“Have you ever been in love?” she asked him.

“Not really,” he said, blushing slightly.

“Have you ever had to sacrifice something of great value for someone you love?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“Have you ever had someone sell their own hair to buy you your heart’s desire?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“I can tell. Let me tell you something about that story. It’s a horror story. The husband gives up his most valuable possession, his gold watch, to buy his wife combs for her beautiful long hair. The wife sells her hair to buy her husband a chain for his watch. At the end of the day they gave up everything they had of value and ended up with nothing. How is that a love story?”

The young man shrugged, looking confused and flustered, and she knew she had him. She’d stumped him. He’d fold. He’d give up. He was cute and she liked looking at him but if he wasn’t going to fight back, she’d lose interest in him in five seconds.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

“They have each other,” the young man finally said. “That’s the point of the story. Who needs gold or hair when you have each other? Love isn’t about appearances, and it isn’t about money. It’s not a horror story. Only a cynic would say that, and I don’t think you’re a cynic.”

“I might be a cynic.”

“A cynic is someone motivated by self-interest. Teaching a class is the act of an optimist or at least someone motived by the public interest.”

“You talk like a college freshman. Anyone ever told you that?” Nora asked.

“It’s my first day as a college freshman. You’re my first time.”

She raised her eyebrow at him and was rewarded by seeing him blush.

“I’m just saying,” he said quickly, covering his embarrassment, “I don’t believe you’re a cynic. I do believe you’re trying to mess with us.”

Tryin’ he said. No g at the end. Nora liked the way he talked. The way he talked, the way he smiled, the way he looked at her as if he’d never seen anything like her before in his life and knew he wouldn’t see anything like her ever again so he better not look away in case he missed something.

“Little ole me? Mess with little ole you? Would I do something like that?”

“Yes,” the young man said nodding. “I think you would. Ma’am.”

In the back of her mind she heard Kingsley’s voice—This is a woman who can walk into any room, find the most handsome face in the crowd, look him in the eyes and know she will take him home with her on a leash.

Where was her leash when she needed it?

“What’s your name?” she asked Mr. Kentucky Blue with the gold flecks in his brown eyes and the summer in his hair.

“Wesley Railey. Everyone calls me Wes.”

“Stay after class,” she said to him.

“Am I in trouble?”

Nora smiled at him.

“Yes, Wes. Yes, you are.”

“Ms. Sutherlin?”

“What is it... Gary?”

“Geri. I’m a girl.”

“I don’t judge. What were you saying, Geri?” Nora asked, still not taking her eyes off Wesley. It was unreal how much she liked looking at him. She felt a little dizzy, a little wobbly, even happy. The hangover was long gone and something like the opposite of a hangover had taken its place. Somewhere in the distance she heard something. It sounded like a door opening. A door she hadn’t even known was there. She could walk through it and she’d find herself on a path in the country with rolling green hills to the left and a silver singing stream to the right and a yellow summer sun in the bright blue sky. She wondered where this path ended. Didn’t matter. No matter where it ended she knew she had to follow it.

“Ms. Sutherlin—you told me to remind you that you had something to do after class, and you shouldn’t be a pussy.”

“Forget it.”

“What?” Geri asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nora said to Geri.

“But Ms. Sutherlin—”

She smiled at Wesley. Wesley smiled back at her. Then for some reason he laughed. He laughed as if he could read her thoughts and knew the kind of trouble he was in was exactly the kind of trouble he wanted to be in.

As for whatever it was she was going to do after class...

“It can wait.”

37

Forever

Scotland

2015

“IT CAN’T WAIT,” Søren said.

The sun had fled the chapel entirely. Halfway through her story she’d had to find candles and matches and light them against the dark.

“What can’t wait?” she asked, studying Søren’s face. The anguish was still there. If only she knew how to ease it.

“You’ve told me your confession. Here is mine. While I was in Syria those four months, I was a ‘good’ priest. Chaste. Celibate. Exactly what the church wanted me to be. And, as I’d feared, it didn’t help. I might have been a ‘good’ priest but it didn’t make me a better priest. I thought of you and Kingsley constantly. The early church never intended for clergy to be celibate. Even that pompous ass Saint Paul said it was better to marry than to burn. While apart from you and Kingsley, I burned.”

Søren met her eyes and she saw cold fire blazing in them, a reflection of the candles against his steel-colored irises.

“I had a choice to make. Continue down this path, the path of chastity like the church demanded, and let my priesthood suffer. Or accept that the rule of celibacy was not something God wanted for us and break the vow. I am a better priest because of you and because of Kingsley. You both keep me humble.”

“We’re miracle workers then.”

“You are,” he said with a smile, quickly there, quickly gone. “In Syria, I had a revelation. I was angry at you. And not because you left me, not because you’d taken a path I didn’t approve of or gone somewhere I couldn’t follow. That you had topped Kingsley and hurt him behind my back...”

“You were mad at me because I was doing the very thing with Kingsley you wanted to do.”

“The very thing I wanted to do but I couldn’t let myself do it. I was terrified of hurting him like I did when we were in school together, terrified of ruining his life again like I’d done before. I was angry at you. I resented your freedom, your fearlessness. I resented your nights with Kingsley. They should have been my nights with Kingsley. I know I shut the door on being with him, but you two locked it from the inside.”

She knew he wasn’t speaking figuratively. The night of his Final Vows he’d come to Kingsley’s house. She’d heard something, something that had woken her up. Søren had come to Kingsley’s bedroom that night seeking them out and the door had been locked from the inside.

“You didn’t know. I didn’t even know how much I wanted to be with him again until I came home that night and you showed me the riding crop he’d given you to beat him with. It was my own fault. I was afraid of hurting Kingsley, and I hurt him far worse in the process of trying to protect him. All of this I realized while I was in Syria. And that’s when I made my decision.”

“What did you decide?” she asked, feeling the foundations of her world shiver at the revelation.

“I decided two things—I would ask you to come back to me and be mine again. And you could still be Mistress Nora and you could still work for Kingsley as long as you would give me your blessing, give us your blessing.”

“You wanted to be with Kingsley again.”

Søren nodded.

“My plane landed the day after Christmas. It hadn’t snowed, so I rode over and parked my motorcycle at the church on the corner of your street. I went into St. Luke’s and prayed that you would say yes and come back to me. I believed you would. I knew you would. I left my motorcycle in the church parking lot—I even locked it so you wouldn’t think I was an idiot.”

Nora remembered her first words she’d ever spoken aloud to him—“You’re kind of an idiot. You know that, right?” And all because he’d been too arrogant to put a lock on his motorcycle.