by Peggy Webb
“Be sure to tell them that you were the first to know,” Martie broke in. She was so angry that her voice was shaking. How dare Miss Beulah spy through the keyhole! How dare she plan to ruin Paul’s career by misinterpreting what she saw! It was one thing for Miss Beulah to talk about her misdeeds, but it was another thing altogether to drag Paul into a scandal. Martie couldn’t let it happen. “We’re going to be married,” she blurted out.
Paul sucked in his breath and Miss Beulah’s mouth dropped open.
“We were going to announce it soon,” Martie continued, “but now you can do that for us.”
She stopped and shivered. Oh, dear! Now she had done it. They would never extricate themselves from this mess.
Paul put his arm around her and drew her to his side. “We were planning to surprise everybody, Miss Beulah, but now the cat’s out of the bag. By the time you see us again, we will be Reverend and Mrs. Paul Donovan. I’m counting on you to share the good news with the rest of the parishioners.”
The knowledge that she was the first to know took the edge off Miss Beulah’s self-righteous indignation. She swung her mountain of flesh out the door without saying good-bye.
“Just wait ‘til I tell Essie Mae,” they heard her say as she disappeared down the hall.
Martie raised stricken eyes to Paul’s face. “Oh, dear! What will we do now?”
“Get married,” he said, smiling.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They had a small ceremony in the church with Jolene, Bob, and Sam as witnesses. Reverend Tom Stegall, a friend of Paul’s who served a small parish in nearby Saltillo, officiated. Afterward Paul helped Martie move into the parsonage.
“You don’t think it’s necessary for me to sleep over there, do you?” Martie asked, looking up from the box of books she was packing. “Maybe I could just putter around the parsonage in the daytime to keep up appearances and slip quietly through the gate at night.”
She didn’t know if she could be under the same roof with him at night without making a fool of herself. They had a paper now that made sleeping with him all nice and legal, but it didn’t make a bit of difference. She knew that he had married her to save his career and that his scruples would keep him from consummating a marriage that was not real.
His heart turned over at the forlorn look on her face. He wanted to take her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her. He wanted to drop down on his knees and take her hand and tell her that he had meant every word of his wedding vows. He wanted to call his family to celebrate. He wanted to carry her over the threshold and into his bedroom and make her his wife in every sense of the word. But he couldn’t do any of those things. He knew that she had married him out of unselfish generosity. She had made it perfectly clear that she would never willingly choose the conventional life of a minister’s wife. As much as he wanted to make love to her, as much as he wanted to bind her to him with passion, he would never take unfair advantage of her.
He leaned against the bookshelf and took out his pipe, small consolation for the frustration he was feeling. While he was filling his pipe, he carefully considered his answer. He wanted to reassure her without closing the door to other possibilities. Lifting the pipe to his mouth, he took a slow draw. He was determined to move heaven and earth so that someday they would truly be man and wife. But he was a patient man. For now, he would wait.
“I’m afraid you have to move in full time,” he replied slowly. “But don’t worry. The parsonage has more than one bedroom. And I promise not to bite.”
“I’m scared I’m the one who will bite.”
Seeing the gleam in his eyes, she hastened to steer the conversation toward safer topics.
“I’ve never had a housemate, Paul. I’m not sure you’ll be able to stand me. I get up early to jog and I play my music loud and I leave wet towels on the bathroom floor.”
“You also eat cow food.” He smiled at her. “I’ll take these boxes across while you pack your clothes.”
She watched until he was out the door and then she kicked a box. Why didn’t he know that she loved him? The big galoot! Did she have to hang a sign around her neck?
She raced upstairs and began slinging her lingerie into a suitcase. A lot of good it did to own sexy underthings. That thick-headed, oversized, wonderful, remarkable, marvelous, gorgeous man would never even see them.
