Читать книгу Nothing Sacred - Tara Quinn Taylor - Страница 9

THE PRODUCTION of Pastor David Marks’s portion of the MUTV Sunday morning spiritual hour took only three meetings—the initial consultation and then two other sessions over the next couple of weeks. One to film, and one to preview and approve the edited version. Disappointed when taping was wrapped up so proficiently, David waited around MUTV the second Monday in February, after the final viewing while Martha gave wrap-up instructions to her predominantly student crew.

He’d really been hoping for an excuse to spend a little more time with her. With luck, they might’ve been able to become friends. He might even have been able to offer her some guidance, or at least reassurance. Whatever instincts prompted him in his work prompted him strongly where she was concerned. The woman was asking too much of herself. Expecting too much.

And helping people was how he filled his calendar.

“You’re very good at what you do,” he said as the last of the students left and she led him to her small office off to one side of the surprisingly modern studio.

She shrugged, her shoulders slim and feminine in the white oxford blouse she had tucked into a pair of black cotton slacks. “I’ve got great kids working for me,” she replied easily. “Enthusiastic, smart, eager to learn. They love what they do.”

“So do you.”

She turned, met his gaze for a brief second longer than the last time he’d been able to catch her attention. “Yeah, I do.” Then she added, “You do, too, don’t you?”

“More than I’d ever imagined.”

It was the truth. His job had given him a life. One that was solid and meaningful.

“Well…” she dropped a clipboard on the desk, then faced him, her arms crossed. “It’s been good working with you, Pastor.”

“David.”

She looked down, her short, flyaway hair tempting him to forget that the part of him that might think running his fingers through a woman’s hair was long since dead and buried.

“I prefer Pastor,” she finally said quietly.

“Ellen’s come to see me a couple of times.” He hadn’t been planning to tell her.

“She has?” He wasn’t sure which was more dominant in the expression she turned on him, her surprise or her concern.

He nodded. “She just needed someone to talk to.”

“She’s always talked to me!”

“She didn’t want to hurt you.”

The light of understanding entered her eyes at about the same moment her features settled into despondency. “She’s upset about Todd. The new baby.”

“And you. She doesn’t understand why a woman as loving and giving and wonderful as you should be hurt so much.”

“I got over Todd Moore years ago.” Her eyes might have moistened slightly, but it was the trembling of her chin that told David how much she was holding back.

“Did you?” He didn’t think so.

“Yes. Of course. Kind of hard for a woman to pine for a man who’d leave her with four children to raise while he ran off to be a kid himself.”

“So why are you squeezing the heck out of your arms? What emotion are you hiding?” he asked, glancing pointedly toward hands that had been lying slack only seconds before.

“You’re very observant.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

With a small grin, she peered back at him.

Given time, he hoped to reach this woman.

Maybe even help bring some peace to her life.

“It’s just good to hear that my kid thinks so highly of me,” she said. “I worry how unfair all of this has been to Ellen. She’s taken on a lot with the younger kids, especially since she got her driver’s license.”

“Life isn’t fair.” It was one of the first lessons he’d had to learn.

Martha frowned. “That’s an odd thing for a preacher to say.”

“Why?” he asked, serious and intent. “It’s the truth.” She turned her head, not looking at him. He was losing her. “Besides,” he added with a grin, “you already know I’m odd. You told me so. A couple of weeks ago. In my own chapel. It’s one of those moments that stand out.”

She smiled and he breathed a little easier. “Give it up, Preacher,” she said lightly. “You aren’t going to send me on a guilt trip over that one.”

She had him all wrong. Sending her on a guilt trip was the last thing on his agenda.

But it probably wasn’t a bad idea to keep her guessing. At least he had her attention.

Now he just had to find a reason for them to spend more time together.

ELLEN WASN’T HAVING the best day. Thursday night, less than a week after the most perfect Valentine’s Day she’d ever imagined, she’d gone and fought with Aaron over something stupid. He’d agreed to partner with Karen Anderson for his biology project, and Ellen had been furious—even though she knew that Karen had won first prize in a state college science competition the year before and was the perfect partner for a young man who hoped to graduate summa cum laude. Never mind that she—Ellen, his girlfriend—had equally high marks. However, she was majoring in English, not sciences.

Clocking out in the back room at Wal-Mart, she grabbed her sweater and purse from her locker, said goodbye to the mentally challenged man who did nighttime janitorial work, and hurried out to her car, avoiding eye contact with anyone. The customers had been unusually cantankerous that evening and she didn’t feel like talking.

Aaron had accused her of not trusting him. And she didn’t blame him. She’d overreacted.

And she did trust him. It was just men in general that she had trouble believing in. She hadn’t told him about her father’s last phone call—the new baby on the way. Nor about the nights following that call when she’d heard her mother crying in her room after she thought they were all asleep. Ellen hadn’t known what to do, what she could possibly say that could ease her mother’s pain. In the end, she’d cried, too.

Sometimes life sucked.

Her car wouldn’t start. Ellen turned the key a third time, pumping the gas pedal, but nothing happened. And she knew why. She’d just used the last of her gas to flood the tank. The gauge had been on Empty when she’d driven to work, but she’d been running late—because of fighting with Aaron—and had decided to fuel up on the way home.

She should’ve done it after she left college that afternoon, before picking up her sisters and brother from school. There was a station right around the corner from the university.

Head on the steering wheel, she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She’d never run out of gas before. Wasn’t sure what she should do.

Except not call her mother. There was no way she was going to add more problems to her mom’s already overflowing plate. The gas station was too far to walk. And she couldn’t call Aaron. Not after she’d stomped off the way she had.

This was her problem. She’d gotten herself into it. She’d get herself out of it.

