A Little Bit Engaged

What was going on? She’d been leading a perfectly sane life this morning. She had a business she ran well, a family she loved, a mother she was still mourning, true, but all in all, a good, sane, predictable life.

Was this punishment for showing up at Big Brothers/Big Sisters under the guise of doing something nice for someone, when all she’d really wanted was to get in good with Charlotte Sims’s husband?

She did feel guilty about that part.

But good work was good work, right? Were her motives really that important, when in the end she’d be doing a good thing? At least, she’d intended to do a good thing. She certainly hadn’t gone there to flirt with a priest and question everything there was to her five-year relationship with Joe, who really was a very, very nice man. A sane man. A responsible one. A careful one. A smart one. A kind one. Everything she thought she’d ever wanted in a man.

“Katie, you’re scaring me,” Joe said.

“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I just… I have to go. Call me when you get into town, okay?”

Joe promised that he would.

Kate hung up the phone and wished with every fiber of her being that her mother was alive and well and that she could run to her and spill out all her problems to her.

She missed her so much. It had been horrible, watching her waste away like that. Kate had always thought she was so strong, that she could handle anything, but losing her mother had left her feeling as lost as a little six-year-old, like the little girl she’d helped to the car earlier.

She didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. She couldn’t be certain about anything, even marrying Joe.

Tell me what to do, Mom. Couldn’t you just tell me what to do?

Two hours later Ben was back, seated in front of Charlotte Sims, feeling like a naughty kid who’d been summoned to the principal’s office.

“I am not a Catholic priest,” he said. “I’m a minister at Grace Cathedral on Elm Street. Ministers in our church get married. No one cares. In fact, people think it makes us better at our jobs to have spouses and children, to better understand the kinds of emotions and challenges that come with marriage and parenthood.”

“All right,” Charlotte said. “So you were trying to pick up an engaged woman in my waiting room because…?”

“I didn’t pick her up. I had a conversation with her. I thought she was attractive, and I thought just maybe I might leave with her phone number, that I might ask her to dinner or something. But that’s it. And I didn’t do any of those things because I found out she’s engaged.”

Maybe, he added. Was it maybe? Or was it really and truly engaged? He still wanted to know. No way he was asking Charlotte Sims about that. She’d probably slap his face, and rightly so.

“Melanie said you were flirting with Kate, and Melanie should know. She’s one of the biggest flirts in the entire state.”

“Well, then…I guess I was flirting. Guilty. Shoot me, please. Put me out of my misery.”

“I can’t. You owe me a favor.”

Ben clamped his mouth shut, thinking he hadn’t said a single, right thing all day.

“If,” Charlotte added, “I decide I want you to have anything to do with my organization.”

“I am not a bad guy!” He nearly exploded with it. “I just…I’m having a bad day, okay? I thought she was pretty. She was nice to that little girl, Allie, and I don’t think I’ve spent a moment on anything that might be considered a personal life since I came here seven months ago. Obviously, I’m lousy at it. I am still single at thirty-two. I don’t think I’ve had a serious relationship in the three years I was in divinity school or the two since I was ordained. Maybe I should have been a Catholic priest and given up on women all together!”

Charlotte stared at him. Slowly, he came to realize that the ends of her mouth were twitching, were fighting it seemed to curve upward into a smile.

“You think this is funny?”

She nodded, covering her mouth with her hand, giggles spilling out of her until her eyes filled with tears and she needed a hankie to wipe them away. Her shoulders shook. She was trying mightily and failing to keep from grinning.

“I am so sorry,” she finally managed to say. “I just wanted to hear your side of it. I know all about you. I talked to Betty at the high school, and she told me Mildred Ryan is your secretary. I went to school with Mrs. Ryan’s granddaughter, Peggy, so I put in a call to her. They assured me that you’re a very nice man and a wonderful minister, even if you are a bit…socially challenged.”

“Socially challenged?” he repeated.

Charlotte nodded, still fighting the giggles.

Okay, so they didn’t think he was pond scum, just completely inept in the area of personal relationships.

You deserve it, Ben. Admit it. You do.

It was probably better if Kate went right on thinking he was a rat. Then she’d never speak to him again. He deserved that. That’s why he hadn’t tried to explain things to her before he took that phone call. He’d be better off if she stayed away from him, and he could only hope he hadn’t done any permanent damage to her relationship with her fiancé, if the man still was her fiancé. And Ben wouldn’t so much as look at another single woman for another seven months, at least. He didn’t have time for one, anyway.

