Saints and Sinners (A Classic Romance) (5 page)

"Well, I never—" Mrs. Henderson huffed.

"Ahem... ah, Sally. About the music for next Sunday..." Matt had recovered from his coughing attack, and not a second too soon.

"Yes?" She turned her attention back to him.

"I'd like to drop one of the hymns."

"But we sing only four as it is. We've always sung four. I've been the church pianist for twenty years, and four it's been each and every Sunday."

"Twenty years is a long time without a change in the program. I think we need to try something different."

"Something different?" She sounded as if he'd suggested desecrating the holiest of the holy.

"Sure. I'd like to have everyone get up and move around, mix a little. Greet their neighbors."

"But everyone already knows each other."

"Not necessarily." He nodded in Dee's direction. "And besides, it wouldn't hurt to create an atmosphere of fellowship during the service."

"No disrespect intended, Reverend," Mrs. Henderson said indignantly, "but I've known the people in our church a lot longer than you have, and I say they won't like changing their ways."

"And I say, as pastor, the final decision is mine. We'll try it, and if the congregation doesn't like it, we'll go back to the old format. Nothing wrong with a trial run, is there?"

That shut her up. Dee looked at Matthew with increasing respect. Then he proceeded to demonstrate he wasn't good only at asserting his authority, but could smooth the feathers that were ruffled as a result of it.

"Oh, and by the way, Sally, would you mind playing a solo while everyone else visits?"

"A solo? Of course, I'd be delighted. Is there anything in particular you want, or can I choose?"

"I trust your judgment, Sally. I'm sure you'll select something that will contribute to the spirit of friendship and harmony we want any visitors who might grace our church to feel in our midst."

"I... well, yes, of course." With a farewell to Dee and family that was more genial than her greeting, Mrs. Henderson departed.

It was Dee's turn to hide her mouth with a napkin. When Matthew winked, she indulged a throaty chuckle.

"You will visit with us next Sunday, won't you?" he asked.

"After you changed a twenty-year-old tradition in a New York minute?" Dee tapped his shin with her foot while a spark of mischief danced in her eyes. "Reverend, I wouldn't miss that piano solo for the world."

* * *

"Sure I can't help with anything before I take off?"

"Positive. You've done so much as it is, I can't thank you enough, Matt. You actually got the kids to bed by nine o'clock, when I was afraid they'd be climbing the walls at midnight. Tomorrow's their first day in a new school and they're wound up tighter than a jack-in-the-box."

So was she. Getting them registered wasn't the cause of her anxiety. All the necessary papers, including the school records she'd gotten a copy of before they left Las Vegas, were ready in her purse. Meeting with the teachers and the prospect of future one-on-one conferences was what she feared.

"They are anxious," Matt agreed. "Loren wanted to know what I thought about the outfit she'd picked out, and Jason asked me to say a prayer that he'd get a teacher who doesn't give homework. I told him I would, but even ministers didn't have the kind of clout he needed to get that one granted."

That quickly he made her forget her worries and smile. A feat that was nothing less than amazing these days.
He
was amazing, she decided, amazingly masculine yet kind and giving.

"Do I want to know what Loren showed you?"

"I doubt it. But she selected something more, shall we say, acceptable, when I mentioned that the particular style she'd chosen had gone out here years ago and baggy was in. Fortunately, she doesn't know I'm fairly new to the area and what I understand about fashion wouldn't take a minute to explain."

"You are a delight, Matthew Peters. Delightfully...
devious."

"I can be. When it serves a good purpose. But I much prefer to be honest, say what I'm really thinking."

"And what are you thinking now?"

"That the flowers Mrs. Henderson brought over would look better on you than this old piano Mrs. Adams wanted out of her basement." Matt picked a daisy out of the vase Dee held and tucked the yellow bloom behind her ear.

"Matches your hair." Next he selected a stalk of vivid blue statice and traced her brow before tickling her nose. "Just the color of your eyes." His regard was intimate.

Not only was he amazing, she realized, he was wildly romantic. Matt Peters was the kind of man a woman could fall for and hit ground zero before she knew she'd dropped.

He was the kind of man a woman in trouble could turn to for support and help.

Dee turned away—for a price. She told herself the loss of his promised kiss was a small thing, nothing really, after the other losses she'd endured. But that was a lie, and lying wasn't her forte. This was yet another sacrifice, one she resented. Resentment ran deep and long in her life, and at the moment she could almost resent Matt for making her want what she couldn't have.

Placing the vase on the upright piano she'd gratefully taken off Mrs. Adams's hands for a song, she fussed with the arrangement, then softly played the C-minor chord. Her gaze remained fixed on the keys.

"I wonder what Mrs. Henderson would think of you using her flowers to flirt with me."

"Is that what you think I'm doing... flirting?" When she forced a curt nod, he leaned an elbow on top of the piano and studied her.
"Flirting,
now, that's an interesting concept. Toying. Teasing. Leading someone on. It's not my style, Dee. I prefer a much more direct approach. Or hadn't you noticed?"

What she noticed was that he stood so close his chest nearly brushed her shoulder and his hips all but rubbed against hers. The room seemed to shrink in size while Matthew's presence expanded. His scent, his aura, surrounded her.

