Stuck in the Middle (25 page)

“You did?” That was a surprise. He’d figured her for a Sunday-morning-only gal.

“They have a good praise band, and though I didn’t hear their pastor speak, he seemed really . . . ,” her gaze shifted away as she tried to come up with a word, “. . . genuine.”

She continued to surprise him today. Where was the flirty girl of last week? He folded his arms across his chest. If only there was a dirty sweatshirt within reach.

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She raised a hand in farewell before she went down the rest of the steps. He watched her walk across the grass, seized by indecision. He really didn’t want to go to her church again, but suddenly he wanted to spend the morning with her.

“Uh, Joan?”

She turned, her eyes round with questions.

“Maybe I’ll go with you after all. I really should give it a second try, don’t you think?”

The grin that lit her face made his head go light.

Joan walked through the doorway to the Sunday school room, nervously aware of Ken on her heels. She wanted to kick herself for caving in to the impulse to stop and invite him to come with her this morning. What was she thinking? She had no idea, just as she had no idea what she was doing here when she could be sleeping in at Tori’s.

Brittany Daniels, seated at the far end of the long table that dominated the classroom, simpered when she caught sight of Ken. Beside her, Eve Tankersly straightened in her chair, her eyes going round. Ryan Adams searched the empty doorway eagerly, but his face fell when he realized Tori wasn’t with them. A few others sat around the table, each with a Styrofoam cup of coffee or a bottle of water in front of them.

“Good morning.” Ken’s smile swept the room.

“Good morning,” the girls breathed in unison.

Instead of rolling her eyes, as she wanted to do, Joan nodded a greeting and stepped up to one of the empty seats nearest the door. She started to pull it out, but Ken was quicker. He grinned down at her as he slid the chair out and waited for her to be seated.

“Thank you.” Her pulse did a tap dance as she slid onto the hard plastic seat. She avoided looking his way as he sat in the chair next to hers. No sense reading anything into a polite gesture. Ken was nothing if not a gentleman. On the other hand, the fact that he’d agreed to join her this morning when he obviously wasn’t impressed by the church last week gave her hope that maybe Karen was right. Maybe he really was interested in her.

Across the table, Brittany heaved a disappointed sigh. Joan hid a smile. Well, maybe holding her chair was a
little
more than a polite gesture.

Mr. Carmichael arrived a moment later, pacing through the door with his funny little shuffle, a stack of papers in his hands. He glanced around the table, his eyes going wide when he caught sight of Ken. “Dr. Fletcher, we’re happy to have you back.” His tone, and the alarmed expression on his face, said the opposite.

Beside her, Ken’s smile broadened. “Thank you.”

Mr. Carmichael cleared his throat as he fumbled to arrange his Bible, Sunday school book, and papers in neat piles in front of him. He opened his teacher’s guide to a place marked with a paper clip, set a page of handwritten notes inside it, and then handed the stack of student papers to Ryan to be passed around the table. With another nervous glance in Ken’s direction, he cleared his throat again and began.

“This week’s lesson is taken from the tenth chapter of Deuteronomy and is entitled ‘Walking in His Ways.’” He removed his glasses and began cleaning them with his tie. “Now an interesting fact of which you may not be aware concerns the name of the book. Deuteronomy means ‘repetition of the law,’ and it arose from a mistranslation in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate of a phrase—”

“Uh, excuse me, please.” Joan raised a hand.

Every head in the room swiveled toward her. Mr. Carmichael, in the process of replacing his glasses on his face, gave her a wide-eyed stare of disbelief. “Yes?”

Suddenly self-conscious, Joan tapped a finger on the edge of the table. She’d been thinking about the Open Bible Church, trying to pinpoint the differences between the service she attended and the services at Christ Community. Besides the obvious difference in the music, there was another one she’d noticed.

Joan gulped air and coughed politely. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have a question.”

He shook his head. “But I haven’t even started the lesson yet.”

“It’s not about the lesson.” Joan let her gaze sweep the faces around the table. “I was wondering if anybody is interested in doing something together as a class.”

Ryan cocked his head. “Huh?”

“I mean . . .” Joan hooked her index fingers on the edge of the table, flustered. She didn’t really know what she meant, but she remembered that bulletin at the Open Bible Church, with the long list of activities. “Don’t most churches have young adult groups that get together and do things?”

Brittany leaned forward. “You mean, like, go bowling or something?”

Her expression said she didn’t think much of that idea. Joan agreed with her. Bowling was something Mom did, and she had not the slightest interest in. “Not that, necessarily, but something besides Sunday school.”

Beside her, Ken was staring at her with an intensity that made her skin tingle. She kept her gaze fixed on the others in the room, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw him studying her.

“I think I know what Joan means,” Gordy said. “We’re supposed to socialize with each other, make sure we have other single Christians to hang around with during the week. There sure isn’t anybody my age at my work to go out with.” His grin swept the table. “Maybe you guys could keep me from becoming a couch potato.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” She nodded in his direction. “We could meet for coffee or go to a movie or to dinner. And we could . . . pray together. Or something.” Joan glanced toward Mr. Carmichael, who sat watching with his hands clasped and a long-suffering expression on his face.

Eve raised a tentative hand. “Well, I go to a singles Bible study every Wednesday night in Lexington.”

Joan looked at her in surprise. “You do?”

She nodded. “It’s at St. Matthew’s over on Richmond Road.” She looked around the room. “Any of you are welcome to come with me any time you want. They’re a great group of people, and I’m learning a lot.”

