For the Love of God (8 page)

Each night, Abbie sat down to the typewriter for three hours, correcting misspelled words, or finding the right one when a sister had fallen victim to malapropism, and inserting the right punctuation where none existed. It was a long, tedious process, made fascinating by the characters and stories she remembered the sisters telling as they became part of the plot. Just when she became used to reading Esther’s handwriting and could get some typing speed, the next part would be written by Isabel and she’d have to slow down again.

The typing gave her a perfect excuse to miss church that Sunday, and the sisters had more written when Abbie finished the first installment. She missed the following Sunday’s service as well.

The long days, working at the office and in her apartment on the nights and weekends, were beginning to wear on her. Abbie was dragging Monday morning when she arrived at the office. She was leaning on the table, waiting for the
coffee to finish dripping. Her father walked out of his office, carrying his cup, just as she was in the middle of a large yawn.

“You can’t keep this up, Abbie.” He shook his head at her. “You need to get out and have some fun. I hear you hammering away at that typewriter every night.”

“I’ll take tonight off, Dad,” Abbie promised, and tried to swallow another yawn.

“Not just tonight,” he advised. “You take a couple or three nights off. Go to a movie—or ask some guy for a date. These are liberated times. You don’t have to wait for a Sadie Hawkins’ Day.”

“Yes, Dad.” She smiled wryly, because there wasn’t anyone she was interested in asking—except Seth. She shook away that thought. The red light blinked on to indicate the coffee was done. “Coffee’s ready.”

“I’ve just got time for a quick cup, then I have to get over to the courthouse,” he said with a quick glance at his watch.

By the time her father left, Abbie had drunk her first cup of coffee and felt that at least her eyes were open. She poured a second cup and sat down at her desk to see what dictation had been left for her to type. The more she thought about her father’s suggestion, the more convinced she became that he was right. It was to the point where she was typing in her dreams.

When she heard someone enter the office, Abbie tried to summon a suitably cheerful smile to greet him. But the “him” was Seth Talbot.
Her hazel-green eyes widened in surprise, and she was suddenly very much awake.

In the past three weeks, she’d only had occasional glimpses of him behind the wheel of his dark green sports car. But here he was—in the flesh—and her pulse started fluttering crazily. As Seth approached her desk, so tall and lean and flashing her that white smile, Abbie felt weak at the knees. The whiteness of his clergyman’s collar contrasted sharply with his darkly tanned neck, but her senses didn’t have any respect for his attire. They were all reacting to his raw manliness, his roughly chiseled features, and deeply blue eyes.

“Hello, Reverend.” Abbie was amazed that she sounded so calm.

“Good morning.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, partially concealing the intensity of his scanning gaze as it swept over her. “How are you?”

“Fine.” She nodded. It seemed logical to assume it was her father he came to see, so Abbie explained. “I’m sorry but my father is out of the office just now. I expect him back around noon.”

“I’m not here on a legal matter.” Seth corrected her thinking. “I came by to see you.” He said it so casually, yet her reaction was anything but. A heady kind of excitement tingled through her nerves, while a breathlessness attacked her lungs.

“Oh?” She tipped her head to the side at an inquiring angle, her pale copper hair swinging free.

“I haven’t seen you in church lately,” he said. “I thought I would stop to see if there was anything wrong.”

“Ah.” Abbie nodded her head in bitter understanding. “The shepherd is out looking for the sheep that strayed from his flock, is that it?”

There was a slight narrowing of his gaze at the bite in her voice. “Something like that, yes,” Seth admitted. “I miss having an honest critic in the congregation. If I say or do something you don’t like, I know you’ll tell me about it. You aren’t the type to flatter my ego.”

But he was flattering hers by trying to make her believe it mattered to him whether she was there or not. Except that was his job, to persuade members to attend church regularly.

“I’m sure you know how it is.” Abbie shrugged. “A person goes to bed on Saturday night with the best intentions but somehow doesn’t make it up in time for church the next day.” The wryness in her smile was caused by many things. “I warned you I wasn’t one of the truly faithful.”

“And I warned you that I’d bring you back into the fold,” Seth reminded her with a crooked slant to his mouth.

