Threat of Darkness(74)

 So clearly there was no way she could be the regular pianist for the Magnolia church. And that’s exactly what she would tell Davis. Really, she should not be inside more than ten minutes.

 She had hardly set her foot upon the porch step, however, when two identical young women with the same glossy dark chocolate hair as the pastor emerged from the house. Both wore jeans, one with a purple sweater and matching socks, the other with a rumpled T-shirt and bare feet. They smiled in tandem.

 “You must be Becca!” exclaimed one.

 “How put together you are for so early on a Saturday morning!” exclaimed the other.

 Becca barely had time to glance down at her corduroy jacket and pleated, khaki slacks before they reached out eager arms and whisked her inside. Their eyes, she noted, were a light blue like Davis’s, but without the warm glow that his seemed to possess.

 “We’re Caylie and Carlie,” said the purple sweater, not bothering to differentiate who was which.

 “Davis is making breakfast,” said the other. “He says you play and sing like a professional.”

 “And he would know,” remarked the first.

 “My, yes, given the musical genes in our family DNA.”

 “All of my family has remarkable talent but me,” declared the object of their discourse. Standing with spatula in hand in the open archway between the small, sparsely furnished living room and an old-fashioned eat-in kitchen, he welcomed her with a smile. Clad in jeans and a dark blue knit pullover with long sleeves pushed up to the elbows, his face cleanly shaven, he quite literally took Becca’s breath away—which meant that she stood there like a dummy, as per usual. “My inability to carry a tune,” he went on cheerfully, “no doubt accounts for my winding up in the church. I had to do something.”

 The twins pooh-poohed that as they trundled her into the kitchen, parked her at the square oak table, served her coffee and inquired how she preferred her eggs.

 “Oh, I’m not particular.”

 “Over easy it is,” Davis decided, standing at the stove, his back to her.

 The twins groaned. Becca quickly recanted. “Scrambled, perhaps?”

 With the twins clamoring approval, he turned a look over his shoulder, his electric ice-blue eyes dancing.

 “I like your hair down.”

 She tried not to gasp, one hand touching the recalcitrant curls. In deference to the early hour, she’d originally caught the lot of it at her nape, but the clip had burst open on the drive over and now lay hidden under one of the seats. Cheeks blazing, she ducked her head in embarrassment as Davis and the twins went about preparing the remainder of their breakfast.

 Soon the table had been laid with napkins and flatware, as well as platters of crisp bacon and toast and tubs of butter and jelly. Davis turned to the table, four plates in hand.

 “Scrambled, for the ladies,” he said, handing off the appropriate plates before placing his own before the empty chair to Becca’s left. “And over easy for the man of the house.” He wiggled his dark eyebrows at Becca. “It takes a real man to eat half-cooked eggs.”

 She recognized with a shock her own laughter among the “eww” and “yuck” of the twins. Then they linked hands around the table and bowed their heads.

 “Father God, I praise You,” Davis prayed. “Thank You for Your many blessings, among them this town, the church, my sisters and Becca. Bless this food from Your bounty to the nourishment of our bodies, and forgive me for pressuring this dear lady to take the position of pianist to satisfy my own selfish ends.” He squeezed her hand and leaned so close that their heads nearly touched. “You will, won’t you?”

 The refusal that she’d painstakingly practiced fled her tongue. What could she say? Taking a deep breath, she looked up into those luminescent blue eyes. “I’ll try my best.”

 “We’ll pray you through it,” he promised, holding her hand so tightly it seemed welded to his. “Amen!”

 The twins began to eat amid much chatter. “We’re so glad! Honestly, he’s helpless on his own. Mother says Joshua is even worse, which is why he’s married already.”

 “Our brother,” Davis clarified, using a fork to smash his eggs into a runny pulp. “He’s twenty-five.”

 “The same as my Barry,” Caylie announced happily. “I think twenty-five is a good age for a man to marry, don’t you?”

 “So is twenty-eight,” Davis said with a shrug, “or thirty-three or fifty. The only bad age to marry is too young.”