Teresa Hill - A Little Bit Engaged

“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.”