Just Like Heaven (10 page)

She ran to him, or maybe he ran to her. One moment she was standing alone in the middle of her hallway and the next she was in his arms, cheek pressed against his broad chest, breathing in his smell, listening to the quick and steady beat of his heart.

How long was it since she had been held in a man’s arms? Months, years, maybe forever. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. Heaven existed. She could say that now as a natural fact.

His laughter rumbled beneath her ear. “Come on, Kate,” he said in the same rich baritone she remembered, “let me see your face.”

Laughing herself, she reluctantly leaned back in his arms and looked up at him.

“Oh my God!” she cried out. “You’re a priest!”

Six

She jumped away from him as if she had been poked with a cattle prod. Who knew a Grateful Dead T-shirt inspired less horror than a clerical collar?

If anyone ever wanted to know if the fates had a sense of humor, she finally had the answer.

“This is Father Mark Kerry,” Maeve said, hovering near them. “He showed up at the door about fifteen minutes ago.”

“I’m so embarrassed,” Kate said, trying frantically to forget the feel of his lean body pressed against hers. “It’s just that I was—I mean, I was so excited to see you again.” What was wrong with her? That was totally the wrong thing to say.

The tension between them was strong, almost irresistible. It took all of her willpower to keep from hurling herself into his arms again.

“The last time I saw you, you were on a stretcher attached to a twelve-lead EKG.” He assessed her openly and his smile widened. “You look great.”

“I feel great,” she said, “but it’s all because of you.”

“I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I’m glad I could help.”

“So were a lot of other people, but they didn’t save my life.”

Their eyes met and she felt herself lifting right off the ground and sailing up to the ceiling with sheer happiness. His eyes were beautiful, sad and curious, the blue of sapphires.

He took her hand and their fingers interlaced.

“I’ve been trying to find you for days,” he said. “I called every hospital in New Jersey looking for you.”

“I tried to find you too.”

She heard her mother talking in the background, Gwynn’s voice, the sharp tone of Paul’s words, but nothing was getting past the staggering shock of recognition she was experiencing. She finally understood what all the fuss was about and wouldn’t you know it? The guy was a priest.

“I finally went back to the Promenade and took your license plate number down. An ex-cop friend of mine ran it through DMV.”

“Maeve and Gwynn went to pick up my car and they saw a car parked behind mine and I knew that was you.”

Another minute or two, one missed traffic light or wrong turn, and they might never have found each other. The loss seemed so enormous, so overwhelming, it took her breath away.

“I’m glad,” she said. “I—what I mean is . . . what I’m trying to say is that I’m so grateful that you—”

It took her a full second before she realized that the strangled, gasping sound she heard was the sound of her own sobs. Her entire body shook with the force of them as they ripped their way through her chest, tore at her throat, then broke free. She covered her face, helpless before a riptide of emotions that had caught her completely off-guard. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. Not marriage. Not childbirth. Not even the heart attack when she was sure she was about to die.

The touch of his hand, the sound of his voice—that was all it took to send her free-falling into the world of romantic chaos, the one place she never thought she would be.

And the scariest thing of all was that she liked it.

 
She had been fine, emotional but fine, until she looked up and those wide hazel eyes of hers landed on the collar and the dam burst.

He was no stranger to people in emotional turmoil. Part of his job, an important part, was to be there in times of great pain and great joy. He was there to welcome new souls into the world and to help ease old ones into the next. He sat quietly next to hospital beds, prayed over problems that could shatter a man’s soul, said the words that helped turn a man and a woman into a family with all that meant. He knew when to talk and when to listen. He could take a step back from the storm and wait for the sky to clear.

But he was helpless before Kate French’s tears.

She was sobbing into her hands and nothing anybody did seemed able to stem the flow of tears. Her mother, clearly worried, tried to steer her toward a chair but Kate wouldn’t budge. Her daughter, a time-capsule version of Kate twenty years ago, fluttered around with a bottle of Gatorade and talk of electrolytes. And the man, whoever he was, looked as if he would have knocked Mark flat on his ass if he hadn’t been wearing a clerical collar.

Sometimes that collar was better than a Kevlar vest.

What he wanted to do was pull her back into his arms and hold her for a lifetime or two, feel her heart—her mended, powerfully beating heart—against his chest, bury his face in her hair, pile sensation upon sensation, memory upon memory, against a future without her.

Instead he did what he did best: tried to make sense from chaos.

“Maeve is right,” he said. “You should sit down.”

She looked up through her tears and nodded. “Okay.”

Her mother and daughter exchanged looks, and then Maeve gestured him back toward the living room. He took Kate’s hand to lead her toward the sofa and the shock of recognition, of completeness, hit him again and this time it almost brought him to his knees.

He had never felt the presence of God more powerfully than he did right now with her hand in his. He could scan back and re-create the chain of seemingly unrelated events that had brought them together five days ago in the parking lot of the Princeton Promenade. He had breathed life back into her body, felt her still heart start beating again. The inevitability of it all was as overwhelming as it was undeniable.

“Are you going to stand there all day?” asked the guy near the door.

Maybe they could stand there all day. He could think of worse fates. But the world didn’t work that way and somehow they found themselves sitting next to each other on a squashy yellow sofa near a huge wall of windows that overlooked a garden. There were other people in the room. He heard them talking. He saw them as if from a great distance when they entered his line of vision, but they never really registered. Kate was his only reality.

She told him about her hospital stay, making him laugh at things nobody had ever made funny before. She was bright and witty and she cast so much light he almost had to look away.

It took him fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee before he remembered why he was there.

 
He was out to his car and back in again before Kate could get her bearings. He handed her a shiny metal box of papers, and the missing pieces began to fall into place.

