Marie Ferrarella - The 39-Year-Old Virgin

Until now.

Anything she might have imagined as a young girl didn’t even begin to scratch the surface. She felt disoriented and yet there was this wild rush inside her. And electricity. A great deal of electricity, crackling and humming between them. It took everything Claire had not to just fall into the kiss and remain there.

But she couldn’t. It wasn’t right. This wasn’t what she’d intended to happen.

Her breath felt trapped in her throat. And she was dizzy. She, who had never been lost for words, now felt as if she’d suddenly been struck dumb.

Dear Reader,

For those Catholic children whose parents couldn’t afford a parochial education, there was “religious instructions” or, as some of us called it, “catechism.” We studied our book, memorizing answers to questions just in case, when we finally made it up to the Pearly Gates, St. Peter decided to give us a quiz. We all went on Saturdays and Wednesdays. It was Wednesdays that made us a source of envy for the other students. They had to remain seated while we—they thought—ran off to freedom when the bell rang dismissing “all students attending religious instructions.” The truth was, we remained captives of these sharp-witted, often sharp-tongued ladies whose faces and hands were the only visible evidence that they were human rather than spirits sent by God to tidy up our immortal souls.

I don’t remember the questions or answers—hopefully St. Peter will be magnanimous—but I remember those ladies and how I wondered if they were happy. I actually had a Sister Michael. This is not her story, but it is the way I would have imagined it.

Thank you for reading and, as ever, I wish you love.

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA ®Award-winning author has written more than one hundred and seventy-five novels for Silhouette Books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her Web site at www.marieferrarella.com.

To

all the dedicated Dominican Sisters

at

St. Joseph’s in Queens, NY,

who passed through

my life

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

So this nun walks into a popular hot spot…

Ex-nun, Claire corrected herself silently. Dear God, what was she doing here, anyway?

The loud din of voices wedged itself into the throbbing music, forming one large wall of noise that seemed to swirl all around her. Thinking was becoming increasingly more difficult, never mind hearing and talking.

Claire supposed she was daring herself to forge ahead into the life she’d never previously sampled, the life she’d left behind.

Heaven knew that, although popular, she certainly hadn’t had more than her share of dates. Less would have been a better word to describe the condition of her social life at the time. Her popularity had a universal appeal. She’d been the one people always talked to, the one they wanted to hang out with. She was a “friend” with a capital F to all, no matter what gender.

The bottom line was that she’d never had a boyfriend, no steady male in her life to turn to, to nurture secret dreams about. There’d been no one to make her pulse race, her adrenaline flow. She’d never even had a crush, much less been in love.

Was it so wrong to want to discover what she’d missed?

Her fingertips tingled. She was nervous. Just as nervous as she’d been this afternoon when her cousin Nancy, Nancy of the comfortable life, loving husband and four children, had insisted on taking her shopping for not just something suitable to wear tonight, but for undergarments, as well.

“What’s wrong with what I have?” she’d asked.

“Nothing, if you want him immediately guessing that you were a nun.”

She’d discarded the see-through panties that Nancy held up, trying hard not to blush. “There’s not going to be a ‘him,’” she insisted.

“Uh-huh.” Picking up the panties again, along with two more just like them, Nancy grinned. “On me,” she announced, heading toward the register.

Claire wasn’t wearing them tonight. No way was she about to sail into a shallow relationship just to make up for lost time. She had to get used to the idea of going out with a man first. And that was going to take time. A lot of time. She’d been a nun for twenty-two years. She’d only been a “civilian” for a couple of weeks. She hadn’t even told her mother that she’d left the order permanently when she’d first arrived home. Margaret Santaniello had been under the impression that her only child had gotten a leave of absence in order to care for her during an aggressive bout of leukemia. Her mother, who proudly proclaimed to all who listened that her daughter, Sister Michael, was “married to Jesus,” had been horrified when she’d discovered, purely by accident, that Claire, to put it in her mother’s words, had “divorced God” because of her.

Her mother had no way of knowing that this turn of events had been a long time in coming. That she hadn’t lost her faith, but she had lost her passion. And perhaps lost pieces of herself, as well. Pieces she needed to find again. Pieces that weren’t going to turn up here, she thought, looking around at Nancy and the other childhood friends who had dragged her to this place, a restaurant called Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, where “hookups” were the not-so-secret hoped-for outcome of any given evening.

When she’d first thought about leaving the order, when she’d first felt that surge of restlessness, of no longer feeling fulfilled or being on the right track, she’d dreamed of having a family of her own, of children. However, that dream didn’t extend to the segment before that ultimate goal was reached. She hadn’t thought about dating, or the dreaded step before that—looking for a date.

The idea of looking, of actually “dating” terrified her more than going off into the heart of Africa, armed with a truckload of medicine, a crucifix and an untested translator. That she’d undertaken almost fearlessly, believing she had God and right on her side because her intentions were selfless and noble.

God was no longer her copilot. She was flying solo here. And, if examined, her intentions could be deemed as self-centered or self-serving, both foreign feelings to her. The closest she’d come was the notion of remaining alive to see the next sunrise when she and the accompanying nurses had found themselves in enemy territory, caught in cross fire.

She wondered if sitting at a table in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning could be deemed as being stranded in enemy territory.