120 Mph

by Jevenna Willow

  ****

  “I can’t keep wearing a pajama top, Christian.”

  Christian raised his eyes. He’d been stuck in thought while consuming the best damn pancake to touch his tongue in all his life. “No. I suppose you will need clothes sooner or later.”

  “Sooner more than later is preferred in my book,” she said. Then the sudden tears welled in her blue pools. “I can’t believe all of my things are gone.”

  “They’re only possessions Sara. Your life is the only truly valuable thing to any of us.”

  “But my antiques,” she replied, the slide of her tears unstoppable, “all the stuff that can never be replaced. I spent years collecting those antiques. I spent every dime I had . . .”

  He set down his fork and picked up her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. She was hurting and afraid. The only tangible reaction to get past this fear was Sara pretending it did not matter to her as much as he knew it must. “Just stuff Sara.”

  “No. You don’t understand. All that stuff was my stuff. And for the first time in my life I actually had something I could call my own.” Her eyes trapped his, held on, and quickly convinced him more was coming. “I never had that. Foster home to foster home, I never had anything I could call mine, until now.”

  Christian never knew Sara Ruby was a foster child. Then again, he really didn’t know much about the woman, other than she intrigued him in a highly sexual way and likely to get him into a lot of trouble in this town. Most women her age, especially living in so closed-minded of place, were married with kids. Sara must have had her reasons for being unwed and childless.

  Christian never saw her around town all that much, never really heard much about her, until the club-closing fiasco. He never really cared to know her until an accidental bump of the ass at a yard sale changed his mind.

  The moment he’d turned around and saw her entrapping eyes was when he knew his life was about to change. He never thought it to be so much of a change, or so soon. His head was still spinning.

  “When did you get put into the system?” he asked, drawing himself back into the conversation.

  Sara wiped off the remnants of her tears by using the back of her hands, gave him a wry smile, and said, “Birth.”

  “Birth?”

  She nodded. “My parents were killed in a car crash on the way home from the hospital the day I was born. I was the only one who survived.”

  “Oh, dear God, Sara. I had never heard this before. Was this in Preacher’s Bend?”

  He knew her as the local health inspector, who held a Master’s in Criminal Biology, but hadn’t put that degree to good use. Although he’d told her he was following her, in reality he’d only been mad with Harriet and had taken his anger out on Sara.

  “You were not supposed to have heard this before,” she quibbled. “It isn’t public knowledge for Preacher’s Bend. I never told anyone . . . before now.”

  His insides tightened into painful. “Why me?”

  Sara’s brows rose sharply, mocking the question. “Perhaps for the same reason you told me about the can of beer.”

  This answer, he could certainly accept. His being a recovering alcoholic was not something anyone in town knew about. Not even the ever-knowing Harriet Thorn was privy to this information. The sin was between God and Christian, no one else. At least no one else until Sara came along.

  The night his wife died, Christian had been so stinking drunk he could barely stand. Chief Berken had come to the house to inform him of the tragic news, and Christian had been too incoherent even to care. It wasn’t until the next day when the sobriety hit him hard and fast that he fully understood his wife’s death and the added ramifications to it. Those ramifications just about killed him; too damaging for a man to comprehend, and too forgiving for a man who wanted nothing more to do with life.

  He never needed AA to recover. All he had needed was a huge wakeup call of the worst kind. Still, AA helped a lot, as had his sobriety coach assigned him. But in the end it all came down to the fact his wife’s death was caused by some inconsiderate ass who’d run her off the road. Beale’s vehicle hit a tree and she never woke up. The accident report filled out with gruesome descriptions of what happened; the coroner’s report had been even worse.

  The night his wife died, Christian had asked Beale for a divorce. Any severance of marriage would not be taken well inside the Church, but he knew he could not stand living with the woman for even one more second, let alone the rest of his life. He’d made a terrible mistake, and that mistake had been ripping him apart.

  Beale had stormed out of their house. She told Christian he could go straight to Hell. As angry as he’d been, he had firmly stated to his wife he could not go to Hell. He had too much of an in with the Big Guy, that to head anywhere other than up was an impossibility. That was the very moment she glared at his face, picked up her suitcases, and told him if God cared at all about him or her, He wouldn’t have let Christian become a useless waste and a drunk.

  Christian kept those two cans, unopened, to remind him that sins had followers, and a man’s past could easily come back to haunt him if ever he thought it could not. His demons had kept a low profile until last night.

  The last two cans of beer in a case of thirty had stayed inside his refrigerator for eight full years . . . until Sara Ruby set her fingers upon them.

  As his gaze rose to her, he felt the past punch him right in the chest. A painful slice made to a man’s heart. A good woman was within his reach. All he had to do was tell her this.

  All he had to do was show her this.

  Beale had been ice cold—body, and soul. So cold, their marriage had been little more than months of nastiness and near violence inside the home; never physical, only verbal and far more damaging.

  Outside the home it was all smiles and sickeningly pretense of life being good.

  It was not until the autopsy that he even knew about the pregnancy.

