Hot Under His Collar - Andie J. Christopher Page 0,17
was impossible not to let her mind go wild with the possibilities that would open up if he was not a priest right now. If he was just a regular guy, the best friend of her best friend’s husband, they might have already done it.
No, she knew they would have already done it. She would have made it happen. Just turned on the Finerghty-woman magic and made him hers.
Not that he would have had any idea of what was happening while it was happening. The Finerghty magic was much more subtle than all that. She didn’t think her father knew that her mother had mapped out their courtship with a level of precision and strategy that would impress a four-star general. And her sister’s husband had no idea that their meet-cute was nowhere near the coincidence he’d thought it was. Her mother and sister had scoped out all the first-year men in the Notre Dame freshman faces site and picked one out. Marlena had gotten a work-study job with her now-husband, Kevin, batted her naturally long eyelashes, and the rest was history.
Not-a-priest Patrick would have been almost as much of a gift. Granted, he hadn’t gone to Notre Dame. But he was Irish Catholic, and he would have given Moira’s grandchildren the prettiest green eyes. He would have been seen as acceptable as long as he’d gone to the right law school or medical school.
She must have had a dreamy look in her eye, because Patrick tilted his head. Thankfully, some of the anger leached out of his affect. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Needing a moment to collect her thoughts from the gutter, she cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m fine.”
Patrick nodded, and the air re-thickened between them. He stepped back, and she felt his absence. She was tempted to throw herself in front of Mrs. O’Toole’s Subaru so that he would save her again. Kind of.
The sensible part of her brain flipped back on now that she was no longer surrounded by the scent of Irish Spring and drowning in Patrick’s clover-colored eyes. “I’ll send you the final plans for the bake sale and get you the flyers to hand out at all the services this weekend. Hannah will send out a newsletter to our usual press contacts between bouts of extreme nausea to get some local, feel-good coverage. And we’ll talk to Jemma at the baptism this weekend.”
“Thank you.” He grabbed the back of his neck, threatening her equilibrium again with the sheer amount of masculinity he was throwing off. “This is really too much.”
“The work you’re doing with those kids is really important.” She kept herself from reaching out to touch his shoulder reassuringly. She wanted to give him comfort, and it was exceedingly difficult to remember that it wasn’t her place to do that. He wasn’t hers, and he never would be. “Their whole lives will be better because they had a nurturing place to go to learn kindergarten things before kindergarten.”
Sasha had been given every advantage, and her family had always emphasized the importance of giving back. For them, it was all about image. For her, from the moment that she’d started going to the local South Bend preschool with Hannah to read to kids, it was about making a difference.
Maybe part of her wanted Patrick to think she was a good person. Reading to kids and planning this bake sale so that they had a place to go and learn also made her feel like a good person. And most days, especially days when she didn’t feel like she was living the life that her family expected her to live, she really needed that. “It’s not too much because St. Bart’s needs it. The kids need it.”
Patrick gave her a crooked smile, and all the parts at the middle of her body melted a little. She could pretend it was the adrenaline draining out, but that would be a lie. And she didn’t even want to lie to herself in the presence of a man of the cloth.
“You really do deserve someone as special as you are.”
God, he was trying to break her heart.
CHAPTER FIVE
SASHA MET HER SISTER Madison for lunch about once a month. She was the only member of her immediate family who didn’t cause a knot to take up residence in her belly. Still, she had to keep some boundaries because Madison hadn’t developed enough self-awareness to realize that their parents had really fucked all of them up.