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eBook Category: Romance
eBook Description: Strange things begin to happen, when Myra Baynes meets Rev. Clayton, a widowed pastor who is running on empty. Instantly attracted, Myra surprises herself when she begins to flirt. The Rev. might be interested if only he had more time--then there's a fire in the church and all hell breaks loose. 187 pages.

eBook Publisher: ebooksonthe.net, Published: 2003
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2005

6 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [639 KB], eReader (PDB) [114 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [89 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [81 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [122 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [147 KB], hiebook (KML) [267 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [172 KB], iSilo (PDB) [73 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [92 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [140 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [120 KB]
Words: 28573
Reading time: 81-114 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 978-1-59431-025-4

I remember how nervous I felt the day of my first regional ministerial association meeting. As the host pastor's new secretary, it was my duty to make the guest ministers comfortable as they arrived. I handed out coffee and led each one of the distinguished, suited, clergymen into the cushy inner office. Each man put down his leather briefcase beside an easy chair and made his way to the refreshment table in the back. Jovial conversation in what passes for wit in such circles took up the next few minutes.

At the appointed meeting time, Pastor Hermann asked in his ministerial boom, "Are we all here?"

The men, all from different denominations, stopped talking.

Come to think of it, I was pretty interdenominational myself--raised Episcopalian, I had attended the Methodist church where I worked in the city . Now I was back in my home town and employed as church secretary in a Lutheran congregation. I had been away so long, most of the ministers at the meeting were unknown to me.

Like obedient children at the ring of the bell, the men brushed crumbs off their hands and fretted their way to their chosen places. I went to my own desk opposite the open office door.

"Where's Clayton?" asked Pastor Hermann.

"Late as usual," someone answered.

Laughter. From my desk I could see into the back half of the room and hear everything. Not that anything interesting to a layman had ever been worth hearing. I'd been employed by churches long enough to know most ministers were just exactly as boring as they looked. Pastor Hermann began with the first order of business.

I heard the outer door whoosh open and stood up to go out and welcome the latecomer. I heard the sharp tread of a lightweight man in a hurry. As I rounded my desk, he arrived at the inner door. I couldn't see a face since the man had bent over, trying to lean an umbrella against the wall and failing. On the third try he muttered in a rich tone, more despairing than angry, "Oh, to blazes with it." His khaki raincoat dripped on the tiles. A khaki hat, of the kind my dad wore fishing, hid most of his face. When he gave up on the umbrella and stood up, I looked into a lean, youngish face above a black shirt with white clerical collar. One eye looked back at me, the other hidden behind a white bandage the width of a baseball. He whipped off the hat and flung it in the direction of the front door where it fell to the mat to dry. Black hair, streaked with silver, sprang up at the back but he didn't bother to try to pat it down as he gave a lopsided smile and whispered, "I'm late," like someone who hoped he wouldn't be noticed. Fat chance.

"'Bout time, Clayton!" boomed a voice from the inner sanctum.

Clayton sighed and stepped lightly past me into the pastor's office. I took his coat to hang it on a hook in the lobby.

"Wow, what happened to you?" someone asked.

"My van broke down four blocks from here," Clayton explained. "While you're all sitting here lapping up donuts, I'm out hoofing it in the rain."

"Why didn't you call?" asked one of the pastors. "Don't you have a cellphone?"

Suddenly all the ministers felt compelled to give advice.

"When are you gonna get rid of that hundred-year-old van and avail yourself of a car that runs?" asked Pastor Hermann.

"You can't keep fixing that van yourself for another ten years," someone added. "You should get someone else to haul the youth group around. When are you gonna learn to delegate?"

"Have you seen what he carries around in that van? He's got all his electrical engineering tools in there in case something breaks down. Half the Altar Guild ropes him into fixing their broken toasters."

"Just get on with it," said Clayton in a good-natured tone, "I'm here now. I have to make hospital calls and I'm without wheels so I'm in a generally rotten mood, if it's all the same to you gentlemen."

Over the chuckles, I heard, "I meant what happened to your eye?"

"Glass sliver got in it."

I made my way into the carpeted den, carrying hot coffee and a muffin. Reverend Clayton took it from me, with a grateful look. "O'boy, thank you. It's even hot!"

The uncovered eye winked at me. I blushed.

I went back to my desk where I had a view of several other pastors' feet and the briefcases beside their chair legs. Reverend Clayton bent down to get a pen and unzipped his scruffy blue backpack. I opened a drawer and took out the ministerial directory, thumbing to the "C" section. There it was:Clayton, Wallace Ward, PhD, D.Min, and BS. St. Matthew Methodist University Ministry at St. Sebastian, MO.

His professional achievements took up half a column. Wow, I thought. Minister, musician, previously engineering professor at a small college. Impressive. Sort of, to me anyway. So he's well educated. He could still be a jerk.

See, I'm fast becoming an old maid, according to my mother, who is the reason I moved back to my hometown. She recently had a stroke. I had been living in Pittsburgh, working for a metropolitan Methodist center, and enjoying a circle of friends. I had plenty to do, an interesting, productive life. My mother thinks I missed too many chances to get married and have kids. Honestly, I just never met anyone who seemed like "my better half." So I was and I wasn't impressed by the noble-sounding Reverend Clayton.

The meeting droned on. When it gave no sign of breaking up after an hour, I heard Clayton's baritone saying: "I hate to miss any of this, guys, but I left a young parishioner in labor at the hospital. I have to do something about my van; my eye is killing me; and I haven't even been near the church office yet. I really have to be going."

The others took advantage of the break to start making departing noises of their own. Clayton made his way to the door where I stood ready with his coat.

"Thanks," he said, with a grateful smile.

"Can I give you a ride?" I asked. "It's my lunch time and I do have a cellphone."

He kept talking as he put on his coat, looking around for his hat. "I'll take you up on that," he said, "since like that dame in the Marlon Brando movie, I am entirely at the mercy of strangers at the moment. You'll have to teach me how to use the cellphone to call a garage. I can't fix the old tank myself this time."

I picked up my coat and his wayward umbrella and followed his fast pace to the parking lot. I smirked as my coat tried to cuddle his damp umbrella.

"You need an assistant," I said, "can I apply?" Did I really say that!

"Oh, how I wish you could," he said like a drowning man watching a lifeline float away from him. "I haven't had a secretary in a year because the parish can't afford one. We're trying to get the old church declared as a historical building to defray some of the costs that it needs for renovation. The congregation's very helpful but the paper work is monumental."

We had come to my car and he opened the door for me before going around to the passenger side. As he slid in, he asked, "Do you have any aspirin?"

"Your eye hurting?"

"No, my head. Didn't you hear them in there going on for half an hour about how to baptize a two-headed baby? I just need to get to the hospital to help an unwed teenage mother who hasn't got a place to take her one-headed baby when it's time to go home."

I laughed. A sense of humor too?

His good eye twinkled. I fished about in the bottom of my bag and handed him a bottle of Aleve. As he threw the pills down, he began to choke. As he bent forward, I popped him smartly between the shoulder blades.

"Ah, you have saved my life. Maybe I ought to know your name when I thank God for your timely touch."

I just laughed again as I found myself in a stir of traffic. He slouched as the car crawled through the rain toward the hospital. He hadn't said exactly where to go, but well, someplace had to be our destination. When I glanced at Clayton again he was leaning back, the battered fishing hat sliding off toward the door. His mouth slightly open, he snored ever so gently. I looked at his long thighs and the slender hands still clutching his faded backpack. That backpack told me he related more to his college student parishioners than to his briefcase-toting peers.

I took him home with me.