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  “Well, I’m so glad you came up and introduced yourself. How friendly.”

  “Can you tell me who the evangelism deacon is?”

  “Oh, would you like to volunteer?”

  “Yes, it’s rule number two — I mean, I’m feeling . . . uh . . . convicted, yeah, convicted to put more effort into telling others about Christ.”

  “Oh, well, that’s wonderful. Our evangelism deacon is Mrs. Oh. Now where is she . . .” Eleanor scanned the crowd around her, but considering her lack of inches, it wasn’t much help.

  “Trish, there you are.” Monica appeared at her elbow. “I found Mrs. Oh.”

  “There she is.” Eleanor pointed toward the left side of the hallway.

  “She’s the one in the blue dress.” Monica also pointed in that direction.

  The sea of bodies parted slightly and there stood a tiny old Chinese lady. She looked like she’d barely reach Trish’s shoulder, and Trish certainly wasn’t considered tall.

  “Do you see her?” Monica stabbed her finger harder in Mrs. Oh’s direction.

  “Yes. Thanks.” Trish shimmied between groups of chattering people before she lost sight of her quarry.

  Mrs. Oh chatted amiably with the young woman next to her, then bent to pick up the woman’s small daughter.

  “Hi, Mrs. Oh.”

  At the sight of Trish, the woman’s gentle and kind face lit up with a smile. “Hello.”

  “We haven’t met before. I’m Trish Sakai.”

  “Oh, how nice to meet you!” Her welcome was rather enthusiastic, but it seemed she wasn’t faking — that’s how she really was.

  “I’m interested in helping with evangelism — ”

  “You are!” Mrs. Oh’s eyes opened wide enough to make the black mascara gooked on her short eyelashes unclump.

  The young mother she’d been talking to eased backward in a subtle movement, but somehow it caught Trish’s eye. A niggling started in Trish’s stomach, but she firmly stood her ground. How silly to be uneasy. Mrs. Oh seemed perfectly nice.

  “Mrs. Oh, I’m going to take Kaylie and go home.” The young mother disentangled her daughter from the old woman, not a difficult feat since Mrs. Oh was so tiny. “I’ll talk to you later. Bye!” Trish blinked and the woman was gone. Like Superman. Or Supermom. Trish tried not to feel worried at her speedy exit.

  Mrs. Oh grasped Trish’s hands in hers. “How wonderful that you want to serve on the evangelism committee!”

  What? Committee? “Actually, I was hoping — ”

  “We could use so much help in organizing the Easter festival this year. It’s our biggest outreach to the community — last year, over five hundred people attended!”

  “Easter festival?”

  “We need someone to be in charge. To get people to volunteer, to organize the schedule, to take care of publicity — not that much work.”

  “Five hundred people?”

  Mrs. Oh clapped her hands and widened her pearl-pink smile, revealing pearl-pink smudged teeth. She had an awful lot of teeth, too. “And we could use someone to organize the Go-Go Group. We may be older but we’re certainly energetic!” Mrs. Oh punctuated her proclamation with an excited fist in the air. Rah, rah. “We have won derful outreach events like Craft Day and Japanese Luncheon. We really need someone to set up the kitchen schedule and make up fliers and get the seniors involved.”

  “Japanese Luncheon?”

  Mrs. Oh’s eyes started to blaze. “Oh, and the children’s Sunday school needs someone to take charge. They don’t have enough teachers and they always need someone to fill in each week. Why, last week the kindergarten class had almost fifty children and only one teacher!”

  “Fifty children?”

  “I’ve been trying to get someone to help, but now I have you!”

  “To get people to help?”

  “To do all these things!” Mrs. Oh’s face had turned into a maniacal demon noh mask. “The first thing you need to do is set up the Easter Festival. Make a big sign-up sheet and put it up in the foyer. Then make an announcement at ser vice. And you have to order the cotton candy machine and the popcorn machine and all the supplies for it, and you should ask around for the games they used last year, except I don’t remember who owned which game. You’ll also have to order that big inflatable jumping thing they used last year for the children, and then order all the prizes. Oh, but first see if people will donate prizes — you’ll have to ask around . . .”

  The woman was completely loco.

  Trish wanted to help, not run the committee for this insane old lady. If Trish accepted this, she’d walk straight into an organizational nightmare and black-hole-sized time suck. Besides which, people barely knew she even went to church, much less who she was. Why would they ever volunteer to help?

  Back away from the crazy person . . .

  But Mrs. Oh grabbed Trish’s hand again, probably sensing the quarry was about to flee. “We so need young people like yourself to take up leadership roles in the church. Do you have any friends who might want to volunteer, too?”

  “Mrs. Oh, I don’t think — ”

  “Hey, babe.”

