The Rebel and His Bride Read Free Page B

to give him what he needed to feel complete?

TWO
    “Yes, Mrs. Clarke,” Gregory said into the phone. “I’ll be by the hospital this evening, then … I know you’re exhausted … I’ll sit with him a while so you—Yes, I’ll be sure to bring my Bible. I know what his favorite passages—Of course, Mrs. Clarke. You’ve been wonderful to—Yes, tonight, then.”
    Hanging up the telephone, he turned back to the half-melted dish of ice cream on his desk. He met Annabelle’s questioning gaze. “Maurice and Addie Clarke,” he explained. “Mo broke his hip in a tractor accident last week and Addie hasn’t left his side—much to his dismay, I think. She stays with him every minute and refuses to leave his room unless someone else comes in to sit with him.”
    “So you graciously volunteer to rescue him from her overzealous attentions?”
    “Something like that. Addie means well. She feels it is her Christian duty as a wife to wait on him hand and foot.”
    “Whether he wants it or not,” Annabelle said with a small smile. “The way you say the words
Christian duty
says a lot.”
    Gregory sighed. “Too many acts of charity are done piously and reluctantly—and often loudly—in the name of Christian duty. Charity should be freely given. And quietly given.”
    “You mean you should hide your light under a bushel?”
    “Too many people set the whole bushel basket on fire.” He licked a drop of melted ice cream from the back of his spoon. “Good point for a sermon,” he said suddenly, putting his spoon down. He grabbed a pencil and jotted a few quick notes, then looked up at Annabelle with a sheepish expression. “Sorry, but I don’t often get ideas for sermons ahead of time. I usually spend the Saturday before stewing over them.”
    “You always did like to put everything off until the last minute.” Her face softened with memories. “I remember one research paper for your environmental studies class, I think it was, that you basically wrote the night before it was due. You finished it about dawn.”
    Gregory remembered that one too. He’d planned on writing it a week or two ahead of time, but his relationship with Annabelle had been newly serious and he’d been too intrigued with the physicalpassion between them to think about something as mundane as how to repair the pollution damage to the Chesapeake Bay.
    No, intrigued wasn’t quite the right word, he thought. Besotted was more like it. He’d been besotted with her, the way her hair had looked spread over his blue-striped pillowcase, the way she’d felt beneath his hands, the way she’d tasted, the little sounds she’d made in the back of her throat when he’d made love to her.…
    “Gregory?”
    He looked up. “What? Oh, sorry. I was lost in thought again.”
    “Tomorrow’s sermon or next week’s?”
    Neither. His thoughts had been as far from a sermon as they could get. He drew in a deep breath. “Uh, next week’s, I think. I’ve almost finished tomorrow’s.” He wondered how Annabelle would feel beneath his hands now? There was an enticing new roundness to her curves that fascinated him.
    “And about what subject are you going to enlighten us tomorrow?” she asked.
    He was careful to keep his gaze above her chin. “Deciding whether or not to ditch church?”
    “What, me? I wouldn’t miss a chance to see you in your native habitat.” She fished the last bit of praline topping from the bottom of her bowl, then stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankles.
    Gregory’s gaze locked on her long tanned legs.Heaven help him, he could remember so vividly the way they would lock around his hips in passion. He lifted his gaze back to her chin, clenching and unclenching his fists before saying evenly, “There’s a little ice cream left. Since it’s your favorite, do you want it?”
    “Oh no. I couldn’t eat another bite.” She leaned back in her chair, the movement pulling at the buttons on her pink-flowered