Magdalene (28 page)

I vaguely wondered how they handled
differing sexual needs if they didn’t have sex before marriage. But
of course, needs change over time and with age, and people can
deceive with body parts other than their vocal cords—and oh, how
well do I know that.

I started when a little girl appeared at my
side, apparently having decided to make me her pet project. Pale,
blonde, blue-eyed, her mass of curls were caught up in and fastened
by an elaborate, elegant bow that Martha Stewart’s staff couldn’t
have matched. I pegged her around five-ish and she had abandoned
her mother (where was the father?) who struggled with an infant, an
intractable seven-year-old (or thereabouts) boy, and a male toddler
type.

“Hi,” she said.

I really don’t like children, particularly
small ones. “Hi.”

“What’s your name?”

“Cassie. What’s yours?”

“Brittany. You smell pretty.”

I had to chuckle at that. “Thank you.”

She plunked herself in the seat beside me
and leaned against me as if I had invited her to do so. I put my
arm around her because I could tell it would go numb if she
continued to lean against that particular pressure point. She
picked at my sleeve. “What’s that?”

“A cufflink.” I collect cufflinks; it’s my
favorite kind of jewelry and I make sure to have my clothes
tailored to showcase them.

“What’s it do?”

I popped it out and handed it to her, then
demonstrated how my cuff fell open. “It’s kind of like a removable
button. See, you have buttons here, but I don’t. I just flip this
thing,” and I did. “See how your buttons stay on your clothes?”

“So you don’t have two of them, like
me?”

“Nope. One does the trick just fine, but
see, my blouse front works the same way.” She was fascinated, but I
wasn’t about to pop one of those out. “These are called shirt
studs.”

She played with the cufflink, turning it
over and over, holding it up to the light and seeing the glints off
the facets. “This is really pretty.”

“You can have it if you want.”

She looked up at me and grinned.
“Really?”

“Really. But give it to your mother to keep
it safe for you.” I made a mental note to talk to her mother and
make sure she knew it wasn’t a toy. I popped the other out and gave
that to her, too, then rolled my sleeves up to my elbows. I’d been
a little too overdressed, anyway, what with most of the mothers all
in denim jumpers and the like; and most of the older women in
serviceable, though attractive, dresses.

The girl stayed curled up against me for the
rest of the service. If her mother noticed, I didn’t know about it,
but then, the poor woman was so harried I couldn’t hold it against
her. This was church; the mother had a rightful expectation of a
community that would take care of her child if she couldn’t.

The village.

And the village was a mix of rich and
poor—mostly poor—with not much in between. That surprised me, but
it shouldn’t have. Lehigh Valley was perpetually depressed. Since
the Mormon church was huge, there would most likely be a reflective
percentage of poor mixed in a congregation like this.

It was also as overwhelmingly white as
Lehigh Valley. I counted two black families. The one with a father
was just as rowdy as the rest of the families with many young
children.

The one without a father sat in the fourth
row, middle section, from right to left arranged according to
height. The mother wore a sapphire silk dress, the two small girls
wore dresses that matched hers exactly, and the three boys of
widely varying ages wore identical black suits. Then I glanced back
at the nattily dressed black man up on the dais to Mitch’s right
(one of Mitch’s counselors?). He had on a sapphire silk tie.

Sacrament meeting finally ended. I dislodged
Brittany, stood, and went to her mother while that entire
congregation surged toward the doors. “Here,” I said. “Let me have
the kid.” I picked up that slimy disgusting mess of a crying infant
and threw it (him? her?) over my shoulder to pat its back, unsure
if my jacket would withstand the mess. I looked at the girl and
pointed to an empty seat. “Brittany. Sit. Stay sat. Don’t talk.”
She obeyed, wide-eyed.

Why had my daughters never done that?

“Oh, thank you,” breathed the mother as she
pinned the oldest boy to his chair with one strategically arranged
leg and wiped the mouth of the toddler. “My husband is on
assignment in another ward.” It took a minute to register, but then
I remembered the spreading around of labor that Mitch and Ashworth
had told me about. Seemed counterproductive to me to take the
husband and leave the wife to tend the children he’d made on her,
but then I wasn’t here to rearrange this organization’s flowchart.
I was pretty sure that Sebastian would have done it by now had he
had his ’druthers.

