“I came to talk about the logistics for the bake sale.” Her words were wary, and her gaze was wide-eyed.
“And you decided to drop in on story time?” He softened his tone with this question.
He realized his mistake when Sasha smiled at him. That wouldn’t help with Project Dick Go Back to Sleep—like, not at all. “They like you.” He cleared his throat of the thing he wanted to say—I want to put a baby in you—and said, “You’re good with kids.”
“Small children are great. They’re free.” There was something wistful in her smile as she looked through the little window in the classroom door that he shouldn’t probe, but with her he couldn’t help himself. As long as he wasn’t touching her, he would be totally fine. Totally fine.
“You’re going to be great with Hannah’s little one.” When Jack had shared why Hannah was sick, Patrick had assumed that Hannah had told Sasha about the pregnancy. It wasn’t public yet, but Hannah told Sasha everything. As soon as she looked at him, he knew that he’d not only made a mistake trying to strike up a non-business-related conversation with Sasha, but had said something wrong. Wrong in the way that made her eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry if I—”
Sasha wrapped her slim arms around her waist in a way that made her seem like a wounded bird, and he almost reached out to pat her on the arm. The only sane part of him still steering the ship of his brain stopped him from touching her. She shook her head. “It’s okay.”
“It doesn’t look okay.” Totally should have dropped it, but he couldn’t now. He tilted his head toward his office. “C’mon, we’ll talk about cake. That always cheers me up.”
He didn’t miss her raised eyebrow and the look she gave his flat stomach. And he couldn’t suppress the jolt of lust her gaze caused him.
“Well, I sort of came here to talk to Jemma.” Sasha pointed at the teacher, who had taken over story time. “I wanted to chat with her to get a better idea of how we can really make folks reach deep into their pockets.”
When Patrick looked over, it was clear that Jemma had more than enough on her hands. “I’m baptizing Jemma’s baby later this week, and honestly, talking to her then would probably cause less chaos than carving out time now.”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude—”
Of course she wouldn’t. “Hannah might be feeling better by then, and you can both talk to her.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” She crinkled her brow again, and Patrick thought he might perish on the spot. “If you’re sure—”
“I’m sure.” She followed him out of the classroom and her forehead un-crinkled, so it felt like success to him.
Once they were in his office and she was seated across the desk from him, he could relax a little bit. Her scent didn’t fill his nostrils, and she had composed herself. He still wanted to know what had made her gaze shiny about what he’d said, but he could quell his curiosity enough to get through this meeting for the time being.
But Sasha didn’t seem like she could let go of the way she’d lost even a little bit of her composure around him. “I should explain what happened back there.”
“You don’t have to—”
“No. I guess I consider you a friend, even though I don’t even know if you can have women friends—”
“We’re friends by association.” He smiled at her, but it felt tight even to him. “That’s allowed.” Although it would be a lot easier if she was a friend the age of Mrs. O’Toole—his most faithful parishioner whom he pinned as somewhere between eighty and one hundred and twenty years old.
She took a deep breath as though she was deciding whether to say what she obviously wanted to say. Her full mouth flattened, and he held his breath. Everything in him wanted to hear what she had to say. “I’m really jealous that Hannah is married and pregnant.”
Most of the time, confessions were pretty boring to him. Most of his parishioners were at an age that cheating at their weekly bridge game was a more likely sin than cheating on a husband. Sasha’s words rocked him. He’d had an idea of what she was like from his very brief interactions with her—poised, competent, shy, pure. Like the Virgin Mary plucked out of Bethlehem and plopped down on the South Side. But her admission that she had negative feelings about her best friend, even though he knew how close they were, slightly shifted his view of her. It was like the vision of her messy and disheveled that he’d been trying to hold at bay rushed in.
He said none of this and tried to take on his pastoral persona despite the rioting thoughts that had her crawling across his desk and him pulling out her careful ponytail. “That’s totally natural. We’re at an age where most of our friends are getting married and having kids. And those are good things for them. And you want good things for yourself. Have you done anything about your jealousy?”
“Of course not. It’s just a feeling. And I hate feeling that way. I want to be totally happy for her. And I am happy for her—both of them. I love Hannah like my own sister.” She finally paused her explanation to breathe. “And I adore Jack. He’s the only man that I could imagine loving my best friend the way she deserves.”
That was all well and good, and it warmed Patrick’s heart to hear that his best friend had found his match despite a rather rocky beginning. But Sasha wanted to be loved in the way that she deserved. “What about the guy you were on a date with the other night?”
Sasha looked down and blushed. “Nathan?”
Suddenly, Patrick hated everyone named Nathan that he’d ever met for no other reason than one douchebag named Nathan got to do what he could never do—take Sasha out for a drink with the intent of kissing her and doing a whole lot more.
“He’s okay, I guess.” Sasha didn’t even sound like the guy was okay, and that prickled Patrick’s guts.
“How did you meet?” He shouldn’t be asking these questions. It wasn’t any of his business. Sasha wasn’t even a parishioner. But he couldn’t help himself.
“At a wedding. Maybe you don’t remember, but he was one of the groomsman, and he asked for my number as I was cleaning up. He was nice, and I couldn’t think of a reason not to.”
That didn’t seem like a good reason to date anyone to Patrick, but his expertise about dating and relationships had always been limited and ended in college—right after his mother died and he decided that whole love thing was not for him. He’d been good at sex—he thought. None of his girlfriends had ever complained, and the vast majority of them had wanted more of that.
It was only when his heart had gotten involved that everything went sideways. He’d never have thought that losing his heart to a woman in the midst of the most awful period of his life would lead him to a lifetime full of administrivia and celibacy, but here he was. Celibate—but thinking about how much he would give up to touch a strand of Sasha’s hair. To hold her and not have to pull away.