  Christian, by a quirk of fate, became a widower whom everyone then felt sorry for. He’d been labeled a Reverend widowed before his time, and accepting the loss of an unborn as his due.

  Oh, if they only knew . . .

  He’d not been worthy of their pity or sorrow. It hadn’t been his child. Beale had been having an affair while Christian’s head stuck in the fog of alcoholism and God’s enormous shadow.

  If anyone other than God knew he was a fake, it was Christian. A fake made out of lies, sins and cast stones. A man who claimed God as his savior, when no desire to save himself . . . until last night.

  And the woman who could help him with all that was seated across from him, eating a pancake. She was licking the sticky syrup off her lips. Her vivid blue eyes were turning to him, and her smile was quickening his heart.

  He set down his fork, picked up her hand, and held onto it for dear life; knowing that life, and all past mistakes, was about to change for the better.

  Fate wouldn’t be so cruel to make it worse.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sara Ruby never told anyone about the Foster Care experience. She’d been ashamed. More so, this terrible shame filled with regret. When old enough to get out of Foster Care, Sara ran and she never looked back.

  But the past she could not hide from for much longer.

  Reverend Mohr gave her a reason to look back. A simple touch of the hand, a simple promise held in his eyes, and kind words off the tongue, there was always a price to pay for things never thought as able to possess.

  Yet what she saw in the past when her eyes closed caused a shudder to come out while living in the present. Nice words made pretty and poetic—this did not give them the power to heal.

  Reverend Mohr stood quickly, shoving his stool from the countertop. He severed the connection she suddenly felt by the release of her hand.

  “I need to see to those books. You will be okay until I’m done, won’t you?” he asked.

  “Please don’t act like you have to be my babysitter. It doesn’t suit you. B
esides, I can help you . . . with whatever you need to do to them,” Sara offered. “It’s the least I can do for your kind hospitality.”

  Christian shook his head, denying her the right. “No.” His smile reaffirmed it. “What you can do for me and what I would consider as a truly priceless gift right now, would be for you to clean up my kitchen, and if you can cook. . . .then cook us dinner this evening.”

  Sara had no trouble agreeing to this. “I can clean . . . and will cook. But you’ll need to find me some clothes.” He seemed to have forgotten about the fact she was wearing his pajama top and little else. Hell, nothing else. And though selfless in offering his home, he was a little stingy in the ‘heating that home’ department.

  “Do I have too?” he complained, quite sinfully.

  Sara’s returning smile was quick. “Yes, Reverend, you really do have to find me clothes to wear.”

  “Christian,” he told her.

  “Yes?” Sara confused by the sudden use of his name.

  “My name is Christian. When you call me Reverend, it sounds so oddly formal.”

  “But you are the Reverend,” she deliberately stated.

  The smile that came to his mouth was as quick as hers. “I know what I am. But when you are in my home, and in my presence for however long it will be, I would prefer it if you call me by my given name. Even ‘Hey, you!’ would work. Reverend Mohr sounds as if we are standing in Church . . . and right now, Sara Ruby, a church rectory is the furthest thing from my mind.”

  He added a wink to make certain she understood this fact.

  “Fine, Hey You!” Her tease brought out the color in his face. “Would it be okay to call you Chris, if ‘Hey You’ doesn’t get the required immediate response I desire?”

  He gave it some thought. “No one ever has.”

  “Well, then . . .”

  “That does not mean that you can,” he mentioned quickly.

  Sara gave him a nod. “Then I won’t. But Christian seems equally formal, as much as Reverend does. It would be a horse apiece.”

  “If I’d allow you to call me Chris, what would I get the pleasure to call you?”

  Sara gave him an easy grin. “Um . . . Sara.” It wasn’t as though her name could be shortened.

  He leaned over and glanced at her bared legs. The smile that graced his lips told her he had another name in mind, and that if she did not stop this man’s slightly dangerous thoughts headed in the wrong direction, she would be in big trouble, perhaps soon.

  Sara stood, pulled the pajama shirt down as far as she could, and told him firmly, “Clothes Reverend! No later than noon, if you please.”

  “Yes, ma`am.” A mock salute made from hand, he turned on his heels.

  As Sara moved off toward the bathroom to shower, she heard behind her back, “But whose clothes? Yours . . . or mine?” This statement followed by a loud chuckle that put the fear of God into her heart.

  Reverend Mohr had Sara questioning each and every one of her insecurities, and this was not a good thing while literally trapped inside the man’s home because of threats to her safety.

  She found Christian a half hour later seated on the carpeted floor near the large stack of prayer books he was supposed to have done last night. He was writing in each one under the front cover. As he finished with one, he grabbed for another.

  She’d been watching him from the doorway, the man hard at work and somehow lost in deep concentration, but she had thought better of staying hidden from view. Her shower done, she could certainly start on the dirtied dishes of their breakfast.

  She told him before heading there, “Thank You.”