“So you did. Okay, I promise to be at church this Sunday. Is that good enough?” She didn’t want him to do any arm twisting. If she spent too much time in his company, she was afraid he might guess that she was no different from any of the other women in town, attracted to him as a man.

“That was easy.” He appeared to regard her quick capitulation with a degree of curiosity.

“‘Ask and ye shall receive,’” Abbie quoted.

“That’s an offer I’m not going to turn down,” Seth replied as the corners of his mouth deepened in a faint smile. “Would you be willing to do some typing for me?”

“I understood you had a lot of volunteers,” she countered.

“Ah, but not necessarily volunteers who can type,” he explained with a mocking look. “Or maybe I should say—who can type with more than one finger.”

“I’d like to help you out but I’ve already agreed to type a manuscript for—someone else.” She kept the Coltrain sisters’ authorship to herself, as they had requested. “Between doing that at nights and working here during the day, I don’t have time to do any more.”

“It sounds like all work and no play.”

“It has been hectic,” Abbie admitted, but refused to feel sorry for herself. “But I’m treating myself to a night off this evening.”

“Do you have a date?”

In a small community like this, there was no point in lying. If she claimed to have a date, she’d have to produce one or be caught out. “No,” she answered indifferently to show it didn’t matter.

“Good. Then how about having dinner with me?” Seth invited, and leaned both hands on the front of her desk.

It was the last thing Abbie had expected. She
was so tempted to accept but—she shook her head. “Thanks but I was really planning to have a quiet evening and an early night.”

“That’s no problem. We’ll have dinner and I’ll bring you straight home so you can have a restful evening,” he reasoned. “What do you like? Mexican food? Pizza? Steak?”

It was so hard to refuse. “I don’t think you heard me,” she said weakly.

“I’ll wear my collar tonight—just for you,” Seth mocked.

Abbie took a deep breath and held it a second. “You don’t understand what it’s like living in a small community like this, Reverend.” She sighed. “If I had dinner with you tonight, by tomorrow morning, rumor would have it all over town that we’re having an affair.”

“So?” he challenged.

She wished he wasn’t so close. Even with the desk separating them, the way he was leaning on it brought him much nearer. She could even smell the tangy fragrance of his after-shave lotion.

“So
—you’re a minister.” Abbie wondered why she was reminding him. “And a bachelor. You can’t afford to have that kind of talk going around.”

“Empty talk can’t hurt me.” He hunched his shoulders in an indifferent shrug without changing his position. “It doesn’t bother me, so you shouldn’t let it bother you.”

Abbie had run out of arguments. “It doesn’t.”

“Then you’ll have dinner with me,” Seth concluded.

“Pizza.” The atmosphere at a pizza parlor would be more casual, invite less intimacy. Plus there wouldn’t be any lingering after the meal. It seemed the safest choice all around.

“I’ll pick you up at six-thirty. Is that all right?”

“Yes, that’s fine.” Abbie nodded, certain that she had lost her senses completely. “Do you know where I live?”

“Yes. Your address is in the membership files,” he said, indicating he’d already checked. Deliberately or just as a matter of course, Abbie didn’t know.

“It’s probably my parents’ address that’s listed. I live in the apartment above the garage,” she explained.

Seth straightened from her desk. “I lived in a garret when I was attending the seminary. My friends and I had some good times there.”

“I like it,” Abbie murmured in response.

“I won’t keep you from your work any longer,” he said. “I don’t want to get into any more trouble with your father over that.” But he was smiling in a way that belied his expression of concern. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yes.” Abbie just hoped that she knew what she was doing.

At ten after five that afternoon, Abbie was clearing her desk to leave. Her father stepped out of his office, a pair of reading glasses sitting low on his nose and a letter in his hand.

“I’ve changed my mind about the way I want this letter worded, Abbie. I’ll need to have you retype it,” he said, hardly paying any attention to what she was doing.

“You don’t have to have it yet this afternoon, do you?” she asked hopefully. “It’s already after five.”

He bent his wrist to look at his watch. “I hadn’t realized it was that late already. You don’t mind staying a few more minutes while I reword this. There’s no reason for you to rush home.”

