Chapter 15
Fifteen
Preacher nearly drowns. Girl dries him off and definitely catches feelings.
Jack
The rain starts early Wednesday morning. First it rains all morning. Then all afternoon. Now, with the sun just down, it’s still raining.
I run for my front door. There’s a moment of forward momentum—followed by confusion—when it doesn’t open.
“She locked me out.” I slap at my jeans pockets for a key.
Deacon hoots with laughter somewhere behind me.
We’ve spent the last hour up on the church roof, hammering on a tarp while it rained hard enough to make me wonder where I parked my ark. I’m soaked. And apparently locked out of my own house by the woman I’m falling for, which seems about right for how this day’s been going.
“See you tomorrow,” I holler and Deacon honks the horn of his truck as he drives past. He doesn’t even wait around to make sure I get in safe—he’s a terrible date.
I end up having to fish the spare out of the key frog sitting on the top step. As soon as the lock turns, I barrel inside. I’m more interested in being somewhere less rained on than in playing it cool, which is probably good because I’m about as far from cool as a man can get right now.
The second I step inside, I discover my living room’s been replaced with a tropical sauna.
Georgia Peach is wilting in her dollhouse.
She barks a cranky hello as I shut the door behind me and halt on the doormat.
If I track mud and water all over the house, I’ll have to clean it up.
And explaining to Dixie why there are boot prints on her freshly mopped floors would require admitting I noticed she mopped them, which would require admitting I notice everything she does, which is a conversation I’m not ready for.
So, it makes sense to strip down by the door, except I’m not alone and Dixie and I have established a no-one-gets-naked rule. A rule that seemed sensible when we made it but feels increasingly stupid every day I live with her. Walking away from last night’s kiss wasn’t my smartest move.
I toe my work boots off while I debate how far I can push that rule. Boots, yes. Socks, 100 percent. But what about my flannel or my T-shirt? Pants, I decide regretfully, have to stay on. Pants are a roommate requirement.
Speaking of which, where is my roomie?
She’s hard to overlook, thanks to the constant singing and chaos. The house feels different when she’s not in it—quieter, sure, but also emptier in a way that makes no sense given I lived here perfectly happily for years before she crashed into my life.
It’s possible she’s gone to bed. It isn’t even eight but she’s not feeling 100 percent today.
She’s held herself extra carefully and fine lines dig into the corners of her mouth when she thinks no one is looking.
She’s keeping herself together, but something hurts, and the fact that I can read her pain now should probably worry me more than it does.
A shower. That’s what I need. All the hot water in the world. Use the menthol shower steamers I stole in last year’s Dirty Santa gift exchange. Take a cup of tea in there and the crossword because all that roof time has turned me into an old man.
The bathroom door opens with a bang, bouncing off the baseboard I repainted last month.
“Strip!” Dixie shouts, loud enough to be heard in the parking lot.
I blink at her like an idiot. “I’m asleep on my feet,” I mutter, which isn’t entirely true. I’m definitely awake now.
There’s a whole lot to see. Her kimono is pinky, silky, and clings everywhere except her cleavage, where it parts like the Red Sea. I can tell she isn’t wearing a bra—or panties. Noted. Noted again. Definitely filed away in the part of my brain that’s going to make sleeping hard tonight.
Her legs are bare. She is, however, wearing a fuzzy pair of flip-flops because Dixie has never met a faux-fur animal that she didn’t want to wear.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to repeat myself? Got water in your ears?” Dixie frowns at me. Her hair is swirled on top of her head and anchored with a handful of clips that kind of remind me of Georgia Peach when she gets her wrath on.
I blink at her. Maybe I’m not dreaming. Maybe this is just what my life looks like now—coming home to a woman who yells at me to get naked while wearing next to nothing herself. My dream is awesome.
My Dixie dreams have never included four-legged mammals before, so when a towel suddenly soars toward my face, I know this is real.
It’s scorching hot. She must have run the dryer, which means… She planned this?
“You look like hell,” she says way too cheerfully.
The towel in my hand is definitely one of mine, but it smells like the fancy fabric softener she uses, not the generic stuff I buy. I like her version better.