She wanted to breathe him in, fill herself up with this man who was unlike any other she'd ever known. Fighting against him, but mostly against herself, she plucked the daisy from her hair and stuck it back into the vase.

"In that case, I doubt Mrs. Henderson would approve of the good Reverend's direct approach with her flowers."

"And you care?" He chuckled. "Especially when you're setting them on a piano that'll likely hurt her quota of students."

"I guess Mrs. Adams told you my line of business too?"

"No, Jason did. He mentioned it to me when I tucked him in."

Dee struggled to keep her voice conversational. "What else did he tell you?"

"Not much. Just that you miss your baby grand and the kids you taught before moving here. And you're the best piano teacher ever and that mean old Mrs. Busybody next door's going to be asking you for lessons herself once she finds out you know more about music than she could in a million years."

Managing a small laugh, Dee trilled two keys to buy enough time to slow the racing of her heart.

"That'll teach me to keep my opinions to myself. I don't think such talk would endear me to my neighbor."

"Youngsters are just honest. Unlike a lot of adults." His pause was significant. "How long have you played?"

"All my life, it seems."

"Did you study anywhere special?"

"My mother taught me." Dee caught herself before she mentioned her Juilliard degree. She wondered if the diploma she'd proudly displayed still hung in her vacated Las Vegas apartment, or if Vince had burned it in one of his rages, just as she'd had to torch all ties to her past. "A lot of what I know is self-taught," she added, improvising. "Life's been a tough teacher. I graduated from the school of hard knocks."

"With honors?" Matt asked softly.

The fraction of an inch he moved in her direction should have been imperceptible, but she sensed it. His nearness stirred her imagination, and she could easily picture his chest brushing her breasts, his tongue flicking into her ear, and his groin riding the side of her hip.

Dee shut her eyes tightly. There was an ache between her thighs, and her breasts tingled. She was shaking from the inside out with such startling intensity, she felt as if she were waking from years of being in a coma. He wasn't even touching her and every nerve end was coming loose, her heartstrings unraveling.

"Did I graduate with honors?" she whispered unevenly. "Let's just say that giving up my piano was not a minor sacrifice. Students are transient, but my piano? I talked to it every morning and kissed it good night. Whenever I was angry I'd pound its keys. Happy, I'd jam and boogie-woogie and run cadences until my fingers were numb."

"And when you were sad?"

"Moonlight Sonata, or Bach. Anything dreary that captured the mood. We shared a lot of feelings, Cristofori and I."

"Cristofori?"

"My piano's name. After the man who crafted the original model." She laughed without humor. "I don't tell many people about our relationship. I mean, they'd think I was crazy. You yourself must believe I'm a little off."

He covered her hand, which was resting on the keys.

"What I believe is that Cristofori was your lover. Maybe for lack of another?"

She stared, unblinking, at the tanned fingers that interlocked with hers. The striking contrast of their skin colors echoed the ivory to ebony keys. His hand rode upon her own as she repeated the melancholy minor chord.

Matthew stroked her third finger down from black to white, lifted it, then pressed. The sweet sound of the major chord filled the silence and lingered before fading.

"Is there a chance you can get Cristofori back?"

"I'm beginning to think anything's possible." Before she could stop herself, she met his searching gaze.

"Anything is possible if you believe strongly enough." His hand left hers, and his fingers, still warm from their shared heat, touched her cheek.

"Tell me, Dee, do you believe in things unseen? Like two strangers connecting, both of them a little confused, maybe, because something keeps passing between them that defies reason. Every time they share a look they feel a need to touch, but both pretend it's not happening and they say what's polite and acceptable when more than anything they're aching to kiss. Deeply. Intimately." His head descended, stopping just short of a kiss. "Do you believe?"

She believed that if he kissed her, she would beg for more. Beg this man of quiet power to listen and make right what couldn't be righted without a miracle. She wanted to touch him, feel his hands on her while she spilled out every heartache, every hope, every wide-awake nightmare that composed what had become her existence.

And how long had she known him? Less than a day.

Oh, Dee, how desperate you must be. Desperate enough to sacrifice what you've staked your life on with a near stranger. And it's not just you. Jason and Loren hang on every word out of your mouth, every action you take. Don't do it. Dear God, don't you do it.

"What I believe, Matt, is that it's time you went home."

He kept his face close to hers as he softly stroked her cheek, a feather-light brush that nearly drove her mad with the need to feel his mouth cover her own.

"Know what I believe?" he said huskily. "That leaving is the last thing you really want from me, and I'm dangerously close to compromising my position more than I already have." He stepped back, and she felt his loss too keenly. "I'll see myself out, Dee. By the way, thanks for the best Sunday, the best any day I've had in a long, long time."

The soft click of the front door sounded a moment later. The high-pitched revving of an engine—she couldn't find it possible to believe it was that of a motorcycle—soon purred down the street.

The breath she'd been holding rushed out on a sigh. A smile she didn't mean to smile, but that asserted itself over every reason she had not to, commanded her lips to obey. Just as her fingers refused to acknowledge the message to play Moonlight Sonata.

As Pachelbel's Canon in D filled her ears, Dee felt her heart lift while she murmured two syllables: "Matthew."

Chapter 4