Donovan’s Angel (2 page)

“Here you are, Miss Beulah. With a twist of
lemon, just the way you like it.” Then he turned to Martie. His
hand touched hers as he gave her the chipped china teacup. “And
lots of sugar for you, Martie.”

She wanted to grab his sun-warmed hand and
hang on. It was electric, dynamite. This man pulsed with energy and
strength. And that voice! It made her want to stand up and cheer.
She wondered if he were a singer.

Miss Beulah ignored her tea and focused on
Paul. “I’m so glad you’re back, Reverend . . . .”

“Damn!” Martie’s back stiffened as the
shocked whisper echoed in the room.

“Did you say something, Miss Fleming?” Miss
Beulah lifted her eyebrows until they disappeared into her Mamie
Eisenhower bangs.

“I said, damask. This chair is covered with
rose damask.” Oh, damn the luck, anyway, she thought, taking a big
gulp of her tea. A preacher! Stuffed shirts and stiff upper lips
and going by the book and whatever happened to the carousel? Living
in a fishbowl and being oh-so-correct and whatever happened to
swimming naked in the moonlight? If she had been home, she would
have kicked something. Instead, she lowered her eyes to her teacup
and said goodbye to an improbable relationship before it had ever
begun.

o0o

Paul watched all these emotions cross her
face. He had half expected her reaction, but he was not prepared
for the intensity of his own feelings. Why was she shutting him out
without taking the time to know the man behind the profession? he
wondered. Why was she throwing away magic—and he knew that together
they would be magic—without a second thought? He would make her see
him as a man. He had to.

“Aren’t you curious about what’s underneath
the covering, Martie?” he asked gently.

She felt as if all the breath had been
knocked out of her. The minister wasn’t talking about chairs. And
that made him all the more dangerous. “Not in the least,” she
lied.

“Your actions belie your words. A woman who
climbs a tree to see what’s on the other side of the fence exhibits
a great deal of curiosity.”

“I thought we were talking about chairs. How
did fences get into this conversation?” Miss Beulah might as well
have been a knot on the wall for all the attention she received.
Paul and Martie were absorbed in one another, cut off entirely from
the rest of the world. Even the furniture had faded into
nothingness.

“Evasive tactics won’t work, Martie. Tenacity
is my strong point.”

“And stubbornness is mine.”

Miss Beulah Grady was completely unaware that
she had witnessed a preliminary skirmish. Her eyes were shut to the
lifting of the shield and the counterthrust of the sword. She
didn’t smell the smoke or hear the battle cry. If she had, she
would have run like hell. Instead, she stepped right into the fray.
“As I was saying, Reverend, I have the gravest matter to report to
you. One of absolutely
cataclysmic
proportions.”

“I’m always here to listen to the problems of
my parishioners.” Paul made the transition so smoothly that Martie
almost believed she had dreamed their exchange. She thought of
slipping quietly out the door, but discretion was not her style. It
would be much more fun to go out with a drumroll and a trumpet
fanfare. All she had to do was wait for the band to march by.

She didn’t have long to wait.

“I don’t know if you are aware of this,
Reverend, but there is a honky tonk in this neighborhood.” Hot on
the trail of scandalous doings, Miss Beulah was in her element.
Perspiration beaded her upper lip, and her hands trembled when she
talked.

“Are you certain, Miss Beulah? I’ve heard of
no such establishment.”

“Am I
certain
? Why, Reverend
Donovan, that sleazy music well nigh blew me out of my bed last
night. I never heard such whumping and pounding in all my life! For
a minute there I thought it was Satan and his band marching through
Pontotoc. Or at least the Russians.”

Paul tried unsuccessfully to hide his smile
behind his teacup, and Martie’s sides were shaking with laughter.
She thought this was almost as much fun as falling over the
fence.

Miss Beulah took a gulping breath and
continued her tirade. The orange flowers on her dress heaved up and
down. “I’m telling you . . . something has to be done. It’s a sin
and disgrace. A dis-
grace
. And right behind the parsonage,
too. Just beyond that cyclone fence.”

Martie met Paul’s gaze over the teacup. For a
moment laughter bubbled up inside as she started to explain what
was going on behind the cyclone fence. Then she thought she saw a
question in his eyes. Well, damn it all, let them think she ran a
honky-tonk. It was probably the quickest way in the world to put an
end to the music she had been hearing ever since she’d met the man
with the quicksilver eyes.

