Divine Temptation (35 page)

Sharon didn’t stay long, and Maggie and the kids had a quiet evening. After assuring her children she’d be okay alone in her room that night and settling them into their own beds, Maggie had fallen immediately asleep. When she next opened her eyes, it was after two a.m. Evan sat beside her on the edge of the bed, and she immediately pushed herself up to be eye level with him.

“Where would you like me to start?” he asked before she could even speak, having learned to dispense with formalities when Maggie’s mind was cluttered with questions.

“With the demon’s heir. What happened to it?”

“When you trusted our Father with your fate, he granted you his protection, and you were held back from the demons’ grip. But Aeden feared what his son might become if left in the care of a woman who answered to the Lord. He wouldn’t allow it, so he continued to beckon his child forth. What happened inside you was a separate battle between good and evil. Aedan continued to crush his only chance at procreation relentlessly against the fortified walls of your womb until its prophesied life was cut short. Because of your faith, Satan lost his prince.”

“The doctors didn’t say anything about a pregnancy or miscarriage.”

Evan shook his head. “It was so small. Too new and supernatural; they’d not pick it up on the equipment available to them.”

“What about its father? He must be furious with me—do I need to be prepared for him to come back?”

Evan waved his head back and forth, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. “The decision to deny or accept him was yours alone to make, but once you made your choice and gave yourself fully to the Lord, my brothers and I were free to step in. We took care of them.”

“Killed them?”

“Nearly, and then we cast what was left of their sniveling life forms back to their master. The torture he’s sure to inflict for their failure will be far worse than being extinguished entirely. It’s doubtful he’ll ever liberate any of them long enough to visit this realm again.”

Maggie nodded, staring down at her blankets and absorbing what he’d told her, trying not to imagine what Satan’s punishments might be. When she was ready for more she looked back to him. They sat very close, only inches away, but neither of them seemed inclined to touch the other. “How much about Aeden did you know ahead of time, and why didn’t you warn me?” she asked.

“I knew nothing of his plans. Not until the night I found you with his mark. That’s when I was enlightened. The reason I became visible to you was so that I could be both a temptation and a guide. My divine propensity against lust was lowered, and while I grappled with the confusion and anguish that caused, I was distracted from the ways my struggle was fostering your growing physical desire for me, providing Aeden with the pathway he needed to implant his prophetic seed. At the same time, my spiritual guidance was meant to give you the fortitude to beat him in the end.

“God trusted you to meet the challenge, and I was only an instrument.” His tensed features softened, his natural light seeming to almost throb, beaming on her. “You did well.”

Maggie let her sorrow, her guilt and anxiety, subside for a moment, and allowed herself to bask in his glow, feeling the truth of what he said.

“What about now?” she asked. “Your propensity. I don’t know if it’s just because of everything I’ve been through, but…it feels different. I’m still—I feel a connection to you, but it’s not the same.”

His eyes narrowed as he took her in, and his mouth tightened into a small frown. “How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just, I feel
steady
. Like I could be okay just sitting here with you, talking for hours, not touching, not wanting more than just this.”

A bright smile burst across his beautiful features. “My libido has been renewed to where it belongs. I’m as angels are meant to be.” The shining shards in his silvery eyes were more brilliant than ever, but Maggie was happy to simply admire them, and didn’t mind that they no longer burned on her.

“And I’m apparently a huge sucker for unbridled angel-lust,” she said, “because you
really
had me mesmerized.”

Evan chuckled. “I suspect it wasn’t just my vibes influencing your affections.”

Maggie quirked an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“When you were trying to manage your feelings for me, you deflected onto Raymond. It’s quite possible you’d also been deflecting onto me all along.”

“The ol’ double deflect,” Maggie said, scrunching a teasing nose at him, but then her expression morphed into something more serious. “Carl?”

The angel tilted his head, raising his eyebrows in confirmation.

“But what was between us was so different from what I ever had with him.”

“You weren’t directly substituting me for your husband, but your emotions, your lingering feelings for him, may have been looking for a place to land, and they found me. Understand that I don’t know this for certain—it’s just a theory.”

“A theory that doesn’t exactly do me any good. I don’t want these ‘lingering feelings.’ I need to get over him for good.”

“You need to trust the Lord with your heart the way you trusted him with your life and soul two mornings ago. Stop trying to control what you feel and just feel it. He won’t leave you bereft. The answer will come in his time.”

She scowled, not completely understanding what he was telling her to do and not in the mood to try to figure it out. She had other things pressing on her mind, the question she’d been afraid to ask since she’d remembered what had happened. “Can you tell me anything about Father Tom? Is he happy?”

The angel placed both hands on her shoulders, his light pulsating into her. “Immeasurably.”

Maggie’s relief came out in a sharp exhale and she fell into Evan, who wrapped his arms around her and held her close as she laughed and cried at the same time. “I’m so happy he’s made it to a better place, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the guilt of knowing he was killed so brutally—because of me.”

“His own actions brought him there as much as yours. Like you, he made missteps, but they led him to where he needed to be. It was his fate.”

Maggie stayed pressed to him, listening to the even rhythm of his heart and pleased to see that her own maintained a smooth, platonic pace. “Will you go away now that your purpose in my life is fulfilled?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Pulling her head back, she leveled a stern look at him. “Well, one thing you can know is that I’m going to continue to exercise my summoning powers for as long as they work.”

He brought his hand up to tweak her nose. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you.”

