Threat of Darkness(72)

 Something about that delighted him—did it demonstrate a desire, perhaps, to impress? Davis thought of the striking contrast she presented to his own appearance, her light against his dark… .

 With a start, he realized that he now stood within a foot of her. Close enough to note the fine pores of her creamy pink skin, the indentations that her heavy glasses pressed into the almost-nonexistent bridge of her button nose, and the plump, rose perfection of her lips. He was shocked to find that his heartbeat had accelerated.

 Prudently, he stepped back. To cover his own agitation, he opened the passenger door of his coupe and swept her a bow. “Allow me.”

 She blinked. “What? Uh, a-aren’t we going into your office?”

 “Unfortunately my office is in the parsonage,” he told her, nodding toward the small white house tucked into the corner of the lot. “I thought we’d find someplace warm and public to talk.”

 After several seconds of wide-eyed contemplation, she gave her pointy little chin a nod. In one long, fluid motion, she slipped around the opened car door and down into the bucket seat, tucking her skirt beneath her. He hurried around to drop behind the steering wheel. Only as they drove toward downtown did he release the breath that he had been holding.

* * *

 “Where are we going?” Becca asked.

 He drove a bit fast, manipulating the gears of the sleek car with practiced ease, but that was not why she stared straight ahead. She dared not look at him. He was that handsome—mesmerizing almost—with refined features in a rectangular face of strong, square planes and the lightest, bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Oddly, those ice-blue eyes were anything but cold. They seemed backlit with an inner fire that drew her like a moth to a flame.

 “We’re already here,” he announced, slowing to turn left across the oncoming traffic lane and into a parking space in front of the Garden of Eden Café.

 The diner happened to be one of Becca’s favorite places, but she rarely enjoyed its eccentric ambience because of her grandmother. In order to accommodate the wheelchair, they had to move tables and create a general fuss that embarrassed both Becca and her grandmother. But her grandmother wasn’t with her today, so she was delighted that Davis had brought her here. She allowed him to help her out of the car and usher her inside, where red tabletops and the speckled, white vinyl seats of black steel chairs combined with knotty pine walls, a black concrete floor and an old-fashioned soda bar to charm and beckon.

 The proprietor, Lola Mae Hanover, nodded to them from the back corner table as she poured coffee from a steel pot into the cups of the Jefford brothers, Holt and Ryan. Ryan was the assistant principal at the high school where Becca taught. She blushed, recalling that he’d had to step in to calm her rowdy class the day before. That last class of a Friday afternoon could always be counted on to act up, and she could never seem to control them.

 Both men nodded in greeting as Davis steered her toward a table across the room, where he pulled out a chair for her.

 “Any idea what you’d like to eat?” he asked, shrugging out of his coat.

 She clasped her hands together beneath the table. “I’m not particular.”

 He took a seat across from her. “I’m fond of the chili myself, but then I have a cast-iron stomach, as my mother would say. I’ve met your mother, by the way, and your father.”

 “Oh?” Then she thought of her father’s pharmacy across the street. “You must have seen her in the pharmacy. She’s been working more the last week, with my sister on vacation.”

 Davis smiled. “Ah, yes, the sunny climes of Mexico. How glad I am that she’s there and not you.”

 Becca blushed to the roots of her hair. Thankfully, Ryan chose that moment to stop by the table.

 “Hello, Pastor. Becca, I’m surprised to see you out and about on a Saturday. I know how your grandmother hates to be left alone when you’re not working.” A big, authoritative man with an easy manner and kind smile, Ryan winked at Davis. “Takes a man with clout to get her out and away from Grandma Taylor.” He turned for the door, grinning. “Enjoy,” he called over his shoulder.

 Davis laughed and leaned his elbows on the table, bright eyes glowing. “I must have more influence in heavenly realms than I know, but I’m not sure I’ve met this formidable Grandma Taylor of yours.”

 “Grandma was paralyzed from the waist down in a car wreck that killed my grandfather,” Becca explained.

 Davis leaned closer. “I’m so sorry.”