The Happy Hour Choir Read online

  We rode in silence to the church. She insisted on driving again. I didn’t want to admit I was nervous, and she, blessedly, didn’t feel the need to ask me. She patted my hand before we got out of the car. “You’re going to do fine, Beulah. Just fine.”

  It sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  I took my seat on the first pew, and Luke nodded at me before making his rounds. County Line only ran six pews deep so it didn’t take him long to shake palsied hands and kiss wrinkled cheeks. Most everyone in the place was over the age of sixty.

  At fifteen till, I took my spot at the piano in the choir loft. I looked over for Ms. Lola, but she wasn’t playing the organ as she always had with Ginger. Instead, she sat on the second row with her arms crossed to indicate she wasn’t joining me in the choir loft any time soon. I looked at Luke, and he nodded.

  County Line didn’t usually have a formal choir, so I waited for the spirit to move the usual suspects to come forward and climb the steps to join me in the loft. No one came. I played another hymn just to be on the safe side and realized the church piano was more out of tune than the one at The Fountain. As warped notes bounced off the walls, I reminded myself to get John the Baptist to tune them both as soon as he got back from Guatemala.

  Playing the music as written, I ignored the itch to embellish, the desire to cover up the stark humanity of simple out-of-tune notes. As suspected, the congregation mumbled through the first song. I didn’t hear Lottie Miller’s distinctive rough-hewn soprano, so I chanced a glance over my shoulder. She sat beside her twin sister, Lola, with her arms also crossed and lips firmly closed. I told myself I didn’t care what Ms. Lola and Ms. Lottie did, but my stomach flipped over in betrayal.

  I narrowly resisted a nervous tic as I played a spiritual without being able to jazz it up. Luke looked back at me as we finished the song with a whimper, definitely not a bang. I glared at him for the injustice done to “Soon and Very Soon.” He arched an eyebrow that said, “My church, my rules.”

  I eased into one of the choir seats next to the piano, immediately realizing the mistake of not going back downstairs to join everyone else. The eyes of the sparse congregation, some curious and some hostile, bore through me, so I studied the perfect crown on the back of Luke’s head. He read that judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged passage, and I rolled my eyes. Please. Obviously, I was going to have to think of something, anything, other than what he was saying.

  From my vantage point, I couldn’t see his feet. Was he even wearing pants? What did he wear under those robes? I had a vision of him taking off his robe to reveal only a faux shirt collar and the old-fashioned sock garters and black socks with his dress shoes. Of course, he had to wear tighty whities. How could anyone as obsessed with rules and propriety not wear briefs?

  I smothered a snicker into a cough, but he didn’t miss a beat. Looking for something else to keep my mind off what Luke was saying, I almost reached for a Bible to thumb through it.

  Yeah, no.

  Next week I’d sneak a couple of magazines up to the choir loft. Maybe I’d see if I could read about Cosmopolitan’s new sex positions while holding a properly pious look on my face.

  “When my wife left me, it was easy to blame her.”

  I sat up straighter. Luke was married?

  “It was too easy to hold myself blameless, to not see that God was leading us both to a better place. I had to take a look at myself, not just her.”

  Intriguing. I wonder what he saw.

  What would it be like to have Luke look at you with affection crinkling those beautiful blue eyes? He’d given me a similarly friendly smile when he first walked into The Fountain. I frowned as I realized he hadn’t been as judgmental then as I’d thought. After all, he’d walked in and ordered a beer. He’d enjoyed the music, even looked at me with respectful admiration, not like I was a slab of meat.

  And you played that song and winked at him like a world-class flirt.

  No. I wasn’t going to feel guilty about that. I hadn’t known who he was. Even if I had known, I would’ve still played the song.

  So I probably would’ve skipped the winking part. Maybe the double entendre at the end. But I still would’ve played the song.

