“I’m enjoying this. Being with you. Knowing that you’re a completely free woman and that I like you, and that just about anything could happen between us.”

Kate puzzled over that. Anything?

“I just got out of a five-year engagement.”

“I remember.”

“I can’t do this!” she said.

“Why not?”

“It was two days ago!”

“So?”

“I have to figure out what went wrong, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“You know what happened, Kate,” Ben claimed.

Only then did she realize that she was still sitting on his lap, in his car, in her driveway, for anyone to see! She let go of his shirt, pushed away from him and slid onto her own seat with every bit of dignity she could muster, which wasn’t much.

Dear Reader,

Well, if there were ever a month that screamed for a good love story—make that six!—February would be it. So here are our Valentine’s Day gifts to you from Silhouette Special Edition. Let’s start with The Road to Reunion by Gina Wilkins, next up in her FAMILY FOUND series. When the beautiful daughter of the couple who raised him tries to get a taciturn cowboy to come home for a family reunion, Kyle Reeves is determined to turn her down. But try getting Molly Walker to take no for an answer! In Marie Ferrarella’s Husbands and Other Strangers, a woman in a boating accident finds her head injury left her with no permanent effects—except for the fact that she can’t seem to recall her husband. In the next installment of our FAMILY BUSINESS continuity, The Boss and Miss Baxter by Wendy Warren, an unemployed single mother is offered a job—not to mention a place to live for her and her children—with the grumpy, if gorgeous, man who fired her!

“Who’s Your Daddy?” is a question that takes on new meaning when a young woman learns that a rock star is her biological father, that her mother is really in love with his brother—and that she herself can’t resist her new father’s protégé. Read all about it in It Runs in the Family by Patricia Kay, the second in her CALLIE’S CORNER CAFÉ miniseries. Vermont Valentine, the conclusion to Kristin Hardy’s HOLIDAY HEARTS miniseries, tells the story of the last single Trask brother, Jacob—he’s been alone for thirty-six years. But that’s about to change, courtesy of the beautiful scientist now doing research on his property. And in Teresa Hill’s A Little Bit Engaged, a woman who’s been a bride-to-be for five years yet never saw fit to actually set a wedding date finds true love where she least expects it—with a pastor.

So keep warm, stay romantic, and we’ll see you next month….

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

A Little Bit Engaged
Teresa Hill

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TERESA HILL

lives in South Carolina with her husband, son and daughter. A former journalist for a South Carolina newspaper, she fondly remembers that her decision to write and explore the frontiers of romance came at about the same time she discovered, in junior high, that she’d never be able to join the crew of the Starship Enterprise.

Happy and proud to be a stay-home mom, she is thrilled to be living her lifelong dream of writing romances.

To everyone at St. Mary’s.

I’m positive it wasn’t that long ago that I sent my son to

kindergarten in his little blue dress pants and white polo

shirt. I remember so clearly thinking I’d have a child at

St. Mary’s forever. And yet, somehow, this is our last

year. My daughter’s graduating from the eighth

grade this spring. Somehow, twelve years have gone by.

Thanks for all you do, for all your

hard work, for all the memories.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

“So, have you and Joe set a wedding date yet?”

Kate Cassidy barely managed not to choke on her carrot-stick appetizer.

Trapped in the corner by an interior designer, she swallowed hard and relaxed her facial muscles in hopes of avoiding that really unattractive expression she wore when she just wanted to scream.

It was truly an unattractive look.

Kate knew because she’d looked in the mirror one day while she made it, hoping it wouldn’t be that bad. But it was. She’d vowed to eradicate the expression from her face, but it was hard. Especially lately, when someone asked that question. Third time this evening at the Board of Realtors dinner, in fact.

“Not yet,” she said quietly, with what she hoped was a bit of a smile.

“Oh.” The woman, Gloria someone, waited expectantly for Kate to elaborate, which Kate wasn’t going to do. She’d learned that if she was silent long enough, most people quit asking and went away. But Gloria wasn’t budging.

Okay. If things got really bad, she could always sink so low as to play the sympathy card. Sorry, Mom. She let her expression fall, allowed a shimmer of tears to come into her eyes.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kate. I guess it’s just too soon, huh?”

Kate nodded with what she hoped was appropriate sadness and grief, hoping her mother would understand. Kate had finally found something she didn’t know how to handle. All her plans that had always gone so well seemed to have fallen apart, and she didn’t know what was right anymore or what to do. It had started with her mother’s death and spilled over into every aspect of her life.

“It just takes time,” Gloria said kindly, making Kate feel worse. “And Joe’s such a sweetie. I’m sure he understands.”

Kate wasn’t so sure he did. And she didn’t want to think about it. She wanted to ignore the whole mess and hope it went away or solved itself, or that the answer just dropped out of the sky or something.

Vaguely aware of new voices around her, Kate looked up to see Charlie Sims, president of the Magnolia Falls, Georgia, Board of Realtors.

“Kate, how are you?” he asked, extending a hand.

“Great, Charlie. How are you?”

“Couldn’t be better, my dear. Have you met my wife, Charlotte?”

“No, I haven’t.” Kate smiled down at the pint-size blonde on Charlie’s arm.

Charlie introduced them, and then Charlotte launched into a tale about their recent wedding. Kate didn’t listen. She was too busy planning her escape. Was there anyone in this room who didn’t know that she and Joe were supposed to have married this summer but hadn’t because Kate’s mother’s cancer had come back and she’d died in the spring?

There. Kate spotted two absolute strangers in the corner. She was ready to make her excuses when Gloria said, “Oh, that sounds like fun. I’d love to do that.”

“Fabulous,” Charlie said, sounding genuinely appreciative.

That got Kate’s attention. She wanted Charlie to be happy with her, because there wasn’t a real estate agent in town Charlie didn’t know. He was a veritable gold mine of referrals for Kate’s fledgling mortgage company.

“What about you, Kate?” Charlie’s wife asked. “Care to come join us?”

Kate stood there with her mouth open. She had no idea what she’d just been asked to do, but if Gloria could do it, surely Kate could, too. Anything for Charlie and his referrals.

“Of course,” Kate said. “Sounds like fun.”

“Oh, it is. The kids are great,” Charlie’s wife said.

Kids? They were doing something with kids?

“If you two will give me your fax numbers, I’ll send you an application. Fax it back, and we’ll match you up.”

Kate wasn’t sure if she’d just applied for a job or joined a dating service. Match us up? No, that couldn’t be right. Everyone here wanted news of her upcoming wedding to Joe. Plus this was something to do with kids. It couldn’t be dating.

Kate obediently gave Charlie’s wife her fax number.

It wasn’t until the next day, when the fax arrived, that she vaguely remembered something about Charlie’s new wife taking over as director of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program, and that Kate had just volunteered to be a Big Sister.

Okay. How hard could that be?

Maybe she’d get lucky, and her little sister would be one of the few people in town who wouldn’t question her about why she and Joe hadn’t gotten married yet.

Ben Taylor hovered at the end of the hallway leading to the front door, assessing his chances of sneaking out of his office without getting caught, and thereby avoiding a lecture from his nearly eighty-year-old secretary.

Her long-distance vision wasn’t good, and she hated her bifocals. Ben figured the odds were at least three-to-one against her noticing him leaving. Which meant he could put off for now her lecture about his unfortunate tendencies to wander about, loose in the community, doing his freelance, do-gooder thing and getting into trouble, all while just trying to help people.

Ben really tried to help. He wasn’t sure if he was just bad at it or if people’s problems were getting worse. It seemed no one walked in with a simple issue he could solve anymore, and really, wasn’t he here to solve problems?

“Should have just kidnapped the girl,” he muttered to himself. “Or maybe held her hostage until I could talk some sense into her.”

“You say something, Pastor?” It was Rose, the nice lady who lived three blocks down and came to clean every other day.

“No, ma’am.” Ben sighed. “But I’m going out for a few minutes. Will you tell Mrs. Ryan if she asks about me?”

“Sneakin’ off again, Pastor?”

“Maybe,” he admitted.

He and Mrs. Ryan would have to come to an understanding about his straying from the office one of these days, but this wasn’t the day, and he wasn’t up to a scolding by a scrunched-over, outspoken taskmaster who reminded him of his great-grandmother.

“Will you tell her I’ve gone out?” he asked Rose.

“I guess I’ll have to,” Rose said. “I’m the only one who’s not scared of her.”

