Читать книгу A Million Blessings - Angela Benson - Страница 19

Six months later

Andrew paced in front of his desk in his church office. His day had started badly and gotten worse. What was he going to do? His financial situation was nowhere near as dire as it had been before he’d won the lottery, but it was pretty bad. How could he have lost so much money so fast? He wiped his hand down his face.

“Okay,” he told himself, “don’t panic. You can fix this.”

First things first. He had to find five hundred thousand dollars to pay his debt to his bookie. He had the money, but he didn’t have easy access to it because it was in a trust for his boys. It would take some legal finagling to get that money without Sandra’s knowledge since there was no way she’d sign for him to get it.

So all he had to leverage were the horse farm, their new house, and the church. He had convinced his father-in-law to allow him to get a mortgage on the horse farm, he’d put less down on the house than Sandra thought he had, and he’d been dipping a little in the church discretionary fund. Of course, he planned to repay them all before Sandra, or anybody else, found out. He was just having a turn of bad luck. Things would change for him. He was convinced of it. He only needed time.

He turned at the sound of the intercom on his desk. He walked over and pressed the button. “Pastor, you have an un-scheduled visitor. A Mr. Bert Taylor. He wouldn’t state his business.”

He didn’t have to. Andrew knew who he was. “Send him in,” he said. “I’ll see him.”

Instead of greeting his visitor at the door, as he normally did, he went and sat at his desk. He needed the protection provided by the furniture. He pulled a pad out of his desk drawer and pretended to write. He heard the door open but ignored it as if he hadn’t.

“Hello, Pastor.”

He didn’t even look up when he heard Bert’s voice. “I told you never to contact me here,” he said, still pretending to write.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Bert saunter to the desk and drop down in one of the visitor chairs. When Bert leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the corner of the desk, Andrew was forced to give him his attention.

“That’s more like it,” Bert said, meeting Andrew’s eyes. “I don’t like being ignored and I don’t take orders from dead-beats who don’t pay their debts.”

“You know I’m good for it,” Andrew said.

“What I know is that you owe me five hundred grand.”

“Don’t I always pay?”

Bert took a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “You’ve never owed this much before. And you’ve never avoided me the way you have for the last month or so. I don’t get a call, a visit, nothing. Makes me wonder about my personal hygiene.”

Andrew grimaced as Bert laughed at his own joke.

Bert removed his feet from the desk and leaned toward Andrew. “I hope you’re not trying to cheat me, Andrew. You’ve got a good setup here with this church. I’d hate to have to ask your deacons to make good on what you owe. Somehow I don’t think they’d look too kindly on a gambling pastor. You could find yourself out of a job.”

Bert’s words didn’t scare him. He’d heard them before. “What good would that do you? Not having a job would make me less able to pay you, not more.”

Chuckling, Bert leaned back in his chair. “Church folks hate a scandal. They’d fire you and pay me just to keep me quiet.” He leaned forward again. “Look, I’m not here to ruin your gig. I just want my money.”

“And I’ve told you, you’ll get it.”

“When?” Bert demanded.

“Give me a couple more weeks. I have something in the works, but it’ll take a couple of weeks.”

Bert stood, flicked the toothpick on Andrew’s desk. “I’m not a bank,” he said. “But I am going to have to charge you interest. I’d say two weeks is worth an additional hundred thousand.”

Andrew jumped out of his chair. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Bert said. “You pay me in two weeks or I take this to your church. If the church isn’t interested, I bet that little wife of yours will be. It’s that simple. We clear?”

Andrew nodded. What else could he do? He couldn’t let Bert go to Sandra. He’d get the money, even if he had to dip into church funds again.

“Good,” Bert said. And then he turned and left the office.

When the door closed, Andrew dropped down in his chair. He would need a miracle to get the money he needed in the next two weeks. All wasn’t completely lost. He’d gotten a miracle before. He began to pray.