She mimes rubbing herself with a towel, and I force myself to look away before my imagination gets the better of me.
“You been doing laundry?”
She shrugs. No big deal. “I’m taking care of you, Preacher Man. You shouldn’t climb around on roofs in a rainstorm. You might fall off.”
“You watched that?”
“I had 911 on speed dial the whole time. Now take your clothes off.” The briskness with which she says this is less sexy, erotic demand than practical concern, but it still makes me want to tease her just to see how she’ll react.
I reach for the first button on my shirt, moving deliberately slowly. “Right here?”
She rolls her eyes, but her gaze dips to my hands. You feel it, too, Dixie. “You want to track that through the house? You’re wet all the way through.”
That she manages to say this with a straight face while I’m standing here in soaked clothes, looking at her in that barely there kimono, is a testament to her commitment to pretending we’re just roommates. We both rock that particular lie.
“Yes, ma’am.” I yank my flannel off. It isn’t the sexiest striptease ever, but her eyes widen slightly, so maybe I’m doing better than I think.
“Dude!” She points a finger at me. “Warn a girl to turn around!”
“You’ve seen it already.” I drop the shirt on the floor because I’m committed to living dangerously and go to work on my T-shirt. It’s clammy and stuck tighter to my chest than plastic wrap on pie.
She flounces herself around to face the kitchen, but her gaze goes straight to the kitchen window, and I realize she can see my reflection. I should probably tell her. I definitely don’t.
Instead, I fist the bottom of my shirt and pull it over my head, hyperaware she’s watching.
Yank off my undershirt.
They land in a wet heap by my feet, and I’m deeply grateful for all those years of manual labor that’s kept me in shape. Not that I’m trying to impress her. Much.
When I start on my belt buckle, I definitely catch her peeking over her shoulder.
“What do you think you’re looking at?” I pop the button on my jeans.
“Absolutely nothing,” she says. As if I’ll believe that.
I shove my jeans down my legs. They hit the floor with a sodden thump. I may groan as I straighten up—partly from the cold, partly from the way she’s looking at me like I’m something worth looking at.
“You’re stiff.” She turns around to look at me properly. My boxer briefs are cold and clammy, but I’m about to have a different kind of stiff problem if she keeps looking at me like that. “Stiff makes a person clumsy and that’s an excellent way to die, Preacher Man.”
I wrap the towel around my waist. “Someone’s got to do it.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be you. You’re not a contractor, Jack.”
“Someone has to, and it’s my responsibility.”
She’s shaking her head as she grabs my soggy clothes, and I want to tell her that this is what I do. I fix things. I take care of people. It’s who I am, even when it’s probably stupid.
“Shower.” She points toward the bathroom. “Go. It’s pre-warmed. You’re welcome.”
She pushes me into motion and I go, mostly because arguing with her when she’s being nice to me is counterproductive. The bathroom is foggier than the Great Smoky Mountains and I can barely find the shower curtain but when I do the water is perfect—hot enough to strip the chill from my bones.
As my brain unfreezes and the steam starts to dissipate (the curse of a very small hot water tank), I realize that Dixie has been busy.
There are tea lights on the bathroom counter, next to a stack of fresh towels that smell like dryer sheets.
A pair of my sweatpants and a clean shirt set out. A beer.
I’m pretty sure that for the rest of my life, I’ll get hard when I smell raspberries, and that’s going to be a problem when she leaves and I’m stuck with the memories.
Don’t think about her leaving. Don’t think about her at all.
Except I can’t stop thinking about her, about the way she looked at me, about the fact that we kissed each other last night and now she’s out there doing God knows what—but I think it might be taking care of me. I can’t remember the last time someone did that.
By the time I come out, she’s dragged my reading chair in front of the fireplace.
Huck’s flopped on the rug, paws twitching like he’s chasing something in his sleep.
Georgia Peach is nowhere to be seen, which probably means she’s plotting the next battle in her anti-Dixie campaign.
Or maybe she’s given up and accepted that Dixie isn’t going anywhere.
Does that make Georgia Peach smarter than me?
