All eyes turn to me. I want to disappear into the floor.
“My grandmother,” I manage, my voice barely carrying. “She taught me everything.”
“Well, Rose Davis clearly knows her way around a kitchen,” Mr. Chen says. “This is the best pie I’ve had in years.”
“Better than mine?” Mrs. Delacroix’s voice cuts through the praise like a knife.
The room goes quiet. I watch her face, see the hurt and anger warring beneath her severe expression.
Her lemon meringue pie sits mostly untouched, a monument to five years of unchallenged supremacy now toppled by a girl in a thrift-store dress.
“It’s just different,” Mrs. Patterson tries diplomatically. “Both are lovely.”
But the damage is done. People are already moving away from the dessert table, plates full of my pie, leaving Mrs. Delacroix standing alone beside her creation.
I see her hands shake slightly as she smooths her dark skirt, see the way her thin lips press together in a line.
I should feel triumphant. Instead, I feel sick.
Marcus’s hand finally makes contact with my lower back, warm and solid and grounding. “You okay?”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass her.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice is low, meant only for me. “You just made something beautiful.”
Adrian crosses the room toward us, his movements controlled but purposeful.
People part for him automatically, and I watch the way his cassock swirls around his legs, the way his broad shoulders fill the space.
When he reaches us, he’s careful to maintain appropriate distance, but his gray eyes burn into mine.
“That was quite a pie, Miss Davis.” His voice is formal, priestly, but I hear the roughness underneath. “Your grandmother would be proud.”
“Thank you, Father.” The title feels wrong in my mouth after everything we’ve done, but we’re surrounded by parishioners who can’t know the truth.
His jaw clenches at the word. I watch his throat work as he swallows, see the pulse beating beneath his collar.
He wants to touch me. I can see it in the way his hands flex at his sides, in the way his eyes drop to my lips before he forces them back up.
Elijah joins us, completing our dangerous quartet.
To anyone watching, we’re just clergy and volunteer having a polite conversation.
But the air between us crackles with barely restrained need, with the memory of tangled limbs and desperate kisses, with the knowledge that tonight, when the church is empty and the doors are locked, we’ll claim each other again.
“You should teach me to make that,” Elijah says, his angel face innocent but his eyes promising sin. “I’d love to learn your technique.”
The double meaning isn’t lost on any of us. Marcus makes a sound low in his throat. Adrian’s knuckles go white around his rosary beads.
“Maybe,” I manage, my voice breathier than I intend.
Across the room, Mrs. Delacroix watches us with narrowed eyes. She’s seen something—the way we stand too close, the electricity crackling between us, the careful-not-to-touch proximity that speaks volumes.
Her expression shifts from hurt to something sharper, more calculating.
She picks up her lemon meringue pie and carries it to the kitchen, her spine rigid with wounded pride.
As she passes our group, she pauses just long enough to meet my eyes.
