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  “Three rules?” His eyebrows hit his waving hair.

  “If I can follow them, eventually God can change my heart so I’ll have undivided devotion to Him.”

  “So what are your three rules?” His mouth worked in and out. Almost as if he were trying not to laugh.

  Trish crossed her arms and glared at him. “You’re making fun of me.”

  He opened his eyes wide and held up his hands. “No, I promise I’m not.”

  She didn’t trust that glint in his eye. “Okay, rule number one — no looking at guys or encouraging them. No drooling, no roving eye, no scoping them out as boyfriend material.”

  “Hmm.” He looked like a clinical psychologist. Or rather, what she imagined a clinical psychologist would look like when confronted with, say, a patient who claimed that aliens had taken over her brain.

  “What do you mean, ‘Hmm’?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. What’s rule number two?”

  “Tell others about Christ. Be bold and on fire to spread the Word.” Oops, maybe she shouldn’t have said that with such relish in front of a non-believer, to whom she was supposed to be witnessing at some point.

  “Ah.” More head nodding. “Number three?”

  “Persevere and rely on God in hardship. God will give me strength through trials, and I need to persist and trust Him no matter what happens.”

  “Oh.”

  Was she being a good witness for Christ in telling him her three rules, or did it make her seem like an idiot? “You think I’m just spouting off. I’m serious.”

  “I believe you.”

  She shot him a look that should have squished him like a grape under a car tire. “No, you don’t. You’re making fun of me.”

  “I wasn’t making fun.”

  “You were trying to swallow your chortles of laughter.”

  “Chortles of laughter?” He waggled his eyebrows as he said it. “You’re reading too many romance novels.”

  “Oh yeah? How would you know unless you read them too?”

  “I read serious stuff. Like Star magazine.” He gave his little-boy grin.

  That stopped her mid-breath. She coughed. “You read Star?”

  “I got a subscription free.”

  “Oooh, can I borrow it when you’re done?” Goodie. She couldn’t get herself to actually pay money for it, but she couldn’t help reading it. It was more entertaining than reality TV.

  “Is it in your rules?”

  She wanted to smack that sarcastic smirk off his face. “My rules will work.”

  Spenser snorted. “You won’t last a week.”

  “What are you talking about? They’re good, biblical rules.”

  “They’re legalistic. Rules don’t change people.”

  “I told you, God will change my heart.”

  “You’re being optimistic and idealistic. Think about it. No looking? Resisting basic animal attraction? Everybody’s programmed with it.”

  Her words sliced out clear and slow. “Maybe some people think with their lower regions, but not everyone acts on their lust.” Like you did, chickie-babe? She tried to slam a lid on the insidious voice, but it echoed through her empty places inside.

  He snorted. “Not looking is like trying not to read. And the telling everyone about Christ? Most people are plain scared to even talk about God.”

  “I’m not.” She really wasn’t.

  He loosed a superior smile. “Sure.”

  “I’m not — ”

  “And then, persevere? Everyone’s inherently lazy.”

  “I told you, God will help me — ”

  “If rules could have made the Israelites faithful, they wouldn’t have had to wander in the desert for forty years instead of entering the Promised Land.”

  “But my rules are good.” She needed those rules to remind her, because otherwise she wouldn’t think about God at all in the course of a day. “Wait a minute. How do you know about the Israelites?”

  For a second he froze, as if thinking about his answer. “You assumed a lot, considering you don’t know me very well.”

  “Assumed what?”

  “That I’m not Christian.”

  “What do you — ” It dawned on her like the undead-destroying morning sun in a vampire movie. “You’re Christian?”

  His face was neutral again, as it had been when she first turned him down. Now she knew why. She had totally blown it. “How can you be Christian?” It flew out of her mouth before her brain had a chance to censor it.

  He looked like he’d swallowed a frog. “What do you mean?”

  Was he trying to deny it? “You’re always flirting with girls. Everywhere. In the hallway, in the parking lot, on the phone. Even on email, I’ll bet.”

