For the Love of God (17 page)

“We don’t mean to sound critical, Reverend.” A bald-headed man was speaking in a stiffly censorious voice that belied his words. “But we have an obligation to ourselves and the church to express our feelings on this matter.”

“I’m sure your intentions are above reproach.” Seth’s murmured response was exceedingly dry. Even from this distance, Abbie could see the coldness in his blue eyes and the attitude of challenge in his stance.

“It isn’t that we have anything personal against Miss Scott.” A second man hurried to assure Seth of that.

“We freely acknowledge that she comes from a good family. Her parents are respected members of the community and this church,” the third man said. “Miss Scott herself is probably a very nice girl.”

“However?” Seth prompted the qualification that had only been implied by their tones.

“However …” The bald-headed man glanced at his two colleagues. “… she doesn’t strike
us as being a suitable … companion”—he paused before selecting the words—“for the minister of our church.”

“Since Miss Scott has returned to our town, she hasn’t participated actively in church affairs. She didn’t even attend church on a frequent basis until you came,” the third man explained.

“These are things you couldn’t have known about her,” the second man inserted. “Which was why we felt we should bring it to your attention.”

“I’m sure you understand now why we are advising you to break off your relationship with Miss Scott. It would be in the best interest of everyone concerned,” the bald-headed man concluded, with a slightly righteous tilt of his head.

Tears burned the back of her eyes as Abbie heard the final edict. She hadn’t dreamed that anything like this might happen. The whole scene took on a nightmarish unreality. Her gaze clung to Seth as the silence stretched over the span of several seconds.

“I fully understand the concern that prompted you to seek me out, so this could be discussed openly.” Seth’s low-pitched voice was clear and concise. “And I’m in full agreement with you that Miss Scott lacks some of the qualifications that are regarded as essential for a woman to be considered as a minister’s marital partner….”

An involuntary gasp of pain was ripped from her throat at this ultimate condemnation from the man she loved. Abbie cupped a hand to her
mouth to smother any more sounds, but it was already too late. Seth had seen her.

“Abbie!” He called to her.

But she heard the irritation in his voice and whirled away to run out the door. Tears blurred her vision as she hurried down the steps, breathing in sobs. Her high-heeled shoes restricted her pace to a running walk.

All her illusions were torn asunder. She suddenly realized why Seth had wanted to talk privately to her today. He had intended to break it to her gently that she wouldn’t be a suitable wife for him. Love had led her down another dead-end road.

Yesterday, that passionate scene on her apartment sofa had been just that—passion—at least on Seth’s part. Now Abbie could see what he had been trying to tell her when he had asserted he was made of flesh. The desires of the flesh—as opposed to the desires of the heart.

She remembered the way he had held her and murmured, “What am I going to do with you, Abbie?” Tears ran hotly down her cheeks as she reached her car in the church lot. It was all very clear now why he had said that. No doubt Seth had guessed that she was in love with him, but marriage was out of the question. What a fool she’d been! What an unmitigated fool!

“Abbie!”

Her glance was jerked in the direction of Seth’s voice. He was half running across the lawn toward her, his black robe billowing out behind him. The flutterings of panic went
through her. She couldn’t face him, not yet—maybe never.

Wiping at the tears running down her cheeks, Abbie yanked open the car door and scrambled behind the wheel. Her shaking hands dived into her purse for the key and fumbled in their first attempt to insert it into the ignition lock. She glanced frantically out the front windshield. Seth was nearly to the car, a forbidding grimness etched into his rugged features.

“Don’t fail me now, Mabel,” Abbie pleaded with the car as she turned the key in the switch.

The motor grumbled in protest but its slowly turning noises were encouraging. Abbie pumped on the pedal to give it more gas and the grumble became a constant complaint. The gears ground together as she shifted into reverse, but it was too late.

Seth was opening the passenger door and reaching across the seat. Abbie pressed herself against the driver’s door to elude him, but he wasn’t intending to grab her. He was after the key. By the time she realized it, he had already turned the motor off and extracted the key from the ignition.

Cornered, Abbie squared around to face the front and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. She held herself rigid, refusing to look at him, not wanting to see the pity in his eyes.

“Will you please give me the keys?” she requested stiffly. Her jaw was white with the effort to contain her emotional turmoil.

There was a rustle of material as Seth climbed
into the passenger side and shut the door. Tension screamed through her nerves when he leaned over and inserted the key into the ignition switch.

“There’s your key,” he challenged.

Her chin started to quiver. Abbie had to grit her teeth to control it. “Will you please get out of my car?” she insisted, still without looking at him.

“We’re having Sunday dinner together, remember?” Seth replied evenly.

“The invitation is withdrawn,” Abbie retorted wildly, and blinked quickly to keep back the tears.

“That’s too bad. I guess I’ll just have to sit and watch you eat,” he countered. “But we’re going to get this misunderstanding straightened out.”

“There is nothing to straighten out.” She lifted her chin a little higher. “The situation has been made perfectly clear to me, so we have nothing to discuss. I understand completely.”

“Do you?” he murmured dryly.

“Yes, I do,” Abbie stated. “There’s nothing you have to explain.”

“Whether you want me to or not, I’m going to do just that,” he stated. “You obviously overheard my meeting with the representatives from the church board.”

“Obviously,” she admitted on a bitter note, and flashed him a brief glance that was almost her undoing. The brooding intensity of his gaze seemed to reach out for her, but she succeeded in avoiding it.