  “Oh, hi Kazuo. Mrs. Oh, my friends are — Kazuo!” Trish did a double-take at his tall, dark presence right next to her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to take you to lunch.” He leaned closer to Trish and touched her back with his hand.

  “Trish!” Lex stood frozen a few feet away, both hands full of paper plates loaded with rice balls, donuts, inarizushi cone sushi, and egg salad sandwich triangles. She rounded on Kazuo. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to help Trish.”

  Lex didn’t have time to do more than widen her eyes a fraction before Trish jumped in. “I didn’t invite him, honest! He showed up.”

  “Why, here are a few friends who might help!” Mrs. Oh tried to grab Kazuo’s arm while keeping a firm grip on Trish.

  Lex looked like she was going to lose her food as she moved to put her hands on her hips, but she remembered in time that she had those plates, so she tucked her elbows close to her ribcage instead. “Why are you here?” She glared pointedly at Kazuo.

  “I’m taking Trish to lunch.” Kazuo turned an impassive gaze on Lex.

  Trish would have preferred he kept his big mouth shut, sexy accent notwithstanding. “He’s not. I didn’t ask him to.”

  “How wonderful that he did!” Mrs. Oh gave Kazuo a wide smile, which unfortunately looked a bit evil rather than encouraging. Kazuo leaped back a step.

  Mrs. Oh advanced on Lex. “You’ve been coming to this church for a while now, haven’t you? You really should think about volunteering — ”

  Lex’s eyes became as big as the rice balls on her plate. “Uh . . .” Her gaze darted around before landing on Mrs. Cathcart in the far corner. “Mrs. Oh, Monica needs you.” She whipped her arm in the direction of the other side of the hallway, dropping a chicken wing from the plate. “Right now.”

  Mrs. Oh’s pencil-thin brows wrinkled. “She does?”

  “Something about . . .” Lex floundered.

  “The Go-Go Group?” Trish supplied.

  “Yes! The Go-Go Group.” Lex gave a weak smile. “Something about . . . uh . . .”

  “Cooking?” Monica could whip up a meal for an army — or at least her four teenagers — in thirty seconds flat. Trish tugged at her hand, trying to wrestle it from Mrs. Oh’s grasp.

  “Yes! Cooking.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Oh released Trish and clapped her tiny hands together. “How wonderful! The Japanese Luncheon is next week!” She darted off.

  Trish heaved a sigh even as she rubbed the raw marks on her wrist. That little Chinese woman had hard, sharp bones in her hands.

  Lex turned to Kazuo. “This is considered stalking.”

  “Your grandmother told me to come,” he said.

  “What?” Trish and Lex snapped at him.

  “You don’t want to be around these strange people.” He motioned his
head toward Mrs. Oh’s departed direction. “I treat you like the goddess you are.” He reached out and ran a soft, comforting hand down her arm.

  A delicious shiver followed his caressing fingers. Trish breathed deep and filled her senses with sandalwood and the musky smell of Japanese soap. He had treated her like the center of his universe . . .

  “Trish!”

  Lex’s screech sent a jolt through her floating body. Oh, right. Not hurting Lex anymore. Devoted to God. New person. No Kazuo.

  She sighed.

  “And your grandmother approves.” Kazuo’s eyes seemed so reasonable, so logical. Of course Trish wouldn’t want to upset Grandma, right?

  Lex snorted. “You’re Japanese, and Trish is the next oldest single female cousin in our family. Of course she approves.”

  “We make a good couple.” He smiled that secret smile, the one that always made him seem even more mysterious and otherworldly. The one he often smiled when he painted her.

  Instead of taking her back to romantic memories, it unearthed the more unpleasant ones. “You didn’t want me to be around anybody else. I’m only the model for your painting, just a possession.” She’d felt like a caged bird, or a tethered cat.

  “You are precious to me.” His hand followed the curve of her face without touching her.

  Precious? That made her feel kind of tingly inside . . .

  Lex’s mouth was doing the pinchy thing as she glared at Kazuo. “Oh, give me a break.”

  Trish dampened the tinglies. Where was her head? All her good intentions flying out the window as soon as he came within a few feet of her. “We don’t belong together anymore. I’m becoming a different person. I’m following my three rules.” Sort of. “I’m getting my MDiv. I’m devoting myself wholeheartedly to God.”

  Kazuo shrugged. “I can do that, too.”

  “What?” In unison again, Trish and Lex shared a bewildered glance this time, as well.

  “I can learn more about God.” He looked deep into her eyes. “For you, I will do it. I will come to church.”

  NINE

  Did you have to yank me away so hard?” Trish rubbed her bruised arm as she got into Lex’s car.

  Lex jammed her key into the ignition. “You are going to fall for him again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could totally tell he was being condescending.”