“As a matter of fact there is,” Abbie admitted. “I have a date.”

He took off his glasses to look at her. “Since when?” He was surprised. “Don’t tell me you took my advice and asked a man out?”

“No.” She wasn’t quite
that
liberated. “Reverend Talbot stopped by this morning. He invited me to go out and have a pizza with him tonight.”

“Reverend Talbot.” He repeated the name with curious emphasis. “My, my.”

Abbie knew that tone of voice. It always preceded a cross-examination to determine her degree of interest in a particular date.

“Dad, we’re just going out for a pizza,” Abbie cautioned him not to blow it out of all proportion. It was good advice for herself as well.

“I guess the letter can wait… just as long as you retype it first thing in the morning,” he decided, and didn’t pursue the discussion of her evening date.

“Thanks.” Abbie waved him a kiss as she hurried out of the office to her car.

On the surface, it would have seemed more practical to ride back and forth to work with her father, but he was an early riser, often arriving at the office to work at four or five in the morning, when it was quiet and there were no interruptions. Abbie didn’t need to be there until the office opened at nine, so she usually drove Mabel.

Mabel grunted her way through the traffic and grumbled up the winding street to Abbie’s home. Abbie only had an hour before Seth arrived, and she used every minute of it. While the bathtub filled with water, she ran a dust cloth over the furniture and picked up the clutter of magazines and newspapers.

A quick bath and Abbie was faced with the
impossible decision of what to wear. Nothing seemed exactly appropriate. Her outfits were either too tight, or possibly too revealing, or too plain. Finally she settled on a pair of white jeans and a velour top in a rich kelly-green. Its V-neckline plunged a little. She’d have to remember to sit up straight.

She was just running a brush through her hair when she heard the roar of the sports car’s motor coming up the drive. In her haste, she accidentally hooked the bristles in the gold hoop of her earring, giving her ear a painful tug.

“Ouch!” It was a soft, involuntary cry, interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Hurrying out of the bathroom, Abbie reached the door just as he knocked. She opened it, intending to leave with him immediately, but Seth walked in.

“I’m a couple of minutes early. I hope you don’t mind,” he said, and turned to look at Abbie still holding the door open.

“No, that’s all right. I’m ready.” She noticed he was wearing his collar. It just peeped over the light blue of his windbreaker.

“This is nice.” His glance made an assessing sweep of her apartment. “I wish I had this and you lived in the parsonage.” A frown flickered across her face as Abbie wondered whether a minister should be making such comments. Seth read her look, a smile slanting his masculine mouth. “Don’t worry. I’m not breaking any commandments. I don’t really covet your garret.”

“I—”

“You weren’t sure,” he insisted.

“No.—”

“You might want to bring a scarf.” His glance ran over the coppered blond of her hair. “I’ve got the top down on my car. The wind’s likely to mess up your hair.”

“Good idea.” There was a nervous edge to her smile as she backed away toward the apartment’s small bedroom. “It’ll just take me a minute to get one.”

“There’s no rush,” Seth replied.

But Abbie thought otherwise. In her bedroom, she rummaged hurriedly through the top dresser drawer until she found the sheer silk scarf with the green and gold print. The green wasn’t the same shade as her velour top but it was close enough.

When she came out, Seth was standing by the table with her typewriter, looking at the stack of handwritten pages beside it. His fingertips were resting on the top paper as if marking a line. A thread of apprehension ran tightly through her edgy nerves.

“Is this the manuscript you’re typing?” Seth asked, looking up as if sensing her presence in the room.

“Yes.” Abbie tried to remember where she’d left off and what the next scene was that he was reading. Some parts of the book were rather racy.

“I’m glad the Coltrain sisters took my advice,” he said, glancing back at the page.

“How did you know?” Abbie stared in stunned wonderment.

“I recognized the handwriting.” A hint of a smile made indentations at the corners of his mouth. “Isabel sent me a note. No one else writes with all these flourishes and curlicues.” A dark brown eyebrow was arched in query. “Why? Is their identity supposed to be a secret?”

“They asked me not to tell about the book,” Abbie admitted.