“Dinner is served!” Dixie winks and points to the dishcloth draped over her arm like she’s working at some fancy restaurant instead of serving Cup Noodles in my living room. “I’m your fancy French waiter. Tip me on the way out.”
There’s a whole picnic set out on the rug—two bowls, two spoons, and two linen napkins that haven’t come from my kitchen because I don’t own linen napkins. Another tea light flickers in a Mason jar, and suddenly my living room looks like something from a Pinterest board.
She grins at me as she empties the plastic Cup Noodles containers into the bowls and then bows. “Bon appétit!”
She points at the chair and sits down cross-legged on a pillow I also don’t recognize.
It must have come from her van, along with the napkins and probably half the other things that have slowly migrated into my house since she moved in.
I should probably be bothered by how easily she’s made herself at home here.
Instead, I’m bothered by how much I like it.
“Eat up, monsieur.”
“Avec plaisir.” I’m flirting with her. It’s my new default.
She pulls a face. “The only other French I know is voulez-vous coucher avec moi? And crepes! Baguette?”
“You forgot escargot and croissant.” I settle into the chair and vow never to get back up again. I’m so tired, and this is the first time in months that tired feels good instead of overwhelming.
She points her spoon at me. “Brioche.”
“We’ll be polyglots if you keep this up.”
“We’re Americans. We’re perpetual monoglots.” She spoons noodles into her mouth. “So is the roof really bad?”
“It’s a disaster,” I admit. “And I only had, like, seventy percent of a roof to begin with.”
She grimaces. “Yikes.”
“Yeah. And the church council told me there’s no money in the reserve fund.
” I stir my noodles, avoiding her eyes because talking about my failures isn’t exactly romantic dinner conversation.
“Not that I’m surprised. If they had cash, they could’ve hired their own vicar and skipped involving the bishop altogether. ”
“You mean they wouldn’t have ended up with you?”
“Exactly.” The admission tastes bitter. “Which wouldn’t have been their worst outcome.”
“You don’t believe that.”
But I do, a little. I’ve been trying so hard to be what they need, to prove I deserve to be here, and all I have to show for it is a leaking roof and a congregation that’s probably questioning whether they made the right choice.
“You want to talk about it?” She hands me the rest of her noodles when I finish mine. “If not, consider the subject changed.”
“No, thank you. Although—” I glance at the setup she’s created. “Thank you for this.”
She shrugs, but there’s a flush creeping into her cheeks. “Whew. Hot flash.” She fans herself with a noodle wrapper. “I’m really bad at sympathy.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” I thought I knew what kind of person she was when I first met her, but she keeps surprising me with moments like this.
“I mean, I am one of the world’s leading experts on illness.”
That gets my attention fast. “Shit. Really?”
Her mouth quirks. It’s a test, Jack. “No. Not really. But I get sick a lot. Plus, I’m great at malingering.”
I’ve seen the pill bottles. The long sleeves, even when it’s warm. The way she winces when she thinks no one’s looking. The careful way she moves sometimes, like her body is betraying her.
“I have rheumatoid arthritis.” She spits the words out like they taste bad, like she’s daring me to flinch or run or start treating her like she’s made of glass.
“That sucks.”
It’s not eloquent, but it’s honest. And maybe that’s what she needs, because some of the tension leaves her shoulders.
“Yeah, well. I don’t need a fixer or special consideration. Just to malinger on occasion.”
“And to rock on,” I suggest.
She grins and the sun comes out from behind the clouds. “Yes! But it means I know what feels good when your body’s cold and stiff.”
I force myself not to think about the word body. Or stiff.
“Thanks for the noodles,” I say because it’s that or do something stupid like tell her I’m falling for her.
She launches into a story about a terrible dive bar where she and the other musicians lived on ramen and the bathroom had three sinks but no toilets, and I let her voice wash over me while I try to process what just happened. She told me something personal. She trusted me with it.
I tell her about the roof, about how hard it is, holding it together with duct tape and prayer. About how I hate that this place—this chapel where I spent a few summers as a kid and discovered I had a calling—is falling apart on my watch.
“I’m not a billionaire,” I mutter. “I can’t fix it the way it needs fixing.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Asking for help is the worst.”