“No, no,mi Margaritahas the fresh young look of youth. Her skin is so soft.” Carmelita set one of Margarita’s hands atop my own.
Firecrackers and alarm bells shot off in my body. Was it just anyone who could set me off like this? Or was it the way her dark hair fell over one shoulder in just that certain way that I was used to? The way she sucked on her bottom lip when she was nervous, or how her dark eyes clung to mine, naïve and willing?
“She won’t bite, Padre.” Carmelita tugged her daughter’s chair closer to mine. Our thighs almost touching, I chomped down on my teeth to quell the urge to what…I wasn’t even sure. “The Martinez family, we come from a long line of very devout Catholics, Padre. Please don’t mistake our love for something other than what it is.”
I let her words hang heavy, fearful she had in mind what I thought she did.
“For many, many centuries, it was not uncommon—not just in our village, not just in Cuba, but Rome, Brazil, Boston!—for even the most devout of holy men to…experience all the pleasures only a family can afford.”
Her chocolate-brown eyes hung on mine, thelechon asado con mojosettling like cement in my stomach. My head pounded and my chest ached. So many eyes trained on me at once made me feel like ants were marching their way beneath my skin, hell-bent on breaking free.
“I…” I searched for the right words.
But what the hell were the right words in a situation like this?
“I’m flattered.” My eyes bounced from Margarita’s wide innocent ones to her mother’s. “Margarita holds a beauty far greater than most.” I swallowed, fearing I might alienate what had quickly become like a family to me. “But I am a holy man—” I held a hand to my heart “—to the core.”
Carmelita tipped her chin up, running her eyes up and down my body before shrugging. “Maybe one day, you come around.”
She stood, tapping my face with her wide palm and then patting Margarita’s head before bustling down the back hallway and out of sight.
“I’m truly sorry. I mean no offense.” Margarita’s eyes widened farther, almost as if she didn’t quite understand.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t come around so much. I don’t mean to give the wrong impression about my time spent here.” The urge to stand was strong. Margarita’s brown eyes on mine felt more familiar than strange. The soft contour of her cheek, the way her top lip filled out her bottom with the perfect little Cupid’s bow center. I blinked, thinking she looked more like Tressa upon closer inspection than I’d first realized.
I had a flash of a moment where I imagined what it might be like to kiss Margarita. If she tasted like Tressa, winter and honeysuckle, coaxing me into a blissful calm.
Margarita sucked on her bottom lip, hand inching across the worn tabletop until her little finger crushed my own. “You’re a very handsome man, Padre.” She slipped her little finger under the knuckle of mine, forcing more contact than I could possibly stand. “It would be an honor to…” her eyes hung heavy-lidded with desire “…be yours.”
I gulped, thousands of years of programming sending my body into hyperawareness.
I hated myself in that moment.
And the next.
“Sí, Padre.” Margarita’s hands worked around my neck, little fingertips sliding underneath my snow-white collar. “I can give you plenty of love—” her wide eyes caught my own “—andbabies.”
My body raged at me to absolve myself of the pain and allow myself an escape, but every other logical cell in my brain reminded me that it would be no escape at all. As honestly and devoutly as she offered herself, I’d rather she serve herself and her fellow man by becoming a nurse or a nun, not the mistress of a holy man.
Realization snapped into place.
The way tiny Santiago’s laugh carried through a room, his personality boisterous and engaging, much like a holy man I’d met not too long ago at this very table.
I didn’t know how long Padre Juan had been retired, nor did it matter. I was sure Santiago was likely his child, but Margarita too? Had Carmelita held on to the love of a taken man for the greater part of the last twenty years? Or even a lifetime? Priests with families weren’t uncommon, many of them hiding in plain sight, and it had only been in the last few decades that most felt the need to hide it with increased secrecy.
“I promise, I won’t make any trouble for you.” Her voice cracked with desperation on the last words.
She was looking for her very own escape, only she was foolish enough to think I was her best target. She’d have to start aiming a lot higher.
Like a serrated edge was slicing through the ventricles of my heart, I felt my breath began to falter, the ants inhabiting my skin bursting through their barriers, my thighs rigid as I set her back in her own seat and shot to my feet.
“Please thank your mother for her hospitality, and…” I paused, her warm, puppy-dog eyes searching mine for answers.
Why did it feel like I was breaking this girl’s heart already?
My two experiences with the opposite sex were proof enough of my calling to enter the priesthood. I had a terrible habit of trampling on feelings and saying all the wrong things at the damn wrong times.
I pushed a hand over my head, frustration causing my hackles to rise as I sucked in a valiant breath, made the sign of the cross on her forehead and then mine, before bursting through the doors and out into the humid night air.