“I’m not scared,” he claimed. It was just that… Well, she did look a lot like his great-grandmother, and he’d been raised to believe a boy never, ever argued with his great-grandmother. His father would have seen it as an appalling lack of respect. Of course, his father would have thought sneaking out like this was cowardly, which made this a classic no-win situation. He’d take the cowardly way again. Rose wished him luck and said he owed her one. He decided he’d bring her a latte from that little shop down the block. She loved them but considered them a luxury. It was the least he could do for her for saving him from Mrs. Ryan.

He was nearly to the door when Rose said, “Now, just to be clear on this, you’re not really going to kidnap anyone, are you?”

“No. Promise.” The church probably frowned upon kidnapping and hostage taking. He’d just have to find another way. He was supposed to be able to keep people here long enough to help them without resorting to those tactics, even if a kidnapping could have made things so much simpler.

He must be doing something really wrong.

“Okay,” Rose said. “I just wouldn’t want to be around if Mrs. Ryan got wind of you kidnapping someone.”

“Neither would I.” He would really be scared of the woman then.

“So,” Rose said. “What should I tell her when she comes looking for you?”

“Nothing…”

“Pastor—”

“Okay, if she threatens to pull out your fingernails one by one, you can tell her I’ve gone to see Charlotte Sims at the Big Brothers/Big Sisters office. But only under threat of torture. Understand?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks, Rose.”

He slipped out the door of the massive stone church, built seventy-five years before, and tried not to think of his shortcomings as an Episcopalian priest, as Mrs. Ryan saw them. He was too young, wasn’t married and had no children, so he obviously didn’t know enough about life to help people with real problems. He tended to be more informal in how he related to his parishioners and how they related to him, than Mrs. Ryan thought was proper. She thought it scandalous that he asked people to call him Ben—Pastor Ben if they really felt it was necessary to add some title to his name. And he was always behind on his paperwork.

Those were his main failings, all of which he tried not to think about as he headed for Magnolia Falls’ Main Street. He’d cross that and then go four blocks over, to Vine, to see Charlotte Sims, a woman he hoped would be more successful than he’d been at helping the teenager who’d shown up at his church yesterday morning but run away before Ben could do anything for her.

Honestly, she’d hardly given him ten minutes.

Was he really supposed to turn her life around in ten minutes?

Not that he’d left it at that.

He’d followed her, was probably lucky he hadn’t been arrested for stalking. Mrs. Ryan would have loved that. The day that woman had to bail him out of jail was the day he was out of here for good. Defrocked. Wasn’t that what they called it? He thought it sounded like an odd, modern-dance number or maybe some obscure cooking term.

Defrock the basted chicken pieces, and heat oven to 375….

Okay, so he’d like to avoid defrocking, kidnapping, hostage taking and stalking charges. He’d like to actually do some good. He’d like to feel useful. He’d like to not be afraid of Mrs. Ryan. He was her boss, after all. Not that she showed any understanding of that.

He grinned remembering how horrified his secretary had been by the girl’s appearance yesterday. Truth be told, Ben had been a bit taken aback, as well.

She had badly dyed, jet-black hair that looked like she’d taken a razorblade to it, then gelled it to get it to stand up in every direction; she was wearing at least seven earrings. He didn’t even want to imagine what else she might have pierced. Shannon wore a black leather jacket and tall boots, that odd white makeup on her face and nearly black lipstick.

And it wasn’t even Halloween.

She looked as if she was twelve going on forty, but he’d found out she was actually fifteen, had lost her mother and the grandmother who’d raised her, and was now living with a father who couldn’t have cared less about her, at least not as she told the story. She said straight-out that she didn’t believe in God but was desperate enough that day to give God—well, actually Ben—a chance. Ten minutes to either help her or convince her to stay, neither of which he’d done.

And she was pregnant, which made the whole situation even more dire.

Ben had followed her, successfully avoided stalking charges, resisted kidnapping her, and found her in the parking lot of the local high school talking to one of his parishioners, Betty Williams, who happened to teach there. A nicer, more successful do-gooder, he’d never met. And Betty had told him to get Shannon into the local Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, if he could. They were full, with a waiting list a mile long. Betty had checked.

It had taken a little unauthorized deal making to get Shannon a spot at the front of the line, and he hated to make other kids wait longer for help, but there was the baby to consider. So Ben had turned wheeler-dealer, offering an as-yet-undefined favor to the director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, which was why he was sneaking out of church this morning, to see what the deal would cost him.

He arrived at the pretty brick building and was just about to grab the door, when it opened on its own.

Hmm.

He liked open doors.

He thought they were a sign that someone was doing something right.

He was just about to walk through that open door when a tiny, curly-headed girl came barreling out. Afraid she was going to charge out of the building and right into the street, he yelled, “Hey, wait!”

She stopped, standing with her back to the door, not trying to escape but holding the door open and gazing up at him with a puzzled smile.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought you were taking off.”

“Not by myself. I’m only six,” she said, as if he had the IQ of a tomato. Maybe one that had been defrocked along with the chicken?

“Well…good,” he said, bested by a six-year-old. “I tell you what. The door looks heavy. How ’bout I hold it?”

She shrugged, then grinned. Once he had the door, she did a little dance step and spun around. “Know what? I’m gonna be a dancer when I get big.”

“Great.”

She did another little twirl step right there in the hallway, and the little red ribbon that had been dangling from the end of one curl floated to the floor.

“Allie, wait,” a woman inside called out.

Ben looked up to see a woman sitting just inside the door. She had her hands full, a baby cradled against her shoulder and a toddler missing a shoe whom she’d managed to catch by the hood of his jacket.

“You don’t want to leave your mom,” Ben said, moving to put his body between hers and the hallway, in case she decided to run for it.

“She’s not my mom,” Allie said. “She’s my cousin. My mommy left, and her cousin has a little baby and a not-so-little one, and she’s trying to take care of me, too. Only, we’re a handful. I’m here to get a big sister. What about you?”

“I think I’m too old for them to give me a big brother. What do you think?”

She giggled. “You’re really old.”

“And you lost your hair ribbon,” he said. “Let me get it.”

Ben got down on his knees beside her, happy to have a problem he could solve for a change. He grabbed the ribbon, then didn’t quite know what to do with it. She really had a mountain of hair, and it was sticking out every which way. He wasn’t sure what he could accomplish by way of subduing it with one ribbon. Was it for show, or did it have a real purpose?

“Looks like you two need some help,” a nice, soft, feminine voice said.

Ben glanced to his right and saw legs, really nice legs. He looked up and saw a pretty blonde in a no-nonsense, dark-brown suit and a crisp white blouse. There was a brown satchel in her hand and an I-can-fix-this look on her face.

Okay, so he couldn’t even get the hair ribbon thing right. Maybe it really wasn’t his day. Maybe he shouldn’t be out loose on the streets like this, even if he hadn’t committed any crimes yet.

“This is my friend, Allie,” he told the pretty blonde. “She’s lost her ribbon.”

“Again,” Allie added.

“Again? Oh. Well, let’s see if we can get it to stay in your hair.” The woman put down her satchel and took the ribbon in hand, working what looked like magic with the girl’s unruly hair in a matter of minutes with nothing but her two hands, and then secured the ribbon. “Double knot and tight. That’s the key to keeping a hair ribbon in place.”

“Really?” Allie bounced up and down and then stared out of the corner of her eyes, trying to find the ribbon.

“It’s still there,” Ben told Allie, then let himself look at the woman again. She knew how to fix ribbons and hair, and she was kind as well. Seemed like she liked children, too. He wondered how she knew about the double-knotted-ribbon thing. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. She’s adorable.”

“Oh…she’s not mine,” Ben said, happy to have an excuse to clear that up, just in case. “I’m just the official door holder.”

“I’m here to get a big sister,” Allie said. “Are you gonna get a little sister?”

Good girl, Ben thought, altogether pleased with the turn of events.

He’d let Allie interrogate the pretty blonde, and then maybe he could casually work into the conversation the fact that he had no wife and no children and then… Who knew? He might even get a lunch date out of the deal.

Ben couldn’t remember the last time he had a date.

He checked to see if he had his clerical collar on, then remembered he didn’t. Mrs. Ryan, with a very disapproving look, had reminded him of that this morning, but he’d gotten distracted and hadn’t put it on.

Okay. This was not a bad thing.

The collar made people uncomfortable.

Especially women.

Not that he was all that good with women even without the collar.

“I already have two little sisters,” the woman said. “Real sisters, I mean. But you can’t have too many little sisters, right?” She looked at Ben.

“Right,” he said. Could he interest her in a pregnant fifteen-year-old?

“So I came to get another one,” the woman said.

