Drinking in Patrick was probably why she didn’t freak out when she was walking toward her car one moment and on the grass underneath Patrick the next, the wind knocked out of her but otherwise unharmed.
Because she wasn’t the good girl she portrayed while out in the world, she didn’t immediately push against him to get up. She stared, dazed, into his eyes, which were so close and so green. And so concerned. “Are you okay?”
Sasha didn’t usually have a problem getting words out. But right then she stammered, “I—I think so.”
She did a mental inventory. Her head was cushioned by his hand. Her tailbone ached. Legs and ankles and back seemed fine.
But then she wasn’t fine, because Patrick’s gaze clouded over with something she’d never seen from him—anger. It was as close to passion as she’d ever get, so she still didn’t push him away. It was as close as she would ever get to having his weight press her down into a flat surface, and she couldn’t quite see her way to making it stop. Instead, she curled her hands around his upper arms and held him close.
She’d feel guilty about it later, but that was not a problem for now. The problem for now was that he smelled like Irish Spring soap, and she would never, ever be able to get that fact out of her head. Not ever.
“I’m okay.” She had to make this stop, so she tried to sound sure.
“Fuck.” She’d never heard him swear.
“You shouldn’t say that.”
With that, he levered off of her body, leaving her bereft. Him not touching her made her feel hollowed out and uneasy. She was afraid that she’d never feel easy again without him touching her. And him touching her again was not ever going to happen.
Patrick marched over to the car that had almost killed them both with rage in his stride. He looked like an avenging angel, and she half expected him to sprout wings and grow a sword from his palm.
Gah! She had to stop thinking of him as a hero in a romance novel. He would never be the hero in her romance novel, and this was unproductive. Having lascivious thoughts about Father Patrick would not help her find the someone special that he insisted she deserved.
She got to her feet and dusted herself off in time to see Patrick pull a youth out of the beat-up car that had almost mowed them down by the collar of their shirt. They were far enough away that Sasha couldn’t hear what was said, but the kid looked like they had probably peed their pants.
Patrick let the kid down and walked away. The youth leaned against the car, looking just as happy to still be alive as Sasha was.
When Patrick marched back toward her, he didn’t look any less angry than when he stormed away. He didn’t stop his storming until he was in front of her. He grabbed her by the arms, probably too hard. But it was just hard enough for Sasha to feel like she was still tethered to the earth.
And he was touching her again.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He still sounded angry, so she paused before answering. She did not want to anger him by claiming to be okay when she really wasn’t. “I can take you to the emergency room.”
Then he looked her up and down for outward signs of injury, probably because she still hadn’t responded to him. And she needed him to stop looking at her because she was pretty sure that her nipples were rock hard since he had touched her so much in the last two minutes.
“I’m really fine. A little bruised from the fall.” That sounded like she was upset that he’d saved her life. “Thank you for saving my life.”
He seemed to relax when she said that. And then he seemed to realize that he was still touching her. He dropped his hands and stepped back, clearing his throat. “Of course.”
“You were kind of hard on the kid.” Sasha motioned over to the car, which now didn’t have a kid leaning against it.
Patrick’s gaze hardened again, and Sasha tried not to shiver. “He almost killed you.”
She could have fallen in love with him then. The idea of her being hurt or killed seemed to be so unacceptable to him that he stopped being the affable acquaintance she’d had for years now. His collar might have disappeared—just up and floated away. He was so much man in that moment.
It was impossible not to let her mind go wild with the possibilities that would open up if he was not a priest right now. If he was just a regular guy, the best friend of her best friend’s husband, they might have already done it.
No, she knew they would have already done it. She would have made it happen. Just turned on the Finerghty-woman magic and made him hers.
Not that he would have had any idea of what was happening while it was happening. The Finerghty magic was much more subtle than all that. She didn’t think her father knew that her mother had mapped out their courtship with a level of precision and strategy that would impress a four-star general. And her sister’s husband had no idea that their meet-cute was nowhere near the coincidence he’d thought it was. Her mother and sister had scoped out all the first-year men in the Notre Dame freshman faces site and picked one out. Marlena had gotten a work-study job with her now-husband, Kevin, batted her naturally long eyelashes, and the rest was history.
Not-a-priest Patrick would have been almost as much of a gift. Granted, he hadn’t gone to Notre Dame. But he was Irish Catholic, and he would have given Moira’s grandchildren the prettiest green eyes. He would have been seen as acceptable as long as he’d gone to the right law school or medical school.
She must have had a dreamy look in her eye, because Patrick tilted his head. Thankfully, some of the anger leached out of his affect. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Needing a moment to collect her thoughts from the gutter, she cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m fine.”
Patrick nodded, and the air re-thickened between them. He stepped back, and she felt his absence. She was tempted to throw herself in front of Mrs. O’Toole’s Subaru so that he would save her again. Kind of.
The sensible part of her brain flipped back on now that she was no longer surrounded by the scent of Irish Spring and drowning in Patrick’s clover-colored eyes. “I’ll send you the final plans for the bake sale and get you the flyers to hand out at all the services this weekend. Hannah will send out a newsletter to our usual press contacts between bouts of extreme nausea to get some local, feel-good coverage. And we’ll talk to Jemma at the baptism this weekend.”
“Thank you.” He grabbed the back of his neck, threatening her equilibrium again with the sheer amount of masculinity he was throwing off. “This is really too much.”
“The work you’re doing with those kids is really important.” She kept herself from reaching out to touch his shoulder reassuringly. She wanted to give him comfort, and it was exceedingly difficult to remember that it wasn’t her place to do that. He wasn’t hers, and he never would be. “Their whole lives will be better because they had a nurturing place to go to learn kindergarten things before kindergarten.”