“I won’t accept charity like that. I work for my money. I’ve worked all my life, first on the ranch and then to pay my way through college, and I won’t accept your money to sit around and eat bonbons and fritter away two months.”
“You could order Merveilleux de Fred every day,” he said.
“Oooo, that’s playing dirty. But I want to make a difference, too. When I heard about this mission, it made the rest of my life seem like I’ve wasted it. Even though when I was in Phoenix, I was working in an inner-city hospital and helping people and saving lives every day, this is even more important. I could do something that I’m really proud of here.”
He sat in a chair across from her and braced his elbows on his legs, his hands clasped between his knees, a pose that Dree knew was taught to therapists and dorm resident assistants to signal, I’m non-judgmentally listening. “We both want to go on this mission.”
“Yes.”
“It is a problem that you are female.”
“Sexist, much?”
“It is inconvenient.”
That was worse. “Sorry that my vagina inconveniences you. It didn’t last week.”
He frowned. “The other four people scheduled to go on this mission are all male.”
“You sure about that? Any of them named Chris, or Andy, or Charlie, Skylar, Frankie—”
“Two of them are old friends of mine from boarding school. I’ve known them for twenty-five years. Both are cis-het males, Alfonso de Borbón y Grecia and Isaak Yahontov. They’re tech guys, engineers, and venture capital.”
“So, that’s two. How about the others?”
“One is a translator, and we asked specifically for a male person. His name is Batsa Tamang. Batsa means ‘son,’ like a male offspring, in the Nepali language, so I’m going to guess he’s a guy.”
“You never can tell with names, evidently. And there are trans people in Nepal.”
“We’ll cross that rickety, swinging suspension bridge over a raging river when we come to it. Speaking of which, there will likely be several of those on our journey. If you don’t like heights—”
Her words came out as almost a sneer, but he was being an ass. “My cousins and I used to go rock climbing up cliff faces with nothing but Keds sneakers and prayer. You can’t scare me.”
He cleared his throat. “You haven’t seen some of the bridges that I’ve crossed in Nicaragua and Argentina. The other guy is purported to be a Jesuit, so he’s probably a man.”
“Heh. Maybe.”
“Right, but it’s likely you’ll be the only woman on the trip.”
“I’m fine with that.”
“I’m not. I might not be around every moment to protect you. I have connections to make, business to do, while we’re up there.”
“Do you seriously think that some of these guys might be Rapey McRapists? If they are, should you be taking them way out in the middle of nowhere, where maybe the police aren’t particularly reliable?”
“Alfonso and Isaak are fine. They would never force a woman or do anything untoward. I’ve never met the translator or the Jesuit.”
“I got along just fine for twenty-five years before I met you.”
“The night I met you, it looked like you were not fine.”
She eye-rolled at him. “I promise not to get smashed at the Buddha Bar in the Nepali outback and make stupid pronouncements.”
He shrugged. “That did seem like a one-time event. Is there anything else on that napkin bucket list of yours that’s going to get you into trouble?”
Dree poked around in her purse and pulled out the napkin she had been writing her craziest goals and ideas for the future on. One corner was limp and becoming frayed. She should laminate it or something. “I promise not to do any of the ones that involve getting naked while on the mission. Going to Nepal is on the list, so if you hand me that pen, I’ll just cross that one off right now.”
He handed over a slim pen that had been sitting on the coffee table between them, holding it by one end.
She took the other end of the pen, pinching it carefully, leaving as much space between their fingers as possible.
The heat from his skin warmed the air around the pen, and when she grabbed it, their eyes flicked up and met.
Magic.
Magic like a spark and a crackle and anticipated warmth washed over her, and the dark depths of his eyes pulled her in.
His luscious lips parted.
No, no, there was no such thing as magic, and Dree was just taking a pen out of his hand. It was nothing.
She leaned back.
He leaned back.
She drew a careful line through the words Visit Nepal.
An ink-dot spread from the end of the line and bled into the napkin’s paper fibers.
Above where she had crossed out Visit Nepal, the items on her bucket list read, Play Baccarat at the Monte Carlo Casino, Meet someone royal, Swim in the Mediterranean Sea in the French Riviera, and Marry someone you love with all your heart because it’s worth it.
Yeah, well, maybe someday.
She leaned back over the coffee table, offering him the pen back. “Um, thanks.”
He took the pen back without looking her in the eyes that time, keeping his gaze on the pen and the table. “Of course.”
If she went on this mission, out into the wilderness of Nepal with this incredibly attractive man who thought he wanted to be a priest, she was going to have blue lady-balls the whole time. Even a waft of warmth from his hand was making her dizzy and distracted. “So, if I wasn’t going to go, what would you do for medical personnel?”
Deacon Father Maxence had crossed his legs away from her and was looking out of the front window over the small yard with carefully manicured hedges and bushes, almost like a labyrinth. He rested one elbow on the back of his couch and rested his knuckle on his lips. “I would call Father Thomas Aquinas in Phoenix and a few other network connections and see if they could find a replacement for you and how soon they could be here.”
She couldn’t look away from where his knuckle touched his full lips. “Could you do that?”
He nodded. “We’re supposed to leave on the day after tomorrow, early in the morning. We’re having a team meeting here tomorrow afternoon after I assist with Mass at Perpetual Help, and then we will arrange for permits and problems after that. We leave early Sunday morning. I can’t imagine that they could get someone here in time.”
“You could just postpone the beginning of the trip for a few days until someone got here. Father Thomas was supposed to send someone else. Maybe they could jump on a flight.”
“The doctor’s mother had a stroke. He had to drop out.”
“So, he can’t come.”
“And the flight time from the southwestern US to Nepal is over a day, sometimes more like thirty-two hours. Even if we found someone as close as India, getting them here and ready to travel would be problematic. Do you have cold-weather gear?”
“Yes, Father Moses in Paris set me up with all kinds of gear—”
“Father Moses Teklehaimanot? Black guy, African, missing part of his small finger of his right hand?
“Yeah, at Saint-Sulpice Cathedral in Paris?”