Charlotte finally managed to stop laughing. She dried her tears daintily with a delicate, embroidered handkerchief and then gave him a bright smile.

“Well. I guess we should get down to business. You owe me a favor, right?”

“Yes.” And to think all he’d done yesterday morning was to follow a troubled, hideously dressed, pregnant teenager from his church and walk through a few open doors, thinking to do his job and help someone?

“How many people in your congregation on an average Sunday morning?” Charlotte asked.

“Maybe a hundred.”

“Okay. I’m thinking ten percent would be good,” she announced.

“Ten percent of…?”

“Your congregation, volunteering with my organization.”

“Ten people? You want me to find you ten people?”

She nodded. “You’re in the business of encouraging good works, right?”

Ben nodded.

“So, go encourage. Preferably people between the ages of twenty and thirty. And they have to have references and pass a background check.”

“I doubt I have ten people in that age group in the entire congregation.”

“I really don’t care if they come from your congregation. I need ten more volunteers. Actually, I need more like fifty, and you look so wonderfully guilty about what happened earlier….”

“Okay, I’ll find you ten.”

“You know, you’re getting off easy, Pastor.”

If having to find her ten volunteers was the worst thing that came out of today, he was.

“And let me give you some advice,” Charlotte said. “When you’re striking a bargain, never agree to anything without knowing what it’s going to cost you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “You’ll find someone for Shannon?”

“I’ll get her the best person I can find,” Charlotte promised.

“Good. Thank you.” It was more than he deserved. “Now, what would you say are the chances of this little incident staying between you, me, Kate and your receptionist?”

“About a million to one against it,” Charlotte said. “I’ll be good, and I bet Kate will keep quiet, too, but Melanie… Well, one of the reasons she’s so good at this job is that she knows just about everyone in town and all their secrets, which means she’s always talking to everyone about everything. Sorry, Pastor Taylor.”

He shook his head. “Not your fault.”

It was his completely.

Maybe this was why Mrs. Ryan thought he should stay in the office and wait for people to come to him—because he was dangerous, loose out in the world. And he really should keep his clerical collar on at all times. It was just so unseemly, trying to meet women with the collar on, because they all jumped to the conclusion that he was Catholic. Not that he needed to be meeting women anyway. Look at the trouble it had gotten him into today.

He thanked Charlotte Sims for her help, apologized again for the mix-up, ignored the laughter that followed him as he left Melanie in the reception area, and went back to his office to be scolded by an eighty-year-old great-grandmother look-alike.

Charlotte Sims liked to think she had good instincts about people, and sometimes she got impulses to meddle, which got her into trouble.

Her instincts said that Pastor Ben and Kate Cassidy had protested too much that absolutely nothing had happened between them in her reception area, which meant that something had, maybe something special.

And Melanie’s instincts told her that if Kate and her fiancé were ever going to get married, they’d have done it long ago. Charlotte remembered when she’d met Charlie. She’d been besotted, right from the first, and there wasn’t anything in the world that could have kept them waiting for more than five years to be man and wife. Nothing.

There was careful. There was getting to know each another. There was the need to be sure, but five years was something else completely.

So…maybe it was up to her to do them all a favor.

That’s how she thought of it.

A favor.

She had to find someone for Shannon, whom she’d met the day before, and Shannon’s problems seemed much more serious than Allie’s. Allie was a delight, and the distant cousin who’d taken her in seemed like a very good woman, though a bit frazzled, who’d provide a good home for Allie. And Charlotte could find a big sister for an adorable six-year-old blindfolded and with one hand tied behind her back.

So…maybe she didn’t have to meddle with Kate and Pastor Ben.

Maybe she could just do the best she could for Shannon and things would fall into place.

She put in a call to the love of her life, her husband, Charlie. He was president of the local Board of Realtors, and at the group’s annual dinner three nights ago, she’d managed to convince five of the people there to sign up as new volunteers with Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Which meant that he had some connection to the only adult volunteers she had who had yet to be matched up with a little brother or sister. Two of them were men, which left three possibilities for Shannon Delaney.

Her husband came on the line.

“Hi, honey. I need your opinion about something. That secretary from your friend Tom’s office? The one who’s volunteering for me? I need someone who can handle a fifteen-year-old. A tough one. What do you think?”

“Sorry, darling. She’s a nice lady, but I just don’t think she’s tough enough.”

