Grounds to Believe (12 page)

“You can’t blame a guy for trying. And I told you the other night.” He sobered, playing the part. “I was passing through. Escaping.”

She bit her lip. “I’m so sorry, Ross. I didn’t mean to be flippant. Here I’ve been dwelling on my family’s problems and totally forgetting how much you’ve suffered, too.”

He shrugged. “You sounded like you needed to talk. And don’t worry about me. The pain becomes part of you after a while. You learn to live with it, like a fake hand or something.”

“That doesn’t sound very appealing.”

“Consider the alternative.”

“So your employer said you could take off for as long as you needed?”

“Not exactly. I’m between positions at the moment. And was that a sneaky way of finding out more about what I do for a living?”

“No, of course not. But it’s nice to have an idea of who you are.”

“What I do isn’t who I am.” Now, there was a whopping big lie. His job—no, his vocation—as a cult specialist was a huge part of who he was. His past with Annie and the Sealers and his drive to succeed as an investigator dovetailed with his faith that this was the path God had called
him for. But it was time for her to think less about him and more about them.

“Care to share my jacket?” he asked.

“The view is just fine from here, thank you.” After a long moment, she turned to find him watching her. “Ross.” Her tone held warning. “You promised.”

“I did, didn’t I?” He closed his eyes and relaxed under the sun and after a moment, despite what she’d said, he felt her stretch out next to him. The wind fanned over the two of them, bringing the sound of water splashing on the rocks below. A hawk wheeled lazily in the updraft.

Beside him, Julia sighed, a sound of desolation. He rolled to his side and rested his head on his hand, looking down into her eyes. She was watching the hawk. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking of a girl I knew in school.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Jenny Kurtz. She works for the police.”

“And why were you thinking of her?”

“You told Melchizedek you saw me and—and you thought maybe God could still do good work on the earth.”

“I did. But I still don’t get the connection.”

“She used to tell people I was in a cult. She’d make up stories from things she’d read and tell people we did them. But we aren’t a cult. We just believe in God.” She looked up into his face. “What do you think we are?”

This was a switch. The informant was putting his investigation back on track. He gazed into her eyes, eyes that were clear and honest and completely without ulterior motive or guile. There was only one thing he could say.
“This Jenny doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he said gently, smoothing an errant strand of hair out of her eyes. “But I know one thing.”

“What?” The breeze died, leaving them in a vast, waiting silence.

She had rolled her head toward him, her face so close he could touch it with a breath. “You don’t love Derrick Wilkinson.” With one fingertip, he traced her jawline.

“Yes, I do,” she whispered, as if reciting a lesson. The sun caught in her eyes, gilding the tips of her lashes.

“But you like being with me.” Aimless as the breeze that puffed over them, he let his fingertip drift down to her chin.

She seemed to be losing the thread of the conversation. “I’m not supposed to feel this way about an Outsider.”

He felt the potential of passion like the wind racing across the meadow, coming closer and closer. Just by leaning down he could take her sun-warmed sweetness and consume it with a kiss, drawing it into himself like a talisman against the dark.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t offer this woman anything, even leaving her odd religion out of it. It wouldn’t be right to lead her on any further, no matter what Harry Everett thought he had to do. That would mean pushing “cultivation of the informant” past the boundaries of investigative license straight to “grounds for suspension.”

And it might mean breaking her heart.

I
f she let herself cry, he would see her in the side mirrors. Julia drew on years of training in silence and clenched her teeth, willing the tears back to where they’d come from. She should have known better. Bad enough she had been so forward as to lie on that jacket with him. Worse that she had lain there waiting for his kiss, throwing her self-control away under the magic of his touch. She’d been dumb enough to allow him intimacies she’d hardly allowed Derrick, for heaven’s sake, and blurted out her feelings on top of that, and now look.

