Chapter 3
Three
Girl flirts with preacher
Jack
People love ministers—or hate them.
No in-between.
Either we save your soul, handing out free passes to the five-star resort of Heaven, or we’re con artists who believe everything we read in the Bible and demand your hard-earned cash.
Divinity school teaches how to memorize Bible verses but doesn’t cover the way being a minister takes over every part of your life until there’s no room left for anything else.
“Jesus Christ.” Dixie sounds pricklier than a hedgehog and twice as defensive. “Did I just hump you in front of your entire congregation? Did an entire church’s worth of people hear me proposition you for sex?”
I know a rhetorical question when I hear one. I stay silent and wait for her to jump off my lap like a scalded cat.
We’ve attracted enough attention to guarantee robust attendance at the Sunday church service this weekend, with everybody coming to see the preacher who’d gone rogue in the town bar. Opinions will be shared. My bishop may get an earful.
Worth it? You bet.
Dixie’s hair spills over her shoulders and down the back of her leather jacket—which is black, as is her cowboy hat.
The white dress is less goth, a buttery-soft material that hugs her curves and makes her look like the country version of Morticia Addams, if Morticia traded her mansion for a broken-down van and a dream.
I remember one of those Bible verses that got drummed into my head: Rejoice in hope, rejoice in hope.
Despite some dust from racketing around backcountry roads and deep shadows beneath her green eyes, she’s strikingly beautiful—the grit-and-glamour package, with long, wild auburn hair that tumbles around her face beneath the brim of that black cowgirl hat.
Her eyes sparkle, full of mischief, and freckles dust her nose and cheeks.
“Hold up a minute.” Deacon slides his phone between my face and Dixie’s, slow and deliberate as everything he does. “Reckon you might wanna explain why you’re all over my YouTube recommendations, darlin’?”
Dixie’s face pouts from the screen. In the photo, her smile is simultaneously sultry and carefree, despite the Y-shaped crack that splits the screen and transforms her into a Dali-worthy portrait. She’s…a country music singer?
“Busted,” she carols. Then her eyes narrow. I’m getting the feeling that’s her factory default setting. “Although that goes for both of us.”
I snag Deacon’s phone and scroll. Wow. Dixie Jane Pearl is an up-and-coming country music singer who’s written and performed her own songs for eight years.
She has a bunch of songs on YouTube, some TikTok videos, and multiple Instagram shots of her wearing cowboy hats as she sings her heart out on top of a rusty truck, a hay bale, and a leather armchair.
I don’t recognize the songs, so I share the link with myself so I can listen to them later.
The information bursts the tiny fantasy I’ve had about tonight being the start of something.
What’s that saying about bright lights, big city?
I’m small-town, through and through, and now I feel like a stupid moth flapping around the brightest light of all, the bold, bright, creative ray of sunlight that’s Dixie.
Okay. So she’s more thundercloud than sunshine, but whatever.
The moth bites it. Every time.
“This is you?” I angle the phone so she can see.
“Uh-huh.” She scoots around in my lap until she’s straddling me, using me as her own personal piece of furniture. “But you don’t have to take my word for it. Look at my bio.”
She taps a button that proclaims MEET DIXIE! The words are inscribed in curly letters inside a hot-pink heart wearing a cowgirl hat.
“Wow,” I say. “I guess I should have guessed based on how well you sing.”
Deacon mimes what looks like “she’s hot” over Dixie’s head while giving an exaggerated wink. He makes a subtle nudging motion with his shoulder. Come on.
I try to brush him off behind her back.
She makes a face. “How can you be a preacher?”
“The usual way,” I say as lightly as I can. “Lots and lots of summer Bible camp. A calling. Divinity school.”
“But you do karaoke,” she protests. “In a bar. How did this not come up when we met?”
“We met less than an hour ago and it’s not my usual opening line.”
Her frown deepens. “The minister thing should have been disclosed up front.”
“Why?”
“Because—” She waves a hand enthusiastically, knocking Deacon’s phone out of mine. He grunts and swipes it off the floor. “Just because!”
“I’m allowed out of the church,” I say dryly. “I get that’s a shock.”
I know I won’t spend the evening preaching at people or making them feel bad about their choices, but there’s no good way to explain that. Tonight, I just want—
I’ll stop right there. I blame the amazing kiss that relocated the blood from my brain to my dick for my inarticulateness. I’m at a critical disadvantage from blood loss.
