Divine Temptation (23 page)

“I have considered it.” Evan examined her, his eyes roving over her face and down her length, as if searching for something. It made her uneasy.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t appear to have any choice. I’ve not been allowed to take my focus off you. The best I can do is stay in the background.”

“So you
want
to leave me?”

“No. But I also don’t necessarily want to be around to witness…everything.”

The silver of his irises looked more leaden than usual as he glanced away, and Maggie blushed, thinking of that night in Ray’s truck. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to sense the angel’s presence as accurately as she’d thought. A subject change seemed in order. “We haven’t talked since that phone call to Sharon, the one where she told me I’m a horrible friend. I was thinking about how Liam’s friend had started being nasty to him because he’d been infected—do you think that could be the case with Sharon too, maybe to a lesser extent?”

“I can’t say for sure, but this seems like a strictly human problem to me. It’s entirely possible for friends to get angry at each other without being possessed by demons.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Look, I know I haven’t been the most attentive to her, but I can’t believe she’d come down on me like that. And honestly, she’s been pretty damn rude to me throughout the years—always prying into my business, making snap judgments about my personal life—and I’ve never once railed on her. She can just stew on this one for a while.”

Maggie took a long sip of wine and drained her glass, ignoring the arch in Evan’s eyebrow that accused
her
of being the one who was stewing. As she reached for the bottle, Evan laid his hand on hers. “Be careful with your anger, Maggie. It feeds them. You and your friend have issues to work out, but giving evil purchase on your souls isn’t going to help either of you.”

The doorbell rang, and Maggie laughed at the timely arrival of a miniature, horned Beelzebub standing on her doorstep.

Chapter 16

O
N
A
LL
S
OULS
D
AY
, Maggie let Brenda know she’d be taking an extra long lunch break and drove south along the river to meet Raymond at a new gourmet sandwich place. She found him already there, seated at one of the high-backed booths. He stood and greeted her with a stiff kiss on her cheek and stayed quiet while they looked over their menus. At first Maggie thought he was probably preoccupied with the work that had been keeping him busy the last several days, but when he laid down his menu and didn’t look directly at her as he asked how she’d been, she knew something wasn’t right.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

He met her gaze and gave a chagrinned half-smile—it didn’t even cause the slightest dent in the sides of his face. “I was planning on getting into this after we’d had a chance to eat, but I apparently need to work on my poker face.”

“Is it bad news?” she asked.

He reached his hands across the table and touched hers with just the tips of his fingers. “Maggie, I’ve been seeing someone else.”

The entire restaurant may as well have fallen into a dark pit and left Maggie perched amidst a gray sea of nothing, because that’s exactly how she felt. She hadn’t seen this coming from eight million miles away.

“I know we’ve never talked about being exclusive,” he continued. “So for all I know you’re seeing someone else too, but we’ve progressed far enough that I feel like I owe you an explanation. I guess what I’ve realized about myself is that I’m just not the type of guy who can handle dating two women at once.”

“And you’re choosing her.”

Raymond watched Maggie and cautiously nodded just as the waiter approached to tell them all about the soup of the day.

“You know what? I’m not hungry, but thanks,” Maggie said, handing the server her menu.

“Give us a few more minutes,” Raymond interjected.

The confused waiter looked down at Maggie’s menu and seemed to consider giving it back to her, but after a nod from Ray, he left with it.

“A restaurant, Ray? Really? You think this is a good place to break up with someone?”

“I’m sorry, you’re right. This wasn’t the right place to do it. Come on.” He set his menu down and stood, reaching for Maggie’s hand. “I don’t blame you for being shocked. But I think it’ll benefit you just as much as me if you’ll let me explain.”

Maggie ignored his outstretched hand, but stood and led him out of the restaurant. The day was overcast, but with mild temperatures, so Maggie continued down the sidewalk.

When they passed a coffee shop, Raymond said, “At least let me buy you a coffee.”

“Hot chocolate. The biggest they’ve got. With whipped cream.” A few minutes later, armed with her warm cup of security, she was ready to hear him out. They’d walked onto the main bridge and stood on one of the curved lookout points over the shallow river.

“I wasn’t looking for someone else. I dropped off the dating site and felt very grateful to have met you. But then she came back in my life, a former college girlfriend. After graduation we’d gone our separate directions, and even at university our timing had never been quite right, but it looks like we’ve been given a second chance.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“She first called me about a month ago. She moved back into the area. For a while it was honestly just a reuniting of old friends—a phone call here, a lunch there, but in the last couple of weeks the old flames reignited. I suppose it’s because we’ve got all that history to build on that it’s moving so fast.”

Maggie saw the gentle glow under his surface as he spoke of this other woman and noticed something missing under her own—there was no nagging sting of jealousy.

“The only negative is having to end things with you,” Ray said.

“Yeah, her timing’s still rather sucky for me.” Maggie stared hard at him. His downturned mouth and the glassiness of his warm, brown eyes gave his otherwise sturdy face a somewhat pathetic air and convinced her of his sincerity. Softening, she said, “I appreciate you being honest and not stringing me along.”

“I’d never do that. I respect you too much.” He chanced a small smile.