“Okay.” Charlotte closed the folder in front of her and reached for another one. “What about the decorator? Gloria Sandling?”

“Well…she wouldn’t be my first choice. Didn’t Kate Cassidy sign up?”

Charlotte grinned. “Yes, she did.”

“If you’ve got a tough case, Kate’s your girl, honey. Smart, stubborn, responsible, knows her way around kids. She helped raise her two younger sisters after their father died, and she doesn’t know the meaning of the world quit.”

“Sounds perfect,” Charlotte said. And she had not done this. Really, she hadn’t. “It’s just that she asked for a younger child. In fact, she met a cute six-year-old in our office today.”

“Trust me, honey. Give Tom’s secretary the six-year-old, and give your problem child to Kate.”

“Okay, I will. Thanks, Charlie. I love you. You’re so good to me. And so useful a man to have as a husband.”

“I do my best, darlin’.”

His contacts worked wonders for her when she needed volunteers or money, and he wasn’t shy at all about exploiting those contacts for a good cause.

She told him she’d see him soon and then hung up, puzzling over exactly how to handle Kate. She had practically promised her the six-year-old, and she did feel guilty about that. But Shannon was in trouble, and it had nothing to do with Charlotte wanting to meddle in Kate and Ben’s lives.

She was just doing what was best for Shannon. She’d pair Kate up with the girl, and if in the course of helping Shannon, she and Ben Taylor had reason to get together, well…Charlotte would leave that up to fate.

Kate got home that evening to find her middle sister, Kathie, who was also her roommate, on the phone in the kitchen, and by the look on Kathie’s face, she had to be hearing all about Kate flirting with a priest!

The combination of guilt and curiosity in her eyes was all too clear.

“You know,” Kathie looked absolutely pained as she broke into the conversation, “she just walked in the door.”

“No,” Kate mouthed. Whoever it was, she didn’t want to talk to them.

“Oh. Okay,” Kathie said into the phone. “I’ll tell her.”

Kate winced as she stepped out of her heels. Not even caring about neatness tonight, she left them by the coffee table along with her satchel and headed for the kitchen, loitering just outside the door, while Kathie stood in it, looking even more guilty as she managed to get rid of the person on the phone.

“Let me guess,” Kate said, as her sister hung up. “Someone couldn’t wait to tell you about the priest who was flirting with me?”

“Huh?” her sister said.

“That wasn’t—?”

“You were flirting with a priest?”

Kate groaned aloud. “Who was that?”

“Joe.”

“Even better,” Kate muttered. She wondered if he’d heard about her and the priest yet. Honestly, that man had made her so mad. How dare he presume to give her advice on handling her relationship, when all the time he was just trying to get her phone number so he could ask her out?

“What’s going on?” Kathie asked. “Joe said— Well, he thought something was wrong. That something had happened. Did something happen?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said, ridiculous as that was. It was her life. If anyone knew, it should be her.

“Why was a priest flirting with you?” Kathie asked.

“I don’t know. Because he’s a jerk?” But he hadn’t seemed like a jerk. He’d seemed like a perfectly nice man. That I’m-no-good-with-women thing… She’d bought that completely.

“So, Joe heard about a priest who was flirting with you and—”

“I don’t know.” Kate was nearly in tears, and she never cried.

Her sister looked upset, too. Really upset. What was that about? Maybe just because Kate was so upset, and it took a lot to get her this way. Maybe Kathie thought something awful had happened.

Kate sniffled and swiped away tears.

“Did I do something?” her sister asked.

“No.”

“Because, if I did… Joe seemed to think something was really wrong, and you’re crying. You never cry. And…well, if it’s me…I’d never want to do anything to hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

Kate was absolutely bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” her sister said.

It was like a disease, spreading through the kitchen. The I-don’t-know-what’s-wrong disease. It had been such an odd day.

“What did Joe say?” Kate asked.

Kathie hesitated, studying her sister, finally saying, “That he wasn’t going to make it home today. Hopefully tomorrow. That he’d call you as soon as he knew for sure. But…he sounded like he thought you were going to break up with him. Are you going to break up with him?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said.

Her sister started to cry, too, then. Maybe everyone was having an awful day.

“I’m sorry,” Kathie said. “So sorry.”

“Me, too.” She didn’t even know for what, but she was sorry, and she gave her sister a hug.

“I miss Mom,” Katie said.

“I do, too.”

And they both stood there, completely miserable, crying for reasons Kate couldn’t begin to understand.

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