“Oh, good. I pick you,” Allie said, then turned and yelled back into the office. “Miss Grace? I found one all by myself! See?”

In the waiting room, a woman kneeling at the feet of the now completely shoeless toddler looked up and sighed. The little boy was trying to wiggle his way off the chair. A second woman was holding the baby, who was sucking on his fists.

“Allie, Miss Charlotte will find you a big sister. You can’t just grab one in the hallway.” Miss Grace grabbed the toddler by his left ankle, which kept him from sliding out of the chair, but he howled in protest. To top it all off, the baby started crying. The poor mother looked as though she might sit down and cry, too.

Ben had seen that exhausted-mother look before and stepped in. “Ma’am, would it be okay if I walked you and Allie and the boys to your car?”

She gave him a look that said she would have kissed his feet, if need be, to get help to the car with Allie and the two squirmy, crying boys. Allie came to his side and put her hand trustingly in his. Miss Grace handed him the toddler, whom he held against his shoulder.

“Thank you so much. I’ll get the shoes, the baby and the diaper bag—”

“I’ve got the diaper bag,” said the pretty blonde who was a whiz with ribbons.

Ben, this might be your lucky day.

If he could just get her phone number. And find the time to have lunch or something, and if she was willing… If he could sneak away from Mrs. Ryan for a few more hours, and if this woman actually liked him and wanted to see him again, he might manage to have a life outside the church.

People said he needed one. They warned about getting completely caught up in his work and forgetting to have a personal life.

Ben held the toddler, who was studying him with distrusting eyes. Grace had the baby. The blonde had the diaper bag. Allie was close by. They were ready.

“Thank you both so much,” Grace said.

“We’re having one of those days.” Allie sounded six going on twenty-six.

After a few more moments of confusion over misplaced car keys, a lost sock and a small battle of wills with the toddler over his car seat, the little blue station wagon was loaded up and on its way, leaving Ben alone with the blonde and trying to remember how to flirt. He’d never been that good at it, and for the past few years, he hadn’t had time, even if he did remember how.

She saved him by sticking out her hand and saying, “Sorry. It was so hectic back there, I didn’t have time to introduce myself. I’m Kate Cassidy.”

He took her hand in his. “Hi. Ben Taylor.”

“Nice to meet you. Are you going back to the office, too?”

“Yes.”

They turned and walked together.

Kate said, “So, are you a big brother?”

“No, I’m in the highly precarious position of owing the director a favor, and I’m not sure yet how she’s going to collect. I hear she can be brutal. I could have six little brothers by lunchtime.”

“Charlotte does seem to know how to take advantage of every opportunity.”

“She twisted your arm, too?”

“No. I can’t say that. It was more like…” They’d gotten back to the office door, and Ben held the door open for her. Kate nodded in the direction of his hand. “…like opening a door in front of me and knowing I’d walk right through it. You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yeah. Those get me every time,” he said, thinking the door metaphor could really be a sign. He believed in signs. And phone numbers. He had to get her phone number before she disappeared. He was trying to picture his calendar through the end of the week, to see if he had a day open for lunch, when they walked into the Big Brothers/Big Sisters office one more time.

“Kate,” the receptionist said. “It’s so good to see you. I’ve been waiting to see an announcement in the paper, but I must have missed it. You and Joe have picked a wedding date, haven’t you?”

Ben barely managed not to growl.

Chapter Two

“Not yet,” Kate told the woman, whose nameplate read Melanie Mann.

Was it Ben’s imagination or did she seem upset by the question? Ben stood behind her, eavesdropping shamelessly.

“Oh. Well, I understand,” her friend said. “No time to plan, right?”

“Right,” Kate agreed. “Not yet.”

Ben thought if she really wanted to marry this man, surely she could find time to plan a wedding.

“Sorry about your mom,” Melanie said. “I know you must miss her terribly.”

“Yes, I do,” Kate said.

Okay, so he was a cad. A truly terrible person. It sounded as if she’d lost her mother recently, and here he was, hoping there was something wrong between her and her fiancé, just so Ben could maybe have lunch with her.

He sighed, then frowned, then found both women looking at him.

“Sorry we were so rude,” Kate said.

“No. It’s not that. I was just thinking of…a problem I need to address.” His own shortcomings.

“Melanie and I went to high school together,” Kate said. “This is Melanie Mann. Melanie, this is Ben Taylor.”

Melanie picked up a tiny, yellow Post-it note. “Ahhh. That explains it. Charlotte just handed me a scribbled note that I think says, ‘Ben, ten-thirty, today.’” She turned to Ben, “That would be you?”

“That’s me.” He held out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too. But I’m afraid we have a problem. Charlotte didn’t check with me before scheduling a time for you to come in, and she already has a ten-thirty appointment. With Kate.”

“It’s all right. I can wait,” Ben offered. He was already in hot water with Mrs. Ryan. Another few minutes away from the office wouldn’t matter. “Besides, I just called this morning. I’m betting Kate’s had an appointment longer than that. She looks like the organized type.”

“Oh, definitely,” Melanie said.

Kate hesitated, then said, “You don’t have to be somewhere?”

“My morning’s clear.” So was lunch. Too bad he couldn’t ask her. Not if she had a fiancé.

“Well, if you’re sure, I do need to go ahead. I have paperwork to look over and a lunch meeting and three clients coming in this afternoon.”

“Go ahead,” Ben said, noting she’d said lunch meeting, not lunch date.

No lunch date. No wedding date. Still, none of his business.

Then he remembered she’d said she had two sisters. Maybe one of them would have lunch with him. If that didn’t work out, maybe he could start a singles group at church….

Just so you can get a date, Ben?

Okay, he was sleep deprived from sitting up late into the night with a distraught couple while their baby had emergency surgery, and he was getting a little silly now, thinking to solve his non-social-life problem in one single morning out on the town. It wasn’t as if the issue was urgent. He’d been here this long and not done a thing about it. The issue would still be there next week, next month, probably next year.

He really hoped he didn’t wait until next year to do something about this.

Kate was giving him a funny look. So was Melanie.

“Sorry.” He yawned deeply, unable to hold back the motion at all, and then said, “I can be easily distracted, and I was out way too late last night.”

Which made it sound as though he was partaking in some blatantly unministerly things. “Working,” he added. “I was working.”

“Me, too,” Kate said, giving him a puzzled look. “But I wouldn’t have pictured you as the workaholic type.”

“Which means what? That you are?”

“Well…” Kate hesitated.

“She most definitely is,” Melanie said.

“What do you do?” Ben asked.

“Kate has her own mortgage brokerage company. She’s the youngest person in our class to own her own business,” Melanie said, sounding proud.

“It’s not much,” Kate claimed. “Me, a desk, a phone, a fax, a computer and an assistant. That’s it.”

“Still, it’s all yours. I wish I had the guts to start something like that and make it work,” Melanie said.

“It wasn’t guts,” Kate said. “You know how I like to do things my own way. Starting the business was the only way I could earn a living and not have someone else telling me what to do all the time.”

She laughed when she said it, but Ben thought he must be right. A well-organized, ambitious workaholic who couldn’t find time to plan her own wedding?

Not for him at all.

So why had he taken such an instant liking to her? Why did he feel as if someone had just opened a door and he wanted to walk through it?

The phone on Melanie’s desk rang. She excused herself and picked it up. Ben and Kate took seats in the small waiting room and smiled politely at each other. He tried to think of a way to bring up the fiancé thing without being too obvious and then gave up on the obvious part.

“So,” he said, because he felt the need to have it drilled into his head, “you’re engaged?”

A pained look crossed her face. She hesitated way too long over her answer, then said weakly, “Yes.”

That was interesting.

“Sorry.” Ben frowned. “I’m being nosy, but…you don’t sound too sure about that.”

“No… I mean…” She frowned, too. “Honestly, I don’t know what I mean.”

He didn’t know whether to feel guilty or happy. He really did try to do the right thing. He didn’t succeed all the time, but he felt it was important to try.

So what was the right thing here?

She certainly shouldn’t marry the guy if she didn’t love him….

They looked at each other again, her waiting to see what he said, him not knowing what to say but wanting to know more.

“Want to tell me about it?” he tried. He’d had a lot of success with that particular phrase. A lot of times people thought about it and decided they wanted to talk, and there he’d be. Maybe she wanted to talk.

“Maybe,” she said, frowning. “Maybe it would be easier with a stranger. I mean, if I just brought up the idea that Joe and I might not get married to one of my siblings, all three of them would hear about it within seconds, and they’d have questions that I just couldn’t answer, because…I don’t know what to do, and I hate that. Don’t you hate not knowing what to do?”