Her cup rattled against the saucer as she
plopped it down on a scarred end table. “I own that honky tonk
behind the cyclone fence.” She glared defiantly at Paul.
Now
let him smile and talk about neighborly cups of tea
and curiosity and fences and things that made her heart go
bump!

“I should have known,” Miss Beulah blurted
out.

Paul spoke quietly. “Just a moment, Miss
Beulah.” Why was she doing this? he wondered. Women who adored
golden retrievers and wore tattered marigolds behind their ears
didn’t operate beer joints. “As a matter of fact, I heard the music
myself. I thought it was rather lively and joyful sounding. I’m
sure Martie is playing a joke on us.” He looked directly into her
eyes. “Aren’t you?”

The question burned through her, singeing her
heart, and she almost told him the truth. Almost. “Why should I
deny it? Miss Beulah heard the music. So did you.” She turned to
Miss Beulah. “And by the way, it’s not sleazy music. I call it
jazzy juba juke music.” She bounced out of her chair. “It’s the
kind of music that adds pizzazz to life. Good day, all.”

She flounced out of the room with a brilliant
demonstration of pizzazz.

“Martie, wait.” Paul’s entreaty fell on deaf
ears.

“Well, I
never
.” Miss Beulah fanned
herself with her fat hands. “It just makes my blood boil. Running a
honky tonk, and brazen about it, too. Pure D brazen. Pizzazz, my
foot. I call that twitching your tail. I said to Essie Mae the
other day . . . Essie Mae, I said—”

“Excuse me, Miss Beulah,” Paul said,
interrupting her endless flow of words.

He left Miss Beulah in the parlor, still
talking. The screen door was vibrating on its hinges from Martie’s
flamboyant exit. He flung it open and stepped into the October
brightness. A flash of scarlet announced Martie’s retreat down the
sidewalk. He started to follow and then hesitated. The wonderful
thing that had been blossoming between them was squashed the minute
Miss Beulah had opened her mouth about a honky tonk. Now was not
the time to force the issue. And anyway, Miss Beulah was still in
his parlor, probably still talking.

He sent a prayer winging upward for patience
as he turned to walk back into the parsonage.

o0o

Martie’s blood roared in her ears as she
marched down the sidewalk. She heard the screen door slam again and
knew Paul was standing in the doorway. If he tried to follow her,
she’d knock him in the dirt! Her sandals slapped angrily against
the sidewalk. Well, why wasn’t he following her? It just proved her
point: she was totally unsuitable for a minister. She knew it and
he knew it. Why then did it make her so angry that he thought so?
She was so mad that she could have jumped the cyclone fence
flat-footed.

She barreled down the sidewalk, blind to
nature’s stunning display of gold-dipped foliage. She rounded the
corner of the block and raced up the street to her own house. Baby
met her with a short, joyful bark, tail thumping madly.

“It’s all your fault,” Martie said sharply to
her puzzled dog. For an instant Baby’s tail forgot to wag, but she
recovered quickly and pranced off to worry the cat.

Martie stood in the middle of her yard. She
was tempted to put her eye to a crack in the fence to see if Paul
was still standing on the steps. It would serve him right.
Honkytonk, indeed! Self-righteous hypocrite.

Her indignation made her feel noble for all
of two seconds, and then she wilted. He had never accused her of
anything. He had cast no stones. She had acted on impulse, as she
always did. But this time it was different. She had the uneasy
feeling that she had thrown away something precious.

Well, darned the luck, anyway. She marched to
the pile of tattered flowers and gave them a vicious kick. She
would never look at another marigold as long as she lived.

Martie woke up with two furry faces peering
down at her. Baby and her archenemy, the gray-blue Siamese cat,
were on opposite sides of the bed trying to get their mistress to
come down to the kitchen for breakfast.

“Shoo, you two hellions.” She swatted
playfully at her pets. “I jazzed until midnight. Go away and let a
girl get her beauty rest.” She closed her eyes and rolled over.
Baby grabbed the white eyelet comforter and dragged it off the bed.
“Doggone it, Baby,” Martie grumbled. “I’m going to put you in the
cellar.”

Baby’s tail thumped on the polished wooden
floor and her tongue lolled out happily.

