LITMIR.BIZ

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he added. Was it maybe? Or was it really and truly engaged? He still wanted to know. No way he was asking Charlotte Sims about that. She’d probably slap his face, and rightly so.

      “Melanie said you were flirting with Kate, and Melanie should know. She’s one of the biggest flirts in the entire state.”

      “Well, then…I guess I was flirting. Guilty. Shoot me, please. Put me out of my misery.”

      “I can’t. You owe me a favor.”

      Ben clamped his mouth shut, thinking he hadn’t said a single, right thing all day.

      “If,” Charlotte added, “I decide I want you to have anything to do with my organization.”

      “I am not a bad guy!” He nearly exploded with it. “I just…I’m having a bad day, okay? I thought she was pretty. She was nice to that little girl, Allie, and I don’t think I’ve spent a moment on anything that might be considered a personal life since I came here seven months ago. Obviously, I’m lousy at it. I am still single at thirty-two. I don’t think I’ve had a serious relationship in the three years I was in divinity school or the two since I was ordained. Maybe I should have been a Catholic priest and given up on women all together!”

      Charlotte stared at him. Slowly, he came to realize that the ends of her mouth were twitching, were fighting it seemed to curve upward into a smile.

      “You think this is funny?”

      She nodded, covering her mouth with her hand, giggles spilling out of her until her eyes filled with tears and she needed a hankie to wipe them away. Her shoulders shook. She was trying mightily and failing to keep from grinning.

      “I am so sorry,” she finally managed to say. “I just wanted to hear your side of it. I know all about you. I talked to Betty at the high school, and she told me Mildred Ryan is your secretary. I went to school with Mrs. Ryan’s granddaughter, Peggy, so I put in a call to her. They assured me that you’re a very nice man and a wonderful minister, even if you are a bit…socially challenged.”

      “Socially challenged?” he repeated.

      Charlotte nodded, still fighting the giggles.

      Okay, so they didn’t think he was pond scum, just completely inept in the area of personal relationships.

      You deserve it, Ben. Admit it. You do.

      It was probably better if Kate went right on thinking he was a rat. Then she’d never speak to him again. He deserved that. That’s why he hadn’t tried to explain things to her before he took that phone call. He’d be better off if she stayed away from him, and he could only hope he hadn’t done any permanent damage to her relationship with her fiancé, if the man still was her fiancé. And Ben wouldn’t so much as look at another single woman for another seven months, at least. He didn’t have time for one, anyway.

      Charlotte finally managed to stop laughing. She dried her tears daintily with a delicate, embroidered handkerchief and then gave him a bright smile.

      “Well. I guess we should get down to business. You owe me a favor, right?”

      “Yes.” And to think all he’d done yesterday morning was to follow a troubled, hideously dressed, pregnant teenager from his church and walk through a few open doors, thinking to do his job and help someone?

      “How many people in your congregation on an average Sunday morning?” Charlotte asked.

      “Maybe a hundred.”

      “Okay. I’m thinking ten percent would be good,” she announced.

      “Ten percent of…?”

      “Your congregation, volunteering with my organization.”

      “Ten people? You want me to find you ten people?”

      She nodded. “You’re in the business of encouraging good works, right?”

      Ben nodded.

      “So, go encourage. Preferably people between the ages of twenty and thirty. And they have to have references and pass a background check.”

      “I doubt I have ten people in that age group in the entire congregation.”

      “I really don’t care if they come from your congregation. I need ten more volunteers. Actually, I need more like fifty, and you look so wonderfully guilty about what happened earlier….”

      “Okay, I’ll find you ten.”

      “You know, you’re getting off easy, Pastor.”

      If having to find her ten volunteers was the worst thing that came out of today, he was.

      “And let me give you some advice,” Charlotte said. “When you’re striking a bargain, never agree to anything without knowing what it’s going to cost you.”

      “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “You’ll find someone for Shannon?”

      “I’ll get her the best person I can find,” Charlotte promised.

      “Good. Thank you.” It was more than he deserved. “Now, what would you say are the chances of this little incident staying between you, me, Kate and your receptionist?”

      “About a million to one against it,” Charlotte said. “I’ll be good, and I bet Kate will keep quiet, too, but Melanie… Well, one of the reasons she’s so good at this job is that she knows just about everyone in town and all their secrets, which means she’s always talking to everyone about everything. Sorry, Pastor Taylor.”

      He shook his head. “Not your fault.”

      It was his completely.

      Maybe this was why Mrs. Ryan thought he should stay in the office and wait for people to come to him—because he was dangerous, loose out in the world. And he really should keep his clerical collar on at all times. It was just so unseemly, trying to meet women with the collar on, because they all jumped to the conclusion that he was Catholic. Not that he needed to be meeting women anyway. Look at the trouble it had gotten him into today.

      He thanked Charlotte Sims for her help, apologized again for the mix-up, ignored the laughter that followed him as he left Melanie in the reception area, and went back to his office to be scolded by an eighty-year-old great-grandmother look-alike.

      Charlotte Sims liked to think she had good instincts about people, and sometimes she got impulses to meddle, which got her into trouble.

      Her instincts said that Pastor Ben and Kate Cassidy had protested too much that absolutely nothing had happened between them in her reception area, which meant that something had, maybe something special.

      And Melanie’s instincts told her that if Kate and her fiancé were ever going to get married, they’d have done it long ago. Charlotte remembered when she’d met Charlie. She’d been besotted, right from the first, and there wasn’t anything in the world that could have kept them waiting for more than five years to be man and wife. Nothing.

      There was careful. There was getting to know each another. There was the need to be sure, but five years was something else completely.

      So…maybe it was up to her to do them all a favor.

      That’s how she thought of it.

      A favor.

      She had to find someone for Shannon, whom she’d met the day before, and Shannon’s problems seemed much more serious than Allie’s. Allie was a delight, and the distant cousin who’d taken her in seemed like a very good woman, though a bit frazzled, who’d provide a good home for Allie. And Charlotte could find a big sister for an adorable six-year-old blindfolded and with one hand tied behind her back.

      So…maybe she didn’t have to meddle with Kate and Pastor Ben.

      Maybe she could just do the best she could for Shannon and things would fall into place.

      She

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