A Little Bit Engaged. Teresa Hill

much, much easier than examining the guilt she felt, both for talking with a complete stranger about her feelings for Joe, when she hadn’t found the courage to talk to Joe himself, and for kind of flirting with the priest.

      Was it really flirting?

      Honestly, she’d never been that good at either recognizing it or doing it, preferring a much more direct approach. So maybe that wasn’t what they’d done. True, she had thought he was cute for a moment but, really, that was it. She’d spent maybe ten minutes with the man, in a public waiting room and on a public street. They’d done nothing but talk. So she really hadn’t done anything horrible.

      Except flirt with a priest, while she was engaged to someone else!

      Kate groaned again.

      Ben Taylor handed the phone back to Melanie and then turned to Charlotte and said, “I’m afraid I have to go. Can I call and reschedule?”

      “Of course,” Charlotte said.

      And with that, he was gone.

      The minute the door closed, Kate, Melanie and Charlotte all started talking at once. Charlotte’s low, insistent voice cut through the other two, as she said, “What’s going on?”

      “He’s a priest?” Kate asked.

      “He must be. That woman kept telling me there had to be a man in a clerical collar in our offices, and I said there wasn’t. Finally she said Ben Taylor, and I just about choked.”

      “Wait,” Charlotte said again. “What’s wrong?”

      “He was trying to pick Kate up, right here in our reception area,” Melanie said.

      “Surely not,” Charlotte said.

      “He was. Tell her,” Melanie said.

      “I don’t know what he was doing, but… He seemed so nice.”

      “But he’s a priest. What’s this world coming to, if you can’t trust a priest?” Melanie said.

      “He was trying to pick you up?” Charlotte asked. “Right here?”

      “I think so,” Kate said.

      “He definitely was,” Melanie announced.

      She should know. She was much more of a flirt than Kate had ever been. Distressed and feeling even more guilty, she turned to Charlotte and said, “How do you know him?”

      “I don’t, really, but I’ll find out all there is to know about him,” Charlotte promised. “Don’t worry.”

      But Kate did worry.

      He’d thrown her completely off balance.

      She prided herself on being a good judge of character, and she’d liked him right from the start. He had kind eyes with little crinkles in the corners and more at the corners of his mouth, which made her think he must smile a lot and generally be a pretty happy guy. He seemed a little too easygoing for her, but then most people were a lot more easygoing than Kate was. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it wasn’t always a bad thing.

      He had a nice voice, strong and smooth and easy to listen to, and he was a very good listener. So few men were. So she’d talked, and he’d listened, and she’d told him everything she didn’t want to even acknowledge about her and Joe, things she been avoiding for months.

      “I have to go,” Kate said, knowing if she stayed she’d really face an inquisition from Melanie and maybe from Charlotte, too.

      “We’ll be in touch about your first meeting with your little sister,” Charlotte said.

      She mumbled a thanks, picked up the satchel that doubled as both a purse and a briefcase, and fled.

      It was a quick four blocks from Charlotte’s office to Kate’s own. She breezed in, asking her assistant Gretchen to try to get Joe on the line before she changed her mind. Ben Taylor might be a jerk, but he’d shamed her into taking action. Kate sat behind the closed door of her office with her palms sweating, trying to figure out what to say. All too soon, Ginny buzzed her and said Joe was on line two.

      Kate picked it up and said, “Hi.”

      “Kate. Hi. Are you okay? You sound funny.”

      “I’m… I don’t know what I am, Joe. You and I need to talk.”

      “Okay. Talk.”

      “Not now. Not like this. Where are you?” She thought he was still out of town, but couldn’t say for sure. What did that say about their relationship?

      “St. Louis,” he said. “I was hoping to be home today, but it’s not looking like I will. I’ll have to see how things go, and then see what the airlines can do for me.”

      “Okay. Call me when you get in?”

      “Sure. Kate? Did something happen?”

      “No. Not really.”

      “You sound like something happened,” he insisted.

      And he sounded like he’d been expecting something to happen. What was that about?

      “I just need to ask you some things,” she said. “About us.”

      “Oh.”

      Oh? He said it as if it had a dozen different meanings, each fraught with possibilities.

      What was going on? She’d been leading a perfectly sane life this morning. She had a business she ran well, a family she loved, a mother she was still mourning, true, but all in all, a good, sane, predictable life.

      Was this punishment for showing up at Big Brothers/Big Sisters under the guise of doing something nice for someone, when all she’d really wanted was to get in good with Charlotte Sims’s husband?

      She did feel guilty about that part.

      But good work was good work, right? Were her motives really that important, when in the end she’d be doing a good thing? At least, she’d intended to do a good thing. She certainly hadn’t gone there to flirt with a priest and question everything there was to her five-year relationship with Joe, who really was a very, very nice man. A sane man. A responsible one. A careful one. A smart one. A kind one. Everything she thought she’d ever wanted in a man.

      “Katie, you’re scaring me,” Joe said.

      “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I just… I have to go. Call me when you get into town, okay?”

      Joe promised that he would.

      Kate hung up the phone and wished with every fiber of her being that her mother was alive and well and that she could run to her and spill out all her problems to her.

      She missed her so much. It had been horrible, watching her waste away like that. Kate had always thought she was so strong, that she could handle anything, but losing her mother had left her feeling as lost as a little six-year-old, like the little girl she’d helped to the car earlier.

      She didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. She couldn’t be certain about anything, even marrying Joe.

      Tell me what to do, Mom. Couldn’t you just tell me what to do?

      Two hours later Ben was back, seated in front of Charlotte Sims, feeling like a naughty kid who’d been summoned to the principal’s office.

      “I am not a Catholic priest,” he said. “I’m a minister at Grace Cathedral on Elm Street. Ministers in our church get married. No one cares. In fact, people think it makes us better at our jobs to have spouses and children, to better understand the kinds of emotions and challenges that come with marriage and parenthood.”

      “All right,” Charlotte said. “So you were trying to pick up an engaged woman in my waiting room because…?”

      “I didn’t pick her up. I had a conversation with her. I thought