This was what came of playing with the wolf. This was what came of putting her own selfish desire ahead of what she knew was right. He’d bundled her back down the mountain and onto the bike like an embarrassed parent hustling a misbehaving child out of Gathering.

Julia gripped his waist as the motorcycle dipped into another turn, and wished she were at the bottom of the lake.

“Where do you want to eat?” he shouted over his shoulder, the wind grabbing the words.

“I don’t care.” Maybe he wouldn’t hear her.

No such luck. He probably read lips. “You don’t care where or you don’t care whether it’s with me?” he hollered. “What’s the matter back there?”

She plastered on a smile and the wind immediately dried it to her teeth. “Nothing!” she shouted brightly.

“Glad to hear it. I could use some home cooking.”

“Some what?”

“Home cooking! You know. Steak. Something simple.”

Only a man would think steak was simple. “I don’t have any steak.”

“I’ll settle for fried eggs. If I’m allowed in your apartment in the daytime?”

Julia struggled to understand him. One minute she thought he was going to kiss her again, the next he had rolled away in disgust. Now he wanted to go home with her for lunch. A trickle of joy seeped through the confusion and humiliation.

“Julia?”

“Yes, you’re allowed.” It would be all right to invite him to lunch in broad daylight. After all, he’d been to Madeleine’s for dinner. Melchizedek himself was going to visit. He was no longer a Stranger, not really, and something like lunch was harmless. It wasn’t like she was inviting him in at night.

He decelerated down the long grade into town. As they cornered into Gates Place she stiffened with a gasp of horror.

“What? What?” Ross demanded. “Don’t do that, woman, you’ll make me lay this thing down.”

“I can’t go home like this!”

“Like what?”

“Wearing jeans!”

“Too late. We’re here.”

He pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. With a sense of relief so heady it was like a lungful of pure oxygen, she saw that Rebecca’s car was gone. She was safe for one more day. Could a person actually die from a heart attack brought on by guilt?

Ross followed her up the stairs and into her apartment. She threw open the curtains and light flooded into the kitchen. He stood in the middle of the adjoining living room and looked around, taking in her pictures, her books, the half-finished embroidery draped over the arm of the couch, held down by the needle stuck in the upholstery.

She opened the refrigerator door and pulled mushrooms and broccoli out of the crisper.

“I’ll do that.” He took them and began opening drawers, looking for a knife.

“That side.” She pointed. “You can cook, too?”

“You think just because I’m a mechanic and ride a motorcycle I have no culinary skills? Mom ran an equal opportunity kitchen. Everything my sisters learned, I learned too. After that I graduated to laundry and the finer points of dusting china.”

Julia tried to imagine Derrick or Owen doing laundry and dusting china and failed.

“She was stuck on me having a real career for a while there,” he went on, “but she got over it. She thought I should be a lawyer or a doctor.”

“A regular job has its benefits,” she pointed out.

“I have a regular job. Most of the time.” Mushrooms fell in precise slices on the cutting board. “Nothing breaks down more regularly than heavy equipment.”

When the water boiled, Julia fed linguine into it. It was a sin to envy a worldly woman she would never see—the future Mrs. Ross Malcolm. The man was not only gorgeous and an expert kisser, he could fix the car when it broke. He could cook. He could even dust china. She battled a sense of unreality. Why was he here in her kitchen? Why was she even entertaining the thought of his life skills when it was completely impossible that she would ever get to enjoy them?

He isn’t Elect, she told herself. And even if he came to Gathering with her, even if he became Elect himself, he’d still be off-limits. She would be married to Derrick by then, with nothing to do but watch Ross get mobbed by single women every Summer Gathering, year after year, until he chose someone far more pretty and interesting than she.

“Hey.” He bumped her shoulder.

She looked up, startled, and felt her knees go weak at the warmth in those gray eyes, the way his long lashes veiled them as he looked down at her. Her breath backed up in her chest.

“What do you want me to do with these?”