  A glowing red the same shade as New Year’s firecrackers started sparking upward from his neck. “I do not flirt.”

  “Oh, sorry. You don’t flirt — you smile excessively when you talk.”

  “How is my friendliness so bad?”

  “Who are you trying to kid? You love women.” Just like her father, who always got along with everyone — especially the women who came into Grandma’s bank. She’d always thought he just liked working with new people, but look how faithful he was. “You’re either dating all of them or you’re leading them on.”

  Okay, that sounded completely irrational even to her heated brain, but she didn’t care anymore. She was tired of men like her dad, like Spenser, who got along with lots of women. She wanted to date some socially inept geek who’d be too shy to even finish a sentence in another woman’s presence. She didn’t want to deal with someone she couldn’t trust completely.

  Spenser’s face turned pinker than her aunty’s neon-red char siu pork. “I am not leading them on.”

  “Faithful men don’t flit from woman to woman. They stay with one wife their entire lives and don’t have affairs with their wife’s old college roommate and then pretend nothing happened and cause stress and headache for their children!” Oops, that sounded distinctly screech-like.

  Spenser looked at her like she was certifiable. “What?”

  “I would never trust a boy like you. I’d be the flavor of the week.”

  He froze except for a faint tremor that somehow seemed of earthquake magnitude. His color paled, and his jaw muscles started ticking.

  Okay, that might not have been the smartest thing for Trish to say.

  Spenser turned away from her slowly, as if every inch of movement took extreme effort. Uh, oh. Trish watched him, frozen to the floor, gnawing on the inside of her lip and tasting blood. She had to say something. But not just anything or he’d go nuclear. What could she say? There had to be something.

  She didn’t have the right to accuse him, considering her own male-laden past (although hers was past, while his was present, or at least as present as last week). She ought to say something, or she’d be just hypocritical and wrong. But what? Her brain wasn’t working.

  Halfway to the door, he threw back over his shoulder, “Well, let’s hope you learn to trust me. We have to work together for the next several months.”

  As he opened the office door, she thought she heard him mutter, “Can’t end soon enough for me.” He exited with a firm tug on the door.

  Her knees gave way, but she was too far from her chair and ended up bouncing off the edge of her desk. She dropped to the thinly carpeted floor with a sharp whomp on her behind.

  What had happened? Had she really refused him? She couldn’t even remember what she’d babbled about. Something stupid about sports teams. She whimpered and banged her head backward against her desk drawers.

  Why did he ask her out? She’d been throwing herself into her work so she’d stop daydreaming about him. Of course, she hadn’t really needed to daydream with him right next to her desk.

  She banged her head again. Couldn’t she have put it a little better? “No offense, but you’re not Christian.” Then, after all that, he had been Christian. But he flirted with an
ything in a skirt — she’d never be able to trust him, no matter what he said to her. She wouldn’t have wanted to date him anyway. She wouldn’t. She knocked her head against the desk drawers some more.

  Still, good thing it was late Friday afternoon. She sighed, breathing in a rather nasty moldy odor from the ancient carpet.

  Well, maybe it was for the best that they’d gotten the bad business out of the way. It would be infinitely more uncomfortable if they’d dated and it didn’t work and then they had to continue working together, right?

  She hadn’t handled that well. Then again, she had done what she was supposed to do. When she’d thought he wasn’t Christian, she’d held to the conviction that she wasn’t supposed to date non-Christian guys. Plus, “Bad company corrupts good character.” She had withstood temptation — and hoo-boy, what a temptation he was. He even made her forget about Kazuo.

  Six-feet-of-gorgeous had asked her out. She sniffed, then moaned low in the throat.

  She hadn’t been doing so hot with rule number one in the past few weeks — she hadn’t exactly been keeping her eyes to herself — but it would get easier, right? She was proud of herself for passing her first real test.

  Wasn’t she?

  Trish was running late — so what else was new? — but since Lex was picking her up, she knew she had at least ten extra minutes.