“I find myself quite often not knowing what to do,” he admitted. Like now. Right now. What did he do now?

“But don’t you hate it?”

“I don’t like it, but…I guess I just think that’s mostly what life is—stumbling along, not knowing what’s going to happen, a lot of times not knowing what I should do but hoping I can figure out the right thing to do.”

“It’s awful. Life should be simpler,” she argued. “We should always know what we should do. We should always be able to figure it out.”

“And you can’t figure out what to do now?”

“No,” she complained. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if I’m engaged anymore. The date when we were supposed to be married has come and gone, and we’re not married, and neither one of us has said a word about rescheduling. We just kind of…left things up in the air. Which is really not like me. But I just don’t know what to do. If I did, I’d do it. But I don’t, so I haven’t done anything, and I’m really not good in situations like this.” She frowned again. “You know?”

“I think so,” he said, thinking that if she didn’t even know if she was engaged anymore, who did? Thinking that a good next question would be, Do you love this man? Does he love you? When what he wanted to say was, If you weren’t engaged, would you give me your phone number?

He blamed the impulse, again, on lack of sleep and acute loneliness. Apparently, he was in worse shape than he thought.

“You’re very easy to talk to,” she said, as if she didn’t quite understand why.

He shrugged easily. “Years of training. I guess some of it took. And in my entirely professional opinion, I can tell you that most people get confused on a regular basis. It’s perfectly normal.”

Kate frowned. “And then they just don’t do anything, because they’re afraid they’ll do the wrong thing? Or because they think maybe something will happen at some point, and then they’ll just know what they’re supposed to do?”

“Exactly.”

“I hate that, too,” she said. “I mean, how can we expect to get where we want to go, without figuring out what we want and making a plan for getting it?”

“So, you don’t know what you want?” he asked cautiously, thinking he knew exactly what she was like. Tough on herself. Focused. Driven. Ambitious. Baffled by how difficult some people found life.

Obviously, she needed help. And it was possible he was helping her clarify her feelings. That was good, right?

“Maybe.” She looked even more troubled and, sounding doubtful said, “But this is supposed to be for the rest of my life. This is not a decision to mess up.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, striving for an absolutely objective tone. One should be absolutely sure when choosing someone to marry. He’d give that advice to anyone who asked. Not just possibly engaged women he wanted to date.

“Maybe it’s just cold feet,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” he agreed. He could be really good at this objective stuff.

“But it would be awful to lose the right man, just because I’m nervous about making that commitment or waiting for…well…”

Oh, yeah. What did she want from this relationship that was missing? What could he possibly say that would be unbiased here?

She just looked sad then. “I don’t know what I want.”

“I think you do,” he said, then could have kicked himself.

Still, not bad advice, he told himself.

He’d learned from experience. People knew. They just didn’t want to admit to themselves that they knew, because then they’d have to do something about it. If they could just pretend that they didn’t know, they didn’t have to do anything.

“Tell me what to do?” she asked.

“I can’t. You’re the only one who knows how you really feel.” Then, because he felt guilty, he added, “Kate, if you really don’t know, it’s okay to let things ride for a little while until you figure it out. That’s just being careful.”

“I don’t think I’m being careful. I think I’m being a coward.”

If she’d been anyone else, he would have reached over and squeezed her hand or patted her shoulder to try to comfort her because she looked so troubled. But Ben wasn’t touching her.

“You think I’m awful, don’t you?” she asked.

“No.”

“You say that, but you sound like you think I’m awful. You’re looking at me like you think I’m awful. Do you know Joe?”

“No.”

“He’s a good man. A very good man.”

But that didn’t make him right for her.

He groaned. Ben, gag yourself now. Right now.

If he had a needle and thread, he’d have sewn his mouth shut and known he deserved the pain it caused him.

“Now you look angry,” she said.

“At myself. Not you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m wishing you weren’t engaged,” he admitted. “Which means I have no right giving you advice about this, and I have to shut up. Now.”

She looked puzzled. “You mean…you want to…you and me?”

He nodded.

“Oh.” Her mouth fell open and her eyes got big and round. Soft color filled her cheeks, and he started laughing, couldn’t help it.

Either he was a terrible flirt or she was completely oblivious to him as a man, because it was obvious it hadn’t even occurred to her that he might be interested in her. He either really liked her for that or felt sorry for himself for being invisible to her.

“I’m really not very good at this sort of thing,” she said. “You know, the man-woman thing.”

“Me, neither.” Ben laughed some more. “Obviously.”

“No. It’s not you. It’s me. If there was a textbook or a class in college or a test, I could have aced it. But there aren’t any of those things when it comes to relationships. I mean, there are tons of books but they all say different things. Have you ever tried to make sense of all the different things written about relationships?”

“No.”

“It’s awful. Give me numbers. I can add them up. They always come up to the same thing. I love that about numbers. Ask me something about love, and I’m just baffled. You can’t quantify it in any way. There’s no definitive test for it. There’s no checklist. It has an infinite number of variables. You can’t even define the term. It means so many different things to people.”

“It is annoying in those ways,” he agreed.

She groaned aloud. “What am I going to do?”

“You’ll figure it out,” he said.

She stared at him and frowned. “You’re a really nice man.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“No, it’s not. It’s just…I don’t know what to do.”

“And you’re the only one who can decide.”

She looked hopeless then, like she might cry sometime soon.

He stiffened his spine, tried to strengthen his resolve. He had to get away from her. Nothing else would save him.

“Okay. I’ll stop talking now and go sit on the other side of the room, in case I’m tempted to do more harm than I’ve already done. It was nice to meet you, Kate. You’ll do the right thing, whatever it is.”

“I’m not so sure of that.” She looked as if she might cry at any minute. “I’m not very sure of anything right now.”

Oh, great. Make her cry. Way to go, Ben.

“Kate, sorry to have kept you waiting,” Charlotte Sims said, saving him from whatever he might have said by choosing that moment to walk into the reception area and place herself directly in front of him and Kate.

Kate looked panicked and guilty. Very guilty.

Ben finally noticed that her friend, Melanie, was staring at them both with rapt attention.

Charlotte looked puzzled. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Ben said. “Not at all.”

Things were right. Very right. She had saved him from saying something he would definitely regret and stepping across a line he had no right to cross.

“And it seems I’ve double booked myself. Again,” Charlotte said, still studying all three people in the reception area to see what she’d missed.

“No problem,” Ben said. “Kate can go first.”

“You’re sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” he said, thinking, Please, just go.

“We won’t be long,” Charlotte assured him.

Kate stood up and followed the woman, turning briefly to shoot a puzzled look at Ben that he couldn’t begin to decipher.

Was she mad at him?

He was mad at himself.

And too curious for his own good.

“Well,” Melanie said. “That was interesting. How do you two know each other?”

“We don’t,” Ben insisted. “We just met at the front door to your office five minutes ago.”

“Oh.” She sounded terribly disappointed.

He wondered if he could ask her not to say anything about this to anyone, particularly Kate’s kind-of-fiancé, but that would probably make them look even more guilty. He wondered if Melanie liked to gossip and how well she knew Joe, whom Kate might or might not love. He’d feel really guilty if the talk he and Kate had had caused any trouble between her and her fiancé.

Ben, you should have slept in today, maybe not gotten out of bed at all. But Mrs. Ryan would have been horrified, and someone had to do the morning prayer service. Staying in bed really wasn’t an option.

Keeping his mouth shut with Kate and staying out of her relationship with Joe…now, that was an option. He clamped his mouth shut, glanced at Melanie, only to find her grinning at him and staring right back.

“So,” Melanie said. “Want to know about Kate and Joe?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

He bit his tongue and sat there, stone-faced. Now, she had him lying. Him…a minister.

But, if he’d told the truth, Melanie would have told him all about Kate and Joe, and it was definitely none of his business.

No way to win this one, Ben.

Melanie laughed at him and told him anyway. “They’ve been together forever. Five years now, I think.”

Which could mean anything. That they were perfectly suited for each other or that they’d simply let things run on, with no inclination to take that final step, because they simply had no desire to actually be married.

“Supposed to get married this summer, but Kate’s mom’s cancer came back in the middle of planning the wedding, and then she died this spring, and… Well, I’m not sure what’s going on now.”

“Melanie—”

“But Joe really is a great guy.”

So he’d heard.

“Still, you’d think if they were going to get married, they’d have done it by now,” Melanie proclaimed.

Please, please, please, please, please, Ben begged silently. Get me out of this. I’ll be good. I promise.