  He looked to his left again, and I studied his profile. Why would any woman leave him? Sure, he was too uptight for my tastes, but there was an undeniable integrity about him. Or was it his decency that had ultimately repulsed her? Lots of women went after bad boys, but I could testify that bad boys were overrated. Still, I’d never survive a relationship with someone like Luke. He was too good and too perfect, the sort of man who would always emphasize how I fell short.

  The congregation bowed their heads for the closing prayer, but I looked straight ahead. I might have fallen from grace so far as those people were concerned, but no way was some freaky off-kilter hymn going to wrap up this sermon. Luke said his amen, and I scribbled a number on a sheet of paper and passed it over the choir loft railing to the song leader who sat below me. Jason Utley looked at me like I had lost my mind. I pointed to the paper, and he shrugged his shoulders. Best I could tell, there wasn’t a song leader alive who could resist “Just as I Am.”

  Jason stood, and I turned to face the piano. He announced the change of hymn, and I could feel daggers in the back of my head, courtesy of one Luke Daniels. They were daggers of Christian love and fellowship, but they were daggers nonetheless. Jason’s tenor warbled through all six verses of the song, and I struggled not to add one flourish, my concession for changing his song. I wrapped up the last verse and chanced to turn around. There stood a new family, three of only seven new faces, and they wanted to join the church. The daggers, I noticed, had subsided.

  When I finally finished, Ginger clapped. Her lips twisted in that way that suggested she was somewhere between pleased and perturbed. “You played spectacularly. You even found a little heart there in those last numbers.”

  “Thanks, Ginger.” I came down from the loft and gave her a hug. “Mexican?”

  “Of course,” she said as I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s a Sunday, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps I could join you?”

  I looked up to see Luke still standing at the front door from where he had shaken the last hand. My gut twisted. How would you feel if someone changed your songs?

  Luke rocked on the balls of his feet, waiting for an answer. I wondered if he got nervous energy like musicians after a concert or athletes after a big game. This was his big performance of the week. And, of course, thinking of rock stars reminded me of Luke in nothing but tighty whities underneath his robe. I managed to convert that giggle into a cough as I looked at the floor and was irrationally disappointed to see sharply creased trousers hanging underneath.

  For the love, Beulah. The man just admitted his first wife left him.

  “I think we might need to speak about my expectations.”

  All of my goodwill dissipated. He wasn’t keyed up or lonely; he wanted to ream me out for having the audacity to change his hymns.

  “You have to understand, Beulah and I don’t talk any kind of business at Sunday lunch,” Ginger said, despite my glare.

  His blue eyes bored through us. “What if lunch is on me?”

  Ginger and I looked at each other in surprise at this unexpected boon. Neither one of us was exactly rolling in money, but Sunday lunch was a tradition so deeply ensconced that we would often eat peanut butter and jelly during the week to keep our Sunday tradition.

  “And no business?” Ginger said.

  “No business.”

  “Can’t beat it with a stick,” she said. “You’re welcome to join us at Las Palmas.”

  He nodded stoically, those lips still pressed together tightly to keep all of the things he really wanted to say from spilling out. When we reached the parking lot, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder. He shrugged out of his robe slowly and draped it over one arm, keeping it balanced so it wouldn’t touch the ground. Beneath
he wore a crisp white shirt and mercilessly pressed pants. I expected to be disappointed by this last revelation but instead found myself admiring how well he filled out his pants.

  Why did he have to be a preacher? Why not a plumber, a used-car salesman, or even a telemarketer? It seemed so unfair that a man that good looking would have to be a preacher.

  He turned then as if he could feel my scrutiny, and I thought I saw a shadow of the man beneath the minister.

  No, I would not worry about the preacher man, I would not. I wouldn’t wonder about what happened with his wife or how he came to be stuck with what had to be a less-than-plum assignment in the hinterlands of West Tennessee. I would not marvel at how he could express such raw emotion and compassion in one moment and then want to chew me a new one in the next.

