Page 5 of Intimately Faithful

Discarding the coat on the front pew, she joined it with the hat and scarf, finally able to breathe. Next she checked the baby was still sleeping and decided to leave her snuggled in the carrying wrap.

It was a barricade of sorts, against her beating heart and the man in front of her.

She couldn’t believe she was standing in Danny’s church of all places.

When she’d heard years ago that he’d gone into ministering, she thought it was a joke at first. The Danny Murphy she’d once known was as far from Godly as a boy could be.

But that was then, and this is now.

There was a whole lifetime of space in between them. Lots of details she didn’t know about now that she ached to find out about him.

She breathed slowly and though she tried to smile, it didn’t truly reach her face.

She was tired and hungry.

“I can’t think of one thing to say,” he spoke and his voice as deep as the ocean and melodic as it was rough went through her fast as air.

She shuddered and looked up finally into those piercing eyes.

“Can I ask what’s wrong?”

That was just like Danny, she thought.

He’d been a rascal from a young age but always there if anyone needed help.Her especially. He’d helped her younger self so much that he’d earned hero status at age five.

He’d been saving her in one way or another her whole life.

She wondered why he could still appear so kind to her?

If the shoe were on the other foot could she be this magnanimous? Probably not. She got her wild hair and even wilder temperwhen provokedfrom her granny Aileen. Had it been Danny to do the dirty on her, she would have punched him if he turned up on her doorstep as she’d just done.

But then, she’d always known he was the better of the two of them.

Aoife longed to sit. It felt like she’d been walking for hours, the snow on the ground not making it easier for the ten mile or so distance she’d traveled. She wanted a hot cup of tea, a plate of biscuits … or cookies as they called them here … and a warm bed so she could sleep for a month.

When was her last good night’s sleep? Forever ago.

“Do you think … maybe I could get that cup of tea?”

She was stalling. She knew it, and from the look Danny gave her, he knew it too, but thankfully didn’t push.

With her arms around the baby she followed behind him slowly, trying without success not to take a minute to gulp in the man he’d become.

He’d always been big built, even at sixteen he stood shoulders above all the other men in their small town in Galway. His hair was shorter then, it still looked like he dragged his fingers through it a thousand times a day. Silver on his hand caught her attention … was it? Oh dear God, he still had the silver thumb ring she’d bought for his sixteenth birthday.

Her heart took off in a sprint, rattling around in her rib cage, almost as if a wild animal was chasing her.

Fatigue dogged her slow steps and she stopped behind him, noticing how good the jeans fitted his long legs and the way the black T-shirt formed to his arms and chest.

Who was he holding with those strong arms now?

Banishing crazy thoughts from her mind, she cleared her throat, aching to sit and lessen the pain from the blister on her ankle. It would have only taken a second to stop for a bandage. A simple task to stop the pain and bleeding in its tracks, but for some reason, all the crap she’d gone through this week, and everything that came before it, the blister represented her choices.

She deserved the pain and suffering.

In a way she felt dead and desensitized to the world she now lived in.

Her choices were not good ones, but she’d had to own them, or they would have consumed her whole a long time ago.

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