“I don’t know if we would suit,” he said, “but I’d like to get to know you better. I’d like to take you to dinner.”
I had been staring into the distance, and whipped my eyes to him.
Dinner.
His dark hair had fallen across his forehead in a long curl. Too long by church standards. And Ben Aden wanted to take me to dinner. Like Occam did. Occam who had kissed me. Playing the field, JoJo had called it once when I was in the room with her and T. Laine as they talked about men. Dating. “Oh. Umm. Oh.” I looked around the house as if I had never been there. Dusty. Cat prints. Lumpy brownish couch. Tattered chairs. I hadn’t noticed they were in such bad shape. John’s and Leah’s things. So little that was mine. I didn’t know what to say to Ben.
Tears filled my eyes. Maybe fear. Maybe confusion. Maybe lots of things. I blinked hard to push them away. “Um.” My cell dinged again. Then twice more with reminders for the first two. I held up the cell as if to show him where the dings were coming from, or like a lifeline, and thumbed it on.
The first text was from Mama, telling me she was sending someone over with fresh eggs. Not even thinking that I might be at work or sleeping off a night of work. No. Expecting me to be at home like a good churchwoman, because the idea of a woman with a regular job was beyond her world reference. Not mentioning Ben. Setting me up for matchmaking.
The second text was from HQ, updating me as to time and location for the op.
The last text was from Occam. It said, Driving up your mountain. We need to talk.
“Oh. Dear Lordy Moses,” I whispered.
“What?” Ben asked, concern lacing his voice.
A car pulled up outside. Cello leaped to the floor and raced to the front door, as if knowing that a big-cat had come calling. Mworing loudly.
“This is about to be uncomfortable,” I said, standing. “A coworker is here to have a chat.” All truth. Not lying at all. “I don’t know about dinner.”
“Would you like to meet for coffee in the morning? Like normal people do? Somewhere in town?” Ben asked, bemused by my obvious and growing panic. A car door closed. The other cats raced to join Cello.
Were the cats moon-called yet? What would Occam do if—when—he met Ben? Occam who wanted to date me, and whose cat might perceive Ben as competition. My breathing was too fast. My hands were tingling. Soulwood seemed to roll over in the winter deeps and reach for me. Oh no. I’d grow leaves. A peculiar laugh stuttered out of me.
“Nell? Is everything all right? Can I help?”
I made that sound that might be considered laughter, the kind heard in a scary movie about ghosts in an old insane asylum. I sped to the door and grabbed up the cats and raced to the back door, where I shoved them onto the back porch, getting scratched in the process. Set the dampers to burn slow. Slung my gobags over my shoulder and my weapon harness over an arm.
Ben was watching me in befuddlement, and maybe some amusement. I heard Occam’s steady footsteps on the stairs. All three cats started caterwauling at the door, wanting back in.
Ben looked back and forth between the front door and the loud cats and me. “Nell?”
“I’m okay, Ben. I gotta go to work.” I sounded anxious.
“Nell?” He was getting worried. I’d heard that protect the little woman tone before. Usually just before a doting father pulled out a shotgun.
“Where?” I demanded. “Where can we meet for coffee or breakfast tomorrow? When I get off work.” Occam knocked on the door, his lithe frame a darker shadow against the dim daylight of the front window.
Ben looked at the front door and at me standing with all my gear. I could tell he was itching to take the heavy load of gobags off my fragile shoulders. “Pete’s Coffee Shop, downtown on Union?” he asked.
“I’ll be there at seven.”
“You sure?” He meant was I sure about my new visitor not being here to ravish me.
“I’m sure.” I opened the door and tossed my two gobags at Occam. He barely caught them, but when he did, they seemed to weigh nothing. “I’ll be right there,” I said. And I shut the door in his face. Spun so my back was to the door. Ben was so close I nearly touched him when I turned. I pressed my spine to the door.
Ben’s blue eyes were twinkling, but his face looked serious. He lifted a hand to the wig and touched the wobbly messy bun, as if to see if the colorful hair was real. “I’ll see you in the morning, Nell.” He took my shoulders in his hands and gently eased me out of the way. Opened the door, stepped out, and closed the door behind him. Closing me out of the conversation.
Oh. I should have gone out there. Should have stood my ground. Acted tough. I placed my ear against the door like a child listening in on a forbidden adult discussion.
“I’m Ben Aden.”
Occam said nothing for a half dozen of my racing heartbeats. “Occam.” There was a low half growl in his voice.
“You work with our Nellie?”
Our Nellie? That was church-speak, a way to cut off others that were interested in a churchwoman. It was also a claiming. I wasn’t ready to be claimed, not by anyone.
“I work with Special Agent Nell Ingram.”
That! That was better.
“Hmmm.” There was a load of possible meanings in that one syllable. I feared that Ben was about to do something awful. Instead he said mildly, “Well. You have a good day, you hear. Weather’s treacherous.”