Chapter 25

O
N
T
HE
D
AY
O
F
T
HOMAS
R
EARDON’S
F
UNERAL
, weary circles darkened Father Dominic’s eyes, and he wore a vaguely lost-looking expression. But as he performed the rite, surrounded by a sea of deep red poinsettias and white-lit Christmas trees, a quiet strength entered his visage. Carl joined his family for the service, with Liam and Kirsten sitting between their parents. The children were stoic and rigid at first, but began to sniff as the ceremony continued. Father Tom had become a respected fixture in their lives, and it would be difficult for them to grasp the reality that he was gone.

When the final commendation began, Liam crawled onto his father’s lap, and Carl clamped his arms around his son while sparing a hand for his daughter’s shoulder. Kirsten’s head slumped, and Maggie immediately caught it and pulled it to her, pressing her lips to her daughter’s hair and letting her own tears freely slide down her cheeks. The chain clinked as Father Dominic shook the golden vessel of billowing incense around the casket, and Maggie silently whispered a final prayer for her beloved priest and friend.

She felt especially in tune with the celebration of Christmas that year and showered love onto her parents and her sister’s family as they gathered together. Carl joined them all for a few hours on Christmas Eve. Maggie had been making such good progress in accepting that the marriage was definitively over, but having her ex-husband so close these last few weeks, and having him be so wonderfully supportive, had been a setback so she considered it a good thing when he spent Christmas Day with Melissa, thus extinguishing any false hope. It had been more than a year since those two had started dating, and Maggie steeled her nerves to be prepared for the announcement of an engagement at some point during the holidays. But that didn’t happen.

Two weeks into the new year, the kids were sleeping while Maggie stayed up, paying bills and making a few updates to the parish website. St. John’s was still waiting for a new pastor to be appointed, so Maggie, Brenda, and Father Dominic were scrambling to keep things running in the meantime. Just as she turned off her laptop, her cell phone rang and she saw that it was Carl. “Hey there,” she said.

“You still awake?”

“No.”

“Smart ass. I guess what I should ask is, are you alone and is this an okay time to talk?”

“Sure.” She shoved the computer aside and clamped her eyes shut, bracing herself for
the talk
. “What’s up?”

“I’m just around the corner; see you in a few.” He clicked off, and Maggie swore under her breath. It was going to be more difficult to hide her true reaction in person. She went to the mirror near the front door and practiced a few different spontaneous smiles. If he didn’t pay too much attention to her eyes, she’d be okay.

He tapped lightly on the door, and she swung it open, gesturing him down the hall to the great room so their voices wouldn’t travel up the stairs. Maggie settled onto one of the island stools and swiveled to face him. “I repeat: what’s up?”

The lines on the sides of his mouth creased as he gave her a small, tense smile and remained standing. “I like that we’ve become friends in the past year. We never paid enough attention to that part of our relationship when we were a couple, and I’m really happy that we’ve been able to look past all our issues and get to this point.”

“Me too.”

He stood there, just looking down at her with that awkward smile frozen on his face. Maggie almost felt sorry for him.

“Is this what you came to talk about?” she asked. “Us being friends?”

“Not exactly. But I do want you to know how important that aspect of our relationship has become to me, and I don’t ever want to lose it.”

“Don’t worry. Nothing you tell me right now is going to make you lose my friendship. I’m an adult, I care about you too, and I’m not going to let a good thing die just because you’re moving on with your life.”

He tilted his head and scrunched his eyebrows in question, studying Maggie. Then his expression relaxed, and his eyes sparked. “Melissa’s a wonderful woman. So easy going, fun, loving. Sexy.”

“She’s a peach, Carl. No need to convince me.”

He sauntered over, suddenly a little too at ease in Maggie’s opinion, and lowered onto the stool next to her. They sat side by side, both of them looking forward rather than directly at each other. “Things became more serious between us after we got back together last spring, and we’ve reached a point where…well, Missy was expecting a ring this Christmas.”

Maggie held her breath, but when Carl didn’t continue, she prompted, “And…”

“And I gave her an iPad. I had no idea she was expecting an engagement ring until the tears were spilling out and she explained to me that electronics are the kind of gift you give to a good client or a brother, not a woman you’re romantically involved with. And then I blew it again on New Year’s Eve, which is when she’d apparently convinced herself I’d been planning to propose and that the iPad was meant to throw her off.”

Maggie crossed her arms and didn’t even try to hide her amusement when she turned to him. “So you’ve come to a woman for help. Here’s a tip: on February fourteenth there’s this holiday called Valentine’s Day. You’d better show up on her doorstep that
morning
with either a big, fat ring or a leather strap and handcuffs so she can take you inside and beat some sense into you.”

Carl looked at her sideways and smirked. “I see I’m not the only one who’s clueless.” To the furrow in Maggie’s brow, he responded, “Missy and I are done. For good. The reason I never picked up on any of her cues is because I don’t want to marry her.”

“Oh,” was all Maggie said, unfolding her arms and letting her hands fall to rest on her thighs as she leaned back against the counter and again turned forward.

“Like I said, she’s a wonderful woman, has a lot going for her. It’s not like I never considered making a life with her, but every time I added it all up there was always one important quality missing. And as it turns out, it’s the one thing I can’t live without.” Maggie’s eyes flicked to him, and he twisted his neck so he could look back and meet her gaze. “She’s not you.”

Practicing her smiles had been a complete waste of time, and Maggie’s mouth dropped open as her eyes tensed in confusion. Carl turned on his stool to face her, swiveling hers so he could mold his knees to either side of her. Her jaw moved up and down as she struggled for what to say until Carl stopped her by gently grasping her hands.