“They looked valuable to me,” he said, watching her closely as she sifted through the documents. “I wanted to deliver them in person.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You don’t have to. You’re home and you’re well,” he said. “That’s good enough.”

And the funny thing was she knew he meant it. There was nothing of greed in his tone, no veiled glimmer of mercenary lust. Then again, he was a man of the cloth, and men of the cloth were supposed to be above such things, weren’t they? Religious types operated on a higher plane.

Of course that didn’t explain the intense pull she felt toward him, the bone-deep attraction.
Inappropriate
didn’t begin to cover it. And you could add
unlikely
,
unexpected
, and
uncharacteristic
and that was just for starters.

They had warned her that this might happen, but she hadn’t believed a word of it until now.

“Well, that’s not good enough for me,” she said. “The least I can do is invite you to lunch next week.” She felt her cheeks redden with embarrassment. “I mean, this isn’t a date or anything . . . I went to Catholic school . . . I know what’s what . . .” She stopped, horrified by the run of nonsense spilling from her lips. “A priest
can
go out to lunch, can’t he?”

If you judged by the explosion of laughter, she was ready for the big rooms down in Atlantic City. Who knew she was a budding stand-up comic?

“I don’t get the joke,” she said.

“Mark is an Episcopal priest,” Maeve said. “He can have lunch
and
date if he wants to.”

“Great,” said Paul in his least friendly tone of voice. “Now that we’ve got that settled, where do you want your bags, Kate?”

Startled, she noticed her overnight bag dangling from his right hand and her matching tote dangling from his left. She had completely forgotten that her best friend was standing there. And to make matters worse, her mother and daughter were watching closely and taking notes.

“You can leave them in the foyer, Paul,” she said, feeling instantly contrite and more than a little guilty. “Thanks for bringing them in.”

“Upstairs is better,” Maeve said. “Show him where, Gwynnie, would you?”

Gwynn cheerfully led an unhappy-looking Paul upstairs while Maeve mumbled something about checking the stove and disappeared, leaving Kate and Father Mark alone together.

“I’m not usually that big an idiot,” she said. “I don’t know why I got so flustered.” She laughed nervously. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve never spoken to a priest before.”

“It’s the collar,” he said, laughing with her. “I should’ve worn the Dead shirt.”

“Everything else about that day is still kind of murky but that shirt was unforgettable.”

Their eyes locked again and a delicious shiver rippled through her.

“You saved my life,” she said as tears welled up again. “I wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t been there.”

“I’m glad I was.”

She grinned at him. “I’m gladder.”

He grinned back. “No contest there.”

The man was as close to perfect as they come. A tall, dark, handsome, kind, funny holy man.

Why couldn’t he be a doctor or lawyer or your average run-of-the-mill bartender? Somebody she could curl up and fantasize about without feeling like she needed to go to confession.

“I’d like to make a donation to your church,” she said, trying to elevate her thoughts to higher, more spiritual ground. “A small thank-you for returning these papers.”

“I appreciate the thought,” he said, “but I’m between assignments right now.”

A priest who was between assignments? There must be a story in that. She wondered if she would ever have the chance to hear it. “If you have a favorite charity . . .”

“You mentioned lunch.”

“You’d come for lunch?”

“If the invitation still holds, I would.”

“Of course it holds! I’d love to have you come for lunch. When do you work—I mean, I know Sundays are probably pretty busy, but do priests have regular days off?” She was babbling again. Why did his religious vocation make her so profoundly uncomfortable? “I can make lunch any day you want. All you have to do is tell me. In fact, you don’t even have to tell me right now. You can call me and let me know. Why don’t you—”

“Tuesday.”

“Tuesday,” she repeated. “Okay. Tuesday.”

“Tell me the time and I’ll be here.”

They settled on one o’clock, then exchanged cell numbers, e-mail addresses, and IM screen names just to be on the safe side.

Maeve glided into the room. “I made a nice Caesar salad with grilled chicken. We’d be delighted if you’d join us.”

“Maeve always makes way too much,” Gwynn called out from the kitchen. “We could feed an army.”

Paul didn’t offer any encouragement.

Mark hesitated and for a moment Kate thought he was going to say yes, but he didn’t. Maeve gave him a huge bear hug and blinked back more than a few tears of gratitude. Gwynn planted a kiss on his cheek and got all choked up when she tried to share what was in her heart, which of course made Kate start crying all over again.

Paul grunted something that was either “Nice to meet you” or “Drop dead.”

She walked him outside, feeling more like a giddy teenager than the serious middle-aged woman she used to be. They lingered at the foot of the front walk, not saying anything of consequence and definitely not saying good-bye.

“I should let you get back to work,” she said finally.

He inclined his head toward the house. “I should let you get back to your family.”

Maybe it was the smell of lilac or the buttery warm sunshine spilling over them. Maybe it was lack of depth perception or temporary insanity, but she leaned toward him just as he leaned toward her and a friendly kiss on the cheek became a quick brush of her lips against his.

They leaped back, startled and wide-eyed. She mumbled something and he mumbled something else in return. One of the things they mumbled must have been good-bye, because seconds later he was sprinting across the driveway to his car and she was beating a hasty retreat to the front door.

Her mother was waiting for her in the doorway, and from the look on her face it was clear Maeve had seen the whole embarrassing incident.

“Don’t say a word,” Kate warned her. “Not one single word.”

Maeve didn’t have to. Her smile said it all.

As far as Maeve was concerned, the red lace thong had worked its magic.

 
It was after eight when Mark finally got home. As a rule the first thing he did was start a pot of coffee, strip off his collar, and flip on the television, but today he headed straight for the computer.