She pressed her hands to her hot face. She wanted to just march right into the parsonage and shout, “I love you, Paul. I’ve always loved you and I always will.” But she couldn’t do that. It was bad enough that he was saddled with the most unsuitable minister’s wife the world had ever seen. She wouldn’t complicate matters by hanging around his neck like an albatross.
She dragged another suitcase from her closet. She didn’t know whether to pack all of her clothes or just a few. She decided on a few. Maybe Paul would think of a way out, and she could move to Outer Mongolia to get over her heartbreak.
She heard him whistling as he came up the stairs. She sat on her suitcase to snap the lock, wishing there were something to whistle about. The lid refused to close. She was still sitting on the bulging suitcase, struggling with the lock, when Paul came in.
“Don’t tell me you’re trying to hitch a ride to the parsonage on your suitcase. I don’t know if I’m up to that, ma’am.” He leaned in the doorway, aching to devour her.
She batted her eyelashes at him. “Why, honey-pot, I married you for your muscles. You’re not going to disappoint me, are you?”
“No, indeed.” He strode across the room and scooped her up, suitcase and all.
She laced her arms around his neck to keep from toppling off the suitcase. “Paul!” she protested, laughing. “Put me down. You’re going to break your back.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am. You’re no heavier than a bale of cotton.”
“Does the parsonage have bars? I married a crazy man.”
He loved the way she laughed, with her eyes crinkled at the corners, not worrying about making wrinkles, and that husky, throaty music resounding in the room as if she felt the mirth all the way down to her toes.
“You married a man . . .” He stopped. He had almost said “who loves you.” Half heartedly he finished the sentence. “Who is hungry.”
“The way to a man’s heart?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then put me down and we’ll have tofu by candlelight. A real wedding dinner.”
She wasn’t aware of how her voice caught on the word or of the wistful look on her face. She didn’t know how Paul almost chucked his scruples and carried her to the bed. She never suspected that, at that moment, her bedroom almost became a wedding bower.
Only his eyes betrayed his turmoil. “How about Haagen-Dazs ice cream by candlelight?” he suggested.
“Paul? The Hilton?” Her pleasure was mirrored in her radiant smile.
“Yes. Steak and lobster and potatoes swimming in butter.”
“And the glass elevator?”
He nodded. “That, too.”
“And afterward a ride in the go-carts?”
“There I draw the line,” he said firmly. “It took me three days to get over the last ride.”
“You’re in luck, mister. I give a first-rate massage.” She held up her hands. “Magic fingers.”
Grinning, Paul set her and the suitcase back on the bed. “Suddenly this thing weighs a ton.” He put his hands on his lower back and stretched. “I’m feeling a mighty bad twinge.”
“My massages come with a price,” she warned him.
“Name it.”
“Haagen-Dazs ice cream.”
“It’s a deal.”
o0o
They remained in high spirits through the drive to Tupelo, the sinfully rich meal, the trip on the glass elevator, and the ride back home. It was not until Paul had parked the car and they’d walked through the parsonage door that reality hit them. They felt a shyness and a constraint that they’d never before known with each other.
&n
bsp; “Well, here we are, Martie.’’ Paul hoped he didn’t look as foolish as he sounded.
“I guess you can show me which bedroom will be mine,” she said, unable to look at his face. She was afraid he would see how much she wanted his bedroom to be hers. How could he help but know? She glowed like neon in his presence.
“You can choose,” he told her. “Down the hallway there’s a spare bedroom next to mine and one across the hall.”
“Which one is yours?”
“The one with the purple socks on the floor.” He grinned at her. “The last one on the left. I’m afraid there’s only one bathroom. It adjoins my bedroom and the one next to it.”
For practical purposes—because of the bathroom, she told him—Martie chose the bedroom next to his. What she didn’t tell him was that she wanted to be as close to him as possible. Even if there was a wall between them, she thought, maybe she could hear him breathing or moving about or even snoring. She didn’t care what she heard as long as it was a sound that connected her to Paul.