At church or my office, leading a Bible study or heading up the billion ministries essential to church life, the expectations are crystal clear. My congregation loves me, and not just because I whoop their butts at karaoke. It’s a pure, chaste, completely hands-off kind of love, though.
Those years of summer Bible camp followed by even more years of divinity school, however, mean I’ve learned a ton of Bible verses by heart.
Some people think that memorization lands you a spiritual reward or is a piece of handy theological punctuation for shutting down debates.
I think the words are an anchor. Reciting scripture keeps me from saying something else when I’m angry or overwhelmed or just plain frustrated.
I won’t put words out there that I’ll regret later.
Tonight’s Bible verse is create in me a clean heart.
If I say it enough, maybe it’ll keep me from acting on my attraction to Dixie.
And from telling her that this minister has a working penis.
And isn’t saving himself for his wedding night.
Despite being a big fan of two people committing to waiting for each other before they’ve even met, I get the argument that waiting is challenging and leaves you at an emotional disadvantage.
Practice is good and people get lonely. They have committed relationships that end before ever reaching the altar.
They like sex and don’t believe it requires a legal and spiritual commitment.
Bottom line: You choose sex for yourself.
I’m not the only minister who believes it’s up to my parishioners to decide for themselves whom they sleep with and when, but it’s also not the most popular opinion. I keep it to myself unless asked.
Right now, I’m uncomfortably aware that Dixie is sitting on top of my dick. Wriggling. The thinking about sex part of things isn’t presenting any kind of a problem for me.
It’s more that up until now, I haven’t spent a ton of time practicing it. Planning for it. Or doing it.
“Do you even—” She waves a hand.
I fill in that blank. Do you EVEN have sex? Do you EVEN like it? Do you need a permission slip from your bishop before you can get naked?
The answer is yes, of course, and no. Although the bishop might disagree, but never mind.
I remind myself that clean heart means no thinking dirty thoughts about the lady. “I feel like I should state for the record that sex is good.”
“Great!” I get the feeling that she isn’t applauding my sex positivity so much as affirming that if I’m ever lucky enough to find myself in bed with her that our sex will be great.
“Fuck.” She scrubs a hand down her face. “This is so weird. I hit on a minister.”
This is why my dick is rustier than my truck.
Dixie squirms on my lap. “So—”
She starts. Stops. While she figures out her sentence, I brush my thumbs over the silky curve of her waist. I’ll take what I can.
“Are you okay?”
At the same time, Deacon sticks his oar in with: “Is the minister thing a deal-breaker?”
“Oh my God.” She blasphemes with enthusiasm. “Do you really want me to answer that question? Yeees?”
She draws the word out like a lifeline and then leans away, almost overbalancing.
My gaze slides down her body before I can stop it, drinking in her long, almost bare legs wrapped around me, the way the soft fabric of her dress pools between her legs.
Her thighs tighten, holding me close.
Focus. I jerk my eyes back up to her face. Her lips are purple, a slick of deliberate color.
Dixie tugs on my arm. “Do you like having sex?”
“Yes. Do you like asking intrusive questions?”
She nods. “I have so many.”
I’m not surprised. “Let me guess. I’m not a priest. I will not be taking a vow of celibacy, so I’m not searching for a sex marathon before I’m cut off forever.
Sex is allowed, although my church strongly prefers that I be married before I have it.
Agree to disagree. I am allowed to date and to have a girlfriend, and no, I am not ‘weird’ about sex. ”
“Wow.” Dixie purses her lower lip, less impressed than McKayla Maroney spotting her vault score.
“I realize the minister thing was a bit of a surprise, but some people do actually enjoy dating me.”
Granted, “some” might be generous. Maybe “a person.” Singular. And she moved to Florida.
Behind the bar, Deacon winces. Smooth, he mouths. Or maybe swoon?
“Sure they do.” She waves a hand. I’m the dating equivalent of a traffic accident or a spill: shit that happens and gets dealt with. She sweeps on before my ego recovers. “I would just corrupt you.”
Is that a joke? Or please God—the next action item on tonight’s agenda?
“Generally, I’m held to be fairly incorruptible.”
True story.
“But I’m really good at it,” she counters.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Yes.”
“Really?”
“I’d be the devil on your shoulder.” She states this with utmost confidence. “You, obviously, are an uptight and rule-following individual, so your life would be far more balanced with me in it, but I do try to be responsible. On random, ill-selected occasions.”
“We do seem like two unlikely people to date.”