  And I certainly would not dwell one moment more on how, for a single traitorous second, I’d wanted to kiss his cheek and tell him it’d all be okay.

  Chapter 5

  When Luke ordered cheese enchiladas I did a double take.

  “The burly man is ordering cheese enchiladas?”

  “Vegetarian.” He flashed a wolfish grin before taking a savage bite of a chip.

  “Oh, you really don’t want to fit in around here, do you?”

  “Fitting in is overrated,” he said as he scooped another chip into the salsa. How many times had I told myself that same thing? But the preacher man lived it. I hid on the fringes where it didn’t matter.

  “Afraid of hurting the wittle animals’ feelings?” I taunted.

  “Nope. Gave up meat for Lent one year, and I really didn’t miss it.”

  Having seen on the first night the guns he kept hidden under that dress shirt, I couldn’t argue with his diet plan.

  Then he had to ruin the moment by changing the subject.

  “Beulah, I appreciate how your song may have inspired someone to join the church today, but you can’t deviate from the bulletin.”

  “Now, Reverend—” Ginger started.

  “I thought I told you to call me Luke,” he said with a winning smile. That was an invitation he might want to rescind. After all, she had almost worn my name out.

  “Luke,” Ginger began as she sat up as straight as she could. “I believe I told you we wouldn’t discuss business at the lunch table.”

  I put one hand on her arm. “We’ll waive it for now. Go on.”

  “Look, a lot of work went into picking out that song. You can’t just waltz into my church and tell me—”

  “How to do your job?”

  I let that nugget sink in. Would he apologize? Doing so would require him to tell Ginger about our argument outside The Fountain, and he didn’t want to do that, for some reason. His eyes narrowed, and for a minute I thought he’d tell all anyway.

  As he shifted uncomfortably, his knee brushed against mine. I moved my leg to rest against his on purpose.

  His eyes widened for the merest of seconds before his mask was back in place. “Fine. You choose your songs, but I have final approval.”

  Not as magnanimous as I might have hoped, but it was probably the closest thing to an apology I was going to get. Of course, I wasn’t above gently rubbing knees with a preacher while I did it. “And I’m sorry for most of those things I said.”

  “Most?” he scoffed.

  “What are you two carrying on about?” Ginger said as we all leaned back for the waiter to slide our plates in front of us.

  “Luke doesn’t care for my signature song,” I said.

  “The song or how you play it?” she asked.

  Great. A double dirty look.

  “Well, it’s a better song than that mess he picked out today.”

  His fork bore down into his enchilada, and cheese oozed out. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means the last time I checked—which was admittedly about nine years ago—County Line was an old church set in its ways. They happen to like the little brown books full of golden oldies.” And why was I discussing hymnals with this man?

  Ginger took a bite of burrito and leaned against the wall. She’d decided to take in lunch and a show.

  “And your little brown book of golden oldies is actually the young upstart from the twenties,” Luke said. “The songs I chose go back to the seventeen hundreds. It’s my job to take County Line back to its roots.”

  Heat flooded my face. Damn if I didn’t hate to be wrong.

  When I shifted in my seat, his leg pushed solidly against mine. I looked up to see steely eyes and his lips quirked upward as if to say, “Turnabout is fair play.”

  “County Line may be an old church set in its ways.” He looked at Ginger. “No offense, Miss Ginger.”

  “None taken,” she said with a shrug. “Always been a fan of calling a spade a spade.”

  “But the superintendent has told me that if we don’t increase attendance the conference will close County Line and send members to the newer building at Deep Gap. We need a fresh start.”

  “By switching books?” My nachos weren’t as appetizing as I’d thought they would be. Either that or I was losing yet another religious argument, which brought nothing but nausea from the memory of a hundred Sunday dinner arguments with my father. At least I didn’t have to worry about Luke making me repeatedly copy Bible verses as punishment.

  “By getting back to the basics.”

