by Janet Dailey
A tremulous smile touched her mouth, inwardly thrilled that he was upset by the interruption. “Yes, it is,” Abbie agreed softly.
He held her gaze for a long second that seemed filled with all sorts of heady promises. With another sigh, he reached to turn the key in the ignition just as a car full of teenagers drove into the lookout area.
“I guess I’d better get you home,” he said.
While he backed onto the road, Abbie tied the scarf over her hair once more. She felt so good inside that she felt like singing, which of course she didn’t do. More than once during the drive home through the back streets, she was conscious of Seth glancing at her. Maybe because she kept stealing looks at him.
Stopping the car in front of the garage, Seth switched off the engine. Abbie waited until he had walked around the car to open her door. He took her hand to help her climb out of the low car.
“I enjoyed myself this evening. Thanks for asking,” Abbie said, letting her hand stay in his grasp a moment longer.
“It was my pleasure,” Seth replied. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
“There’s no need for you to walk me up that flight of steps,” she assured him.
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged with a mocking look. “I only suggested it because I thought it might bother you if I kissed you good night here—where your parents or the neighbors might see us.” When Abbie released a laughing breath of shock at his statement, Seth chuckled and asked, “Would you like to change your mind?”
“It isn’t fair to ask a girl that,” Abbie protested, because if she said yes, it meant she wanted him to kiss her, and if she said no, it wouldn’t be true, but at least she wouldn’t sound so brazen.
“I see.” The dimpling corners of his mouth were mocking her as he curved an arm along the back of her waist and guided her in the direction of the roofed stairwell. “A man is supposed to walk the girl to the door and take his chances.”
“Something like that,” she admitted, slipping off the scarf and absently fluffing the ends of her hair.
Her heart was tripping all over her ribs as they climbed the stairs. She didn’t know what any of this meant or where these feelings would lead. It was too soon to know. But she liked this glow she felt when he walked beside her like this.
“Do you have your key?” Seth asked when they reached the top of the stairs.
“Yes.” Abbie opened her purse and slipped the scarf inside before taking out her key ring.
When she had produced it, his hands settled onto the rounded bones of her shoulders, so she faced him. The width of his chest was in front of her, his head inclined at an angle toward her while his magnetically blue eyes held her rapt attention.
“What do you think my chances are?” he asked with a sensual curve to his hard, male mouth.
It was so easy to sway toward him, her head automatically tilting upward to provide him with the answer. The pressure of his hands increased to bring her nearer. A second before his mouth moved onto hers, a little voice inside warned Abbie that she was kissing a minister and not to respond too wantonly.
But it wasn’t an easy warning to heed, not when the soft curves of her body came in contact with the hard contours of his male form, and she was reminded of the differences between the sexes. Her hands slid tentatively around his lean middle, while the breadth of his hands glided down her spine to hold her firmly.
His mouth did not explore this time, already having discovered the warm softness of her lips. There was more depth to his kiss, more subtle demand, less warmth and more fire. Abbie felt the stirrings of desire coming to life within her and pulled reluctantly away before she shocked him with her behavior.
It was difficult to breathe naturally, especially when his arms continued to encircle her and she could still feel the muscled solidness of his thighs brushing against her legs. The moist warmth of his breath was near her cheekbone. Abbie glanced at his face through the top of her lashes, then lowered it to the white collar showing above the black dickey.
“Thank you again, Rev … Seth,” Abbie corrected herself.
He slowly brought his hands from around her and let a distance come between them. “Good night, Abbie.”
“Good night,” she returned the farewell. “I’ll see you Sunday.”
Seth paused on the first step to add, “If not before.”
There was a hint of a promise there, even if it wasn’t anything definite. She was smiling as she unlocked the door to her apartment, listening to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.
Chapter Six
“Well?” Her father leaned against her desk and swung a leg over a corner to half sit on it. Abbie moved her cup of coffee to the side so he wouldn’t accidentally knock it over.
“Well, what?” she asked with a frown. “Was there something wrong with that letter I just retyped for you?”
“Not a thing. I’m waiting for you to tell me how your date with Reverend Talbot went last night,” he said.
Abbie avoided his gaze and began arranging the papers on her desk in neat stacks. “It wasn’t a date exactly. But I had a good time—if that’s what you’re asking.”
“A good time.” The corners of his mouth were pulled down. “Funny, I had the man pegged as the kind capable of arousing more of a reaction than just a good time.”
“Dad, he’s a minister,” she protested, knowing full well he was right.
“He’s a man—made of flesh and blood, just like the rest of us. Don’t put him on a pedestal, Abbie.” He studied her more closely. “Are you going to see him again?”
“I imagine.” She nodded, then slid him a twinkling glance. “At church on Sunday.”
“You know what I meant, did he ask you out again?” her father chided her for being facetious.
Abbie could answer truthfully, “No.”
Her father thought about that for a minute and studied his empty coffee cup. “I guess a minister doesn’t have a lot of free evenings, what with church youth groups, choir practices, and the civic functions he’s expected to attend. It’s bound to limit his social life.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” There was reassurance in it, though, because it offered a possible explanation why Seth hadn’t been more definite about when he would see her again.