He closed his eyes, closed his ears as best he could, refusing to listen anymore. Melanie got a phone call, thank God, and then another one. She hadn’t said one more word about Kate and Joe.

Charlotte Sims’s office door opened, finally, and she and Kate came out. Ben stood up, thinking he would slide on into Charlotte’s office and not have to say anything but a polite goodbye to Kate, and he’d have escaped relatively unscathed.

But then Melanie, who’d been on the phone again, put it down and said, “Hey, wait a minute. There’s a really annoyed older woman on the phone who’s lost a priest named Ben Taylor.” She glared at him, looking at him like he was a snake. “Are you a priest?”

Kate’s head whirled around, and she stood there, openmouthed, waiting for him to answer. Charlotte Sims was staring, too.

“It’s not what you think,” he said.

Melanie held out the phone. “Pastor? If this is you, it’s your secretary. She’s saying something about you slipping past her and going AWOL.” Then she said into the phone, “He’s not dangerous is he?”

Ben groaned and took the phone, hoping Mrs. Ryan had the courtesy to say that no, he was not dangerous and that no one called the police. Obviously, he’d been right to worry this morning about being arrested and defrocked.

Kate was certainly looking at him as if he was a criminal.

Which was probably the punishment he deserved for flirting with her—had he really been flirting?—without his collar on and without saying he was a minister.

He held the receiver to the side of his face and said, “Mrs. Ryan, you found me.”

Chapter Three

Kate was surprised her lower jaw hadn’t hit the floor. Her mouth had already been hanging open ridiculously at the idea that she might have been both flirting with and getting advice from a priest! And to have him confirm it like that—

She made a tiny sound of outrage, one he clearly heard, because he turned toward her, and for just a moment their eyes met, hers blazing, his contrite, and then he went back to his conversation.

That rat, she thought, because that was much, much easier than examining the guilt she felt, both for talking with a complete stranger about her feelings for Joe, when she hadn’t found the courage to talk to Joe himself, and for kind of flirting with the priest.

Was it really flirting?

Honestly, she’d never been that good at either recognizing it or doing it, preferring a much more direct approach. So maybe that wasn’t what they’d done. True, she had thought he was cute for a moment but, really, that was it. She’d spent maybe ten minutes with the man, in a public waiting room and on a public street. They’d done nothing but talk. So she really hadn’t done anything horrible.

Except flirt with a priest, while she was engaged to someone else!

Kate groaned again.

Ben Taylor handed the phone back to Melanie and then turned to Charlotte and said, “I’m afraid I have to go. Can I call and reschedule?”

“Of course,” Charlotte said.

And with that, he was gone.

The minute the door closed, Kate, Melanie and Charlotte all started talking at once. Charlotte’s low, insistent voice cut through the other two, as she said, “What’s going on?”

“He’s a priest?” Kate asked.

“He must be. That woman kept telling me there had to be a man in a clerical collar in our offices, and I said there wasn’t. Finally she said Ben Taylor, and I just about choked.”

“Wait,” Charlotte said again. “What’s wrong?”

“He was trying to pick Kate up, right here in our reception area,” Melanie said.

“Surely not,” Charlotte said.

“He was. Tell her,” Melanie said.

“I don’t know what he was doing, but… He seemed so nice.”

“But he’s a priest. What’s this world coming to, if you can’t trust a priest?” Melanie said.

“He was trying to pick you up?” Charlotte asked. “Right here?”

“I think so,” Kate said.

“He definitely was,” Melanie announced.

She should know. She was much more of a flirt than Kate had ever been. Distressed and feeling even more guilty, she turned to Charlotte and said, “How do you know him?”

“I don’t, really, but I’ll find out all there is to know about him,” Charlotte promised. “Don’t worry.”

But Kate did worry.

He’d thrown her completely off balance.

She prided herself on being a good judge of character, and she’d liked him right from the start. He had kind eyes with little crinkles in the corners and more at the corners of his mouth, which made her think he must smile a lot and generally be a pretty happy guy. He seemed a little too easygoing for her, but then most people were a lot more easygoing than Kate was. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it wasn’t always a bad thing.

He had a nice voice, strong and smooth and easy to listen to, and he was a very good listener. So few men were. So she’d talked, and he’d listened, and she’d told him everything she didn’t want to even acknowledge about her and Joe, things she been avoiding for months.

“I have to go,” Kate said, knowing if she stayed she’d really face an inquisition from Melanie and maybe from Charlotte, too.

“We’ll be in touch about your first meeting with your little sister,” Charlotte said.

She mumbled a thanks, picked up the satchel that doubled as both a purse and a briefcase, and fled.

It was a quick four blocks from Charlotte’s office to Kate’s own. She breezed in, asking her assistant Gretchen to try to get Joe on the line before she changed her mind. Ben Taylor might be a jerk, but he’d shamed her into taking action. Kate sat behind the closed door of her office with her palms sweating, trying to figure out what to say. All too soon, Ginny buzzed her and said Joe was on line two.

Kate picked it up and said, “Hi.”

“Kate. Hi. Are you okay? You sound funny.”

“I’m… I don’t know what I am, Joe. You and I need to talk.”

“Okay. Talk.”

“Not now. Not like this. Where are you?” She thought he was still out of town, but couldn’t say for sure. What did that say about their relationship?

“St. Louis,” he said. “I was hoping to be home today, but it’s not looking like I will. I’ll have to see how things go, and then see what the airlines can do for me.”

“Okay. Call me when you get in?”

“Sure. Kate? Did something happen?”

“No. Not really.”

“You sound like something happened,” he insisted.

And he sounded like he’d been expecting something to happen. What was that about?

“I just need to ask you some things,” she said. “About us.”

“Oh.”

Oh? He said it as if it had a dozen different meanings, each fraught with possibilities.

What was going on? She’d been leading a perfectly sane life this morning. She had a business she ran well, a family she loved, a mother she was still mourning, true, but all in all, a good, sane, predictable life.

Was this punishment for showing up at Big Brothers/Big Sisters under the guise of doing something nice for someone, when all she’d really wanted was to get in good with Charlotte Sims’s husband?

She did feel guilty about that part.

But good work was good work, right? Were her motives really that important, when in the end she’d be doing a good thing? At least, she’d intended to do a good thing. She certainly hadn’t gone there to flirt with a priest and question everything there was to her five-year relationship with Joe, who really was a very, very nice man. A sane man. A responsible one. A careful one. A smart one. A kind one. Everything she thought she’d ever wanted in a man.

“Katie, you’re scaring me,” Joe said.

“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I just… I have to go. Call me when you get into town, okay?”

Joe promised that he would.

Kate hung up the phone and wished with every fiber of her being that her mother was alive and well and that she could run to her and spill out all her problems to her.

She missed her so much. It had been horrible, watching her waste away like that. Kate had always thought she was so strong, that she could handle anything, but losing her mother had left her feeling as lost as a little six-year-old, like the little girl she’d helped to the car earlier.

She didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. She couldn’t be certain about anything, even marrying Joe.

Tell me what to do, Mom. Couldn’t you just tell me what to do?

Two hours later Ben was back, seated in front of Charlotte Sims, feeling like a naughty kid who’d been summoned to the principal’s office.

“I am not a Catholic priest,” he said. “I’m a minister at Grace Cathedral on Elm Street. Ministers in our church get married. No one cares. In fact, people think it makes us better at our jobs to have spouses and children, to better understand the kinds of emotions and challenges that come with marriage and parenthood.”

“All right,” Charlotte said. “So you were trying to pick up an engaged woman in my waiting room because…?”

“I didn’t pick her up. I had a conversation with her. I thought she was attractive, and I thought just maybe I might leave with her phone number, that I might ask her to dinner or something. But that’s it. And I didn’t do any of those things because I found out she’s engaged.”

Maybe, he added. Was it maybe? Or was it really and truly engaged? He still wanted to know. No way he was asking Charlotte Sims about that. She’d probably slap his face, and rightly so.

“Melanie said you were flirting with Kate, and Melanie should know. She’s one of the biggest flirts in the entire state.”

“Well, then…I guess I was flirting. Guilty. Shoot me, please. Put me out of my misery.”

“I can’t. You owe me a favor.”

Ben clamped his mouth shut, thinking he hadn’t said a single, right thing all day.

“If,” Charlotte added, “I decide I want you to have anything to do with my organization.”

“I am not a bad guy!” He nearly exploded with it. “I just…I’m having a bad day, okay? I thought she was pretty. She was nice to that little girl, Allie, and I don’t think I’ve spent a moment on anything that might be considered a personal life since I came here seven months ago. Obviously, I’m lousy at it. I am still single at thirty-two. I don’t think I’ve had a serious relationship in the three years I was in divinity school or the two since I was ordained. Maybe I should have been a Catholic priest and given up on women all together!”