“No problem.” She moved the leg with which
she’d pinned the boy and allowed him to dash off somewhere (he
seemed to know where he was supposed to go) and then she regained
some semblance of control.

“Can I talk now, Sister Cassie?”

“May I,” I corrected automatically as I gave
Brittany a stern look. “Yes. You may.”

Brittany turned to her mother, holding out
the cufflinks. “Look what Sister Cassie gave me.”

The mother’s eyes widened and she looked up
at me. “She can’t have those.”

I waved it off. “Got a ton of ’em. Don’t
need ’em.”

“I used to work in a jewelry store. I know
what those are worth.”

I shrugged and shoved her now-calm baby back
at her. “Put it in a safe deposit box,” I said abruptly and turned
to walk off—

—straight into Mitch’s chest.

His big hands wrapped around my arms to
steady me. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” I
stiffened, but he pulled me into a bear hug. “I can’t spend time
with you today,” he breathed in my ear and my response was
immediate. Effortless. “If you’d told me you’d like to come, I’d
have made arrangements.”

“I got the rundown from Ashworth,” I
murmured. “I think I’ll be okay.”

“Co-conspirators, eh? Well, I’m glad you’re
here, but I have to go. Sunday school’s next. Do you want to go to
the one the old-timers go to or the one the newbies go to?”

Morgan had told me about this, too, so I was
prepared. “Newbies.”

“Remind me to thank him.” He offered his arm
and escorted me out the door. I felt the wool-silk blend under my
hand and I edged a little closer to him, breathing in his elegant
cologne and wanting so much to press my mouth to the soft spot just
under his ear, in the hollow behind his strong jaw... “How do you
want to play this, Cassandra?”

His voice was rich and full of things I
didn’t understand—a first for me. “I don’t know enough about your
culture to know. You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“I’m asking you if you want to be here as my
woman or my business associate.”

He hadn’t just said that, had he? “Your
woman
?” I pulled away and cocked an eyebrow at him, feeling
as if I had betrayed a country full of feminists for not protesting
more strongly.

“Would you prefer ‘girlfriend’ or ‘lady
friend’? ’Cause as far as I know, there’s no other barely
acceptable term. I’m way too old for girlfriends and way too young
for lady friends.”

Girlfriend.
God, that was pathetic;
next, he’d feel obligated to say something about “going steady.”
Lady friend.
Indeed, that was worse. Florida retirement
community, here we come. I sighed. “What do you want? What’s most
expedient for you?”

He laughed, his cheeks immediately carved in
laugh lines, his smile quick and comforting. “What I want and
what’s expedient are mutually exclusive.” He leaned into me and his
mouth brushed my ear. “Figure out what you want to do and let me
know.”

Then he was gone. I turned to call him back,
but got hung up watching that talented ass of his, the hips that
could flash through the most complicated turns. Was it possible I
was the only woman here who knew what a fabulous dancer he was? I
blinked when I saw his confident stride halt mid-step when
Brittany’s mother caught him with a desperate, “Bishop Hollander!”
He looked down at her, his back now a tiny bit hunched in such a
way as to make him seem humble and caring, unthreatening.

This was so different from the way he’d been
with Father Farraday, his eye glinting with the promise of
challenge, and his body deceptively relaxed, ready to strike at the
man’s next misstep.

The way he could tear up a dance floor all
night long, his eyes sparkling, his laugh easy, quick, and
rich.

The way he could seduce me with a whisper,
create in me an intensity of desire I’d never known before, without
a touch other than a kiss on my hand.

I couldn’t decide which incarnation of the
man fascinated me most.

She hadn’t seen me all the way down the hall
from the foyer, but I could see them both in profile. I could hear
nothing of what she said, but then I caught my breath when she
opened her hand and he looked down. I could feel her distress from
here and it occurred to me that perhaps I had done the wrong thing.
It had seemed so harmless at the time, to give a child a shiny
trinket, but...I had hurt the child’s mother. I saw that now, and I
knew no way of taking that back without making things worse.

