Diana propped herself onto her elbow and caressed JT’s chest. “You really gave a wonderful message this morning. I mean, you always give great sermons, but this one was another winner for sure.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“I did, and I’m always so proud to sit and listen to you. I’m so proud of who you are and who I know you’re eventually going to be.”

“Your support means everything because I never got that when I was a child.”

“Meaning?”

“I know I’ve never told you much about my childhood, the same as I haven’t told most people, but my years as a child were flat-out pitiful. My father spent most of it telling me how I was never going to amount to anything and how I was going to end up just like him: working myself to death for just a few dollars more than minimum wage and living my entire life in shame. He pounded those words into me every chance he got and for a long time I believed him.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I am so sorry, and why haven’t you ever shared that with me?”

“Because I try my best not to think about my father and the horrible person he was. He practically ruined any self-esteem I might have had back then and by the time I turned ten, my mother passed away from uterine cancer and he turned to alcohol. He drank himself into a complete stupor seven days a week, and after a couple of years of dealing with it, I ran away.”

Diana frowned. “At twelve years old?”

“Yeah, but thankfully my aunt was willing to take me in. She was my mom’s older sister, and she treated me like her own child. Which was fine until I started my senior year in high school and she passed away from the same kind of cancer my mom did.”

Diana slowly shook her head in disbelief. “You poor, poor thing.”

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” JT said, refusing to release tears that had suddenly filled his eyes. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“No, we have to talk about this, because I can’t believe what you went through. And looking at you now, no one would ever guess it in a million years.”

“I know. I’ve definitely come a mighty long way, and it’s all because of how wonderfully God has blessed me. He took care of me when I wasn’t quite able to take care of myself, and then one night about six years ago when I was at my lowest, He set things up so that this ended up being the same night my now father-in-law was on television, preaching this awesome sermon. At the time, I had never even heard of anyone named Reverend Curtis Black, but he still had my attention from the moment I flipped through the channels and saw him. Then, when he finished, I got on my knees and asked God to forgive me for all of my sins and to use me in whatever way He saw fit.”

“That’s really profound, and you know, I think it would really help if you started telling your life story to a lot more people. Especially to our congregation, because they’ll certainly feel a lot closer to you once you do. People like knowing that their leaders, or that any man in power who they look up to, is just as human as they are. They like knowing that you haven’t always had the success you have now and that you had to work very hard to get to where you are today.”

“Well, they already know I wasn’t always this successful in ministry because I’m always mentioning how I started out with only a few members but now have more than five thousand.”

“Still, they’ll sympathize with you a whole lot more if you tell them about your childhood. They’ll listen to you a lot more closely, and they’ll tell others what you’ve been through, which in turn might bring in new members. At the least, it might get new people to come and visit New Life to see how they like it.”

JT sighed deeply. “Maybe.”

“Just think about it. I know it’s not an easy story to tell but having any real success in this day and age means putting your heart and soul into every aspect of what you’re trying to do.”

JT smiled at Diana. “That’s what I love about you the most. Well, it’s one of the things I love about you, anyway.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, chuckling, “because we both know what you love more than anything else.”

JT reached toward her and caressed the tip of her chin. “You’re right about that. But seriously, what I love about you is the way you constantly encourage me to be the best person I can be and how you always have such strong faith in all that I want to do. I mean, I have so many plans and goals till I can barely think straight. I want to double the size of the congregation within the next five years, and my biggest dream of all is to begin televising nationally.”

“And, sweetheart, you will. You have everything it takes, and as long as you continue satisfying me the way you have over the last twelve months and you keep spending a respectable amount of time with me, I’ll do whatever I can to help you financially, emotionally, and otherwise.”

“Hey. You’ll always be my girl and nothing will ever change what you and I have together.”

Diana’s face turned serious. “Not even the fact that you have a new little wifey? That sweet young thing who’s only twenty-three years old?”

JT sighed; he hated having this particular discussion with Diana because he knew she still wasn’t happy about him getting married. “Now, baby, you know I didn’t have a choice. You know when a pastor doesn’t have a wife, it opens the door for loads of ridiculous rumors. As it was, people were starting to gossip and whisper about a couple of other women in the church they thought I was sleeping with, and that’s when I knew it was time to get married again.”

Diana looked at him but didn’t comment one way or the other. JT wasn’t sure what he should say next because he could never tell her his other reasons for taking a wife: that he’d had the opportunity to marry the Reverend Curtis Black’s firstborn child, that he could already see how becoming Curtis’s son-in-law would eventually do great things for his career, that he wanted to have a couple of children who would be able to carry on his legacy, and that deep down there was a part of him that really did love Alicia.

“So, do you love her?” Diana asked, almost as if she could hear what he was thinking.

“I care about her,” he said, not wanting Diana to think he loved anyone more than he loved her. He didn’t want her even considering the idea that what the two of them had together really wasn’t love at all and that their relationship was purely based on the rough and very passionate sex they regularly engaged in and, of course, based on the money she didn’t mind providing for him. He cared about Diana, but love had nothing to do with it.

“Well, if you don’t love her, then I don’t see why you had to up and get married,” she said, shifting rather forcibly away from him and onto her back. JT knew he needed to explain things a lot better.

“Baby, come on now,” he said, pulling her back toward him so they were facing each other. “I care about Alicia, but I love you. Plus, it’s like I keep telling you, I only got married because I knew the congregation would be happy about it. And of course with Alicia being Curtis Black’s daughter, they love her.”

“Yeah, I could tell that today, but if you ask me, that’s just plain silly. I mean, who decides to like someone just because their father is famous?”

“Well, for whatever reason, lots of people are obsessed with having even a remote connection to any celebrity, and to prove it, our membership increased by two percent within a month after he served as guest speaker.”

“But according to you, he’s not all that thrilled about you marrying his daughter in the first place.”

“Yeah, but he’ll come around. He’s just a little hesitant right now because of all the rumors and lies floating around about me, but I’ll eventually gain his total trust. Before long, he’ll love me like his very own son.”

“I hope you’re right, because there’s nothing like a father-in-law, especially someone as powerful as Curtis Black, who despises the man his daughter is married to.”