He stowed her suitcases in the bedroom, and they made stilted conversation for a while, skirting around each other, tense and nervous, like two people walking on eggs.
Insisting that she have first bathroom privileges, Paul paced the floor while she showered. The roar of the water sounded like whiplashes to his overwrought mind. He could imagine each drop of water that touched her smooth skin, and he could picture exactly where it landed. He buried his face in his hands and groaned.
Through a fog he heard her knock at the bathroom door. “I’m finished, Paul. It’s all yours now.”
The first thing he saw when he stepped into the bathroom was her black silk teddy. It was draped carelessly across the towel bar, a minuscule bit of silk and lace designed to drive him crazy. As if that weren’t enough, her fragrance of summer flowers, intensified by the steam, assaulted his already reeling senses.
“Lord, help me,” he groaned softly as he picked up the black teddy and let the silk caress his fingers. If she had left the teddy behind, what was she wearing to bed?
Suddenly he recalled his early morning visit to her house and the sheets trailing behind her as she’d met him at the door. She slept in the nude! That perfect body, uncluttered by a single stitch of clothing, was curled beneath the sheets; and only a door separated them. He put his hand on the knob and drew it back. Only a door and his scruples, he amended.
Carefully he hung the silk teddy back on the towel bar and stepped into the shower. The cold water took the heat off the outside of his body, but it did nothing to cool the fires raging inside.
He finished his shower, dressed for bed, and stood uncertainly in his bedroom. Finally he called through the wall, “Good night, Martie.”
“Good night, Paul.”
o0o
He paced the floor, and she punched her pillow until it was limp. Finally she got out of her bed, and he crawled into his. She stared out the window, and he tossed about until his sheet was so tangled he thought he’d have to cut his way out with scissors. He snapped on his light and tried to read, and she cut hers off and tried to sleep. Finally they both gave up and sat on their separate beds, staring at the wall.
At precisely six o’clock the next morning. Baby stood at the parsonage door, barking to be let in.
Two bleary-eyed people sat up in their beds. Paul hastily donned his pajama bottoms and Martie draped herself with the flowered percale sheet. “I’m coming,” both shouted as they rushed out their doors and collided in the hall.
Paul gripped her bare shoulders to keep from knocking her over.
“We forgot to move Baby,” Martie said. She looked up at him through her tousled silver hair and thought that if he didn’t remove his hands, she would attack him in the hall. That bare chest looked too good to be true, better even than it had in his office, more delicious than she had imagined in her dreams last night.
“I thought she would move herself. Don’t tell me she has a suitcase.” He didn’t know if his voice sounded that way from lack of sleep or from knowing she was naked under that sheet. His blood pressure shot up to about stroke level.
“No,” Martie replied. “But she always sleeps in at night.”
“I’ll remember that.”
His hands still tingled after he removed them from her shoulders. He followed her down the hall, and watching her hips move under that sheet jacked his pressure up still higher. Leaning against the wall for a moment, he took a long, steadying breath.
He needed it. Baby bounded through the door and pounced joyfully on Martie’s sheet for a tug-of-war.
“Baby, stop that!” She clutched the top of her sheet as her pet happily ignored her command.
Paul watched, spellbound, as the sheet came unknotted and slowly began to slip down her body. Her breasts emerged, perfect golden-tan mounds with dusky-pink nipples that hardened into tight points as soon as she saw Paul’s eyes on her.
Baby gave another tug and the sheet slipped farther down, revealing a golden torso and tiny nipped-in waist. Holding the sheet between her teeth, Baby sat on the floor, her tail thumping softly against the floorboards as she watched the two people standing before her.
Paul and Martie remained motionless in the electrifying stillness, scarcely breathing. If they had been able to read minds, they would have closed the small space between them and melted in each other’s arms. Instead they struggled with codes of honor and warped truths, standing riveted to the floor like two kegs of dynamite waiting to explode.
