Page 13 of Bows & Eros
"I spoke to the pastor!" Ethan boomed, bringing down the volume on the crowd. Dozens of expectant eyes turned to him, blinking in anticipation. "If you just file into the church and sit in the pews, we will make a list and see that you are all serviced!"
"Ethan!" I hissed over the pastor's moan of distress.
He turned over his shoulder and tossed me a quick wink, then left us to start herding the would-be-wedded couples into the church like they were cows going into a barn. He even managed to catch a few stragglers on the outside, tucking them back into the group and pushing them into the sanctuary to be seated.
"Will they all fit?" I asked the pastor, who nodded, still aware enough to give me a look of reproach.
"Of course they will," he sniffed, straightening his posture and tugging at his tie. "We could manage a congregation twice that size!"
Ethan reappeared, jogging over the snowfall to us, his cheeks pink with exertion. "We're going to snap them out of it," he said to the pastor. "They will be confused and embarrassed but still uh ... really, really into one another. You can probably talk them out of eloping right this minute once they've got more sense."
"How?" My brow was knitted into a handful of unsightly wrinkles, and I was doing my best not to chew my bottom lip raw.
"The sprinkler system," Ethan said with a wide grin. "We'll get them all a little damp, which will be very unpleasant in this cold, even if they're bundled up. Splashes of water worked with the kids, didn't it? We just need to move anything fragile out of the line of fire so it isn't damaged first. Pastor, do you have a lighter?"
"I ..." The pastor swallowed with effort. "I do. For the incense, you know."
"Mm," I agreed, knowing very damn well that he enjoyed a cigar in the evenings.
"If we set off the alarms, they'll send a fire engine," Ethan continued, clearly excited by his idea. "So no one will freeze to death if they don't snap into sense. We'll have help herding people to where they need to go."
I stared at him, running the idea through in my head. It was perfect. Brilliant.
"Ethan," I said, grabbing either side of his face with my gloved hands and giving him a hard, firm kiss right on his mouth, "you are a genius."
I turned back to the pastor before I could witness any reaction to my behavior, which was obviously more than a little inappropriate. "Are you on board with this?"
He nodded, relief pushing its way into the wrinkles of utter exhaustion in his face. "Yes, of course," he said. "Anything that gets wet can be replaced. Hopefully all the bodies in the pews will shelter them from the brunt of it."
"Once that is done, we need your help," I said to him, looping an arm around his middle to urge him toward the church doors. "We're looking for a little boy who ran off in the confusion this morning. Have there been any children here today?"
"His boy?" Pastor Dan asked, nodding toward Ethan. "Yes. Aaron was here with one of the witnesses for the Mayflower-Hubble wedding. He was their ring bearer!"
Ethan pulled his hat off and ran a hand through his mussed hair, his face unreadable. His voice, however, was stony. "Who was the witness?"
"Oh, I'll have to look at the papers," said Pastor Dan, leading us through the aisle between the gaggle of wedding seekers and toward his office in the back. "Rather dapper fellow. Curly hair. Nice suit."
"Oh," I said over Ethan's irritated groan.
"I believe they went for pancakes afterward," the pastor continued, rummaging around in his desk for the lighter. "Aaron was singing the praises of the diner's chocolate chip blueberry stack."
"Damn. We should have gone to the diner," I said, turning to give an apologetic shrug to Ethan. "You were right."
Ethan glanced outside the window at the snow and frowned. "Pastor Dan," he said cautiously. "I don't suppose we could ... borrow your truck? Once we've dealt with your problem?"
He turned to me. "We arenotwalking."
"Fine."
The pastor was more than happy to toss us his keys, given that we stayed until the sprinklers had stopped and we could see the result. It was a fair exchange.
We huddled into the coat closet in his office while Ethan handed us his boots and climbed onto the pastor's desk in his mismatched striped socks and held the lighter up to one of the sprinklers.
All at once, the water had started to fall and cries of surprise began to ring out from the sanctuary only to be drowned out by the high squeal of the fire alarm. I felt the pastor's posture go slack next to me, a dry chuckle of something like relief escaping his narrow chest. Ethan wedged his way into the closet with us, though he was already wet, his hair matted to his forehead in spikes of golden blond.
It only took a few minutes for the sounds of the fire truck sirens to reach us. Mercifully,thosepublic servants had stayed at their posts. We three exchanged glances, waiting for the torrent of water to stop, and for some reason, as we did, a ripple of real, hysterical laughter rippled through that closet. The three of us laughed and laughed and laughed, the way you might laugh after narrowly avoiding certain death.
I sank down to sit, holding my knees as tears pricked at my eyes. I didn't even know what I was laughing at, but it felt like a release, like something I couldn't stop even if I really, really wanted to.