I heard Ben’s farm boots tapping down the stairs. Heard his truck door close and the engine turn over. Heard the truck putter smoothly into the distance.
“Nell, you going to stand there all day or you going to open the door?” Occam asked.
I looked around the house. Thinking. The house would be fine unless I was gone more than a couple of days or unless the temperature dropped into the low twenties and stayed there a while. I took a fortifying breath and opened the door. Closed it behind me and locked up. I stuck my chin up and turned to Occam, who looked me over, much as Ben had, from toes to red and purple wig. My chin went up even higher. I threw the tails of the velvet shawl over me and adjusted my winter coat over my arm. “You wanted to talk. We can talk on the way to work.”
“So I’m driving you in?”
“Might as well.” I took the stairs to the ground, my strange heels making it hard to keep my balance on the sleet-slick steps. Over my shoulder I said, “If I’m not spending my off time sleeping on an inflatable mattress, someone can bring me home. Or I can take an Uber. Or maybe my Unit Eighteen vehicle will arrive. Miracles, anyone?”
“Or your boyfriend can drive you back?”
I ignored Occam and got in his car. The inside of the two-door Ford Mustang was still warm. I closed the door. And waited. Because Occam was still on the porch. Sniffing around? Taking in Ben’s scent? Getting catty-possessive? Eventually he followed me and stowed my gear in the small trunk. And got inside. His long legs moved with a grace no human would ever achieve. The door closed, too softly, too controlled. He started the engine and backed around, to pull down the dirt road, down the hill, his long fingers clasping the steering wheel gently, the way he might hold one of my cats.
The sleet had stopped but it had left a thick slick coating on the road. He nursed the pedals. As we dropped elevations, the sleet disappeared into a slush and then into water draining down the culverts and away.
“You seeing Ben Aden?” Occam asked long after we had entered the bumper-to-bumper traffic of Knoxville’s afternoon rush hour.
“That mighta been resolved if you hadn’t arrived so precipitously.”
“So this is my fault?”
“Ain’t nothing nobody’s fault, Occam,” I said, sliding into church-speak despite myself.
“So are you seeing Ben Aden?”
“I’m meeting him for coffee tomorrow.”
“Did he bring you flowers?”
“No. He brought me eggs.”
Occam slid his eyes from the traffic to me. “Eggs.”
“Eggs. Sent by my meddling mama.”
Occam relaxed suddenly. “Eggs.” He shook his head. “Coffee. Not dinner?”
“Not dinner.”
“Then we’ll have dinner tonight.”
It was another way of claiming. I knew that. It shoulda made me mad. Instead I laughed softly but shook my head. “I got not one single idea how to take coffee or dinner with a man, you stupid cat. Not one! It makes my stomach go all sick just thinking about it.”
“Food goes to your mouth, usually via fork or spoon, you chew and swallow. Eatin’ ain’t that hard, Nell, sugar.”
I blew out a laugh, feeling the unexpected tears gather again. “Dating is more than just eating.” I stared out at the traffic and the fog that hung a few dozen feet above the road. “At least Ben would know what I can and can’t do for conversation and for fun and such like. He wouldn’t ask me to dance or play loud music or buy me a martini. I don’t know how to be what you want me to be.”
“Martini?” he said, sounding incredulous. “Who the hell said anything about a martini? I don’t want you to be anything other than what you want to be, Nell. Question is, do you want to go back to what’s old and safe or try what’s new and adventurous? You want the easy way or the hard way? The easy way is to keep being a churchwoman. I’m new. I’m different. I’ll be hard to date. And I’m not your church.”
“Not my church. Not ever again my church.”
“Then why are you talking to a churchman?”
“He ain’t precisely a churchman. Well, he is, but he went away to college.”
“And then went back inside? When he didn’t have to?” Occam asked.
I thought about Ben’s statement that he had gone away to school and then returned to the church so he could effect change from the inside. How much change? How much did a man grow and evolve his thinking patterns? I had lived away from church lands for over a decade and I still found myself falling into patterns of thought and actions that were church-bound. I remembered Ben’s hands on my shoulders, the feel of them through my T-shirts. That had felt nice. It had been years since anyone had touched me. Except Occam, caressing my cheeks gently. I looked down at my lap.
I remembered the feel of John’s hands touching me in the dark, under the covers. Rough and calloused. Nothing gentle about him, nothing tender or passionate. He hadn’t been cruel. He had just been a man with his own needs, leaving me with the discomfort of my wifely duties. Ben would understand what I had been through. What I had done to survive. It was the way of women in the church. Would Occam understand if I flinched? If I pulled away?
Softly Occam said, “I know you ain’t human, Nell, sugar. Does Ben?”
I firmed my lips and looked away. I had asked myself that question already. But no matter what happened in my life, I would not be pushed into a corner and forced to take something or someone I didn’t choose myself.