She brought her mother a martini, which she downed in three gulps. “Terrible. You need to get your gin from someplace more upscale than Total Wine.”
Yes, everything was terrible at the moment. Madison gave her a look that could only be interpreted as an SOS in the version of visual Morse code that only sisters knew. “How about we find you something better, then?”
* * *
—
SASHA WAS ALWAYS WALKING into Dooley’s when Patrick was least expecting it. It was as though she knew when his resolve not to think about her was weak. Actually, that was a lie—he’d added lies to his list of sins. His resolve not to think about Sasha was always weak.
Sister Cortona’s words ran through his head and mingled and rioted with thoughts of Sasha and the way she’d looked reading to the preschool kids. He looked at her and saw forever, and it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
She’d left a couple of phone messages with ideas for another event to raise money. He’d saved them and listened to them over and over, lying and telling himself that he needed to hear her voice to properly mull over her ideas.
After his conversation with Bishop Rafferty, he’d been feeling like the whole enterprise was for naught. All the community outreach he’d done over the past few years, trying to get people to give the Catholic Church another chance, was based on the premise that he could do something to make the Church more welcoming. Not that he could change canon law, but that he could make a difference around the edges.
Intellectually, he’d known he was wrong about his individual efforts to make change for a while, but the conversation with Rafferty had really driven it home. And his ambivalent feelings about the Church were now all wrapped up with his growing feelings for Sasha.
He didn’t really doubt his calling anymore. He had the growing suspicion that it was bullshit. His mind was scrambled. And he would probably think more clearly if he didn’t have a cockstand from the gentle timbre of her voice.
The only voice message that he didn’t listen to over and over was the one that referenced that the guy she was dating—he refused to say the man’s name, even in his mind—could help out with a church carnival in a month.
He loved the idea, but the prospect of watching that guy with his hands on a woman that he shouldn’t think of as his, but that he did, was enough to muddle his thoughts even more. He wished that he hadn’t agreed to work with her to save the pre-K program, even though he couldn’t have done it on his own. He’d known it was dangerous to spend too much time around a woman who aroused him that much, but now that he knew her a bit more, he craved her presence.
It was both heaven and hell when she walked into Dooley’s followed by an older woman with a sour expression on her face—had to be her mother—and a woman about Sasha’s age who, he would place money on, was her sister.
Sasha looked tense, like one more thing would make her snap in two. He ached to fix things for her. He knew her family was difficult and she remained entangled with them financially. Even though what he truly wanted from Sasha in his heart of hearts would mess up her life, he would never allow himself to actually do that. She came here tonight for a reason, and he would help her with whatever that was.
“What can I get you?” he asked. Sasha’s relief was palpable, and that was like a balm to him.
“Mother, Madison, this is Father Patrick Dooley.”
The woman that she’d indicated was her mother looked around the bar like she’d sucked on a moldy lemon. He took an instant, decidedly unchristian dislike to the woman. And his insides turned cold when she turned her gaze on him. “Why would a priest be working in a bar?”
“My father owns it, ma’am.” The woman winced when he called her that. “And what can I get you?”
“Do you have any decent gin?”
In part to counter his dislike of Sasha’s mother, he reached for the top shelf of dusty bottles that his father charged through the nose for in the event that a rich asshole wandered into his bar. In case they got lost or something.
It came in handy for moments like this.
He didn’t miss Sasha’s gaze on him as he shook the very dry martini and poured it into a glass in front of her mother. Nor did he miss the hungry look in her eyes as she asked him for a Guinness.
“Well, I don’t even know what to do with you if you aren’t even watching your figure anymore.” He didn’t think many people actually went to hell, but Sasha’s mother might be a great candidate.
“I’ll have a vodka soda, then.”
Patrick raised his eyebrows as he leaned down into her space. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
He hoped that he was conveying a silent offer to find a way to extract her from the situation.
“It’ll do for now.” He thought she sounded breathy—definitely. He might have mostly tuned out people flirting with him over the past decade, but he wasn’t completely daft. Sasha was flirting with him. In front of her mother. She must be running on the fumes of her last few fucks if she was doing that.
He couldn’t dwell on it, though. Because he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Sasha was merely flirting for sport. So he turned to her sister. “What’ll it be?”
“Can you go back in time and get me adopted by a nice family?”
Her sister was funny. Sasha might not have much in common with the rest of her family, but there was that.
“You know, the Church frowns on me using my powers of time travel, but how about a mixed drink?”
“I’ll take a pinot grigio.”
“You don’t want the pinot grigio here. How about a whiskey sour?” Madison giggled and brushed a hand over her hair, and he moved down the bar to make their drinks.
He wasn’t out of earshot, so he heard their mother say, “I can’t believe you two, shamelessly flirting with a frocked Catholic priest.”
“I was just being friendly,” Madison said.
Sasha was silent, and he noticed that her glances at him were much more sidelong after that.
* * *
—
SASHA KNEW THAT HER mother wouldn’t miss her thing for Patrick. And still she’d brought her and her sister here so that she wouldn’t have to go through a whole meal at her mother’s hotel. Her choosing to go to Dooley’s and doing very little to conceal her flirtation with Patrick was dangerous. It hadn’t been intentional at first, but it had taken some of the heat off Madison for abandoning “poor Tucker.”
The only redeeming quality about poor Tucker “T-Dogg” McGovern was his ability to empathize with others. That was what had made him such an attractive marital prospect for Madison in Sasha’s opinion. But if Madison no longer wanted to be married to the man, Sasha would support her sister. And changing locations to a place that would put Moira’s focus on Sasha’s failings and off Madison’s was effective. Her mother drank three whole martinis, and Sasha found a puzzle from the corner bookshelf to focus on so she wouldn’t choke Moira before she started in on Madison.