Tempted by Evil (2 page)

“Oh, we did all sorts of things to stay occupied,” I began with slightly less hesitation. After all, it was something I knew like the back of my own hand. “We knitted blankets for the elderly. We served meals at the homeless shelter. We visited the children in the hospitals. We―”

“Yes, yes,” Julian interrupted, “but what did you do for
fun
?”

I just looked at him with a puzzled expression.

He gazed expectantly at me. When I didn’t answer, he spoke again. “You know, climb trees, watch television, go out to the pizza parlor, or hang out at the movie theater on Friday nights?”

Still I looked at him, dumbfounded.

“You mean you’ve never done
any
of those things?”

“Well, I certainly know what television
is
. I mean, the Mother Superior used to allow us to watch programs of religious importance from time to time. And one time, Sister Mary Constance snuck me a Coke when she purchased the groceries. But that made me sick to my stomach.” My heart stuttered when he smiled that mischievous smile. “And, of course, I was allowed chocolate cake on my birthday every year.”

Julian eyed the candy bar sticking out of my duffel bag pocket on the bench next to me. I blushed. “I love chocolate,” I almost whispered.

He settled back in the seat, blue eyes twinkling as that maddeningly beautiful smirk tugged at his lips. “So you never did anything just for
fun
?”

“Everything should be done for a purpose. Idleness is strictly forbidden at the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.” I sighed thoughtfully and traced my finger around the edge of a small hole in my pants, knowing that I had spent my morning indulging in that forbidden activity.

“Ahhh,” Julian said cryptically. I looked over at him to find he had one eyebrow raised in amusement. I’d always wanted to be able to raise one eyebrow; the Mother Superior was horribly talented at using hers to inspire confessions from or strike fear into the novitiates, and she often used it on me as well. Sadly, I’d only ever been able to raise both at once.

“You’ve never had
real
fun,” Julian explained. “And that,” he gestured dubiously to the candy bar once again, “is your version of rebellion?” He paused for a brief moment. “I guess it's a beginning to your quest for independence.”

I paused for a moment, digesting Julian’s assertions.

“I read!” I blurted out finally.

“Oh?”

“I love to read. It’s what I do for fun,” I explained in choppy sentences.

“But certainly a convent can’t possibly have the most . . .
entertaining
literature?” His eyebrow lifted along with the inflection at the end of his sentence.

I blushed again.

“Well, um, Sister Mary Constance . . .” I spoke hurriedly, trailing off.

“I see.” He smirked again. “This Sister Mary Constance, she was your co-conspirator, then?”

“Oh no!” I exclaimed, horrified. “I would never plot to do evil! It's just, well, it sometimes doesn’t seem quite so evil in the moment.”

Julian’s smirk deepened into an almost-grin. “Indeed.”

“It was nothing so horrible.” I mentally crossed myself again for lying. After all, I had been raised in a convent. I knew that all evil was still evil. Murder was a mortal sin. Breaking curfew would be a venial sin. Others were more of a gray area. “She would simply borrow books from the library for me, except for this one.”

I held up my copy of Dickens’ classic for his inspection.

“It’s one of my favorites so she bought it for my birthday last year. And since she was largely in charge of my education, Constance allowed me to read books that, I suppose, would not usually be found inside convent walls.”

Julian leaned forward expectantly.

“Like what?”

“Mark Twain, Jane Austen, The Brontë Sisters . . . ,” I drifted off. “Too many wonderful authors to even name them all.”

When I dared a glance, Julian was looking at me with a mixture of what I surmised was disbelief and admiration.

“Which is your favorite Mark Twain?”

I grinned and clasped my hands together tightly on top of my lap. “
Huck Finn,
of course!” I exhaled enthusiastically, suddenly feeling a bit like a five-year-old child.

Still smiling, Julian just nodded.

“I’m hungry. You want to go get something to eat with me?” he asked as I looked up at him.

“No, I’m fine,” I lied again as my stomach rumbled. He looked at me, disbelieving. “Well, um, it’s just that . . . I don’t have much money.” I breathed as I bit my lower lip, looking down once again at the bench.

“It’s on me,” he said, as if I should have assumed it from the beginning. “Consider it my contribution to your bid for independence.” He grinned again. “In fact, we should get pizza to make your journey to the dark side complete.” He chuckled softly at some joke it felt like I should have understood, then looked at me in consternation. “You’ve never seen
Star Wars
?”

I returned his gaze with my eyebrows raised in as close an approximation of a sarcastic look as I could manage. He laughed outright―whether at my look or his own forgetfulness, I had no idea.

Still laughing, Julian rose from the bench and helped me up as well, swinging my overstuffed duffel bag over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing.

Standing next to him made me feel small and insignificant. He was very nearly a head and shoulders taller than I, and, while not bulky in any way, he had a distinctly strong and animalistic aura about him. Even though he had been nothing but a complete gentleman while we talked outside the café, I had the sudden intuition that he could potentially be very dangerous.

“So, you comin’?” Julian asked with a boyish grin that spread across his face as he extended his left hand toward me.

“Where exactly are we going?”

“To look for some fun, of course.” His grin widened impossibly. “Although you won’t have to look too far when I’m around.”

“But,” I hesitated, my mind finally screaming at me that Julian and I had only just met. “I don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know your last name.” I’m sure my voice sounded shaky, but not because I was nervous―well, not completely because I was nervous.

I knew that I was kidding myself by thinking that anything Julian said would deter me. Inexplicably, I would have followed him almost anywhere he wanted to take me.