“There are a great many disadvantages to marrying a minister. Your weekends are never free. Come rain, shine, sleet, or hail, you’re in church on Sunday mornings. A lot of week-nights, your husband is gone attending church meetings. Everything you do is scrutinized by the good members of the congregation, from the clothes you wear to the way you fix your hair. You’re expected to join every charity, every social and church group, and attend every meeting, unless your children are sick. You—”

“Stop it!” Abbie closed her eyes, unable to take anymore. “I’m fully aware I don’t qualify for the position, so you don’t have to give me a bunch of reasons why I wouldn’t want it anyway!”

“You may not be applying for the position, Abbie,” Seth said quietly, “but I’m asking you to fill it.”

She caught her breath at his words, but refused to believe he meant them. Her eyes were bright with tears when she finally opened them and turned an accusing glance at him. “I heard what you said in there, Seth,” she reminded him. “I don’t—”

“If you had stayed to hear what else I had to say…” Seth interrupted, “…you would know I don’t care whether you’d make a suitable minister’s wife or not. You’re the woman I want to marry.”

“I…” Abbie stared at him incredulously, daring to listen. “Is this a proposal?”

“Yes.” A slow smile began to spread across his mouth. “I’d get down on one knee but Mabel has
me in cramped quarters.” He hitched up his robe to reach in his pants pocket. “I was going to offer you this after dinner.”

Dazed, Abbie slowly uncurled her fingers from their death grip on the steering wheel as she caught the sparkle of a diamond ring. When he reached out for her hand, she hesitantly offered him her left. She watched him slip the ring onto her third finger. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

“Does that mean you’ll marry me?” Seth mocked.

“Yes … if you’re sure.” Abbie qualified her acceptance.

“I am very sure,” he insisted, and proceeded to prove it.

His kiss was ardently possessive and demanding as his arm circled her waist to pull her across the seat to achieve a more satisfactory closeness. There was a wild singing in her ears, a rush of joy that was almost unbearably sweet. When he finally dragged his mouth from hers, she buried her face in the silklike robe covering his chest.

“I never realized I could be so happy.” Abbie breathed out the words. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Not a chance.” His fingers tunneled into her auburn hair and lifted her head so he could study her love-softened features. “You are going to be my wife … Mrs. Seth Talbot.”

Hearing it made her tremble with happiness. “I still can’t believe that you want to marry me, but I’m glad you do.”

“Don’t you remember the second time we met,
I told your mother that I hadn’t married because I hadn’t found anyone who was suitable for me,” Seth reminded her. “I was never looking for a suitable minister’s wife. I wanted a woman who would be right for me. You are that woman, Abbie.”

“I had forgotten you had said that,” she admitted.

“Maybe if you had remembered, you wouldn’t have run out of the church the way you did.” His mouth twisted in a wry line. “If you only knew how frightened I was at that moment—and how angry I was, too, because their unthinking remarks had hurt you.”

“It wasn’t just what they said, but the remarks
you
made yesterday, too,” Abbie explained.

“The remarks I made?” He quirked an eyebrow. “What did I say to give you the wrong impression?”

“It was a lot of little things. When I wanted you to love me, you refused and told me not to ask that of you,” she remembered.

“That’s simply because I didn’t want to anticipate our wedding night,” Seth explained, then shook his head in stunned disbelief. “I suppose you thought I was saying that I couldn’t love you.”

“Not at that moment, I didn’t think it—only later when I began piecing things together,” Abbie admitted ruefully, because she had gotten the picture all wrong.

“What things?”

“Like when you said you didn’t know what you
were going to do with me, I thought you were trying to find a way to break it to me gently that you didn’t love me.”

“I love you,” Seth stated, so there would be no more question of that. “As for that remark, I’m not really sure what I meant other than that I’d been waiting for so long for you to finally recognize I was a man, that I loved you as a man. Because I was a minister you kept trying to put me above such things. Yesterday you nearly made me forget I was a minister, too.”

“And I’ll learn to be a good minister’s wife,” Abbie said, tracing her fingers along his jaw and trailing them across the slashing groove to the corner of his mouth.

“That’s the other thing I was trying to explain to you yesterday. I don’t want you to feel that because of me, it’s your duty to know the Bible, or attend church, or anything else. If you want to do it, then let it be for the same reason I have. Do it for the love of God, not because you feel obligated because you are the minister’s wife.”

“I will,” she whispered. “I promise you that.”

His arms tightened around her, gathering her against him as his mouth came down to claim her lips. It was a long and passionate kiss that rocked Abbie all the way to her toes. She felt him shudder and bury his mouth in her hair.

“How I love you, Abbie,” he muttered thickly.

“Seth.” When she opened her eyes, her glance strayed over his shoulder to the walls of the church. “Do you realize we are practically necking in the church parking lot?”

A low chuckle came from him after a second’s stillness. He lifted his head, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Can you think of a better place? I love you. In the eyes of God and the eyes of man, I want you for my wife.”

“And I want you for my husband,” she whispered, because she couldn’t think of a better place to love him either. Then suddenly she remembered something else and pulled back from him. “The roast!”

“What about it?” Seth frowned.

“It’s still in the oven.” Abbie glanced at her watch. “Dinner is going to be ruined,” she groaned.

“There will be plenty of other Sunday dinners,” he assured her, and pulled her back into his arms where she belonged.