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until I drop him off at your house.”

      “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’ll pick him up.”

      Marcus shook his head. “No way. Not at that time of night.”

      “But I’m out at that hour all the time.”

      “Not if I can help it.”

      She rolled her eyes. “I’m not the thirteen-year-old.”

      “I’m aware of that. Nevertheless, I’d feel better if you’d go straight home after work.”

      Nicole flattened her mouth. It was a very pretty mouth, too pretty to appear stern. He smiled, and she threw up her hands.

      “Oh, all right. But don’t think I’m going to let you get away with treating me like a child, Marcus Wheeler, because I’m not.”

      “You are, however, young and female and too pretty for your own good.” He snapped his mouth shut, wondering where on earth that had come from.

      She had beamed before. Now her smile could have warned ships at sea.

      He gulped and said, “I—I wouldn’t let my mother wander around on her own late at night. In fact, if I could have stopped that, she might still be alive.”

      Nicole’s smile softened. “It’s terrible to lose your mom, isn’t it?”

      He nodded, suddenly swamped with emotion. “She died in an auto accident.”

      “I’m sorry to hear that.”

      “No sorrier than I was to hear about your loss. I was only seven when she disappeared. We didn’t know she’d died for years.” Now why had he told her that?

      Long, slender fingers wrapped around his hand. Even through the leather of her gloves, he felt the heat of her hand.

      “That’s so sad,” she said, “At least I had my mom until I was grown.”

      He almost snorted at that. She was barely grown now.

      Barely, but grown.

      Abruptly he stepped back. As if sensing that she’d made him uncomfortable, she swiftly turned away, saying, “I’d better run. Thanks again.”

      “Don’t worry about it,” he called after her.

      She flashed him a smile and dropped behind the wheel of her car. That thing looked as if it was held together with baling wire and prayer. Another reason she ought not to be running around on her own late at night. He stood where he was until she managed to crank the engine to sputtering life and bully the transmission into reverse. Only as she drove away did he turn toward the office.

      He hoped that restaurant where she worked made their servers wear uniforms. Otherwise, customers were bound to lose their appetites. He laughed at the memory of all those stripes as he pushed through the heavy glass door into the outer office.

      Glancing at the clock on the wall behind his secretary’s desk, he made note of the time. Ten minutes after three. He had plenty of time, but it wouldn’t hurt to be in the principal’s office waiting for Beau when the bell rang at four o’clock. Even as he deposited the bag on Carlita’s desk and shrugged out of his overcoat, he told himself that he had known he would cross paths with the Archer family again.

      He tossed the three-quarter-length tan coat over a chair, explaining, “I’m going out again in a few minutes. I just want to grab a few video games from David’s office.”

      David Calloway was their part-time minister of youth. Marcus hoped to introduce him to Beau very soon.

      “You shouldn’t be here at all,” Carlita reminded him in her tart, Spanish-tinged English. “It is Friday.”

      The single mom of four children and several years his senior, Carlita was prone to mother him a bit. He didn’t mind. Having someone care about you was not an onerous burden.

      He knew that Carlita and his sisters thought he worked too much, but he liked his work. Besides, some weeks emergency calls and visitation kept him out of the office, so Friday might be the only day he had to catch up on things, like picking up supplies he’d failed to have delivered with the regular monthly order.

      Even as he rifled through the stack of video game discs on a shelf in David’s tiny office, Marcus mused that he had no reason not to work. What use was a day off if it was spent alone? It was good to have the prospect of company, any prospect of company. Even if Beau Archer proved less engaging than his sister, Marcus would be grateful for the companionship.

      It had been almost a year since Connie and Russell had moved out, but he still missed them. Not that he would have changed anything. They were happy as could be with Kendal and Larissa. It was just that he’d never been much good at living alone. The parsonage was small, but it could still feel lonely for one person.

      In the early years after their mother had disappeared, he’d missed his sisters terribly, but at least he hadn’t been alone. His foster parents had looked after a houseful of boys. Then when he’d first gone off to college he’d lived in a dorm, and after that he’d shared apartments or houses with various buddies.

      He’d spent a few months on his own after the church had called him, but that had been a very busy time. Then Connie had gotten out of prison and she and Russell had come to live with him.

      Those had been good months, especially after God had brought Vince into Jolie’s life and spurred her to forgive him and Connie for removing Russell from her custody. Now the family was not only together again, it was expanding.

      His sisters’ happy marriages had seen to that. If it felt as though something was missing from his own life, well, he expected God to put that right one of these days, too. He was trying not to be impatient about it.

      Unbidden, an image of Nicole Archer standing in his sister’s foyer came to him, and he resolutely pushed it away. Nicole was an opportunity to minister, not a prospective spouse. The very idea was ludicrous for a number of reasons. Besides, she needed his help, not his desperate, misplaced attentions. She probably had a boyfriend, anyway.

      The thought made him wince, and he resolved to put it firmly out of mind, unwilling to picture Nicole flirting and smiling with some boy and managing to do so just the same. He was forced to admit that he couldn’t see her with a boy. Some guy like David was much more her speed. Thankfully, er, fortunately, the young minister of youth was engaged, a matter of no little irony to Marcus’s mind.

      Not even out of seminary yet and already engaged to be married. It was enough to make a mature, older man just a tad envious.

      Marcus strolled past Carlita’s desk, tossed on his coat, pocketed the game discs and moved toward the door again, saying, “I’m gone now. Have a good weekend.”

      “You, too, Pastor,” she called as he pushed through the door.

      The winter air was bracing, and the weather forecast predicted sleet in the wee hours of the coming morning. Marcus stood for a moment and inhaled deeply, clearing his head of unwanted thoughts. He hoped the prognosticators were correct about the timing of the coming sleet storm.

      February always brought at least one ice storm to north central Texas, and it invariably shut down the entire Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area for a day or more. For the sake of road safety, it was better that it happen on a weekend than a workday, even if it meant that church attendance would be down this Sunday.

      Marcus let himself into his sedan and started up the engine, warm inside his coat. Lots of the kids around here routinely walked to and from school, regardless of the weather; Marcus was glad that Beau wouldn’t be one of them, at least for today.

      He was curious about Nicole’s brother. Actually, he was curious about everything having to do with Nicole Archer. After only one meeting, he’d known that she was a very unusual young lady. Something about her had stuck with him since their initial meeting two days ago. In fact, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. That,

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