“Thanks.” She nodded but couldn’t quite smile back. Ray was a good guy, and she could see that he was already beating himself up over hurting her, so she shrugged and added, “Who am I to mess with fate?”

He cocked his eyebrow. “You believe in fate?”

Now Maggie was able to smile as she glanced down and confessed, “No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

When she lifted her eyes back to his, one side of Ray’s mouth lifted in a regretful half-smile. “I didn’t believe in it either, but I wouldn’t be doing this unless I was sure, and I think my certainty can only be explained by fate, as if an angel carried her on his wings and brought her back into my life.”

Maggie turned her gaze toward the rushing river and murmured, “Interesting choice of words.”

Once safely back in her car, she drove around for a bit and let the tears flow, afterward blaming her red eyes on late-season allergies. At the end of the day, with the kids in bed, she thought she’d cry again, but didn’t. Instead she pulled a load of whites out of the dryer and sat cross legged on her bed folding clothes while watching TV.

Evan appeared, and a quick glance at the careful way in which he regarded her told Maggie he knew what had happened. “Relax,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Does your heart hurt?” he asked.

Maggie paused in her folding and considered his question. After a few moments, she shook her head. “Not my heart this time. Just my ego. Getting kinda tired of being the rejectee.”

“Good,” Evan answered. “Egos are much easier to heal.”

Maggie balled up one last pair of socks and set it on top of the pile in the basket. “Might be nice to get to see your face around here more often—and not only when I’m feeling sorry for myself.”

“I think I can arrange that. Right now, however, I’m going to let you get your rest.”

Maggie nodded, wanting nothing more than to curl up under her blankets for a long, solitary sleep.

Ever since the exorcism, an unspoken tension had flickered between Maggie and Monsignor Sarto. She avoided interaction with him even more than usual, but often felt him scrutinizing her. Yet the moment she turned her head in his direction, his eyes would dart away.

“I’m not saying he’s evil or anything. I just find it a little hard to trust him after he used me as demon bait,” she explained to Evan one evening in the quiet of her bedroom. She hadn’t been able to let go of the hostility on her own, so she was bringing her concerns to the angel.

“It was an effective plan,” he responded.

“Seriously? You’re taking his side?”

“There are no sides, Maggie. Only truth, and the truth is that, although you may not like them, his tactics worked.”

“And what if they hadn’t? What if the demon had entered me? Would you still be defending him?”

A playful smirk danced across Evan’s full lips and into his shining eyes. “Then it would’ve been my turn to play exorcist.”

“You can do that?” she asked from her seated position on the bed.

Evan, standing above her, tilted his head and leveled a teasing glare that was both charming and challenging. “Do you doubt me?”

Maggie smiled, intrigued by this new aspect of her angel. “I’m quite sure you’re capable, but…how would you do it? I don’t picture you walking around with a little leather bag full of goodies.”

“I don’t need goodies.”

Maggie laughed. “How then?”

Evan clasped his hands together behind his back and made a show of pacing alongside the bed while he examined her through narrowed eyes, sizing her up.

“You’re a fighter,” he declared.

Maggie opened her mouth to deliver a quip, but before she could utter a sound, he’d climbed onto the bed and laid her flat, pinning her hands over her head and trapping her hips between his thighs. She made an instinctual move to break free, but he didn’t budge a millimeter.

“So my first act would be to subdue you,” he said. “Then I’d ask—politely, of course—for the demon to come forth. We’d have a conversation, he’d see he didn’t stand a chance, and he’d leave.”

“That easy, huh?” Maggie asked, doing her best to match his nonchalant demeanor rather than give in to the rush of adrenaline fluttering dangerously close to her surface.

“True, they’re not all cooperative. Some can be irritatingly stubborn.
Those
get threatened with an angel’s kiss.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.” Maggie’s voice sounded very small to her own ears.

“That’s because you’re not a demon.” His eyes left hers to wander down to her parted lips. “If you were, you’d flee at the first graze.”

Maggie held her breath as he lowered his face and pressed his lips softly against hers while inhaling the air from her mouth into his own. Any negative thoughts she’d had, any unpleasant feelings she’d clung to throughout the day drifted away.

He lifted his mouth from hers, holding his face only inches away. When he exhaled, his breath cooled the moisture he’d left behind on her lips.

“What if that doesn’t work?” she asked in the barest of whispers.

He answered by pressing his mouth more earnestly onto hers. The blending sensation that occurred whenever they pressed flesh to flesh was hardly discernible as they melded in a gentle, yet all-encompassing kiss. As they moved together, Evan pulled all malevolence out of her, leaving behind only the purest sentiments, untainted by anything corrupt or shameful. Her thoughts merged into a translucent and feathery cloud.

His pressure eventually eased, but he lingered over her mouth, not seeming inclined to pull fully away, and Maggie noticed the inexplicable absence of the questions that should have been swirling in her mind. She didn’t worry that the sensual encounter was wrong; she somehow knew it wasn’t. She also understood that this was as physical as things could ever get between them. But that knowledge didn’t leave her aching for more—her dominant emotion as he pressed his mouth one final time to hers was satisfaction.