“Sorry. Church circle is in the morning. The ladies are making quilts to send to AIDS babies in the hospitals around the country.”
He regarded her with an amazed expression. “Whose idea was that?”
“Theirs, of course.”
“I’ll bet,” he muttered, but he was regarding her speculatively. “Something tells me you could sweet-talk a person into doing just about anything you had a mind to.”
“I’d like to think my powers of persuasion are well honed,” she agreed. “Now, about the trim on the barn. Dark green would look wonderful.”
“I was going to paint the whole thing white this time.”
Anna Louise shook her head. “Maisey and I saw a green and white barn over toward Orange one day. She commented then on how lovely it was. Said it reminded her of the way her place had been when your grandfather was alive.”
A look of resignation on his face, Richard turned to the clerk. “A gallon of green paint, too.”
“Forest green, moss green or lime?”
Richard looked to Anna Louise.
“Definitely forest green,” she said.
“Is that everything, then?” he inquired dryly.
“I’d say it’s enough to keep you busy for the next month.”
“Trying to keep me out of trouble, Pastor?”
“I did wonder what mischief you’d get into if left to your own devices,” she teased.
The look Richard directed at her sizzled straight through her. She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the sudden leap of her heart.
“You don’t want to know, Anna Louise,” he said solemnly, his gaze never wavering. “You definitely don’t want to know.”
Unfortunately, she had a very vivid idea and it scared the tarnation out of her.
CHAPTER FIVE
Anna Louise Perkins was certainly full of surprises, Richard decided, when he finally allowed himself to recall their last encounter in graphic detail. As he’d taunted her in the middle of the hardware store, there had been no mistaking the glint of fascination sparkling in her eyes.
He tallied the evidence—the faint flush in her cheeks, the slight curve of her mouth in what might have been the beginning of a smile. That warning he’d given her, that she didn’t want to know what was on his mind was the closest he’d come to one of his flip, flirtatious remarks.
Her reaction was all the more disconcerting because he suspected a woman in Anna Louise’s position had perfected the art of the withering glance. What he didn’t comprehend was why she hadn’t directed such a look at him. To his way of thinking, that failure to put him in his place made spending time around her doubly dangerous.
Because the first thing he knew, he’d be testing the limits. It was second nature to him. It had taken all of his willpower to get through dinner and a movie that night without stealing a simple kiss.
Heaven help him if she’d suddenly taken it in her head to test her own limits, as well. She wouldn’t be the first woman who had, but surely preachers didn’t do things like that, he reassured himself. For all of her outspoken certainty about the goodness of people, Anna Louise had clearly never run across a persuasive man whose intentions weren’t entirely honorable. If she’d been living as pure a lifestyle as he imagined, any experimentation would likely send them both up in flames.
He wondered about the quirky sense of fate that had plunked a woman like Anna Louise in his path. Perhaps it was simply some sort of divine test. So far he’d passed, but by the slimmest of margins. Anna Louise might credit everyone with the potential for sainthood, but he knew better, especially about himself.
Over the past few years he had learned to take comfort and passion where he could find it. The women he’d known had shared that terrible sense of desperation that made two people cling to one another through long, lonely, frightening nights without sparing a thought for tomorrow. Anna Louise, to the contrary, was all about tomorrows.
It was fortunate, he told himself as he slapped the first coat of paint on the side of the barn, that she wasn’t his type at all. She was bossy, for one thing. Smug, for another. And she was too damned insightful. She’d been able to read him from practically the first moment they’d met. A man needed the comfort of knowing that some of his secrets were safe. With Anna Louise that wasn’t likely. If she didn’t guess them, she’d wheedle them out of him.
Fortunately he had recognized right off—okay, not in the orchard, but right after he’d seen her behind that pulpit, anyway—that they were about as suited as oil and water. Just as fortunately, she didn’t strike him as the sort of woman who was looking for a man to fill in the empty space in her life. She might be looking to add a little spice to her humdrum existence, but the bottom line was that Anna Louise was downright self-contained.
Frankly, he found that to be one of the most disconcerting aspects to her personality. He’d known a lot of independent women in his time, but none had radiated quite the same self-awareness and contentment that Anna Louise projected. He was hardpressed to define the difference, but he suspected it had something to do with being spiritually centered the way she was. Her faith was strong and, as far as he knew, had never been sorely tested as his had been time and again.
That unshakable faith, of course, was something he didn’t expect ever to understand. He had a better chance of grasping quantum physics.
Giving up even a passing attempt at figuring out what made Anna Louise tick, he forced his attention back to painting. He was glad now that Anna Louise had prodded him into buying more paint than he’d thought he needed. The wood was slurping it up faster than he could coat it on. He’d be lucky to get by with two coats at this rate.
While he painted, he kept a wary eye out for