  The voice in her head screamed for her not to run with the toothbrush in her mouth as she dove under the bed for some sandals that weren’t three-inches or higher. She had a more conservative pair somewhere, didn’t she? Yeah, she wore them the last time she went to church — three weeks ago? Three months ago?

  Yet a couple days ago, she’d dissed Spenser for not being Christian. The fact that he was Christian didn’t really count because she hadn’t known it at the time — anyway, she didn’t miss the hypocrisy of her own actions and her lack of attendance the past few Sundays. She couldn’t believe the horrid, judgmental things she’d said to him. Life ought to be like TiVo so she could rewind.

  Well, she was going to church today, that’s what mattered. If she could find a pair of shoes that didn’t sparkle, stab, or glitter.

  There, way under the bed. At least three years old, black and clunky. She swatted at the layer of dust and sneezed painfully through her nose because she didn’t want to spew toothpaste all over the place.

  She finished up in the bathroom, then slung open the accordion doors to her closet. Oops, that was a bit loud. Marnie hadn’t come in until late last night and was probably still sleeping.

  Rifling through her clothes, she looked for a Good Girl outfit. Not that any of her clothes were indecent — well, she had a few dresses that bordered on it — but her conservative church members would look askance at attire in the sanctuary that would be perfectly normal at Valley Fair Mall. She didn’t really understand it, but there it was.

  Too short. Too low. Too pink. Too clingy. Exposed too much back. Exposed too much leg. Exposed too much shoulder.

  Didn’t she have anything to wear to church?

  Maybe something near the back of the closet. She hunkered down into a crouch. She picked up a fistful of dirty laundry from behind her hamper. How long had that been —

  A piercing scream from Marnie’s bedroom ripped through the air.

  EIGHT

  Trish started, then whipped her head around. She smacked her temple into the closet doors with a hollow-sounding thud. Stars exploded in front of her eyes.

  Owowowow! She scrubbed at her throbbing temple as she tried to rise to her feet. “Marnie! Are you okay?” Her bedroom dipped and swayed, but she managed to stumble out to the living room and pounded on Marnie’s bedroom door. “Marnie!”

  The door didn’t open, but Marnie started to howl and moan.

  Trish hesitated a fraction of a second before trying the doorknob. She’d never walked into her room before, but Marnie’s crying shot bullets of alarm through her. Bloodcurdling cries warranted invasion of privacy, right? The knob turned in her hand and she plunged inside.

  Marnie sat on her bed, a small dark bump in the midst of her violent pink-blue-green-red-purple woven bedspread. She gripped her open cell phone with shaking hands. Even as Trish stood there, the phone broke with a plastic snap!

  “Marnie . . .”

  A shallow cut on her roommate’s hand shone red, and the sight of blood seemed to break her out of her anguished trance. She dropped the two pieces of her phone. Her wailing had softened to hyperventilating. “He . . . broke up with me.”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “With a text message. ”

  Ooooh. Trish’s gut clenched as if she’d been punched. She couldn’t imagine what Marnie felt. But here was her chance to win Marnie for God, right? “Um . . . do you want to talk about it?”

  “No. ”

  O-kay. Guess not.

  Marnie leaped from the bed and started cramming clothes into a duffle bag.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need someplace to think.”

  “Are you moving out?” Just like that? Trish still had several months left on the lease.

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Whew. “Do you need help?”

  “No.”

  Well, no one could say she didn’t try.

  Marnie packed in less than four minutes. Trish knew because she stood helplessly in the doorway watching her and eyeing the wall clock at the same time.

  As Marnie flung herself out the door, Trish hollered “Bye!” The only answer she got was a resounding slam.

  She stood in the middle of the living room. Somehow the apartment seemed emptier than it had ever been before, even when she was here alone and Marnie was out. The walls started closing in — this wasn’t some kind of creepy premonition, was it? She rubbed the goose egg on her temple. No, she must have knocked loose some brain cells.

  Ding-dong.