She blinked as he indicated the neat stack of vegetables. “Oh. Um, sauté them. Thanks.”

“Coming up. Where do you go when you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Stare off into the distance like that.”

She blushed the unbecoming color of beets and turned down the flame on the boiling pasta. “I was having an out-of-body experience.” Wishing she were someone else.

“Stick around. I like you in this one.” He smiled, and Julia felt her knees go as spongy as the mushrooms.

Where, she wondered, was she ever going to find the strength to bring this to an end?

Ross left shortly after they heard Rebecca’s car pull into the driveway.

“I can’t believe it,” he said crossly when she’d fidgeted around the room like a fly trying to escape. “What’s wrong with having a man over to lunch?”

“Nothing. It’s just that you can’t stay too long. It’ll look bad.”

“I thought we went through this already. Do they think you’re going to elope with me after the entrée?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why does it look like you’re guilty until proven innocent?”

Julia gave up trying to explain. Single women didn’t entertain a man alone. Period. Lunch had been okay. A couple of hours of conversation, no problem. But when the day stretched into late afternoon, people could think the
worst, and often did. In her case it was particularly dangerous because it would look as though she were cheating on Derrick.

Ross lived in a world where his behavior was his own business. He could do and say anything he liked. The sense of freedom she’d felt earlier was just an illusion. She lived in a fishbowl because she was the sister of the Elder’s wife.

“All right, Julia. Have it your way. I’m gone.”

“Goodbye,” she said softly on the landing. His eyes were level with hers, though he stood one step below. The memory of what had happened the last time they stood here filled the air between them.

“Thanks for the pasta. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

What for? Why did he bother? “I won’t be home in the morning.”

“I know. We could go for a ride when you get home.”

“Not on Sunday, I’m afraid. And then there’s Mission in the evening.”

“Of course.” He paused a moment as if to get his words in order. “You’re sure it’s okay if I come?”

Her heart gave a leap and she struggled not to gasp or weep at the unexpected gift. He still meant to come despite her idiotic behavior! “Of course. Anyone can.”
Thank you, Lord. I don’t deserve this.

“Even bikers?”

“Even them, hard as it is to believe.”

“Can I pick you up? Say at a quarter to seven?”

And roll up to the door astride a motorcycle? What a sensation
that
would cause. Such a thing had never
happened at Mission in her lifetime or anyone else’s. But then, neither had she been accosted by a biker in the parking lot before, and look what had happened since then.

“I don’t think so, Ross. How about I meet you there?”

After a moment, he nodded. “See you tomorrow, then.”

With a light touch, he smoothed her hair behind her ear and cupped her chin.

“Ross…”

“What?” His eyes were deep pools of slate framed by those incredible lashes.

From somewhere she summoned the strength to say, “Please don’t.”

“I won’t. But I still think you’re making a mistake.”

He clunked down the steps, his boots heavy on each riser, and kept his back to her as he put on his helmet, fired the motorcycle up, and roared out of sight.

Making a mistake about what? She turned and went back inside. He’s still coming to Mission. He’s still coming. It’s a miracle. Dear Lord, what was she going to do? She forced herself to calm down. Nothing. This is not up to you. You can’t save his soul, only he and God can.

But who was going to save hers? She thought of his kisses. Derrick never kissed her that way. She’d read in the paper once that two people couldn’t really fall in love until they’d exchanged some kind of chemical in their saliva when they kissed. Was that what was wrong with her?

Not that she was in love with him. She was just infatuated. This was what she got for playing with the wolf. God wouldn’t let her be tempted past bearing.

The good Lord had pretty much pushed her to her limit, though.

Sunday was a day of rest. After Gathering in the morning from ten till twelve, lunch for eleven people at Madeleine’s house to celebrate the news that Ryan could come home the following day, an afternoon with an energetic three-year-old who simply would not go down for her nap, and the drive back home to change due to a mistimed sip of milk, Julia was more than ready for it. But there was no hiding from the current of nervous energy that started up inside her around five o’clock, when she was finally able to shut herself into her apartment.

