Sister Mariam continued, “I can give you a veil to wear, so people will think you are a religious sister, and they will leave you alone. They will also respect you more. Do you have a cross?”
“Um, no. I’m sorry. It was stolen. I wasn’t wearing it when I went to work on the last day when I was in the United States. None of us nurses wear jewelry. You never know when you’re to be standing next to an MRI scanner and have your earrings ripped out of your ears. Anyway, everything I owned got stolen while I was at work.”
Mariam frowned. “May I ask what happened?”
Dree swallowed hard, trying to clear her embarrassment out of her throat and her voice. “One day while I was working a fifteen-hour shift, my fiancé stole all my money and every single possession that I owned, and he sold everything for whatever he could get for it because he owed a lot of money to some criminals. When I got home, I had nothing. Everything was gone. After I fled the country and freaked out for a few days, I called the principal of the Catholic high school where I’d gone to school, and she hooked me up with people to get me here, where my ex or some other people who are looking for him won’t be able to find me.”
Sister Mariam’s eyes had gone wide, showing white all around her very dark brown irises. “I just wanted to get away from home and leave Kerala.”
Dree laughed. “It’s a stupid thing that happened to me. I still can’t quite believe it.”
Mariam shook herself and blinked a few times. “Nevertheless, we are very happy that you are here, and we honor and respect you for doing a mission for Catholic Charities. If you ever want to become a sister in our order, we would happily accept you. Wouldn’t we, Mother Superior?”
Mother Superior Maria Devna nodded. “Although we would appreciate it if you would gossip less and not lead Sister Mariam into temptation.”
Sister Mariam blinked, and Dree got the distinct impression that she was working very hard not to roll her eyes or glare at her mother superior. She said, “Come with me, Andrea Catherine. We will find a veil for you.”
Before they could go, the mother superior asked Dree, “Did Father Maxence mention if he was saying Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help on Sunday?”
“He didn’t mention Sunday, and I think we’re leaving too early that morning,” Dree told her. “But he said he would be assisting and preaching the homily there tomorrow morning, Saturday.”
A shiver ran through the group of sisters, and they all glanced at one another.
Mother Superior Maria Devna said, “I will reserve the school bus for tomorrow morning.”
Dree stuck her tongue between her molars to keep from cracking up. She certainly understood why they were all excited, though.
She’d been on her knees in front of Maxence, and it was spectacular.
After giggling with Sister Mariam half the night because she really did know all the gossip about every religious person in Kathmandu, Dree sat in a pew the next morning at Our Lady of Perpetual Help with the rest of the sisters, all of whom wore perfectly pleated dove gray saris and shining faces.
Thank goodness Dree had made her confession to Father Moses just a few days before, so she didn’t have to ask Sister Mariam to find her a confessor because she’d been having relations first with her boyfriend Francis for months and then with the almost-priest-guy for four glorious days.
Oops. Impure thoughts. She didn’t need any of those on her conscience, especially while she was actually sitting in church and could finally take communion again.
It felt good to be able to receive communion and have a clear conscience. Francis had always made fun of her for being upset and not wanting to go to church because she was too embarrassed to admit she’d slept with him and upset because they weren’t going to stop, and then there was the whole birth control issue.
But she and Maxence had agreed not to indulge ever again, and so they wouldn’t.
With an open and honest heart, she’d told Father Moses in Paris that she had no intention of sinning anymore.
Heck, at the time, she’d believed she was never going to see Augustine again.
And now the spectacularly gorgeous Augustine—Maxence!
Dang it, she had to remember that guy’s name was Maxence, though she had told him to lie to her about his name.
She hadn’t told him to lie about being a priest, however.
Anyway, the spectacularly handsome Maxence, with his full lips and dark eyes and black, softly curling hair, was standing in deacon’s robes at the altar, assisting a priest at the Mass.
Yesterday, even though he’d been wearing a Roman-collared shirt, a part of Dree hadn’t truly believed that Maxence was a deacon and planning to become a priest. His black suit had been fashionable and not altogether dissimilar to the clothes he’d been wearing in Paris. His shirt had been black, but he might have been a mafia hitman, which was more plausible than that energetic, enticing, tantalizing, intensely sexual man with a streak of kink wanting to be a priest.
He’d edged her for two days, denying her an orgasm.
He wanted to be edged and denied forever.
Now, that was pretty dang kinky.
Impure thoughts.
No impure thoughts in church.
Dree glanced at Sister Mariam sitting beside her in the pew, but Mariam didn’t seem to have sensed Dree’s immoral musings.
She made a concerted effort and controlled the tempestuous thoughts rising in her mind until the gospel reading, when Deacon Father Maxence ascended the pulpit on the left side of the sanctuary.
Every eye in the church turned toward him, including Dree’s.
Morning sunlight streamed through the crazy-quilt stained glass windows, showering the sanctuary and the nave with trembling light.
Maxence was bathed in a sunlit glow that glistened on his dalmatic robe, purple for Advent, and was surrounded by gold glimmering in the air like angelic fire. He touched the page of the Bible in front of him and whispered a prayer before he began to read that day’s prescribed Scripture reading.
His rich baritone voice filled the church, which had gone unusually silent without even the common crinkling, sighing, and fidgeting of so many people sitting on wooden pews. Even the ladies wearing rustling silk saris didn’t move and barely breathed.
Dree listened to him read the passage, barely aware of the church around her or anything beyond the otherworldly radiance of the beautiful man standing before her, the music of his voice in her ears, and the taste of his words like honey in her mouth.
At the end of his reading, Maxence intoned, “The Gospel of the Lord.”
The congregation roused, and everyone replied with voices as shaky as if they had fallen into the depths of their very souls, “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.”
Dree realized that she was clutching the back of the pew in front of her with her hands. Her knuckles were white and ached.
Every minute that Maxence had spoken, his voice had found her and filled her mind and spirit as if he had only been speaking to her.
From the rapt expression on Sister Mariam’s face, she had felt the same way.
And the rest of the sisters, too.
Dree twisted and looked around the church. Everyone seemed to be coming to terms with the experience they had just had, blinking and swallowing, while some had their eyes closed and head bowed as they pulled themselves together.