Filled with resolve, feeling better, stronger, more in control, she climbed out of the car and headed for the highway off-ramp just beyond the Wal-Mart parking lot. She’d noticed a girl hitchhiking out there once before, and she’d been picked up almost immediately by a car coming off the highway and heading toward town. Not that it surprised her. That was how things were in Shelter Valley, where there was always someone nice willing to help out.

Purse in hand, she reached the road, stuck out her thumb with uncharacteristic boldness and waited. She would ask to be dropped at Aaron’s dorm. First she’d beg his forgiveness, because that was all she really cared about at the moment. And then, if he accepted her apology, she’d tell him about her car. He would know where to find a gas can. And he’d drive her back to the parking lot.

Without telling her even once how stupid she’d been to run out of gas in the first place. That was Aaron’s way.

It was only one of the hundreds of reasons she loved him so much.

Lost in thoughts of the boyfriend she couldn’t imagine living without, Ellen almost didn’t notice the brand-new Lexus that pulled up beside her. It took the open passenger door and the loud “Get in” to garner her attention. She didn’t recognize the car—or the older man at the wheel—which was unusual in Shelter Valley. But she certainly recognized that the suit he was wearing was expensive.

He could be a friend of Will and Becca Parsons, her mother’s best friends. As president of Montford University, Will Parsons was always entertaining rich and important people from Phoenix. And his wife, Becca, the new mayor of Shelter Valley, knew her share of rich folk, too.

Or maybe he was some friend of the Montfords—descendents of the town’s founder. They were richer than Will and Becca Parsons.

“You going to town?” she asked, holding the edge of the door as she looked into the car.

“I am.” He smiled. “If you’d like a ride, hop in.”

With a lift in spirits that had been plummeting all day, Ellen climbed inside, thanking him and giving directions to Aaron’s dorm. “It’s just this side of the main light in town,” she told him. “It’s not far out.”

Finally something positive was happening today. It was just like Pastor Marks had said. If you could stand up to the challenges, and if you did everything you could to help yourself, assistance would come.

“Have you ever been to Shelter Valley before?” she asked the man, who seemed friendly the couple of times he glanced over at her.

“Nope.”

“It’s a great place. You’ll like it.”

“I’m counting on it,” he said, smiling at her again.

“The turn’s just ahead.”

He nodded.

“It’s after that next group of trees.”

He nodded again, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel as he drove.

“There!” she said quickly, when it looked like he was going to miss the road.

He drove past.

“That was it!” Ellen said, sorry he’d have to turn around, that she was costing him more time than he’d intended. She’d tried to be so clear.

He didn’t slow down. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t even act as if he’d heard her.

“Excuse me.” She tried again. “Did you hear what I said? You missed the turn.” Did he have Alzheimer’s or something? She’d heard Becca talking to her mother about one of the ladies at the new adult day care in town and how her family had had to take her keys away because she’d driven off and forgotten not only where she was going, but most of the rules of driving as well.

God, don’t let him wreck the car. Mom would just die if she were to get a phone call that Ellen had been in an accident. It was a parent’s worst nightmare. Everyone knew that.

She tried two more times to get his attention.

He didn’t say anything, just smiled at her and nodded.

But on the other side of town he slowed down, and Ellen breathed her first sigh of relief. She’d get out as soon as she could, find a phone, call Aaron. Even angry, he’d come and get her. And she’d call for someone to help the old man, too.

Not that he really appeared old enough to have Alzheimer’s, but it did hit some people in their fifties. And no one she knew had ever acted this strange before….

“This isn’t anyplace you want to be,” knowing for sure that he was confused when he turned into the parking lot of a run-down and apparently deserted single-story building. It housed one-room apartments and used to be a hotel back in Shelter Valley’s early gold-mining days.

The man was scaring her.

Especially when he pulled up to a door and grabbed a key from the console between them. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Go where?” Was he crazy? She wasn’t going anywhere with him.

“Oh, so that’s the game you want to play?” he asked, not sounding crazy at all. He held her wrist tightly. Suddenly he had the air of a powerful businessman used to getting exactly what he wanted.

But what did he want? The man was rich. Nicely dressed. Driving an expensive car.

“I don’t know why—”

“Let’s go, sweetie,” he interrupted her. “I don’t have a lot of time before my wife’ll expect me back—”

He broke off abruptly, frowning as though he’d said too much, letting go of her wrist.

Ellen didn’t even think. She wrenched open the car door, intending to run as fast as she could out to the road.

With one foot out of the car, she propelled herself forward, trying to figure out which direction would be the safest bet. She had the sick feeling she might only get one chance.

As she hesitated, her other foot tangled with her ankle and she started to fall.

Except that the man was there, catching her. “So you like it rough, huh?” he asked, sounding excited in a way she’d never heard before but recognized, anyway. “They didn’t tell me that.”

“No!” She tried to pull away from his grasp, unable to feel anything but the urgent need to escape. His words made no sense to her.

His grip made no sense to her.

Aaron! She screamed inside, even as her mind refused to work. Something terrible was happening and she didn’t know why.

She had to get away. For Aaron. For Mom. For herself. She had to do something.

The man held her body in an iron clutch, carrying her to the door just a few feet away. She kicked him. Hard. On the shins. Over and over. She tried to reach higher.

“You little bitch,” he said, but he didn’t sound mad. Somehow she seemed to be pleasing him.

Oh God.

Ellen screamed, so long and hard the sound ripped at her throat. There was no one around to hear. He covered her mouth with his own, swallowing her cries.

She had to vomit. And bit him to make him let her go.

He bit her back, sliding her down to hold her body between his legs while, with one hand on her swollen mouth, he unlocked the door with the other.

Then, his hands on her breasts, he pushed her ahead of him into the room and kicked the door shut behind them.