“We’re a good team,” Bastien said.
“We?” I bumped his shoulder. “I think it was me on the phone begging the fire commissioner to loan me that giant hose he’s got.”
“Loan, huh? Dare I ask what you promised in return, Tressa?”
“It’s better you not.” I winked, waving at the fire chief across the yard.
Bastien lifted an eyebrow.
“Turns out he hasn’t had goodarroz con pollosince his grandma passed last summer. I promised I’d make him a batch, with enough for the rest of the guys, a few times a month through all of winter. It didn’t take him long to agree.”
Bastien laughed. “I concede. You never cease to amaze me.”
“Well, for the record, I may have done the legwork, but it wasn’t without your inspiration.” I shrugged. “So, we are a good team.”
He nodded, eyes taking in the busy scene, St. Michael’s looking alive for the first time in a long time outside of weekly Mass.
“Things were pretty quiet without your particular brand of—”
“Crazy?” I interrupted.
“Love, I was going to say.” His voice lowered, gravelly with seriousness. “I believed from a very early age that I would do this. Many of the men in my family, untold generations, have been seminarians. I was drawing crosses and relics in my school notebook in Havana as a child. For a time, my mother thought I was the second coming of the Holy Father.” He shook his head, wry smile on his face at the memory. “That’s why she enrolled me at the Jesuit school and why she was relieved when I made it official after I graduated.Mi Mamá…”He paused, reserved irises softening with emotion. “She was raised with a belief system that’s both traditional and—” he shrugged his shoulders “—spiritual in a worldly way, I guess you could say. She told me stories of her ancestors escaping a revolution in Spain and Portugal, only to find themselves confronting another in Cuba. From the beginning, I’ve felt called to this life. I’ve pledged my soul to God’s highest good. It’s my vocation.” He turned his eyes to the sky, pondering something far beyond both of us. “This calling has always been good to me, and perhaps despite some of the sadness, it has breathed life into me. I’ve always been thankful for that. Hardship builds character, holy restraint requires deep self-reflection, and therein we unlock our true selves, free of bodily sin and suffering.”
“So…” I leaned closer into him. “Would the Catholic church forgive us our sins?”
Bastien’s eyes turned dark with soft rebuke. “Tressa.”
The way his lips hissed my name sent a thrill of rebellion cutting through me.
I liked eliciting a reaction from him. I tipped my chin in the air, smile defiant.
“That look in your eye tells me you care.”
His eyes softened before he turned away, amused smile returning. “Of course I care. Imorethan care, you know that.”
“But if you have the capacity to love something outside of this church—”
“I can assure you, sweet dove, I’m nothing if not untraditional.”
His words curled through me like a dragon, breathing fire and uncontrollably hungry for more.
I sucked on my bottom lip, a flashback of his thumb swirling under my panties playing like an illicit movie behind my eyelids.
“There’s that look again.” His littlest finger hooked through mine. I nearly singed a human-shaped hole into the snow and earth at my feet.
“Father Bastien! I was thinking—” Ms. Watson crunched over on fur-lined snow boots, red-lipsticked smile crossing her face and completely unaware she’d just interrupted the most intensely sensual moment of my young life “—my daughter-in-law makes these wonderful stuffed cabbage rolls for the bakery she works at. I could have her make a few batches for St. Michael’s Winter Festival, especially. What you and this lovely Tressa have been doing to freshen up the place, well…” She pressed a hand at Bastien’s forearm. “It’s just a miracle. Like breathing the Spirit back into things. This world needs more of the special kind of love the two of you have to give. Doing God’s work, you both are.” She winked, pressing something into the palm of Bastien’s hand and then tottering off down the sidewalk.
“She’s so sweet,” I said, watching her leave.
“With a heck of a sweet tooth. Passes me lemon drops after every Mass.”
“She loves you.”
“They love you too.”
I shook my head, catching Bastien’s gaze for a moment as clouds of our breath rose around us. I wasn’t lovable. Not really. Not in the way he was. I was the villain in this tale; I couldn’t go forgetting that. “I don’t have a place here, not really. Not in your life, not in theirs. I’m so thankful for St. Michael’s. It’s been my home more than anywhere else, but it’s not my forever home.”
“That’s where we disagree.”
