ONE
Tressa
“How much longer until my mommy gets here, Ms. Tressa?”
I pushed a hand through the chocolate hair of the three-year-old boy at my knee. “We got so much snow last night, the power is still out, Hugo. I bet the traffic is really extra terrible because the stoplights aren’t working.”
His little shoulders shrugged before he settled back at the table of matchstick cars and blocks where he’d been playing.
The door crashed open then, a burst of arctic air filling the room, a fine dusting of Philadelphia snow shimmering in Father Bastien’s dark hair. His eyes glinted in the dim light as he ducked under the archway into the rectory and dumped an armful of wood next to the stove.
“Weatherman says tonight will be colder.” Father Bastien shrugged off his coat, his shoulder brushing mine when he did. I had to control the slow shudder that unfurled within my bloodstream. I’d been lucky to get this job when I’d landed on the steps of St. Michael’s nearly two months ago. I hadn’t stepped inside a church in over a decade, but when life pulled the rug out, St. Michael’s was where I’d found myself.
Call it divine intervention.
Or maybe just luck.
“Is there any way I can be of service here?” Warmth laced his words, driving them like a nail into my skin and causing my fingers to twitch with something I didn’t even want to bring myself to admit.
“You’ve already done more than enough.” I caught his dark-rimmed eyes just long enough to steal my breath.
“I’ll light the fire.” One quiet nod, eyes penetrating mine for a brief second before he turned, the crisp cut of his broad shoulders pulling at the seams of his black button-down clerical shirt.
The thing was, I’d walked into St. Michael’s expecting to find Father Martin.
Instead, I’d found Bastien Castaneda.
FatherBastien.
I watched his broad form across the small room, bent to one knee and loading the kindling into the mouth of the stove. We’d already been suffering this storm for two nights, the furnace out since the first spray of rain froze on the limbs of the trees and took down power lines all over our neighborhood, along with the entire city of Philadelphia.
Being confined in the winter months was already hard enough, but relying on life without power made it infinitely worse. I’d spent my last two days at the rectory, the fire warm and the food good enough when the small church family banded together. And sweet Hugo, his mom required to go into work at the only service station still open with the help of giant generators.
This wasn’t the first time we’d been forced to battle Mother Nature, but it was the first time since I’d been back.
I swallowed down the bite of emotion that tore at my throat when I thought of the state Bastien had found me in, unceremoniously dumped on my ass on the sidewalk, angry tears leaking from my carefully made-up eyelashes.
The story was complicated, not something I cared to get into again, but even without knowing me from Eve, Father Bastien Castaneda had taken me in. And he’d been in my life every day since then.
“I was thinking, if you’re not uncomfortable with it—” Bastien locked the door of the wood stove and stood “—you’re welcome to stay here tonight. There’s another bedroom upstairs that never gets used. I don’t even remember the last time I opened the door.”
I swallowed the ache in my throat, the idea of sleeping under the same roof as this man not something my fragile heart could take.
He must have taken my silence to mean something because he continued.
“I’m more than happy to, of course, get the fire going again tonight at your cabin, but I just thought…collectively—” his eyes crossed the homey space of the church’s residence “—we work pretty well together.”
Oh heaven.
I swallowed again, pushing my eyelids shut as I nodded. “Right. It’s so much work to ask you to walk through the snow to light my stove when we’re already here and warm, and there’s food.”
Bastien’s throat cleared, dark-chocolate eyes narrowing a moment before he shifted around me and into the kitchen. “I’m glad you agree.”
Had I agreed?
I wasn’t sure about that.
I wasn’t above YouTubing a video of how to light a wood stove. I was confident I could do it, but the idea of wasting wood with two stoves burning all night felt more than a little indulgent.