It was her eyes that finally galvanized him into action: they were wide with mute appeal. As lovely, he thought, as dew-kissed pansies. Quickly he crossed to her and caught the edge of the sheet. The blood thundered in his ears as he jerked the fabric out of Baby’s teeth and pulled it back up to cover Martie. As his hands touched her bare breasts he had kaleidoscopic impressions of silk and flames and a sweetness almost too much to bear. His hands shook as he retied the knot, and he was certain that he deserved some type of medal for this uncommon act of bravery.
As he bent over the knot Martie fought the waves of passion that threatened to swamp her. She felt as if she were seeing everything through a magnifying glass—the part in his hair, each tiny stubble of his early morning beard, the dark lashes covering his quicksilver eyes.
His face was so close that his breath warmed the supersensitive skin. Under the thin sheet, there was no way she could disguise her desire. She clenched her hands into fists to keep them from pulling his head a fraction of an inch closer. She wanted to cradle his head and run her fingers through his night-dark hair and hold him there until the scorching heat inside her burned down to a quiet glow.
Hating nobility and honor and self-denial, she bit her lower lip and tried to focus her attention away from Paul’s face. Her eyes wandered down his back. The muscles were tense, bunched and corded under his smooth tan.
She was no better off, she decided. Heat, intense as the breath of a volcano, still coursed through her, and she thought she might never be cool again.
“There.” Paul straightened up. “That knot should prevent future mishaps.”
“Thank you, Paul.” Old habits of flamboyance and pizzazz came to her aid. “The next time I wrap myself in a sheet, I’ll just tap on the wall and let you come in to tie the knot.” She commanded her wobbly legs to take her back to her bedroom. “Come, Baby,” she called over her shoulder. “You and I need to have a talk.”
Paul sank into a chair as she swept grandly down the hall. Lifting his eyes upward, he gave thanks for the small miracle that had kept him from making love to her on the kitchen floor.
o0o
During the next few days they tried to act normal, but under the circumstances it was impossible. Paul went through a private hell every time he went into the summer flower-scented bathroom they shared, and his habit of having his morning coffee without a shirt on drove Martie to abusing her bedroom vanity with frustrated kicks and muttered tirades.
Forced
into the marriage for the sake of appearance, they tried to compensate by adopting habits foreign to their natures, seeking desperately to please each other and lighten the burden.
o0o
Miss Beulah spotted Paul in Michael’s Department Store buying a wild print shirt. “I declare,” she later reported to Essie Mae, “you could see that shirt a mile away. It was one of those Hawaiian flowery jobs with big purple parrots and jungle trees all over it. I’m telling you, Essie Mae, there’s just no telling what the preacher’s wife will have him doing next.”
Essie Mae called the Bishops, who called the Rodneys, who called the Grimsleys. Paul was unaware that before he ever reached home his shirt was already the center of a swirling controversy.
He unwrapped it, put it on, and went over to Martie’s house to surprise her.
She had just finished a Jazzercise class and was bent over, picking up exercise mats.
“Hello, angel.”
She looked up, saw him standing in the door, and dropped the mat on her toe.
“Paul!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
She tried to look somewhere besides that terrible shirt, but she couldn’t. It was as out of place on Paul as a neon billboard in a church sanctuary.
“I’m surprised. This shirt is so loud I thought it would announce my presence clear to the other end of the hall.” He turned around for her inspection. “What do you think?”
“I think . . .” She stopped and ran her hands over her mouth, trying to make it behave; it kept wanting to burst open with laughter. “I think that if you like it, you should wear it.”
“I can’t say that I’m overly fond of it.” He smiled ruefully down at the purple parrots decorating his chest. “I guess it’ll grow on me.”
“Lord, I hope not.” The truth just popped out. Martie had never been a successful liar.
He grinned at his irrepressible pretend wife. “You don’t like the shirt?”
“I think it has its merits,” she said carefully.
“Tell me what they are. When I saw this thing in the store I couldn’t think of a single merit except that it’s the sort of colorful dress you’re fond of.”
