Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

"Yet you never sail with me."

"You're a venture capitalist. Go venture," Clare said. "Talk up the auction. Run up the bids. Loosen some purse strings."

"Sadly, the only strings I'll be loosening tonight." He took Karen's hand and squeezed it before pointing a finger at Clare. "Don't forget, I have the first dance, Vicar."

They watched him cross the floor, working the crowd.

"He's awfully nice," Karen said.

"Yes, he is," Clare said. They had met at a party three summers ago and had managed a weekend together every couple of months since then.

"He seems pretty fond of you."

"Yes, he is." He'd been pushing to move their relationship up a notch since the past fall. Nothing obnoxious, nothing that backed her into a corner. Reasonable, considering the dinners in Saratoga, the phone calls, the trips she had made to New York.

"It's so pleasant being around someone happy and uncomplicated, isn't it?"

Clare's mouth quirked. "You mean like Geoff?"

Karen sighed. "I know. I could never fall for the easy guys either." She looked at Clare. "It's always the difficult ones that get under your skin, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." The two women looked at each other in perfect understanding.

Clare didn't know if it was Hugh's influence or not, but they topped out the silent auction almost 20 percent above projections, according to financial officer Terry McKellan's calculations. The live auction following went faster than Clare had expected, much faster, and an hour after it had started, St. Alban's was close to four thousand dollars richer and Terry and his volunteers were shooing her out of the sanctuary. "Go," Terry said. "Dance."

"I should help with the checks," Clare said, almost convincingly.

The finance officer grinned, his luxurious mustache spreading like two glossy brown wings. "Think of it as an act of mercy, then. Logging in these checks is going to be the highlight of my week. Dancing? Not so much."

She decided not to push her luck by arguing further. She slipped into her office, locked the door, and shucked off her clericals in favor of a poppy-red dress whose skinny-strapped top was balanced by yards and yards of skirt that made her look like Ginger Rogers whenever she twirled.

There was already a modest crowd across the street, diners who had skipped the auctions and dancers drawn by the free music. The sky over the mountains glowed with sunset's red and orange and pink, but the fairy lights twining the gazebo and hanging over the park were lit, twinkling like a thousand lightning bugs against the green leaves and the violet shadows. Clare stopped on the church steps, listening to the laughter and the chatter and the squeals and squonks of Curtis Maurand and his Little Big Band tuning up.

Impossible, for a moment, to believe anything bad could ever happen here.

Then a flash of tan beneath one of the cast-iron street lamps caught her eye. Their police presence. Officer Flynn, pressed and shined and looking ready to help little old ladies across the street. And the chief himself, solid, steady, every line of his body a reassurance that they were safe. Protected. Because bad things could happen here. She smiled a little. But not if Russ Van Alstyne had anything to say about it.

He turned. Saw her watching him. Her thread of wistful amusement tightened into a prickly awareness. She hadn't seen him since she'd kicked her way out of his office more than three weeks ago, swallowing bile and several bad words. For which, yes, she needed to apologize. She moved down the steps and across the walkway, conscious in every step of her skirt sliding around her legs, the warm, humid air stroking her bare shoulders, the smell of St. Alban's roses, and the heat from the street's asphalt beneath her flat-soled shoes.

He walked away from the streetlamp to meet her. A couple sat on the bench facing the church, the woman rifling through her purse. The Campbells, crossing from the parking lot, passed her. "Great auction!" Sabrina said. Clare waved an acknowledgment.

"Reverend Fergusson," Russ said.

"Chief Van Alstyne." She wrapped her arms around herself and inhaled.

Before she could launch into her apology, he settled into parade-rest posture and cleared his throat. "I shouldn't have gone off on you like that, when you told me about the men at Mike and Janet's. I realize… she put you in an impossible situation. It wasn't your fault."

She paused, knocked off-kilter by his preemptive apology. Although, she noticed, he never used the words I'm sorry . She decided to supply them. "I'm sorry, too. I should never have agreed to go along with a lie in the first place. And I'm sorry I lost my temper. It was very…"-undignified? unprofessional?-"… childish of me."

They stood there, face-to-face, not quite looking at each other. At the center of the park, the band swung into "String of Pearls."

"Reverend Fergusson!" The voice was lilting and Swedish. Clare turned to see Lena Erlander and her husband, Jim Cameron, approaching. Clare pasted on a bright smile. Lena 's husband was the mayor and had signed off on the use of the park, the street closing, and the police protection. Over, she had heard, the objections of some of the aldermen. "How good to see you again," Lena said, shaking Clare's hand. "And how wonderfully clever of you to put on this dance."

Jim Cameron grinned at Russ and Clare and beamed at his wife. His expression said, Isn't she the perfect politician's partner? They'd been married two or three years, and the honeymoon was evidently still on. Maybe it was true, what they said about Swedes.

"Thank Elizabeth de Groot and Karen Burns, not me," Clare said. "They put the whole thing together."

"Perfect timing, either way," the mayor said. "Proof positive there's nothing to fear in Millers Kill, no matter what trash the reporters like to throw up."

"I saw your handsome friend from New York over by the refreshments table," Lena said. "He was looking for you." She smiled at Clare as if the two of them shared a secret. "I think you were smart to have the old-fashioned band. Dancing close, it gives a man romantic ideas, right, alsking ?" She wrapped her arm around her husband's.

Mayor Cameron's smile glazed over. He looked from Russ, to Clare, then back at Russ. "I think it's smart to attract the right sort of people. Older couples who want to spend money and then go home at a reasonable hour. Not like the god-awful crowds we get at the Riverside Park on the Fourth of July, eh, Russ?"

Russ looked over the mayor's head at the well-heeled dancers swinging to Glenn Miller. "I don't think we'll have any broken beer bottles or fistfights with this group, no."

Lena tugged on her husband's arm. "Come on, I want to dance. Oh, and tell Chief Van Alstyne he can't just stand like a stuffed bear. There are never enough men to go around. He must dance once or twice." She smiled up at Russ. "You must dance with some of the single ladies." She winked at Clare. "Since I don't think you'll be loaning out your date for the cause."

Mayor Cameron dragged her away in what was either a passion to dance or a fervor of embarrassment.

"String of Pearls" ended. The crowd clapped. "So," Russ said. "Hugh's here."

"Thank you very much!" Curtis Maurand said. "This next one's for all you guys and gals who were in the armed services. It's called 'American Patrol.' " The band blew out a full-fledged jitterbug.

"He's staying at the Stuyvesant Inn," she said, then mentally kicked herself. She didn't have to explain anything to Russ.

He made a rumbling noise in his chest. It sounded to her like disapproval.

Pricked, she said, "Of course, if it gets too late, I could always put him up at the rectory. I'm sure I have a spare toothbrush somewhere."

Russ slanted a look at her. "Why not? He could room with Amado."