A Little Bit Engaged

Chapter Two

“Not yet,” Kate told the woman, whose nameplate read Melanie Mann.

Was it Ben’s imagination or did she seem upset by the question? Ben stood behind her, eavesdropping shamelessly.

“Oh. Well, I understand,” her friend said. “No time to plan, right?”

“Right,” Kate agreed. “Not yet.”

Ben thought if she really wanted to marry this man, surely she could find time to plan a wedding.

“Sorry about your mom,” Melanie said. “I know you must miss her terribly.”

“Yes, I do,” Kate said.

Okay, so he was a cad. A truly terrible person. It sounded as if she’d lost her mother recently, and here he was, hoping there was something wrong between her and her fiancé, just so Ben could maybe have lunch with her.

He sighed, then frowned, then found both women looking at him.

“Sorry we were so rude,” Kate said.

“No. It’s not that. I was just thinking of…a problem I need to address.” His own shortcomings.

“Melanie and I went to high school together,” Kate said. “This is Melanie Mann. Melanie, this is Ben Taylor.”

Melanie picked up a tiny, yellow Post-it note. “Ahhh. That explains it. Charlotte just handed me a scribbled note that I think says, ‘Ben, ten-thirty, today.’” She turned to Ben, “That would be you?”

“That’s me.” He held out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too. But I’m afraid we have a problem. Charlotte didn’t check with me before scheduling a time for you to come in, and she already has a ten-thirty appointment. With Kate.”

“It’s all right. I can wait,” Ben offered. He was already in hot water with Mrs. Ryan. Another few minutes away from the office wouldn’t matter. “Besides, I just called this morning. I’m betting Kate’s had an appointment longer than that. She looks like the organized type.”

“Oh, definitely,” Melanie said.

Kate hesitated, then said, “You don’t have to be somewhere?”

“My morning’s clear.” So was lunch. Too bad he couldn’t ask her. Not if she had a fiancé.

“Well, if you’re sure, I do need to go ahead. I have paperwork to look over and a lunch meeting and three clients coming in this afternoon.”

“Go ahead,” Ben said, noting she’d said lunch meeting, not lunch date.

No lunch date. No wedding date. Still, none of his business.

Then he remembered she’d said she had two sisters. Maybe one of them would have lunch with him. If that didn’t work out, maybe he could start a singles group at church….

Just so you can get a date, Ben?

Okay, he was sleep deprived from sitting up late into the night with a distraught couple while their baby had emergency surgery, and he was getting a little silly now, thinking to solve his non-social-life problem in one single morning out on the town. It wasn’t as if the issue was urgent. He’d been here this long and not done a thing about it. The issue would still be there next week, next month, probably next year.

He really hoped he didn’t wait until next year to do something about this.

Kate was giving him a funny look. So was Melanie.

“Sorry.” He yawned deeply, unable to hold back the motion at all, and then said, “I can be easily distracted, and I was out way too late last night.”

Which made it sound as though he was partaking in some blatantly unministerly things. “Working,” he added. “I was working.”

“Me, too,” Kate said, giving him a puzzled look. “But I wouldn’t have pictured you as the workaholic type.”

“Which means what? That you are?”

“Well…” Kate hesitated.

“She most definitely is,” Melanie said.

“What do you do?” Ben asked.

“Kate has her own mortgage brokerage company. She’s the youngest person in our class to own her own business,” Melanie said, sounding proud.

“It’s not much,” Kate claimed. “Me, a desk, a phone, a fax, a computer and an assistant. That’s it.”

“Still, it’s all yours. I wish I had the guts to start something like that and make it work,” Melanie said.

“It wasn’t guts,” Kate said. “You know how I like to do things my own way. Starting the business was the only way I could earn a living and not have someone else telling me what to do all the time.”

She laughed when she said it, but Ben thought he must be right. A well-organized, ambitious workaholic who couldn’t find time to plan her own wedding?

Not for him at all.

So why had he taken such an instant liking to her? Why did he feel as if someone had just opened a door and he wanted to walk through it?