Brittany twisted in her chair to look at Eve. “If you like St. Matthews so much, why don’t you go there on Sunday morning?”

Eve shrugged. “I was raised here. My parents go to this church, and my brother and his wife. I like it here.” She turned an apologetic smile toward Mr. Carmichael. “I like St. Matthews too.”

Ryan leaned forward to look at Eve around Brittany. “I wouldn’t mind going with you sometime.”

Eve smiled. “That’d be great.”

Joan sat back in her chair. She had no idea Eve went to a Bible study somewhere else, nor that Ryan Adams would have the slightest interest in attending one. She looked around the room. She’d been in this church with these people most of her life, and she didn’t really know any of them.

“Maybe we should try to do something like that here,” Gordy suggested.

“Yes, but who would teach it?” Brittany asked.

They all tried not to look at Mr. Carmichael, who became engrossed in his notes. Joan felt a flicker of sympathy. Apparently the poor man wasn’t any more interested in teaching a Bible study than they were in having him teach.

Eve shook her head. “No offense, but my Wednesday night Bible study is pretty intense. I don’t think I can commit to another one. I mean, I’d love to get together with you guys, but can’t we do something else?”

Ken, who had been listening quietly up until now, laid an arm on the table and turned his body so he could see everyone as he spoke. “Since you’ve never really done much together outside of Sunday morning, maybe you need to have some sort of kickoff. An event of some kind to launch yourselves as a group.”

“An event.” Excitement prickled Joan, and she sat up straighter. “I like that. We could do a project.”

“You mean build a house like Habitat for Humanity?” Brittany’s brow creased with alarm. “Y’all, I’m totally useless with a hammer.”

“Well,” Ken said, “maybe you should start out smaller. Is there a job your church needs to have done? It doesn’t have to be a building project. Maybe there’s something in the community.”

They sat in silence a moment, exchanging glances. At the front of the room, Mr. Carmichael cleared his throat and glanced at his watch. Guilt washed over Joan. She had sidetracked his class.

“Maybe we should talk about this later,” she said. “Are you guys free any night this week? Not Wednesday, of course.” She sent a quick smile toward Eve.

Ken spoke up. “I could do Thursday.”

She turned a wide-eyed look his way. Ken wanted to get involved? Heart pounding, she swallowed against a dry mouth. “Thursday’s good for me.” Nods up and down the table indicated that Thursday worked for everyone. “Okay, then. Say around 7:30 at my house?”

The date and time confirmed, she sat back in her chair and turned her attention to Mr. Carmichael. Her apology, delivered by way of a shy smile, was met with a longsuffering sigh.

“Well then, let’s continue. As I was saying, the word Deuteronomy . . .”

Ken put an arm across the back of her chair and leaned close. His warm breath tickled her ear and set her stomach fluttering. “Good job.”

Joan didn’t hear a word of the lesson.

“I can’t believe you ditched us!”

Hands on her hips, Allie stood inside the front door as Joan stepped into the house. Gram and Mom followed right behind her.

“She came home to go to church with us.” Gram kissed Allie on the cheek before climbing the stairs to disappear into the kitchen.

Mom enveloped her oldest daughter in a hug. “Good to see you, honey. How are you feeling?”

“Tired and cranky.” Allie sniffed. “My sisters kept me up all night long and fed me junk food.”

“Puh-lease!” Joan laughed at Allie’s injured expression. “Nobody forced all that pizza down your throat. And who kept throwing chocolate-covered peanuts at me every time I tried to go to sleep?”

“You were missing the best parts of
Four Weddings and
a Funeral
.”

“Like we haven’t seen it seven hundred times already.” In the living room, Tori bounced off the sofa and came to hug Mom. “I’m thinking Joan didn’t just come home to go to church.” She arched an eyebrow in Joan’s direction. “I saw
him
out the window.”

Allie’s eyes widened. “Dr. Gorgeous went with you again? Well, why didn’t you say so? There are very few acceptable reasons for ditching your sisters in the middle of a slumber party, but a hot date is definitely one of them.”

Joan shook her head, laughing. “I’d hardly call Sunday school and church a hot date. Especially since he wouldn’t even stay for dinner.”

An unladylike snort came from Tori. “For a religious nut, that’s about as hot as you’re going to get.”

Joan avoided her little sister’s probing stare. If she thought Ken was a religious fanatic, what would Tori say if she knew her own sister thought God used her and a pint of chocolate ice cream to deliver a message? It did sound nuts. Heck, maybe it
was
nuts.

“I think Dr. Fletcher is a nice young man,” Mom told them. “And he would have accepted our invitation to Sunday dinner, but he worked all night and he has to be back at the hospital at 6:00. He went home to get some sleep.”

Allie yawned. “I know the feeling.”

Mom went downstairs toward her bedroom, probably to change out of her Sunday clothes, and Joan headed toward the kitchen. Tori put a hand on her arm, halting her.

“Nice or not, he’s too serious when it comes to religion.” Her eyes captured Joan’s. “Be careful with that guy, okay?”

An uneasy feeling cast a shadow over Joan’s happy mood. No doubt about it. Her sister had taken a dislike to Ken. That would make for some awkward family dinners if Joan actually managed to develop a relationship with the guy. Or maybe it was religion in general Tori disliked? Odd, she’d never picked up on that before.

She laughed, making light of her growing discomfort. “Are you afraid he’s going to convince me to dress like a Pilgrim and shave my head? Maybe drink poisoned KoolAid?”