been.
“Yeah,” she said. “Father Thomas said he could get me on a plane for somewhere far away from the southwestern US without any questions asked. So, here I am, far away from the southwestern US.”
Augustine nodded. “Nepal is very far away from the southwestern US.”
“Didn’t he or somebody tell you I was coming? Did you know?”
“The Catholic Charities division managing the project emailed me yesterday that a person named ‘Andrea Clark’ had been assigned to us.”
He was pronouncing it wrong, Ahn-DRAY-ah.
She corrected him, “Andrea.” ANN-dree-uh.
“I thought it was amusing because you had mentioned that Clark was a very common name,” he said, “that there was a university and shoes and department store, and other things also named Clark. So, I thought that the person coming must be yet another Clark. It did cross my mind that they might be a cousin or distant relative of yours, but I assumed the person would be male.”
“I can’t believe you thought I was a guy.”
He frowned. “Well, there’s the name, Andrea.”
“There you go again, mispronouncing it. I thought it was weird the way you said it when we were in Paris when you were talking about your cousin. I’ve never heard anybody pronounce it that way, Ahn-DRAY-ah. Who even says that?”
He looked up at her, his eyebrows raised in exasperation. “That’s how you pronounce Andrea. I’ve never heard anyone say it the way that you do, ANN-Dree-uh. Andrea is a boy’s name.”
“Andrea is a girl’s name. It’s always been a girl’s name. It’s how you get Ann, which is a girl’s name.”
“Andrea is one of the most common name for boys in Italy. It’s more common than Marco or Leonardo. My cousin’s name is Andrea Casiraghi, and I assure you, he’s male. Every Andrea I’ve ever known has been a male. Why would I think it was different now?”
“I can’t help the fact that your cousin’s parents gave him a girl’s name.”