The phone on Melanie’s desk rang. She excused herself and picked it up. Ben and Kate took seats in the small waiting room and smiled politely at each other. He tried to think of a way to bring up the fiancé thing without being too obvious and then gave up on the obvious part.

“So,” he said, because he felt the need to have it drilled into his head, “you’re engaged?”

A pained look crossed her face. She hesitated way too long over her answer, then said weakly, “Yes.”

That was interesting.

“Sorry.” Ben frowned. “I’m being nosy, but…you don’t sound too sure about that.”

“No… I mean…” She frowned, too. “Honestly, I don’t know what I mean.”

He didn’t know whether to feel guilty or happy. He really did try to do the right thing. He didn’t succeed all the time, but he felt it was important to try.

So what was the right thing here?

She certainly shouldn’t marry the guy if she didn’t love him….

They looked at each other again, her waiting to see what he said, him not knowing what to say but wanting to know more.

“Want to tell me about it?” he tried. He’d had a lot of success with that particular phrase. A lot of times people thought about it and decided they wanted to talk, and there he’d be. Maybe she wanted to talk.

“Maybe,” she said, frowning. “Maybe it would be easier with a stranger. I mean, if I just brought up the idea that Joe and I might not get married to one of my siblings, all three of them would hear about it within seconds, and they’d have questions that I just couldn’t answer, because…I don’t know what to do, and I hate that. Don’t you hate not knowing what to do?”

“I find myself quite often not knowing what to do,” he admitted. Like now. Right now. What did he do now?

“But don’t you hate it?”

“I don’t like it, but…I guess I just think that’s mostly what life is—stumbling along, not knowing what’s going to happen, a lot of times not knowing what I should do but hoping I can figure out the right thing to do.”

“It’s awful. Life should be simpler,” she argued. “We should always know what we should do. We should always be able to figure it out.”

“And you can’t figure out what to do now?”

“No,” she complained. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if I’m engaged anymore. The date when we were supposed to be married has come and gone, and we’re not married, and neither one of us has said a word about rescheduling. We just kind of…left things up in the air. Which is really not like me. But I just don’t know what to do. If I did, I’d do it. But I don’t, so I haven’t done anything, and I’m really not good in situations like this.” She frowned again. “You know?”

“I think so,” he said, thinking that if she didn’t even know if she was engaged anymore, who did? Thinking that a good next question would be, Do you love this man? Does he love you? When what he wanted to say was, If you weren’t engaged, would you give me your phone number?

He blamed the impulse, again, on lack of sleep and acute loneliness. Apparently, he was in worse shape than he thought.

“You’re very easy to talk to,” she said, as if she didn’t quite understand why.

He shrugged easily. “Years of training. I guess some of it took. And in my entirely professional opinion, I can tell you that most people get confused on a regular basis. It’s perfectly normal.”

Kate frowned. “And then they just don’t do anything, because they’re afraid they’ll do the wrong thing? Or because they think maybe something will happen at some point, and then they’ll just know what they’re supposed to do?”

“Exactly.”

“I hate that, too,” she said. “I mean, how can we expect to get where we want to go, without figuring out what we want and making a plan for getting it?”

“So, you don’t know what you want?” he asked cautiously, thinking he knew exactly what she was like. Tough on herself. Focused. Driven. Ambitious. Baffled by how difficult some people found life.

Obviously, she needed help. And it was possible he was helping her clarify her feelings. That was good, right?

“Maybe.” She looked even more troubled and, sounding doubtful said, “But this is supposed to be for the rest of my life. This is not a decision to mess up.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, striving for an absolutely objective tone. One should be absolutely sure when choosing someone to marry. He’d give that advice to anyone who asked. Not just possibly engaged women he wanted to date.

“Maybe it’s just cold feet,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” he agreed. He could be really good at this objective stuff.

“But it would be awful to lose the right man, just because I’m nervous about making that commitment or waiting for…well…”

Oh, yeah. What did she want from this relationship that was missing? What could he possibly say that would be unbiased here?