Charlotte stared at him. Slowly, he came to realize that the ends of her mouth were twitching, were fighting it seemed to curve upward into a smile.

“You think this is funny?”

She nodded, covering her mouth with her hand, giggles spilling out of her until her eyes filled with tears and she needed a hankie to wipe them away. Her shoulders shook. She was trying mightily and failing to keep from grinning.

“I am so sorry,” she finally managed to say. “I just wanted to hear your side of it. I know all about you. I talked to Betty at the high school, and she told me Mildred Ryan is your secretary. I went to school with Mrs. Ryan’s granddaughter, Peggy, so I put in a call to her. They assured me that you’re a very nice man and a wonderful minister, even if you are a bit…socially challenged.”

“Socially challenged?” he repeated.

Charlotte nodded, still fighting the giggles.

Okay, so they didn’t think he was pond scum, just completely inept in the area of personal relationships.

You deserve it, Ben. Admit it. You do.

It was probably better if Kate went right on thinking he was a rat. Then she’d never speak to him again. He deserved that. That’s why he hadn’t tried to explain things to her before he took that phone call. He’d be better off if she stayed away from him, and he could only hope he hadn’t done any permanent damage to her relationship with her fiancé, if the man still was her fiancé. And Ben wouldn’t so much as look at another single woman for another seven months, at least. He didn’t have time for one, anyway.

Charlotte finally managed to stop laughing. She dried her tears daintily with a delicate, embroidered handkerchief and then gave him a bright smile.

“Well. I guess we should get down to business. You owe me a favor, right?”

“Yes.” And to think all he’d done yesterday morning was to follow a troubled, hideously dressed, pregnant teenager from his church and walk through a few open doors, thinking to do his job and help someone?

“How many people in your congregation on an average Sunday morning?” Charlotte asked.

“Maybe a hundred.”

“Okay. I’m thinking ten percent would be good,” she announced.

“Ten percent of…?”

“Your congregation, volunteering with my organization.”

“Ten people? You want me to find you ten people?”

She nodded. “You’re in the business of encouraging good works, right?”

Ben nodded.

“So, go encourage. Preferably people between the ages of twenty and thirty. And they have to have references and pass a background check.”

“I doubt I have ten people in that age group in the entire congregation.”

“I really don’t care if they come from your congregation. I need ten more volunteers. Actually, I need more like fifty, and you look so wonderfully guilty about what happened earlier….”

“Okay, I’ll find you ten.”

“You know, you’re getting off easy, Pastor.”

If having to find her ten volunteers was the worst thing that came out of today, he was.

“And let me give you some advice,” Charlotte said. “When you’re striking a bargain, never agree to anything without knowing what it’s going to cost you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “You’ll find someone for Shannon?”

“I’ll get her the best person I can find,” Charlotte promised.

“Good. Thank you.” It was more than he deserved. “Now, what would you say are the chances of this little incident staying between you, me, Kate and your receptionist?”

“About a million to one against it,” Charlotte said. “I’ll be good, and I bet Kate will keep quiet, too, but Melanie… Well, one of the reasons she’s so good at this job is that she knows just about everyone in town and all their secrets, which means she’s always talking to everyone about everything. Sorry, Pastor Taylor.”

He shook his head. “Not your fault.”

It was his completely.

Maybe this was why Mrs. Ryan thought he should stay in the office and wait for people to come to him—because he was dangerous, loose out in the world. And he really should keep his clerical collar on at all times. It was just so unseemly, trying to meet women with the collar on, because they all jumped to the conclusion that he was Catholic. Not that he needed to be meeting women anyway. Look at the trouble it had gotten him into today.

He thanked Charlotte Sims for her help, apologized again for the mix-up, ignored the laughter that followed him as he left Melanie in the reception area, and went back to his office to be scolded by an eighty-year-old great-grandmother look-alike.

Charlotte Sims liked to think she had good instincts about people, and sometimes she got impulses to meddle, which got her into trouble.

Her instincts said that Pastor Ben and Kate Cassidy had protested too much that absolutely nothing had happened between them in her reception area, which meant that something had, maybe something special.

And Melanie’s instincts told her that if Kate and her fiancé were ever going to get married, they’d have done it long ago. Charlotte remembered when she’d met Charlie. She’d been besotted, right from the first, and there wasn’t anything in the world that could have kept them waiting for more than five years to be man and wife. Nothing.

There was careful. There was getting to know each another. There was the need to be sure, but five years was something else completely.

So…maybe it was up to her to do them all a favor.

That’s how she thought of it.

A favor.

She had to find someone for Shannon, whom she’d met the day before, and Shannon’s problems seemed much more serious than Allie’s. Allie was a delight, and the distant cousin who’d taken her in seemed like a very good woman, though a bit frazzled, who’d provide a good home for Allie. And Charlotte could find a big sister for an adorable six-year-old blindfolded and with one hand tied behind her back.

So…maybe she didn’t have to meddle with Kate and Pastor Ben.

Maybe she could just do the best she could for Shannon and things would fall into place.

She put in a call to the love of her life, her husband, Charlie. He was president of the local Board of Realtors, and at the group’s annual dinner three nights ago, she’d managed to convince five of the people there to sign up as new volunteers with Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Which meant that he had some connection to the only adult volunteers she had who had yet to be matched up with a little brother or sister. Two of them were men, which left three possibilities for Shannon Delaney.

Her husband came on the line.

“Hi, honey. I need your opinion about something. That secretary from your friend Tom’s office? The one who’s volunteering for me? I need someone who can handle a fifteen-year-old. A tough one. What do you think?”

“Sorry, darling. She’s a nice lady, but I just don’t think she’s tough enough.”

“Okay.” Charlotte closed the folder in front of her and reached for another one. “What about the decorator? Gloria Sandling?”

“Well…she wouldn’t be my first choice. Didn’t Kate Cassidy sign up?”

Charlotte grinned. “Yes, she did.”

“If you’ve got a tough case, Kate’s your girl, honey. Smart, stubborn, responsible, knows her way around kids. She helped raise her two younger sisters after their father died, and she doesn’t know the meaning of the world quit.”

“Sounds perfect,” Charlotte said. And she had not done this. Really, she hadn’t. “It’s just that she asked for a younger child. In fact, she met a cute six-year-old in our office today.”

“Trust me, honey. Give Tom’s secretary the six-year-old, and give your problem child to Kate.”

“Okay, I will. Thanks, Charlie. I love you. You’re so good to me. And so useful a man to have as a husband.”

“I do my best, darlin’.”

His contacts worked wonders for her when she needed volunteers or money, and he wasn’t shy at all about exploiting those contacts for a good cause.

She told him she’d see him soon and then hung up, puzzling over exactly how to handle Kate. She had practically promised her the six-year-old, and she did feel guilty about that. But Shannon was in trouble, and it had nothing to do with Charlotte wanting to meddle in Kate and Ben’s lives.

She was just doing what was best for Shannon. She’d pair Kate up with the girl, and if in the course of helping Shannon, she and Ben Taylor had reason to get together, well…Charlotte would leave that up to fate.

Kate got home that evening to find her middle sister, Kathie, who was also her roommate, on the phone in the kitchen, and by the look on Kathie’s face, she had to be hearing all about Kate flirting with a priest!

The combination of guilt and curiosity in her eyes was all too clear.

“You know,” Kathie looked absolutely pained as she broke into the conversation, “she just walked in the door.”

“No,” Kate mouthed. Whoever it was, she didn’t want to talk to them.

“Oh. Okay,” Kathie said into the phone. “I’ll tell her.”

Kate winced as she stepped out of her heels. Not even caring about neatness tonight, she left them by the coffee table along with her satchel and headed for the kitchen, loitering just outside the door, while Kathie stood in it, looking even more guilty as she managed to get rid of the person on the phone.

“Let me guess,” Kate said, as her sister hung up. “Someone couldn’t wait to tell you about the priest who was flirting with me?”

“Huh?” her sister said.

“That wasn’t—?”

“You were flirting with a priest?”

Kate groaned aloud. “Who was that?”

“Joe.”

“Even better,” Kate muttered. She wondered if he’d heard about her and the priest yet. Honestly, that man had made her so mad. How dare he presume to give her advice on handling her relationship, when all the time he was just trying to get her phone number so he could ask her out?