“Well.” He slapped his leg and pushed off her desk. “Guess I’d better get some coffee and get back to my office so you can get some work done.”
On Thursday, Abbie left the office early for lunch so she could stop by the post office and send out some registered mail. When she returned a few minutes before one o’clock, her father stuck his head out the door of his private office.
“Reverend Talbot stopped by to see you,” he informed her. “He came shortly after you left.”
Frustration clouded her expression. This was the first indication that he had meant to see her before Sunday—and she had missed him.
“Did he say what he wanted?” she asked, feigning a mild interest.
“I guess he wanted to take you to lunch.” Her father appeared to be a little vague on that point. “He did say he’d try to catch you another time.”
“Oh.” Another indefinite. “Thanks, Dad.” Abbie sat down to her desk and stowed her purse in the drawer, trying not to be too disappointed.
Saturday morning, Abbie was up early, gathering up her dirty clothes and linen and driving to the laundromat to do her washing. Her mother had offered to let Abbie use her automatic washer and dryer to do her laundry, but it usually took the better part of a day, washing one load at a time. At the laundromat, it usually took just over an hour. Since she would have insisted on paying her mother for the use of the machines anyway, Abbie preferred the time she saved at the laundromat to the convenience of running next door, as it were.
With the laundry finished, she stopped at the grocery store on her way home and picked up the few items she needed. It was going on eleven when she turned Mabel into the driveway. Abbie stepped out of the car, juggling t
he sack of groceries while she searched her purse for the door key.
“Abbie!” Her mother called from the back stoop of the house. “You had some phone calls while you were gone. They called here when they didn’t get any answer.”
“Who called?” she frowned.
“Isabel Coltrain. She didn’t say what she wanted, but she seemed very anxious to talk to you.” Her mother was consumed with curiosity. “Do you have any idea what she might have wanted?”
To see if Abbie had finished the last stack of manuscript pages the sisters had given her? But Abbie had kept her word to the women. “Maybe it had something to do with typing,” she said in a half-truth. “The word has spread that I’m doing typing on the side. I’ve gotten several calls.”
“But what would they want typed?”
“Who knows?” Abbie shrugged to avoid an outright lie, and turned again toward the garage.
The acceleration of a car engine as it turned into the driveway pulled her glance over her shoulder. A dark green sports car zoomed toward her, its racy appearance making it seem to travel faster than it actually was. Excitement leaped along her veins when she recognized the car and the driver, and turned to meet them.
“I forgot to tell you,” her mother called belatedly. “Reverend Talbot phoned, too.” When he turned off the engine and vaulted out of the car, her mother explained to him, “I was just telling Abbie that you called for her.”
“That’s all right, Mrs. Scott. Thanks.” Seth nodded to the woman, then walked toward Abbie with an easy, rolling stride. He was wearing Levi’s again, and a blue chambray shirt opened at the throat—with no collar.
“I just got back.” The gladness she was trying to contain shined in the emerald-green flecks of her hazel eyes.
“So I gathered. Here.” He reached for the grocery sack. “Let me carry that for you.”
Her resistance took only a token form as she relinquished the sack into his arms and walked to the stairway door. “I’m sorry I missed you Thursday, Reverend. Dad said you stopped by.”
“Are we going to start that again?” Seth challenged.
“Start what?” Abbie paused on the first step.
“That Reverend business.” The dark intensity of his gaze made her blood warm.
“I call ’em as I sees ’em.” She mocked him with a provocative glance. Immediately she was attacked by pangs of self-consciousness that she had actually been flirting with him.
“Look, Abbie.” He touched the tanned hollow of his throat with his free hand. “No collar. For the rest of the day, you’re looking at Seth. So you be sure to call him the way you see him.”
“All right—Seth,” she agreed, her tone a little more subdued.
“Do you have anything on your day’s agenda?” Seth asked as he mounted the stairs one step behind her.
“The Coltrain sisters are getting anxious. I was going to do some more typing on their manuscript,” Abbie explained.
“It’s a fine August day. What you need is fresh air and sunshine—not more hours in front of a typewriter,” he insisted. “I’m here to unchain you from that.”
“You are?” Abbie unlocked the door and pushed it open, walking in ahead of Seth. She was alive with pleasure. The realization that he wanted to spend the day with her swelled within her, but she didn’t want to appear too eager, too overjoyed.
“Yes, I am.” Seth walked to the counter-bar on the kitchen side of the room and set the grocery sack on it.
Abbie moved to the opposite side to begin putting the groceries away. The brilliance of his dark gaze was difficult to meet. There was something possessive about it that started a fire licking along her veins.
“You’ll have to give me a few minutes to change clothes after I get these groceries put away,” she said.
His eyes made a lazy inspection of the faded blue jeans softly hugging her slim hips and the thin white blouse with its capped sleeves and half-collar. Her auburn-gold hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a white silk scarf tied around it.
“What you’re wearing is perfect,” Seth insisted.
