Husband Potential

“No. Phone him in a week. He should be better by then.”

“I hope it’s not serious.”

“I shouldn’t think so.” He turned his back on her, no doubt signaling that this meeting had come to an end. Oddly enough she didn’t want to go. The monks fascinated her, especially this one. His short-cropped hair looked boyish from the back. She tried to imagine him in jeans and T-shirt, his hair a normal length.

“I thought Trappist monks took vows of silence, the Abbot being the exception to handle the public, of course. Why is it that you can talk to me?”

“Though the brothers find excessive conversation unnecessary, the vow of total silence is a myth,” came the even reply over his broad shoulder.

Fran didn’t know that.

“If it’s true, could I interview you while you work? Or is the Abbot the only one allowed to talk to women?”

“If that were the case, I wouldn’t be speaking to you now,” he answered quietly. Too quietly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that comment to sound provocative.”

Suddenly he turned and faced her once more. “Why apologize?”

At the boldness of his question, she had no comeback because a river of heat unexpectedly coursed through her body.

“You’re not the first curious woman to cross over this threshold, intrigued by a man’s decision to remain celibate. No doubt someone with your looks would find that decision incomprehensible.”

“My looks?” She could feel her indignation kindling.

“Come now, Ms. Mallory. You know very well your impact on a man, otherwise you would have framed your question differently.” His gaze dropped lower. “You would have dressed in something less appealing. Only a woman with your kind of confidence lets nothing get in her way, not even the indisposition of Father Ambrose.”

If she were a violent person, she would have slapped him. “I’m not surprised you’ve ended up in here, shut away from the world. Only God would be able to forgive your arrogance, not to mention your colossal rudeness to a stranger.”

“You’ve left out a number of my major sins. In any event, I apologize for offending you.”

“You don’t talk like a monk.”

His hands stilled on the counter. “How does a monk talk?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. She had never known one. Paul had arranged things with the Abbot. In her opinion they were a different breed of men, wanting to be cloistered away from the world to worship.

“I’m sorry if I’ve shattered your illusions, but monks are ordinary people of flesh and blood. In some cases they’re just as prone to flaws as the rest of the world.”

“So I’m discovering.” His frankness had come as a complete shock. “Is that what you want me to include in my article?” she challenged when she could find her voice.

“What I want is immaterial. Without Father Ambrose’s consent, there won’t be one.”

“And if you could influence his decision, he wouldn’t agree to make another appointment. It may interest you to know that I was sent on this assignment because a colleague from the magazine doing this part of the layout is ill with the flu. I didn’t come here with the intention of giving sex-starved celibates their thrill for the morning.”

With her cheeks glowing hot she added, “Judging by your reaction, it appears my presence has titillated you. No doubt your tortured conscience will force you to give yourself some sort of penance which you richly deserve.”

At the entry to the room she paused to shift her camera to her other shoulder. “Tell the Abbot that someone from the magazine will call to make another appointment. Have a good day.”

She overcame the urge to slam the door in his face, then left the monastery without looking back. Her joy in the beauty of the morning had evaporated as if it had never been.

Andre Benet could smell the faint scent of peaches from her shampoo which lingered in the air after she stormed out of the gift shop.

He’d been rude to her. Exceedingly rude, yet he couldn’t summon any guilt. She wasn’t that different from his own birth mother, a woman who lit her own fires. A bewitching woman who went where angels feared to tread and never counted the cost.

His own mother had known of his father’s proclivity for the priesthood, yet she’d tempted him before he’d gone away. Andre had been the result.

He wondered if it was a coincidence that Ms. Mallory had worn a peach-colored, two-piece suit. Even her skin had the proverbial peaches and cream glow. Combine this with gossamer hair, and no man would be totally immune, not even a monk, and she knew it!

Apparently his mother had possessed that same kind of haunting beauty and allure. Enough for his father to sleep with her one more time before he went his separate way.

Andre understood that kind of desire well enough. If he were an artist, he wouldn’t be able to resist capturing the vision of Ms. Mallory on canvas. But he wasn’t an artist, and certainly no monk.

As far as he knew, he had no particular talents. Orphaned at birth, he’d been raised in New Orleans by his Aunt Maudelle, an embittered but basically good woman who worked as a seamstress.

Enamored of the big boats traveling up and down the Mississippi, he had left home in his teens to see the world, working on freighters in various capacities until he’d become a merchant seaman.

In time he became good friends with a Swiss who spoke four languages fluently. Envious of his friend’s ability, Andre enrolled at the university in Zurich where he studied German and French along with history. Though he could have gone into teaching with his degree, Andre returned to the sea, a job that allowed him latitude to keep on the move.

He stayed in touch with Maudelle and always sent her money. On the rare occasion, he came home to New Orleans for a short visit, but nothing could anchor his soul or curb his restlessness, certainly not a wife. Females were to be enjoyed, nothing more. Maudelle despaired of his attitude and prayed daily for his spiritual welfare.

He always laughed, but his amusement had vanished when a month ago a close friend of his aunt’s actually spent the money to phone him aboard ship along the Bosporus and beg him to come home. His aunt was ill.

Andre had a gut feeling it might be fatal. Taking the next flight out of Ankara, Turkey, he found her on the point of death. Though he had never been a churchgoer and had no religious views, he knew she was a good Catholic so he called her parish for someone to come and administer the last rites.

While he held her hand and waited for a priest to appear, Maudelle began her confession. He had heard of deathbed repentance, but he’d never given it any thought. Not until certain revelations began pouring from her mouth.

Her confession had turned Andre’s life inside out and had brought him to Salt Lake City, Utah, a place he had always thought of as the back of beyond, a wasteland the hated Mormon Pioneers of the 1840s had been driven to found during America’s Western Expansion, a place no one else on earth wanted.

Andre loved the water.

The great Salt Lake Desert with its great Salt Sea was anathema to him. Yet here he was on temporary leave from his job…a stranger in a strange land…living in undreamed-of circumstances.

He could scarcely credit that he was really alive, except for the lingering scent of peaches which was a powerful reminder of his mortality. And, of course, the ailing monk lying down in his cell-like room at the other end of the sanctuary. A monk known to the world as Abbot Ambrose, Andre’s biological father, born Charles Ambrose sixty-six years earlier to parents of English and French heritage.

According to Father Joseph, recurring bouts of pneumonia had aged his father a good ten years. The gaunt, frail monk was a shell of his former self.

As Andre let himself inside the room, his father turned his head and stared up at him. “Did you show the journalist around?”

“No. I told her you’d be better in a week. You’ve spent your life’s work building this monastery to what it is today. No one else should give her your story but you.”

His father lifted his hand. “I have done nothing. It is all God’s handiwork, my son.”

“Whatever you say, Father. Nevertheless, we’ll let you get your strength back so you can be the one to guide the interview.”

“I won’t recover this time.”

“Nonsense,” Andre snapped. To lose the father he had just found, the parent he desperately wanted and needed to get to know, was killing him. “I’m sending an ambulance for you. You should be in a hospital and waited on.”