“What’s going on?” Kathie asked. “Joe said— Well, he thought something was wrong. That something had happened. Did something happen?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said, ridiculous as that was. It was her life. If anyone knew, it should be her.

“Why was a priest flirting with you?” Kathie asked.

“I don’t know. Because he’s a jerk?” But he hadn’t seemed like a jerk. He’d seemed like a perfectly nice man. That I’m-no-good-with-women thing… She’d bought that completely.

“So, Joe heard about a priest who was flirting with you and—”

“I don’t know.” Kate was nearly in tears, and she never cried.

Her sister looked upset, too. Really upset. What was that about? Maybe just because Kate was so upset, and it took a lot to get her this way. Maybe Kathie thought something awful had happened.

Kate sniffled and swiped away tears.

“Did I do something?” her sister asked.

“No.”

“Because, if I did… Joe seemed to think something was really wrong, and you’re crying. You never cry. And…well, if it’s me…I’d never want to do anything to hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

Kate was absolutely bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” her sister said.

It was like a disease, spreading through the kitchen. The I-don’t-know-what’s-wrong disease. It had been such an odd day.

“What did Joe say?” Kate asked.

Kathie hesitated, studying her sister, finally saying, “That he wasn’t going to make it home today. Hopefully tomorrow. That he’d call you as soon as he knew for sure. But…he sounded like he thought you were going to break up with him. Are you going to break up with him?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said.

Her sister started to cry, too, then. Maybe everyone was having an awful day.

“I’m sorry,” Kathie said. “So sorry.”

“Me, too.” She didn’t even know for what, but she was sorry, and she gave her sister a hug.

“I miss Mom,” Katie said.

“I do, too.”

And they both stood there, completely miserable, crying for reasons Kate couldn’t begin to understand.

Chapter Four

Shannon Delaney was back in church the next morning before school. Ben spotted her slipping into the sanctuary that morning soon after he arrived.

He’d already been lectured by Mrs. Ryan and promised to stay right where he belonged, safely in his office, that day. Truth was he was scared to go out into the streets, almost too scared to open his mouth around Shannon. It was no telling what kind of trouble he might cause.

Shannon walked up to the pew where she’d sat yesterday and sank into it, waiting for him, he thought. He walked over to her and found her staring, not sure what was going on at first, then realized he was wearing his white collar today. He might never take it off.

Still, she stared. He fidgeted, tugged at it and finally said, “Is it that hard to talk to me when I’m wearing this?”

“It’s just weird,” Shannon said.

He gave her wild, spiked, jet-black hair, pale face and black lipstick a slow going-over and said, “If you say so.”

She glowered at him. “You seemed so nice yesterday.”

“Not everyone thought so.”

“Bad day, Pastor?”

“Definitely.”

“Well, I didn’t have a great day, either.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No, I just… That thing you said? About God helping people who ask for it? Except, the help might not be exactly what you ask for or expect?”

Ben nodded.

“You think the help could come this fast? I mean like…yesterday?”

“Sure,” he said, suppressing a grin.

She shook her head. “I mean, it seems like someone’s trying to help. I don’t know if it really will help, but it seems like someone is trying.”

“Then let them,” he said.

“That’s it? Just…let them?”

“Don’t make it harder than it has to be, Shannon.”

“Why would anybody help me?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Ben asked.

“Because I’m not a very good person,” she confessed.

“I don’t think you’re so bad.”

“Still, it just seems weird that anybody would want to help me.”

“You’re thinking like a human being,” Ben said. “You think people only help you if they like you or they think there’s something in it for them. You’re thinking you have to be good and deserve help to get it or maybe that you just have to be lucky or earn it somehow. God doesn’t work like that. He just likes to help people.”

“Sounds kind of silly to me,” she said.

“Really? I thought it would sound pretty good to you, considering the situation you’re in.”

She frowned at him. “So…I’m supposed to…what?”

“Try to be open to the possibilities.”

“Okay.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Well…if God really did send someone to help me, I was thinking, I ought to thank Him, you know?”

“Yeah. He’d like that.”

Maybe Ben hadn’t messed up everything, as he’d feared.

Kate woke up that morning not sure what had hit her.

Her nice, sane life seemed to have tilted on its axis, and she wasn’t sure where she’d gone so wrong, but she must have, because things seemed to be slipping out of place. She really liked having everything in its place.

To start with, she overslept, something she never did, because she’d hardly slept all night. So she was groggy and grumpy and rushing, which she hated. Kathie had already left by the time Kate walked into the kitchen, which was unusual. They almost always shared coffee and a bagel before leaving for work. This morning, when Kate finally got to the office, Gretchen was already there and already had a stack of messages for her, which she rattled off one by one.

“Brother, brother’s fiancée, sister—”

“Which one?” Kate interrupted, as Gretchen peeled off little pick message slips and put them on Kate’s desk.

“Kim.”

“Nothing from Kathie?”

“No. She’s the only member of your family who hasn’t called.” Gretchen gave Kate a puzzled look.

“Okay. Who else?”

“Melanie Mann, Melanie Mann, Melanie Mann. She says she’s with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Sounds urgent.”

“It’s not,” Kate said. It was about her and the priest.

“She’s calling every fifteen minutes,” Gretchen said.

“Just keep taking messages, please? Did anyone call about work?”

“No.”

Kate groaned. Just when she needed a crazy day at the office to keep her mind off everything else, it turned quiet. Perfect.

“Oh, wait,” Gretchen said. “Someone from the Board of Realtors called, something about a committee for next year’s home show?”

“I’m never going near the Board of Realtors again,” Kate said.

“Why?”

Because that’s what started all of this!

“Okay, I’m probably exaggerating a bit. Maybe. I just…” No way Kate was explaining. “Next time I open my mouth to volunteer for anything, stop me, okay?”

“Sure. Ready for coffee?”

“Please. I’ll spring for espresso from the café, if you’ll go get it.”

“Deal,” Gretchen said.

She was back before Kate even knew she was gone, delivering caffeine and saying, “Okay, I’ll be at my desk. Who do you want to talk to this morning?”

“No one,” Kate said.

“No one? Sisters? Brother?”

“No.”

“Joe?”

“Especially not Joe.”

Gretchen frowned. “Are you okay? Is something going on? Because I’ve had two phone calls myself from friends of mine who said… Well…”

“What?” Kate didn’t want to know. Really, she didn’t.

“That you broke up with Joe. Or that he broke up with you.”

“Anything else?” Kate dared to ask, ready for something about the priest.

“No.”

Kate closed her eyes and let out a breath. “We didn’t break up. I just don’t want to talk to him.”

Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, now that she thought about it.

Gretchen waited, probably looking for more information. Kate offered none.

“Okay,” Gretchen said again. “I’ll just be out here, taking messages, all day. No one gets through. I can do that.”

She probably thought Kate was nuts all of a sudden. Wait until the priest rumors started making the rounds. Then the phone would really ring off the hook.

“Ahh!” Kate groaned, not able to hold it in any longer…

The door popped back open. Gretchen stuck her head in. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Kate insisted. She must have been louder than she realized. Either that or Gretchen was listening at her door. “All I did was volunteer with Charlie’s wife’s organization!”

“Big Brothers/Big Sisters, right?” Gretchen said tentatively, hovering in the doorway, half in and half out.

“Yes. Charlotte brought it up in front of Charlie, and you know Charlie. He knows everyone. His firm is the biggest one in town. Just getting a little bit of his mortgage referral business would be great for us, and he loves it when people volunteer to help his wife’s organization.”

“So you volunteered? To get in good with Charlie?”

“Yes,” Kate confessed. “I went yesterday, and there was the cutest little girl, Allie, with wild, kinky, curly hair and no front teeth. She wanted me to be her big sister, which I said I’d love to do. And I was thinking it was okay, even if I’d come for the wrong reasons. I mean, sometimes good things just happen, right?”

“Right,” Gretchen said.

“But then… Well, then—”

“Is this the part where the priest started hitting on you?” Gretchen asked.

Kate groaned once more.

Kate hid quite skillfully all day. It wouldn’t last, but by 4:15 p.m., she’d successfully avoided all contact with anyone but her clients, their attorneys, their real estate agents and the myriad of other people involved in getting people into a home of their own. The only nonwork item that got through was from Melanie, telling her that her little sister could meet her at 5:30 p.m., if that worked for Kate.

Chicken that Kate was, she had Gretchen call to confirm.

The meeting was set for Magnolia Falls Park, a long strip of land that ran along the river though town. Kate arrived promptly at 5:25, excited for the first time since the whole Big Brothers/Big Sisters debacle began.