They were everyday clothes, clean but showing the wear and thinness of many washings. Abbie looked down at them, then back at Seth. If her present clothes were suitable for the occasion, it raised a question. “Where are we going?” She tipped her head to the side.
His strongly shaped mouth slanted in a half-smile. “Heaven.”
“What?” Abbie blinked.
“I should have said, heaven on earth,” he conceded, with the richness of amusement deepening his voice. “I found a quiet, little spot in the country. It’s peaceful, beautiful—the perfect place for a picnic.”
“A picnic.” She smiled at the initial appeal of the idea, then became serious as she began to think about what food she had in the apartment that she could fix.
Seth appeared to read her thoughts. “I already have a picnic basket filled with more food than we can possibly eat. It’s sitting in the back of my car. You don’t have to worry about fixing a thing.”
“Isn’t there anything I can bring?” she asked.
“Just yourself.” His gaze claimed her with a vibrancy that made Abbie feel shaky inside.
“All right.” Her voice was tinged with a soft breathlessness as she let herself drift under his persuasive spell.
The telephone started ringing, its shrillness making a sharp intrusion between them. Abbie bit her lip in indecision and glanced at the ringing phone.
“That has to be one of the Coltrain sisters,” she murmured and wondered what excuse she could give them for not having any more of their manuscript typed.
“I’ll answer it.” Seth was already moving toward the phone when he spoke.
“Oh, but—” Abbie started to protest, taking a step after him.
But Seth already had his hand on the receiver. He sent her a backward glance over his shoulder. “You get those groceries put away so we can leave,” he ordered. “I’ll handle the sisters for you.”
Abbie gripped the sides of the cardboard milk container she had taken from the sack and watched anxiously as Seth picked up the phone. What would the sisters think when he answered her phone?
“Miss Scott’s residence,” he said into the mouthpiece and paused. “She’s busy at the moment. This is Reverend Talbot. May I help you, Miss Coltrain?” He glanced over his shoulder and noticed Abbie just standing there.
His mouth curved into a wry line as he motioned her to get busy. Without taking her anxious gaze from him, Abbie moved sideways to the refrigerator and opened the door to set the milk inside.
“No, she hasn’t finished the typing for you,” he said into the phone. “Miss Scott planned to type more today, but I have decided she’s been working too hard, so I’m taking her out for the balance of the day.” Seth half turned from the waist up to send a smiling look at Abbie and nod in response to the voice on the other end of the line. “I knew you’d understand, Miss Coltrain.” There was another short pause. “Yes, I’ll tell her. Good-bye.”
Abbie quickly pushed the loaf of bread into the bread drawer as Seth replaced the receiver on its cradle and crossed to the counter. Her glance bounced off his masculine features.
“What did she say?” she murmured.
“Isabel apologized for rushing you about the manuscript and hoped you weren’t too exhausted by all the typing you’ve done for them.” Seth relayed the message. “She thought the outing was an excellent idea.”
Abbie turned away to put the box of cereal in the cupboard. “But didn’t she …” She didn’t finish the question, concerned that she might be too sensitive and guilty of overreacting.
“… didn’t she think it strange that I answered the phone?” Seth completed the sentence, almost verbatim to what was in her mind. “Why should she?” he countered evenly when Abbie turned with a guilty start. “It’s normal for a minister to call on members of his congregation in their homes.”
“Yes, but …” She couldn’t finish tha
t sentence either.
“… but you are a young and very attractive single woman.” Again Seth accurately guessed the rest of it. “And I’m a bachelor.”
“Something like that, yes,” Abbie admitted.
“As romantically inclined as those two spinster sisters are, I’d guess they’re tittering with the possibility a romance is developing between us.” A suppressed smile deepened the corners of his mouth as he met her startled look.
“Oh.” This small response was all she could manage, since he had confirmed exactly what she had guessed they’d be thinking.
“We lunched together, had pizza one evening, and now we’re going on a picnic together,” Seth reminded her. “It isn’t unlikely that an outsider would jump to that conclusion.”
“I know.” Abbie nodded.
With calm deliberation, Seth walked around the counter-bar and took the sack of sugar out of her hands, setting it on the countertop. Her protest died when his hands moved over the bareness of her upper arms with caressing ease.
“Why bother to deny it?” Seth challenged softly while he looked deeply into her eyes. A shiver of sensations slivered through her veins. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“I—suppose.” The whispered admission was hesitant; she was wary of declaring too openly the feelings that were growing stronger with each meeting.
He tipped his head to one side, bronze lights darkening his hair. The expression on his roughly carved features mildly taunted her for her cautious reply, while his hands continued their slow, lazy kneading of her arms.
“You don’t sound too sure,” he said. “If this isn’t the start of a romance, what else would you call it?”
“I don’t know,” Abbie admitted with an uncertain smile.
“What’s the matter?” Seth asked. “Why does it bother you to admit it?”
“I guess I’m not used to being so candid,” she suggested, then deliberately tried to sidetrack the conversation. “How did the Coltrain sisters find out that you knew about their manuscript?”