  Startled by the sound of her voice, his eyes rose to hers, and she made a sweep of the hand over her body to show him what he was being thanked for. On her person was a pair of man’s navy blue sweats—his. He’d put them through the closed bathroom door while she still in the shower. However, she was still minus underwear beneath those clothes. That particular article deemed unnecessary by the man. Truth told, probably unnecessary by any man.

  “It was all I could find in my closet that I thought would fit you.” He set down the book in his hand and rose quickly to his feet.

  Christian had dressed in faded jeans and an old gray sweatshirt ripped at the hem. His feet were bare. His hair sleep mussed. Damn! He looked good enough to eat. Half-dressed last night and earlier this morning had been indescribable. Reverend Mohr fully dressed put the imagination swiftly to use.

  Subconsciously, Sara licked her lips.

  “I’ll head to the thrift store as soon as I am done here. I promise,” he added.

  “No hurry. These will do well for the day.” After all, she was only going to clean and cook. Not perform complicated brain surgery while under duress.

  “Minus the underwear?” His tease merciless; under the circumstances it was not all that amusing.

  Sara wasn’t looking forward to wearing thrift store underwear. However, there was not a damn thing she could do about it without the ability to purchase any from a department store. In near house arrest, due to the threat of an arsonist with sordid agenda, she could not go to any department store until sorting through whatever was still useful inside her apartment. Once that was done, she would then have to settle with her insurance company; hopefully not get the runaround and a long delay to her money.

  Christian may have called it stuff, but to Sara her stuff was what paid the bills. She would have to start all over, from scratch. This was tough to do when not too many were willing to help with the batter.

  To take her mind off her troubles, her reckless answer came back as, “I could always borrow a pair of yours.”

  This checked his smile in a lightning speed hurry. “Um . . . no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sara, there are certain things a man expects on a woman, even if he can’t see them, and men’s underwear is not one of those things.”

  “No one would even know.”

  “I would,” he reasoned firmly, stating it in a tone not to be questioned.

  Sara gave Christian a smile and decided to let him get back to his work; while she started on hers. Dishes and cooking was not her forte`, but what else was there for her to do? Twiddle her thumbs until Chief Berken caught the creeps who torched her place? Honest works for an honest stay was a start.

  “Sara?” he asked, before she got too far away and too deep into her task.

  She turned and faced him from the kitchen doorway. “Yes?”

  “You put them on inside out.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  “So the other side will be clean for tomorrow,” she admitted flatly. “I will be sending a man to do my shopping. I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  She heard his laughter all the way inside the kitchen. Husky laughter produced by a very incredible man.

  A full hour later, Christian found her still inside his kitchen. She’d been cleaning it from top to bottom. He startled her from her task.

  “I never meant you had to clean the whole house!”

  Sara raised her face, deep in concentration with the insides of his filthy stove. If she put to inspecting it, she would have condemned him and his filthy stove right on the spot. The place was a mess. He may be close to God, but he was even closer to the ‘filth demon’.

  “I will not eat from a dirty oven,” she said firmly.

  She didn’t know there were grease smudges on her forehead and the tip of nose, until Christian moved closer and started pointing them out.

  His hand rose and he touched the tip of her nose. “Well, you missed a spot . . . right here.”

  His finger rose to her forehead. “And another spot here.”

  That finger lowered to the front of her sweatshirt. “And there’s another here.”

  His head suddenly bent to hers, his words muttered against her lips. “And right here.”

  A firm kiss from a very confident man was even more potent than before.

&
nbsp; When it ended, she asked him, “Aren’t you supposed to be writing stuff in . . . um, books,” licking her lips to savor the taste of him: coffee, blueberry pie he’d snitched when no one looking.

  “I’m all done with that endeavor.” His strong tone resonated across the minute space between them. His breath brushed her inflamed cheeks; minty. “I came in here to tell you that I am now headed to the Church to drop them off, and then to the thrift store to buy clothes for a woman who has little to no faith in me that I can pick out for her without each being hideous. Not that you do not look quite lovely wearing mine, even if put on inside out.”

  Sara grinned in spite of the fact she only wanted to kiss him again . . . and again. And so damn many times until blue in the face.

  “Once the chief and fire inspector let me back into my apartment, I should be allowed to search through whatever might be left to my name, and hopefully pay you back.”

  He looked shocked all of a sudden. He even pulled back, leaving too much space between them. “I am not doing this to be paid back, Sara. I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart.”

  She quickly placed her hand onto his heart. “And it is a good heart, Christian. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he teased. A hasty separation then made of the bodies to stall any other thoughts toward procrastination that would delay her clothing and confirm potential wrath from Mrs. Thorn.

  Christian stared at her face. He seemed to be assessing her. That stare pulled away, he turned on heels, walked out of the kitchen, grabbed a stack of books from the living room floor and made for the front door.

  She heard him holler from the other room, “A little help here?”

  Sara found the man trying to balance the large stack in his arms and open a door handle at the same time; a truly undoable feat without three hands. She opened the door and then held it for him as he returned for another stack. When all of the books were carried to his car, he leaned down and gave her a hasty peck to the side of her cheek. Too sweet and too short, she wanted so many more.

  He smiled. “You smell like over cleaner.”