  I leaned over the table. “And yet you bagged a new family this morning with the song I chose.”

  He winced at the word bagged but nodded in concession. “Yes, this morning. But are they going to keep coming if we don’t have more of the programs and music most families like? Overall attendance was down by ten today—that’s twenty percent less than the past six-month average.”

  “And you seriously think a bunch of stuffy forgotten songs are going to do the trick?”

  “This is ridiculous.” Luke pushed his plate away. “How can someone who loves music as much as you do not see the need for both traditional and contemporary songs?”

  By now both sets of knees pushed against each other under the table, thanks to how he had to fold his tall frame into the tiny booth as well as from our argument.

  “Well, if you see the need for”—and I broke out my air quotes—“ ‘contemporary songs,’ then why can’t I jazz up what I play? What we did to ‘Soon and Very Soon’ was a disgrace!”

  “Why is an artist like you so vehemently opposed to learning something new?”

  Did he just call me an artist?

  “And by new, I really mean only new to you. I thought only the older folks resisted change.”

  Ginger crunched loudly on a chip.

  “Uh, no offense, Miss Ginger.”

  “Oh, none taken, Luke. We old people are notoriously crotchety and set in our ways. It’s common knowledge.”

  “Nobody likes change,” I murmured. The words rolled off my tongue of their own accord, but I realized I’d spent the past nine years of my life in a rut. It hadn’t been an unpleasant rut, but a rut nonetheless.

  “Well, change has to happen. Without it, County Line will shrivel up and die.”

  The idle chatter around us chose that moment to lull. The Powers family looked up from their booth across the restaurant to see who was going to die and what all the fuss was about. I held my eyes on Luke’s. I was not going to think about anything or anyone shriveling up and dying.

  “And that is why we don’t talk business at Sunday lunch,” Ginger said with a sigh. “You’ll be happy to know we also don’t allow sermon dissection until suppertime. That gives us ample time to properly digest the message.”

  Luke and I stared at each other, neither one of us willing to look away first.

  Ginger put her napkin down on the table. “Come on, you two, that’s enough fussing for one day. Let’s walk on outside and let poor Jorge turn over his table.”

  Luke snatched the bill and went ahead to the counter while I helped Ginger slide out of the booth. Even mad, he was a man o
f his word. For a moment I thought he would walk out the door and not look back, but he waited at the door and held it open for us.

  Once outside, Ginger pointed a palsied finger first at him then at me. “You. And you. Sit.”

  We both sat, next to each other, on a bench.

  “Beulah, you are going to have to follow Luke’s rules because he is, for now, your boss.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Luke, you need to get together with Beulah and talk about hymns because she’s right. You can preach like crazy, but you don’t know jack about music.”

  “But—”

  “No buts from you, either, young man. Now, the only thing that’s going to shrivel up and die around here is me, so you can just get it out of your head that the whole church is going to—to Hades in a handbasket if you don’t ‘save’ it. Besides, I have some news for both of you.”

  She paused dramatically, daring either one of us to stop her.

  “Beulah, Luke is right. The little brown book isn’t full of old hymns. It’s full of hymns that were new back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I simply prefer the songs of my youth,” she concluded with a sniff.

  I looked over at Luke, who was entirely too smug.

  “And you, young man, should realize that many of the songs in that book are popular because they’re powerful. No need to ignore them completely and throw the baby out with the bathwater. And Beulah’s right about the ‘Soon and Very Soon’ massacre. I cringed.”

  That wiped the smirk off his face.

  “Now, it’s not really about what songs you sing,” Ginger continued. “You had a nice new family join this morning, and they joined because your words spoke to them. So did Beulah’s music. Imagine what would happen if the two of you ever learned to work together.”

  Luke and I looked at each other, two kids who’d been called to the side of the playground for fighting. I didn’t want to work with him, and he sure as heck hadn’t asked to work with me. I was about to tell Ginger that, but Luke spoke first.