She just looked sad then. “I don’t know what I want.”

“I think you do,” he said, then could have kicked himself.

Still, not bad advice, he told himself.

He’d learned from experience. People knew. They just didn’t want to admit to themselves that they knew, because then they’d have to do something about it. If they could just pretend that they didn’t know, they didn’t have to do anything.

“Tell me what to do?” she asked.

“I can’t. You’re the only one who knows how you really feel.” Then, because he felt guilty, he added, “Kate, if you really don’t know, it’s okay to let things ride for a little while until you figure it out. That’s just being careful.”

“I don’t think I’m being careful. I think I’m being a coward.”

If she’d been anyone else, he would have reached over and squeezed her hand or patted her shoulder to try to comfort her because she looked so troubled. But Ben wasn’t touching her.

“You think I’m awful, don’t you?” she asked.

“No.”

“You say that, but you sound like you think I’m awful. You’re looking at me like you think I’m awful. Do you know Joe?”

“No.”

“He’s a good man. A very good man.”

But that didn’t make him right for her.

He groaned. Ben, gag yourself now. Right now.

If he had a needle and thread, he’d have sewn his mouth shut and known he deserved the pain it caused him.

“Now you look angry,” she said.

“At myself. Not you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m wishing you weren’t engaged,” he admitted. “Which means I have no right giving you advice about this, and I have to shut up. Now.”

She looked puzzled. “You mean…you want to…you and me?”

He nodded.

“Oh.” Her mouth fell open and her eyes got big and round. Soft color filled her cheeks, and he started laughing, couldn’t help it.

Either he was a terrible flirt or she was completely oblivious to him as a man, because it was obvious it hadn’t even occurred to her that he might be interested in her. He either really liked her for that or felt sorry for himself for being invisible to her.

“I’m really not very good at this sort of thing,” she said. “You know, the man-woman thing.”

“Me, neither.” Ben laughed some more. “Obviously.”

“No. It’s not you. It’s me. If there was a textbook or a class in college or a test, I could have aced it. But there aren’t any of those things when it comes to relationships. I mean, there are tons of books but they all say different things. Have you ever tried to make sense of all the different things written about relationships?”

“No.”

“It’s awful. Give me numbers. I can add them up. They always come up to the same thing. I love that about numbers. Ask me something about love, and I’m just baffled. You can’t quantify it in any way. There’s no definitive test for it. There’s no checklist. It has an infinite number of variables. You can’t even define the term. It means so many different things to people.”

“It is annoying in those ways,” he agreed.

She groaned aloud. “What am I going to do?”

“You’ll figure it out,” he said.

She stared at him and frowned. “You’re a really nice man.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“No, it’s not. It’s just…I don’t know what to do.”

“And you’re the only one who can decide.”

She looked hopeless then, like she might cry sometime soon.

He stiffened his spine, tried to strengthen his resolve. He had to get away from her. Nothing else would save him.

“Okay. I’ll stop talking now and go sit on the other side of the room, in case I’m tempted to do more harm than I’ve already done. It was nice to meet you, Kate. You’ll do the right thing, whatever it is.”

“I’m not so sure of that.” She looked as if she might cry at any minute. “I’m not very sure of anything right now.”

Oh, great. Make her cry. Way to go, Ben.

“Kate, sorry to have kept you waiting,” Charlotte Sims said, saving him from whatever he might have said by choosing that moment to walk into the reception area and place herself directly in front of him and Kate.

Kate looked panicked and guilty. Very guilty.

Ben finally noticed that her friend, Melanie, was staring at them both with rapt attention.

Charlotte looked puzzled. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Ben said. “Not at all.”

Things were right. Very right. She had saved him from saying something he would definitely regret and stepping across a line he had no right to cross.

“And it seems I’ve double booked myself. Again,” Charlotte said, still studying all three people in the reception area to see what she’d missed.

“No problem,” Ben said. “Kate can go first.”