“Casey,” he shot back, still grinning, as soon as the words left his mouth. “My last name is Casey. I was born and raised here in Beaufast. I’m twenty years old, and I'm a sucker for a damsel in distress. Oh, and my family owns this place.” He gestured towards the café as he spoke, adding it as if it wasn’t worthy of the postscript. “Now, are you comin’?”

His voice was low and inviting. He could have been offering the most deadly of mortal sins and I would have gladly accepted. However, at that moment, while looking into Julian’s eyes, I was having trouble remembering even one of those sins. Slowly lifting my trembling hand, I lightly placed it in his. I could feel my pulse racing in each fingertip and prayed that he couldn’t feel it as well.

“So you never said where exactly we were going,” I reminded him, batting my eyelashes in an admittedly pathetic attempt at flirting. The act only caused me to blush at my own foolishness.

“No, I didn’t,” he replied, his grin turning cat-like as he pulled me away from the bench and onto the sidewalk. “You up for a quick stop before dinner?”

“Um, what kind of stop?” I asked skeptically, looking at him from the corner of my eye as we began to walk together.

“Trust me,” he replied as we continued on together. “This is a fun
must
.”

The early autumn evening was unseasonably warm, and people were taking full advantage. Julian and I walked side by side in silence for a long moment, though I could feel his eyes on me repeatedly. I felt terribly self-conscious for the first time in my life. Julian had perfectly tousled, short brown hair, while my plain red strands hung in lifeless waves long past my shoulders. His crystal blue eyes seemed to see right through me while mine were just eyes the color of plain moss. Julian was magnetic where I was old-fashioned, and I wondered briefly why this stunning creature had noticed me at all.

Finally, he broke the silence.

“Here we are,” he said eagerly as we approached what looked much like an ordinary park. Small, lighted black posts were spaced evenly along the grass at the edge of the sidewalk, and I could see nothing but grass beyond.

“A park?” I asked incredulously, assuming he was going to take me one of the movie theaters or pizza parlors he had mentioned. “This is where I get my education in fun?”

Julian just smirked, grabbed hold of my hand, and led me through the wet grass. Just ahead of us was a small hill. He pulled me to a stop as soon as we reached the ridge. I looked up from where my gaze was fixed on the ground to see a vast outdoor rink a few yards away. I wasn’t sure how they managed to keep it frozen, considering the weather conditions outside, but I could only assume there was some man-made technology behind it.

Trees encircled either side and were covered in white twinkling lights, accompanied by two large old-fashioned lampposts to bathe the area surrounding the rink in a soft golden glow.

Julian led me towards a small building to our right. As we passed the rink, I stopped in my tracks, mesmerized by the few skaters on the ice. Their bodies glided along like birds soaring effortlessly through the air. Before I knew it, we were standing in front of an open glass window at the small building and Julian was asking what shoe size I wore.

I turned to face the opening, and a cheerful brunette girl smiled at me in front of a backdrop of ice skates.

“Um, six and a half,” I stuttered while Julian removed his wallet from his coat pocket to pay the girl behind the glass. The idea that my tutorial in fun apparently was to include ice skating lessons had just begun to take hold. He repeated my shoe size to the girl behind the counter and added his own. She then set both pairs of skates on the counter. Julian grabbed them quickly, leading the way once again towards a small wrought iron bench sitting just off to the side of the ice.

I took off my old, worn-out boots, more than a little embarrassed by their shabby hand-me-down condition in comparison to Julian’s expensive-looking ones, and pulled on the skates. Julian finished first, then bent down to help me lace up my skates. I grinned sheepishly and bit my lower lip as his strong hands encircled my ankle to push my heel more firmly into the skate while I finished lacing the other.

“You ready?” He raised both eyebrows, standing and extending his hands out for mine.

“As I’ll ever be,” I replied with a nervous smile. I could only imagine all of the horribly embarrassing things that were about to happen to me out on that ice.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Julian said reassuringly. His voice was low in my ear as he pulled me close and ushered me out onto the ice. While I pulled my stuttering, protesting skates over the frozen water, his feet glided beneath him as gracefully as I was certain they would. I shuddered again at the thought of humiliating myself in front of this specimen of god-like grace, and Julian immediately focused his eyes on my tattered coat.

“How terribly absent-minded of me,” he exclaimed, pulling his leather jacket from his body. “You must be freezing out on this ice.”

He placed the toasty coat over my shoulders, and I slid my arms through the sleeves.

“Not freezing, exactly.” I smiled shyly. “Just a bit chilly. But you’ll freeze to death for sure now.”

“Nah,” he said with that mischievous smirk that made my heart beat fast. “Haven’t you noticed that I’m hot?”

I giggled aloud while my mind was screaming,
how could I NOT notice?

He chuckled to show me that he was only joking, but I knew he was self-confident―who wouldn’t be in his place?

I stood there on the ice, watching Julian move as stealthily as if he were a predator silently stalking his prey, while breathing in the collar of his jacket―both of which made me a little dizzy. As I put my hands in the pockets of the leather jacket, I started to lose my balance. Beginning to fall backward, I tore my hands out of the pockets and clawed at the air for anything that might keep me on my feet. Before I knew what happened, I was in Julian’s arms; he'd somehow managed to catch me.

“I can’t let go of you for a single second, can I?” he said, shaking his head and grinning from ear to ear.

“I suppose not,” I replied meekly, looking down and biting my lower lip.

“You always do that,” Julian said suddenly, seeming to notice some familiar pattern.

“Do what?” I asked, completely clueless.

“Bite your lower lip when you feel shy or embarrassed,” he said, mimicking exactly what he was describing.

“Oh, that. Yeah, I’ve always done it―and have been scolded for it on more than one occasion,” I offered hesitantly.

“
Scolded
,” Julian scoffed. “What for? Is that some venial sin I’m unaware of?”