This must be what drug addiction is like, she thought as she knelt by the bed, trying unsuccessfully to pray before Mission. Her skin felt as though it was just barely holding her together. Blood energized by adrenaline fled through her veins. She would never hear a word of Melchizedek’s sermon if Ross was anywhere in the room.

I hope he doesn’t come.

Oh, Lord, please let him come.

God didn’t listen to such selfish prayers. She got up and threw open the closet door. She didn’t have a thing to wear. All her clothes looked dull and monotonous and, well, black. It was hopeless. The women of the Elect dressed to symbolize sacrifice, not to be attractive. And not for the
first time, Julia wondered if that was really what God wanted from half His creation.

The parking lot at the Mission hall was nearly full. She could get a seat on the center aisle, she thought as she hurried inside. He’d see her right away and come and sit with her.

Or maybe not. She’d forgotten about Derrick. He would see the seat on the aisle and assume it was for him. But even if he got there after Ross, he would spend the whole service staring at them, making sure Ross didn’t so much as bump her shoulder. People would notice. People would talk.

Oh, this was awful. She bowed her head and opened her Bible to Job and his patience during his trials.

The advantage of sitting on the aisle was that she only had to lift her head a little to see people as they came in. Here were Madeleine and Owen, with Hannah between them. Owen flashed her a smile as they made their way to the front row. Alma Woods and her bevy of cronies came in afterward, bulky clothes rustling, T-strap shoes clacking on the hardwood floor. They sat in the third row, gossiping about everyone they saw as if it had been a month instead of a week since they’d done it last. The room was filling up now, and still he hadn’t appeared. She closed her Bible and laid it on the chair beside her. Someone in flat heels tiptoed past, trying to be quiet. Dinah Traynell, in a new high-waisted dress with a—good heavens. It wasn’t even homemade. Who was she trying to impress?

A horrifying thought struck Julia. Her mother had quizzed her about Ross yesterday. Had she been spreading her guesses as truth? Were the single women feathering their arrows before Ross was even in the room?

The Bells came in like a decompressing steam train, all noise and “shhhh!” as Linda and Jim herded all their children into the back row, closest to the washrooms. There was a step in the anteroom and Julia’s body tensed as if someone had wound her up like a toy. Boots. Bikers’ boots. She lifted her head as Ross stepped into the doorway—and blinked. Stared.

He wore brand-new black jeans and a white collarless shirt, with a black Western-cut jacket. His jeans fit those long legs like a worn glove, making him look like a kestrel, sleek and fast, in a room full of threadbare crows. Julia felt her breath back up in her throat.

New black clothes for Mission. Attention-grabbing clothes that were far too sexy, but new and black nonetheless. He was doing it for God, the best way he knew how.

Silence swept over the room. Even the Bell children suspended their animation for a second, staring at the exotic stranger.

He looked worldly and dangerous and completely comfortable. His heels struck slowly on the floor as he strolled the empty distance between the door and the back row of chairs.
Let him see me. Let him sit with me.
Owen turned, saw who it was and half rose from his chair. No! shouted Julia in her mind. With me!

Clunk. Clunk.

Never had it taken anyone so long to walk to a seat. He was behind her now, coming up the aisle. Would he see her? Would he see the seat beside her and know it was for him?

Clunk. Clunk.

Ross eased into the chair next to her and she breathed in an intoxicating whiff of cologne and fresh cotton and relief. Something inside her melted at the bigness of him, the controlled strength, the way both contrasted with the stark black and white of his ensemble. The avid stares of everyone in the room settled on the two of them like frost in an ice storm. She straightened her back.

“Hey,” he whispered, smiling into her eyes. His shoulder bumped hers gently.

“Hi,” she whispered back. He handed her her Bible and she took it. “Glad you could make it.”