She couldn’t wait to see Allie again. Surely things would go smoothly from here on out, at least between her and her new little sister. With two real sisters of her own, Kate felt like she could hold her own with any little girl, especially one as outgoing and happy as Allie. All Charlotte asked was that Kate touch base with Allie once a week, hopefully get together for two hours or so, the activities of their own choice, from educational to pure fun.

Pure fun had never been Kate’s forte, but maybe Allie could teach her.

Once the girl arrived.

Kate stood at the meeting spot—next to the ice cream stand in the midst of Magnolia Falls Park—at precisely five-thirty and fought the urge to pace.

The only young female she saw was…well, frightening was the first word that came to mind.

Nothing impish or cute about this girl.

She might be thirteen and she might be twenty. It was impossible to tell. She wore a little ribbed tank top that clung to her uncharacteristically pale skin. A disreputable-looking black leather jacket and oversize black cargo pants with a huge black belt and what looked like army boots.

So…she definitely wasn’t a shoe person.

She’d probably done that really bad dye job on her hair herself—inky black, of course—and had pierced her ears too many times to count, plus her eyebrows. She’d painted her fingernails black and managed to find purplish-black lipstick somewhere.

She pursed those wicked-colored lips and took a slow, deep drag off her cigarette, staring belligerently back at Kate and arching a blackened brow as if to say, What is your problem?

Kate nearly laughed at that. This girl was the one with problems.

She dismissed Kate with another smirk and started to blow smoke rings into the air, much to the annoyance of the ice cream man, who was trying to wave it away with his hands.

“It’s not Halloween yet, is it, Kate?” Bernie, the ice cream man, asked.

The girl looked bored, as she took another puff on the cigarette, her gaze remaining dismissively on Kate.

“Not for another few days, Bernie,” Kate said.

“Can I get you something, Kate?”

Nerves getting the best of her, she said, “Sure, I’ll have a fudge bar.”

He dug it out of his cart and Katie took it, handing him a dollar bill and thanking him.

No one else had shown up. This was the only ice cream cart in the park. It was in the same place every day. Everyone in town knew where it was.

Waiting impatiently, Kate wondered how much of her own life story she should share with Allie. Kate’s own father died at the hands of a convenience-store robber when she was only eight. And of course, her mother died of cancer six months ago, when Kate was twenty-seven. Life had not been easy for her, and yet she thought she and her siblings had turned out okay, her current situation with Joe and that odd thing with the priest notwithstanding. There wasn’t a wild, rebellious, indignant or irresponsible bone in Kate Cassidy’s body.

Which made her think of the girl beside her. If Katie had to guess, she’d say the girl was at least wild and rebellious, and she seemed to have a good head start on indignant, just looking at Katie, in her favorite black suit and her pretty black pumps. How could anyone object to a classic black suit?

She glanced at her watch. Five thirty-four.

She ate her fudge bar. Ghoul Girl, as Katie had come to think of her, finished her cigarette and threw what was left of it down onto the ground.

“Hey,” Bernie warned her. “That’s not where it goes, and believe me, you don’t want to find out what the fine for littering in this park is.”

That earned him a glare, too, but the girl picked up the cigarette butt and threw it into the trash. Katie finished her fudge bar and threw it away.

Five thirty-seven.

She had hoped to make the 6:15 advanced-cardio-burn class at the gym, but time would soon become an issue. Katie pulled out her cell phone and paged through the numbers programmed in the phone, for Charlotte Sims’s number. Charlotte, cheery as always, answered.

“Hi. This is Kate Cassidy. I was supposed to meet my little sister seven minutes ago, but she’s not here. I was wondering if she’d called to cancel?”

“Katie. Hi,” Charlotte said. “She’s not there? I hope nothing happened. I’ve got her cell phone number right here. Let me try her and see. Can you hang on?”

“Sure.” Thank goodness for cell phones. She tried to never be without hers. Although, a six-year-old having a cell phone…? That sounded a bit odd.

Charlotte put Katie on hold, and, oddly enough, someone else’s phone rang. Ghoul Girl’s. Even her phone was all black.

“Yes,” the girl said into the phone. “Yes, I’m here. I was even early.”

Oh, no.

“Sure,” the girl said. “I can hang on.”

“Darling?” Charlotte came back on the line with Kate. “She says she’s right there. I don’t know how you two could be missing each other.”

Kate gaped at the girl, looking back at Kate with what she imagined was equal parts horror and disgust. Turning to put her back to the girl, Katie whispered into the phone, “I thought I was getting Allie. Remember?” Impish. Pigtails.

“I know. I’m sorry. I thought Melanie called you. We really needed someone for Shannon. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to get through to her, and when I spoke to Charlie about it, he said you were the one for the job. In fact, he said you can handle anything,” Charlotte said, sealing Katie’s fate then and there.

She couldn’t have Charlie Sims thinking she couldn’t handle one rebellious, frighteningly dressed, nicotine-addicted teenage girl.

“Oh,” Kate heard herself say. “Okay. Whatever you need.”

“Great. Her name is Shannon Donnelly. Don’t let the look fool you. She’s only fifteen and very, very intelligent.”

Intelligent? No way, Katie thought, glancing at Shannon, who looked bored once again and was reaching for another cigarette.

“Call me later and let me know how everything goes,” Charlotte said.

“Sure.” Kate closed the phone and faced Miss Shannon Donnelly.

Shannon lit another cigarette, took a big puff and said, “Hey, sis.”

Kate nearly choked. Surely this was her punishment for coming into this program for all the wrong motives and maybe for flirting with the priest and not facing up to her problems with Joe.

“What’s the matter?” Ghoul Girl asked. “Scared?”

“Of you? Amused is more like it.”

It wasn’t a promising start, considering she was supposed to help this girl, but what could she do? Politeness wouldn’t get her anywhere, Kate thought, and neither would kindness right away. She couldn’t afford to let the girl think she was intimidated, either.

Time for some tough love.

Or…tough affection, maybe.

Tough help.

“You really do look like you dressed up for Halloween today,” Kate said, testing her theory.

“And you look like an uptight old woman,” the girl returned.

Okay. The girl respected toughness and bluntness. They could communicate on that level and work toward something more civil at a later date.

“Guess we won’t be swapping fashion tips,” Kate said.

“Guess not,” the girl said, then hitched her chin up a notch and flung back, “So, you’re just doing this to impress the director’s old man?”

Oh, great.

The girl grinned. “I heard enough that I guessed that’s what you might be doing. I mean, you don’t seem like the do-gooder type.”

“That’s what got me started,” Kate admitted. “Who twisted your arm to get you here? Because I can’t imagine you coming here willingly, either.”

The girl’s composure slipped for just a moment, and she looked half human. Okay. They were getting somewhere. Kate wondered who had enough influence over the girl to make her do anything—and why that person hadn’t forced her to do something about that awful hair.

“What if I didn’t?” The girl shrugged.

“So, we’ve both got our reasons for being here, and neither one of us can back out. So…we might as well make the best of it? Getting together a few times should be enough to keep everybody happy, right?”

“Yeah,” the girl agreed. “That’ll work.”

If anyone overheard the deal Kate just made, they’d think she was a really lousy person and still trying to impress Charlie, which she was.

But now that she’d met the girl…

She obviously needed help, and she looked like a real challenge.

Kate loved a challenge.

Besides, she liked fixing people. She happened to think she was great at it, although her siblings were starting to complain, something about her advice sounding more like meddling, that her need to have things in perfect order was starting to bug them. Kate was trying to cut back on her advice, but it was a tough habit to break. Maybe she could make this girl her project, instead.

“Why don’t we start over? I’m Kate Cassidy.” She held out her hand, which the girl pointedly ignored. Were they supposed to smack their hands together or something?

“Shannon Donnelly.”

“Want to sit down?” Kate invited.

She got that I-couldn’t-care-less shrug again, but the girl sat on the bench.

Kate sat beside her. “So, anything going on that I could help you with?”

“I don’t think so.” Shannon laughed again. “Anything I can do for you, Kate?”

“I doubt it.” Kate sat there, racking her brain for something else to say. “I was pretty good in school, in case you need any help there.”

“Like I’d care about school? Please.” Shannon rolled her eyes dramatically. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“And everything’s startin’ to go, huh? The body? The face?”

“Hey?” Kate frowned. “I thought we were going to make this as painless as possible for each other? Could I get a little cooperation, please?”

“Look, I don’t need anything from you,” Shannon said, looking like a little girl for maybe a split second, if that was possible under her disguise. “I don’t need anybody. So, what do we have to do? Look at each other once a week or something? Is that it?”

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