There, the classroom. I started to go
through the door when, in my periphery, I saw Mitch lean toward her
to speak to her while he closed her hand back on the diamonds. He
gave her a quick hug and directed her away from me to send her on
her way down an opposite hall. He watched her until she turned the
corner, then looked at me with an unsmiling expression I couldn’t
decipher. I couldn’t help but bite my lip and turn away then,
unwilling or unable to face whatever censure I had earned.

Thus, the first thing out of my mouth when
someone introduced herself and asked the inevitable question was,
“Cassie St. James. I do business with your bishop and I was in town
with nothing to do this morning, so...”

Naturally, these people would take it on its
face, trusting souls that they were, and the woman, whose name I
didn’t bother to remember because I wouldn’t be back, shepherded me
to Sunday school (“Gospel Essentials,” Ashworth had said).

“I don’t usually go to this class,” she
confided, “but sometimes it’s good to get back to basics. Besides,
Brother Sitkaris is subbing today. I just adore him.”

I couldn’t have chosen better Sunday-morning
entertainment.

We sat toward the back. A man arose to
apologize for the regular teacher’s absence, to announce Greg
Sitkaris as the substitute teacher, and to ask a woman to give the
opening prayer, which she did.

I knew the minute Sitkaris spotted me, and
his eyebrow rose.

He wanted me.

Whether for me or because he saw me as
belonging to Mitch, I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. He was
perfectly confident that he could have me.

“Well, Ms. St. James,” he drawled. “So nice
to see you again. What brings you to our humble services this
morning?”

“Oh,” said one woman, twisting in her seat
to look back at me. “You
are
Cassie St. James. The one
separating the old Jep Industries out from the Steelworks? I
thought I recognized you.”

I never looked away from Sitkaris.
“Yes.”

“I was chosen to be part of your project
team. We’re very excited.”

But Sitkaris did look away from me to bestow
a lovely smile on the woman. It wasn’t a concession; it was a
gambit to bolster his charming reputation. “It is an exciting time
for the Steelworks, isn’t it? The bishop doesn’t seem to make a
wrong move.”

I heard it, but I didn’t think anyone else
had, that undernote of bitterness, the anger and hatred.

He looked back at me. “Does he?”

“Not one,” I murmured. “He’s always
very...
appropriate
.”

“How...fortunate,” he purred.

The tension between us was thick, half war,
half sex. One pointed glance at his crotch, and he smirked before
leisurely buttoning his suit coat. I wasn’t sure how much anyone
else understood—clearly it had gone over my shepherdess’s head—but
a couple of others squirmed in their seats.

As a teacher, he was exemplary. He taught
the lesson on the fall of Adam and Eve, which was rife with
innuendo directed entirely at me. As far I could tell, no one
caught it; my companion certainly didn’t.

But I couldn’t blame it on naïveté. It was
out of context, Sitkaris had cloaked himself in a flawless
representation of Puritan morality, and his broad charm was
undeniable. I would have bet an entire year’s salary that if anyone
did understand the subtext, they were sitting there castigating
themselves for their dirty minds.

I knew I wouldn’t spend the ten-minute
interval between Sunday school and “Relief Society,” the women’s
class, unmolested, especially once my shepherdess excused
herself.

Once the room had cleared, except for a few
female stragglers who prepared the room for the next class,
Sitkaris dropped into the seat beside me and leaned into me, his
arm along the back of my seat, his hand wrapped around my
shoulder.

“Can I pull you out of retirement?” he
murmured.

Ah, he knew.

“I give it away now,” I murmured in
return.

“But not to Mitch.” I wouldn’t dignify that
with a response. “You don’t have to tell me. I already know because
I know him. He would never fuck you without marrying you. If he
even remembers how to do it. If he ever knew how to do it in the
first place. What I don’t understand is what you see in him.”
Everything.
“Or else this really is about the Steelworks and
I’m completely misreading the situation, in which case, I’ll take
you back to your hotel room after church, douse you in champagne,
and lick it off.”