  Aack! That was Lex! She was late for church!

  Even though Lex and Trish snuck into the sanctuary late, several heads turned to peer at them. Trish tugged on the hem of her shirt. It was one of her only ones that didn’t expose her belly button.

  They sank into chairs near the back as the worship leaders ended a song. Actually, it was the last song.

  “You made us hecka late.” Lex’s huffy complaint tickled Trish’s ear.

  “You were already late.”

  “You made us even later.”

  An old lady in the row in front of them whirled to glare at them.

  “Can we discuss this later?”

  Lex shifted her attention toward the front, the argument already forgotten. Lex might not care what people thought of them, but Trish didn’t like the colony of earthworms niggling in her stomach when people gave them dirty looks.

  At least Lex wasn’t avoiding her anymore. She’d been lonely without Lex to confide in, laugh with, hang out and eat Ben and Jerry’s with. Lex understood her like no one else, knew when to encourage and when to tell the stark truth. Trish vowed she’d never hurt her ever again. Never.

  Trish slouched back in her pew. It was too warm in here . . .

  She awoke with a start. The pastor’s gaze stopped on Trish. He lifted an eyebrow at her, then continued. “Let’s pray.”

  She kept her eyes open, deathly afraid she’d fall asleep again if she closed them. Lex gave a soft chortle of laughter before she closed her eyes in prayer.

  “Amen.”

  The worship leader smiled and pointed toward the back of the sanctuary. “Thank you for joining us at worship today. Please stay for refreshments in our fellowship hall upstairs. The stairway is across from the sanctuary.”

  “Who’s the evangelism deacon?” She scanned her program. Pastor’s info, worship leader’s name, pianist, worship team, ushers, church administrative assistant . . .

  No deacons. She could ask the admin, Eleanor Falk, for the name of the deacon and to point him out if Trish didn’t know him.

  Her bladder made itself known. Again
? She’d gone before they entered the sanctuary.

  She had to hold it. For some reason, most people congregated in the hallway behind the sanctuary and not upstairs, so the hallway quickly became a sea of bodies. If Trish wanted to find the evangelism deacon, she had to do it pronto before the hallway filled up.

  “Come on.” Lex tugged at her arm. “I want to get upstairs for the food before the high schoolers eat everything.”

  The band of her slacks had cut into her stomach while she sat (and slept). “Uh — you go ahead.”

  Lex darted away.

  Trish followed close behind and managed to shoot out into the hallway while it was still relatively empty. Then Monica Cathcart appeared from the kitchen and crossed toward the stairwell with a tray of musubi riceballs.

  “Monica!” Mrs. Cathcart knew everybody. Good thing Trish had seen her.

  Monica smiled. “Trish! Haven’t seen you in a while. Good to see you today. Want a musubi?”

  “Thanks.” Ha! Lex should have stuck with Trish. She snagged a fresh rice ball. “Who’s evangelism deacon?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Oh.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mrs. Oh. Short, Chinese, gray hair.”

  That only left a quarter of the congregation. “Can you point her out?”

  Monica peered around the rapidly filling hallway. “I don’t see her. Let me put this tray in the fellowship hall, and I’ll come back and find her.” She zipped away.

  Oh, there was the administrative assistant, Eleanor. Trish pin-balled around standing groups of chatting people, dodged the children’s Sunday schools, which had let out, and accosted Eleanor as she finished talking with someone. “Hi, Eleanor.”

  “Welcome to our church.” She beamed, deepening the wrinkles in her face, and grabbed Trish’s hand in a loose clasp. “Is this your first time?”

  Her smile froze. Had her attendance really been that bad lately? “I’m Trish Sakai.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know Lex had a sister.” Eleanor patted her hand, still holding on to it.

  “I’m her cousin. I’ve been going to this church for . . . a little while now.” Years, in fact. Although considering Eleanor didn’t even remember Trish’s face from her 50th birthday party last year, or from her granddaughter’s baptism the year before that, it probably wasn’t worth mentioning.