The sight of this beautiful woman shattered the quiet in his soul that came from prayer.
Appetites raged in him: hunger for her skin, her scent, her touch, and the sweetness of her taste in his mouth.
He was a dark thunderstorm, and his desires formed words. “Dree,chérie.”
Chapter Two
Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi
Dree
Dree sat on the sumptuous sofa in the rectory’s living room, her ankles crossed, her knees together, and her hands clenched in her lap. “This is not my fault.”
She wasn’t sure that they should have told Sister Mariam that it was okay to go back to her convent quite so quickly. Having some female moral support and a chaperone would have been very welcome just then, especially when she was confronted with her one-night stand who turned into a half-week stand, and who turned out to bea freaking Catholic priest.
Or, you know,close.
He was a deacon, which meant he had been ordained and had taken the first sacrament of Holy Orders, the Roman Catholic rite that consecrates someone as a priest or a deacon.
He might as well be a priest. Unmarried deacons were supposed to be celibate, too.
Augustine—who Sister Mariam had calledDeacon Father Maxence—stood by the fireplace and rested his elbow on the high mantle. He had combed through his thick black hair with his fingers, leaving it curling around his face, and was still hanging onto his hair on the back of his head like he thought the top of his skull was going to blow off.
Hers might.
The top of her head might actually hit the ceiling if somebody didn’t tell her what was going onimmediately.
The man she’d formerly known as Augustine said, “I do not believe this is your fault. Indeed, I do not think anyone isat fault.I should thank you for volunteering to go on a rigorous mission into the interior of Nepal. That was the first thing I had planned to say, but I don’t understand howyoucame to be here.”
Dree was still holding her hands clasped in a tight knot on her legs. Adrenaline coursed through her body, screaming at her to fight, flee, or freeze. Freezing seemed to be her best option right now, and yet she had to talk to the man. She would rather blend into the soft, royal blue velvet under her legs and hide.
Her throat was nearly too tight for words. She forced out, “It’s not safe for me to go back to Phoenix. I told you everything that happened with my ex, Francis. There is some weird stuff going on there with the police and, I think, other drug dealers. So, I called up Sister Annunciata, the principal of my Catholic high school that I went to in New Mexico, and she called up a friend of hers, Father Thomas—”
“Father Thomas Aquinas from Immaculate Conception in Phoenix,” he said with her, in unison. “The Catholic Mafia strikes again.” Augustine shook his head.
Not Augustine,Maxence.
And yet, he was still the astonishingly tall, ripped, beautiful specimen of a man Dree had met in Paris.
But,he was namedMaxence.She had to remember that.
Deacon Father Maxence.
The white tab of the Roman collar on his shirt shone in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, accusing her.
He had not been wearing that in Paris, and he should have been.
“Yeah,” she said. “Father Thomas said he could get me on a plane for somewhere far away from the southwestern US without any questions asked. So, here I am, far away from the southwestern US.”
Augustine nodded. “Nepal is very far away from the southwestern US.”
“Didn’t he or somebody tell you I was coming? Did youknow?”
“The Catholic Charities division managing the project emailed me yesterday that a person named ‘Andrea Clark’ had been assigned to us.”
He was pronouncing it wrong,Ahn-DRAY-ah.
She corrected him, “Andrea.”ANN-dree-uh.
