Page 15 of Sin With Me

“Yes. A holy man. A priest.”

Was he teasing me, or was he really that naive about the trouble his handsome looks could actually cause?

“But I’m already covered.”

“You need to cover up more,” I said, and then passed him the clerical collar as well. “You shouldn’t forget to wear this, either.”

Why was he looking at me with so much curiosity?

“How did you manage to get any work done in this heat?” he asked, and I relaxed as the topic shifted away from my sweaty armpits and his hotbody.

“Ice cream. Lots of ice cream. Where did you learn about air-conditioning?” I set his cup of coffee in front of him at the corner of mydesk.

“Thank you. It was one of the few jobs I did when I was a teenager.”

“Hard-working since the young years?” I hoped he’d share a little bit more about himself. He didn’t seem to talk about his childhood a lot. In fact, he’d barely talked about himself when we were at the Bistro.

“It kept me out of trouble. My father…” he paused, a little saddened. “He’s a great man. He taught uswell.”

A soft smile caught the corner of his mouth, and I wondered what memory had brought it on. When Father Cameron mentioned his father, I felt a sense of painfulloss.

“Us?” I asked.

“Yes, I have three younger brothers. Brook could be my twin. There are only eleven months betweenus.”

Another hot-looking priest?

“We’re all close, though. My youngest brother, Dean, is only four years my junior. He and Jax are as close as me and Brook. We’re sort of like two sets of twins.”

Father Cameron glowed when talking about his brothers. It was special, and I had a feeling that I was seeing a rare moment of his vulnerability. I wondered what had brought on the sudden nostalgia. Seeing him as a commoner, a normal person, gave me a new perspective. Father Cameron took another sip of his coffee and closed his eyes. For a moment, I thought he was lost in prayer, and I didn’t want to interrupt until he opened them again, as if a revelation had come through.

“Your mother must be a strong and very patient woman. Four kids in four years, that’s pretty impressive.”

He smiled with pride. “She’s one of the strongest and most resilient women Iknow.”

I pictured her pushing a stroller every Sunday morning when the family went to church. Brook and the second youngest brother would still be sleeping in their seats while little Cameron walked beside his mother, holding onto the stroller’s handle. He would continuously peek past his mother at the highest point in town, the church cross. Dean would be riding on the rear supporting step, trying to see over the stroller’s hood. It was a nice picture that I’d painted in my mind. I’d never had any siblings. At least, none that I’d met. My baby brother had died before I was evenborn.

“My parents live separately now. Even though they had a complicated relationship, they also made sure that we never felt their problems.”

“Oh, they’re divorced?” That part wasn’t in my picture. It’d never even crossed my mind that a priests’ parents were divorced.

“Yes.”

“Your faith, where did that come from, then? How does thatwork?”

He lifted his chin and our gazes connected. I saw a gazillion questions written on his face and gasped. Would he ask me about my past? Could I tell him the truth? And if not, how could I keep my secrets hidden from a priest?

“My father,” he simply replied, “What about your family? I noticed you don’t have any intown.”

There it was. I took a deep breath and meticulously went over the words I chose next. Telling him too much would be disastrous not only for me but also for him. Being on a crime family’s most wanted list didn’t exactly screamsafe.

“I was a single child,” Isaid.

Father Cameron looked at me inquisitively, like the caring priest that he was. He could probably tell that I wasn’t telling him everything, which I wasn’t. That’s how I knew that in order to keep him off my back, I needed to tell him some more. “My mother is recovering from heart surgery.”

“Oh, that’s serious. Is she all right?”

“Yes, thank you. She’s under good care. I think she might have died of a broken heart if the surgery hadn’t been successful.”

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