She was jolted out of her pleasant daze and back into the world of reality. "Because … because any feelings I might develop for such a man would confuse me."
"Why?"
She ignored his question and asked the one that had plagued her for days. "Ian, why did you become a minister?"
He signaled for coffee. The waiter obliged. After a thoughtful sip, he began. "After I graduated from Columbia, I joined the Peace Corps. It began as a lark, a frivolous whim. I had graduated with a degree in business. My father hoped I'd take over his business, but I stalled, unconvinced that was what I wanted to do with my life. The Peace Corps was a way of buying time without looking lazy or unambitious." He grinned, and even in the dim lighting his teeth shone. The candles on the table were mirrored in his eyes.
"I went to South America for two years. Without boring you with the details, I can say that my outlook on life changed while I was there. We, or I should stress I, had always taken my standard of living for granted. Food, warmth, and medicine if I was sick were elemental things to me but luxuries to so many other people. The hopelessness of the people affected me most of all.
"I came back filled with a zeal to be a foreign missionary. I attended seminary. It was exciting to me, Shay. For the first time I felt I really knew what I wanted to do with my life. B
ut I had a terrible time with languages. I had learned enough conversational Spanish to get by in South America, but as for reading and writing it properly, I was unteachable. I agonized for months. Why had God filled me with such a determination to do something, only to make it impossible for me to accomplish it?"
Without thinking, Shay covered his fingers with hers. He turned his hand over and captured hers, squeezing lightly. "One day while I was still in the seminary, a friend of my mother's came to me in tears, crying for her husband who was an alcoholic. We prayed together. I counseled her and finally managed to see the husband and talk to him. After several such occasions, when I was able to help the people I related to, it occurred to me that God was trying to tell me something."
Ian seemed embarrassed by his simplistic explanation. "You don't have to go halfway around the world to find suffering and need," he went on. "My congregation may have more amenities than their counterparts in an Indian village in South America can imagine, but spiritual deficiency is universal. It knows no boundaries—not geographical, not social, not economical." His eyes begged for her understanding. "Have I answered your question?"
She nodded without speaking. Yes, he had answered her question. She understood him better now and was faced with a bleak truth. She, Shay Morrison, had no calling like Ian did. She could share nothing of his life. She couldn't be even a small part of it.
Ian consulted his watch and winced. "Can you forgo dessert until after the concert? If we don't hurry, Neil and Barbra will start without us."
They arrived just in time, plopping breathlessly into their seats after dashing down two blocks.
The concert was excellent. They applauded when encouraged to, laughing from the sheer pleasure they derived from the music. More than once Ian brought his fingers to his lips and piercingly whistled his approval of the performers.
Catching her wide, dismayed eyes on him, he leaned down and shouted in her ear over the roar of the crowd, "Don't look so shocked. I don't do that from the pulpit." He winked at her and threw an arm around her shoulders, hugging her tight.
During the poignant ballads, he held her hand, stroking her palm with his thumb. After one song with particularly romantic lyrics, the spotlight gradually faded to black. Ian reached over, threaded his fingers through her hair, and turned her toward him. Their mouths found each other in the total darkness.
His tongue barely breached her lips to touch the tip of hers, but she felt its caress deep inside her. Pinpricks of desire between her thighs brought a soft moan to her lips, a moan he captured with his mouth. Her breasts swelled with awakening passion. Her nipples tingled with expectation.
She knew then that what she'd felt with Anson had been the sensual enlightenment of a curious youth not far from her teens. What she felt for Ian was the strong, passionate drive of a woman, mature, full of need, wanting to share her body with a man who felt the same instinctive compulsion to be made complete by joining with another.
They left Madison Square Garden absorbed by the throng. Shay didn't mind the crowd. She actually welcomed the press. It gave her an excuse to keep her body plastered to Ian's. As she walked before him, her buttocks fit snugly against him. To prevent them from getting separated, he locked his arms around her waist.
Occasionally his biceps bumped into the sides of her breasts. Since she wore only a lacy camisole under her dress, those accidental touches induced erotic fantasies she was certain would have shocked her escort. But when she glanced up at him over her shoulder, laying her head against his chest to do so, the look in his eyes told her he could well be sharing and participating in her fantasies.
The place he'd selected to take her for dessert was a restaurant famous for its pastries and operatic memorabilia. It was a bustling narrow restaurant with patrons and waiters calling out orders piped in arias. Ian managed to squeeze them into a table and shout their order to a rushing waiter. Miraculously, within minutes they were being served pastries and aromatic coffee.
"What is this high caloric monstrosity?" Shay asked, probing with her fork at the base of a culinary sculpture.
"Just eat it," Ian commanded. He watched with delight as she dug into the layers of pastry, chocolate mousse, whipped cream, and slivered almonds. She'd bemoan any residual bulges later. For the time being she was unrepentantly gluttonous.
As they were leaving the noisy nightspot, a man entering the door Ian was holding whirled around and cried, "Shay! Is that you, my darling Shay? It is! How are you, darling?"
He leaned toward her and, bobbing his head forward, kissed first one of her cheeks then the other in an affected manner.
"Hello, Armand," she said flatly.
"It's been ages and ages," he gushed.
"Yes, it has," she agreed, thinking that it hadn't been long enough and that it would be another long time if she had anything to do about it.
The man's reptilian eyes appraised Ian, and apparently approving, he smiled up at him. "Armand Boliver, my friend Ian Douglas," Shay said, executing the introduction emotionlessly.
"Charmed," the man said, offering a limp hand to Ian, who shook it very briefly. "Working much, Shay?" Armand asked, keeping his eyes on Ian.
"Now and then."