“You’re sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” he said, thinking, Please, just go.

“We won’t be long,” Charlotte assured him.

Kate stood up and followed the woman, turning briefly to shoot a puzzled look at Ben that he couldn’t begin to decipher.

Was she mad at him?

He was mad at himself.

And too curious for his own good.

“Well,” Melanie said. “That was interesting. How do you two know each other?”

“We don’t,” Ben insisted. “We just met at the front door to your office five minutes ago.”

“Oh.” She sounded terribly disappointed.

He wondered if he could ask her not to say anything about this to anyone, particularly Kate’s kind-of-fiancé, but that would probably make them look even more guilty. He wondered if Melanie liked to gossip and how well she knew Joe, whom Kate might or might not love. He’d feel really guilty if the talk he and Kate had had caused any trouble between her and her fiancé.

Ben, you should have slept in today, maybe not gotten out of bed at all. But Mrs. Ryan would have been horrified, and someone had to do the morning prayer service. Staying in bed really wasn’t an option.

Keeping his mouth shut with Kate and staying out of her relationship with Joe…now, that was an option. He clamped his mouth shut, glanced at Melanie, only to find her grinning at him and staring right back.

“So,” Melanie said. “Want to know about Kate and Joe?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

He bit his tongue and sat there, stone-faced. Now, she had him lying. Him…a minister.

But, if he’d told the truth, Melanie would have told him all about Kate and Joe, and it was definitely none of his business.

No way to win this one, Ben.

Melanie laughed at him and told him anyway. “They’ve been together forever. Five years now, I think.”

Which could mean anything. That they were perfectly suited for each other or that they’d simply let things run on, with no inclination to take that final step, because they simply had no desire to actually be married.

“Supposed to get married this summer, but Kate’s mom’s cancer came back in the middle of planning the wedding, and then she died this spring, and… Well, I’m not sure what’s going on now.”

“Melanie—”

“But Joe really is a great guy.”

So he’d heard.

“Still, you’d think if they were going to get married, they’d have done it by now,” Melanie proclaimed.

Please, please, please, please, please, Ben begged silently. Get me out of this. I’ll be good. I promise.

He closed his eyes, closed his ears as best he could, refusing to listen anymore. Melanie got a phone call, thank God, and then another one. She hadn’t said one more word about Kate and Joe.

Charlotte Sims’s office door opened, finally, and she and Kate came out. Ben stood up, thinking he would slide on into Charlotte’s office and not have to say anything but a polite goodbye to Kate, and he’d have escaped relatively unscathed.

But then Melanie, who’d been on the phone again, put it down and said, “Hey, wait a minute. There’s a really annoyed older woman on the phone who’s lost a priest named Ben Taylor.” She glared at him, looking at him like he was a snake. “Are you a priest?”

Kate’s head whirled around, and she stood there, openmouthed, waiting for him to answer. Charlotte Sims was staring, too.

“It’s not what you think,” he said.

Melanie held out the phone. “Pastor? If this is you, it’s your secretary. She’s saying something about you slipping past her and going AWOL.” Then she said into the phone, “He’s not dangerous is he?”

Ben groaned and took the phone, hoping Mrs. Ryan had the courtesy to say that no, he was not dangerous and that no one called the police. Obviously, he’d been right to worry this morning about being arrested and defrocked.

Kate was certainly looking at him as if he was a criminal.

Which was probably the punishment he deserved for flirting with her—had he really been flirting?—without his collar on and without saying he was a minister.

He held the receiver to the side of his face and said, “Mrs. Ryan, you found me.”

Chapter Three

Kate was surprised her lower jaw hadn’t hit the floor. Her mouth had already been hanging open ridiculously at the idea that she might have been both flirting with and getting advice from a priest! And to have him confirm it like that—

She made a tiny sound of outrage, one he clearly heard, because he turned toward her, and for just a moment their eyes met, hers blazing, his contrite, and then he went back to his conversation.