Martie stretched her arms above her head and
yawned luxuriously. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Even
in the dead of winter, she slept with nothing on. The morning sun
gilded her skin and made a halo of her tumbled hair. She sprang
from the bed humming, stepped into a pink silk teddy, and pulled a
gaily embroidered Mexican wedding dress over her head. Tying her
hair back with a pink ribbon, she bounded down the stairs to her
kitchen.

The large, airy room was awash with October
sunshine pouring through a row of ceiling-to-floor windows
overlooking her backyard. Martie smiled at a pair of sparrows
giving themselves a dust bath in her freshly weeded flower bed.
Then she spotted the pile of wilted marigolds, and her smile
vanished.

She whirled around the kitchen, filling pet
dishes, mixing a banana and yogurt shake, and trying not to think
about a certain too handsome minister who lived across the fence.
But she thought about him anyway. She thought about the lock of
black hair that needed pushing off his forehead. She thought about
his quicksilver eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
Most of all she thought about his voice, that wonderful baritone
voice full of trumpets and hallelujahs and little boy laughter.

The first thing she was going to do this
morning was get rid of that mountain of marigolds. She should have
done it yesterday after that business about the honky tonk. She
guessed that she’d hoped they would disappear overnight all by
themselves, just float off on a Pontotoc breeze, never to be seen
again.

Leaving her yogurt shake half-finished, she
marched to her backyard, intent on destroying the evidence of her
ill-fated meeting with Paul Donovan. She thought of burying them
and then discarded that idea. If she put them in a hole, Baby would
just dig them up again. In the end she decided to rake them into a
pile with the leaves and burn them. Somehow burning seemed
appropriate, a cauterizing of memories.

“Need any help?”

She spun around at the sound of the well
remembered voice. She’d been so intent on her work that she hadn’t
heard Paul Donovan approach. Leaning casually on her rake, she
tried to act as if her heart weren’t doing a rumba inside her
chest.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the Reverend Paul
Donovan? What are you doing in my yard so early in the morning?
Crusading against honky tonks?”

His smile didn’t waver; he had already made
up his mind that today he would clear the air with Martie.
“Actually,” he replied, “I’ve come for my socks.”

“Are you also accusing me of being a sock
thief?” she asked.

“Do your eyes always turn the color of
pansies when your dander is up?”

The remark pleased her so much that she
almost forgot she was mad. She firmly quashed the urge to laugh and
thought how hard it was to be mad at a man whose smile rivaled the
sun.

“Wouldn’t your dander be up if I had come
into your yard, unannounced, and demanded that you hand over my
socks?”

Paul chuckled. “I see your point. Let’s start
over, shall we?” He could hardly take his eyes off her. It wasn’t
just the unusual hair and the brightly colored dress, he decided.
It was that remarkable spirit bubbling inside her that drew him
like a magnet. “The parsonage dryer is on the blink,” he said.
“While your pet was gathering my flowers, she apparently decided to
retrieve my purple socks, too. They’re missing from the
clothesline.”

“Purple socks! You wear purple socks?” The
laughter that had been quivering just beneath the surface exploded.
Martie never did anything halfway. Now she threw back her head and
roared with uninhibited delight. A man who wore purple socks
couldn’t be all correct stuffiness and stodgy convention, she
thought.

“They break the monotony,” Paul explained.
“Anyhow, I don’t dare not wear them. My formidable Aunt Agnes gave
them to me last Christmas.”

“I’m afraid you’ll just have to face up to
Aunt Agnes, Reverend Donovan,” replied Martie, her eyes still
sparkling with mirth. She was having a hard time remembering that
the man in her backyard was off limits, and calling him
Reverend
helped . . . but not much. “I don’t have your
socks.”

“Call me Paul, and it’s okay about the socks.
They were just a good excuse to come over and talk. There are some
misunderstandings that we need straighten out.”

“About the honky tonk?” she asked.

Her laughter vanished as she remembered the
way he had looked yesterday when Miss Beulah had named her house as
the source of sin and disgrace. Well, she certainly didn’t run a
honky-tonk, but that was not to say that she hadn’t been in a few.
And enjoyed it, too. One of the best times of her life was her
stint as a singer with Booty Matthews’s country and western band.
They had started in El Paso and rattled all over the Southwest in
his souped-up camper, performing in one-horse towns and eating
canned pork and beans on tin plates under the stars.