Hot Under His Collar - Andie J. Christopher Page 0,37

filled them out? Was the architecture of the way she moved that much more ingrained in his spirit?

He had to turn away. Just his luck, he looked right at his best friend smirking at him.

“Wow,” Jack said.

“Shut up.” Patrick meant it as a warning. He could not, would not, go there with Jack. Even though they’d been friends since they’d both been wearing diapers, he had an image to uphold. Even if the image didn’t seem to have the vocation attached to it that it used to, he would not let it slip. At least not more than it already had.

He fixed what he hoped was a neutral look on his face. Just a hint of a smile that hopefully would bely the turmoil inside. “Sasha.”

Her face lit from within, and he started saying prayers in Latin in his brain—the intellectual equivalent of a cold shower in his world. She introduced all the pastry chefs. He smiled and shook their hands, thanking them. He wouldn’t remember any of their names. Sasha was too close.

His gratitude when she led the chefs to where their goods were displayed knew no bounds. He didn’t want her away from him for even one second, but she had to get away from him. He was never going to last through the afternoon with her this close. He felt as though he’d either combust or lose control or do something unforgivable like take her hand and lead her around the corner, press her against a wall, and tug that pretty yellow dress up around her waist.

“Dude.” One word from Jack and he felt a flush creeping up his neck. He’d been busted. “Are you okay?”

Patrick grabbed the back of his neck, and his palm came away damp with sweat. “I’m fine. I just really want the bake sale to work, you know?”

What he wasn’t saying was that he really hoped that Sasha and Hannah’s suggestion that they start with a bake sale was actually a promise. He didn’t like the idea of only seeing Sasha from across a crowded room when they were hanging out with their friends.

“Sure.” Jack gave him a jerk of his chin, telling him that his friend was going to leave his obvious thing with Sasha alone for now, but would revisit the increasingly problematic problem later.

They’d developed a shorthand through the years of their friendship, and the whole thing sort of operated like the suspension of a car. They’d never actually gotten into a fight because whenever either one of them tiptoed to a boundary, the other compensated for it. It had always worked perfectly, but Patrick hadn’t felt this kind of turmoil in a decade. And, even then, he hadn’t allowed his friend to see how he was feeling. So used to being the solid center of their crew of friends, he was not about to throw anyone else off-balance with his agitation. That wasn’t part of the bargain of their friendship.

As he’d accustomed himself to doing over the past few years, he pivoted in his mind and put his attention on the parishioners who’d come to support the bake sale as well as the new faces he assumed came as a result of Sasha’s publicity campaign.

He managed a middling amount of success; his gaze only caught with hers three times. For the rest of the two-hour ordeal, he was able to focus and place his attention on the people he spoke with, sharing the success stories about the pre-K program with the surprisingly eclectic crowd in hopes that the Catholics would feel guilty enough to be generous, and the non-Catholics would catch some of that emotion in the air and open their wallets as well.

He hadn’t prepared himself for when it was all over and he was alone with Sasha again. He could never prepare himself for that.

Even though she’d been running around for hours, he still caught a whiff of her fresh scent. Not a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her dress. She smiled at him, and it didn’t have the same strain that her smile of greeting had had earlier in the day.

It was like having sunlight hit him for the first time in the spring, but just as quickly it was gone. She went back to counting what looked like a large pile of cash.

He wanted to flee, but he couldn’t just leave her here. Without anyone else there, he had no reasonable excuse to avoid Sasha. Sister Cortona had gone out with