That rat, she thought, because that was much, much easier than examining the guilt she felt, both for talking with a complete stranger about her feelings for Joe, when she hadn’t found the courage to talk to Joe himself, and for kind of flirting with the priest.

Was it really flirting?

Honestly, she’d never been that good at either recognizing it or doing it, preferring a much more direct approach. So maybe that wasn’t what they’d done. True, she had thought he was cute for a moment but, really, that was it. She’d spent maybe ten minutes with the man, in a public waiting room and on a public street. They’d done nothing but talk. So she really hadn’t done anything horrible.

Except flirt with a priest, while she was engaged to someone else!

Kate groaned again.

Ben Taylor handed the phone back to Melanie and then turned to Charlotte and said, “I’m afraid I have to go. Can I call and reschedule?”

“Of course,” Charlotte said.

And with that, he was gone.

The minute the door closed, Kate, Melanie and Charlotte all started talking at once. Charlotte’s low, insistent voice cut through the other two, as she said, “What’s going on?”

“He’s a priest?” Kate asked.

“He must be. That woman kept telling me there had to be a man in a clerical collar in our offices, and I said there wasn’t. Finally she said Ben Taylor, and I just about choked.”

“Wait,” Charlotte said again. “What’s wrong?”

“He was trying to pick Kate up, right here in our reception area,” Melanie said.

“Surely not,” Charlotte said.

“He was. Tell her,” Melanie said.

“I don’t know what he was doing, but… He seemed so nice.”

“But he’s a priest. What’s this world coming to, if you can’t trust a priest?” Melanie said.

“He was trying to pick you up?” Charlotte asked. “Right here?”

“I think so,” Kate said.

“He definitely was,” Melanie announced.

She should know. She was much more of a flirt than Kate had ever been. Distressed and feeling even more guilty, she turned to Charlotte and said, “How do you know him?”

“I don’t, really, but I’ll find out all there is to know about him,” Charlotte promised. “Don’t worry.”

But Kate did worry.

He’d thrown her completely off balance.

She prided herself on being a good judge of character, and she’d liked him right from the start. He had kind eyes with little crinkles in the corners and more at the corners of his mouth, which made her think he must smile a lot and generally be a pretty happy guy. He seemed a little too easygoing for her, but then most people were a lot more easygoing than Kate was. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it wasn’t always a bad thing.

He had a nice voice, strong and smooth and easy to listen to, and he was a very good listener. So few men were. So she’d talked, and he’d listened, and she’d told him everything she didn’t want to even acknowledge about her and Joe, things she been avoiding for months.

“I have to go,” Kate said, knowing if she stayed she’d really face an inquisition from Melanie and maybe from Charlotte, too.

“We’ll be in touch about your first meeting with your little sister,” Charlotte said.

She mumbled a thanks, picked up the satchel that doubled as both a purse and a briefcase, and fled.

It was a quick four blocks from Charlotte’s office to Kate’s own. She breezed in, asking her assistant Gretchen to try to get Joe on the line before she changed her mind. Ben Taylor might be a jerk, but he’d shamed her into taking action. Kate sat behind the closed door of her office with her palms sweating, trying to figure out what to say. All too soon, Ginny buzzed her and said Joe was on line two.

Kate picked it up and said, “Hi.”

“Kate. Hi. Are you okay? You sound funny.”

“I’m… I don’t know what I am, Joe. You and I need to talk.”

“Okay. Talk.”

“Not now. Not like this. Where are you?” She thought he was still out of town, but couldn’t say for sure. What did that say about their relationship?

“St. Louis,” he said. “I was hoping to be home today, but it’s not looking like I will. I’ll have to see how things go, and then see what the airlines can do for me.”

“Okay. Call me when you get in?”

“Sure. Kate? Did something happen?”

“No. Not really.”

“You sound like something happened,” he insisted.

And he sounded like he’d been expecting something to happen. What was that about?

“I just need to ask you some things,” she said. “About us.”

“Oh.”

Oh? He said it as if it had a dozen different meanings, each fraught with possibilities.