Free Queen Bee Goes Home Again by Haywood Smith Page B

“You don’t mean to tell me that you and Julia … you know.”
    Tommy nodded with a smug smile. “Oh, yes, siree. Not recently, mind you. But for one spectacular summer when she was between husbands, she took me to places I had never been, for which I will be eternally grateful.”
    I covered my face with my hands. “TMI, TMI!” The thought of my brother and Julia doing the nasty … Please, mind, do not go there!
    Tommy let out an exasperated sigh. “You are still such a prude.”
    â€œYes, I am,” I shot back, “and I’d like to keep it that way.”
    He sent me a smug sidelong glance as he got up to leave. “Just wait’ll God sends you a man who rings your chimes, and talk to me then.”
    â€œI am done with all that, and good riddance,” I said. Despite my failed marriage, I had very high standards, which had doomed the three relationships I’d tried since my divorce. Was it wrong of me to want a kind, intelligent, decent Christian man who wasn’t totally self-absorbed or obsessed with alcohol or sex?
    Tricia had said I wasn’t being realistic, but I’d rather have no man than a bad one, so there you are.
    Then I met Connor Allen.

 
    Nine
    I got up early, took a cool shower, then caught my chin-length blond hair back with combs and scrunched it well in back till it curled and dried, which didn’t take long in the air-conditioning. I fluffed it into soft curls with an Afro pick, then dressed as nicely as I could, considering the thermometer. Customers and clients treated me with more respect when I dressed professionally, so I left the house in lightweight Chico’s black travel pants, a white cotton camisole over an industrial-strength bra, a pink silk overshirt, and black sandals.
    Pulling into the brokerage’s parking lot at five till nine, I saw a gray Taurus with North Carolina plates parked next to Julia’s Cadillac SUV.
    Rats. He’d beaten me there.
    I summoned my inner duchess, then sailed into the office.
    Standing there beside Julia was one of the best-looking, kindest-looking older men I’d ever seen in my life.
    He was tall and slim, just as I liked. His neatly cut hair was purest white, but his intense blue eyes and expression were young with the twinkle of a mischievous little boy.
    He stared right back at me with unveiled assessment.
    Then he broke into a million-dollar smile and offered me his hand. “Julia,” he said, his eyes still on mine, “you didn’t tell me my agent was going to be so beautiful.”
    His grip was firm and didn’t let go, and that voice … low and smooth and cultured, but still Southern.
    I blushed like a girl from the top of my camisole to my hairline. “And you didn’t tell me our buyer was so good-looking,” I said, then thought better of it. This was business, not a flirtation.
    With my track record, he was probably the latest in a long line of jerks. But hubba hubba, was he a gorgeous one.
    Chemistry. Serious chemistry.
    What was I doing feeling chemistry at this stage of my life?
    â€œLin Scott, this is Connor Allen,” Julia introduced. “Connor, Lin will be showing you the best of our local listings.” Smug as a monk on a keg of wine, Julia revealed, “Connor has been called as the new pastor for Mimosa Branch First Baptist. He starts work in two weeks, so we need to get him into the perfect house right away.”
    I almost choked. A minister, and a Baptist one, at that?
    Baptist ministers didn’t date divorced women. Usually, they wouldn’t go anywhere with a single woman unchaperoned, much less a grass widow like me.
    My brain started cussing up a storm, but I managed to reduce it to rats . Just rats !
    Frozen chosen Presbyterian or Episcopalian would have been fine, even Methodist, but why did he have to be a Baptist ?
    I could hear laughter echoing from heaven, and I didn’t think it