  “I could tell that too.” Sort of. It was hard to think straight with him nearby. “I would never have believed him.”

  Lex snorted.

  “I wouldn’t. He’s tried that before.”

  “He has?” Lex threw a curious glance at her before swinging the car out of the parking lot.

  “When we first started dating, he’d go with me to church. At first he acted all interested, but then he would make us late. And he never wanted to meet anyone. Eventually we both stopped going.”

  Lex gave her a sidelong glance.

  “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have been so easily swayed. But now I’m free of him — ”

  “Not when he follows you to church.” Lex signaled and switched lanes. “You know, you weren’t exactly giving him the cold shoulder.”

  Well, that was true. “But I wasn’t falling in his arms, either.”

  Lex rolled her eyes. “I guess that’s an improvement.”

  “Of course that’s an improvement. I told you this on the phone. I am the new, improved Trish!” She tried to fling her arms out but only smacked her hand against the closed window and narrowly missed poking out Lex’s eye.

  “Hey, watch it.” Lex’s expression, while kind, had that twist of disbelief. “Trish, I know you pretty well. You love people, you love meeting new people, especially guys. I’ve hardly ever seen you not flirt. No offense, but I have a hard time believing you this time.”

  Lex’s blunt honesty annoyed her sometimes. She supposed it was a good thing that at least one of her cousins had the courage to tell her the bare truth about how she felt, but sometimes she wished Lex would just pretend to believe Trish and be all sweet and compassionate like Jenn. “I’m really serious. I’m going to wipe the slate clean.” Too bad she didn’t have one of those memory wipers she read about in that action romance novel she read recently . . .

  Wipe the slate clean. That was it. “I’ll go to a new church.”

  Lex paused to digest her words, then sighed. “There you go again.”

  Trish wanted to strangle her. “What? Why is that so bad?”

  “You always go on to something new.”

  “That’s not always a bad thing. In this case, it’s a necessity. I can’t work with Mrs. Oh. You heard her. I’d be doing everything except cleaning the church toilets. It’ll be like selling myself into slavery.”

  Lex raised her eyebrows. “Good point. So which church?”

  “How about Aiden’s? He’s still going to Valley Bible Church in Sunnyvale — by the way, when are you guys going to start going to the same church?”

  Lex’s mouth tightened. “We will eventually. Stop nagging me.”

  Oops, must be a sore spot. “Anyway, Aiden would introduce me around at his church, wouldn’t he?”

  Lex stiffened, but she made a visible effort to relax her ramrod straight shoulders. She still had that weird reaction, even after six months of dating him. Trish sighed. She should never have made a move on Aiden — never mind that Lex hadn’t even known him then. Hopefully with rule number one, no looking, she’d keep herself from doing seemingly innocent things that would get her in trouble later. Like that whole deal with Aiden.

  “He’s okay with me, right?” Trish monitored Lex’s face closely. “He seemed okay with me the last time I talked to him. Water under the bridge, and all that.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sure.” Lex blinked and kept her eyes forward.

  Trish spun one of the earrings on her left side. “I’m sincerely glad you guys are dating now. I don’t . . . like him anymore, you know.”

  Lex’s face relaxed completely. “I know.” She turned a genuine smile at Trish. “I’m sure he’d be happy to introduce you around.”

  “Great.”

  A new church, a new adventure. Things were looking up.

  She’d taken emergency precautions and gone to the bathroom before heading to her office. Was Spenser going to yell at her? Give her the cold shoulder? Pretend nothing happened?

  “Um . . . hi.” Trish walked into their office on Monday morning.

  “Hi.” He didn’t turn around from his computer.

  She dropped her bag near her desk. “Had a good weekend?”

  “Yeah.”

  She started up her computer. Sat and stared at the screen while it booted up and did all kinds of time-consuming things. Her chair was already pushed back from her desk, so she peered around the cubicle partition at Spenser, who sat engrossed in some spreadsheet on his monitor.

  She jiggled her leg. Sighed. “Spenser, I’m sorry — ”

  “Look, can we — ”

  She swiveled her chair and held his gaze. His face wasn’t mad or grumpy or disdainful, but he wasn’t happy with her, either. Well, not that she expected him to be actually happy, but she had been hoping for — what? A little warmer neutrality? More willingness to meet her halfway?

  This was weird. She felt like she was trying to make up with a boyfriend after a fight, not reconcile after dissing her coworker.

  Well, she wasn’t a coward. She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Spenser, for assuming you weren’t Christian and yelling at you and everything. And for any ugliness between us, because we have to work together, and I think we do that well, and I want this project to succeed.”

  He looked a little annoyed. Like she’d beaten him to the punch. She pushed down a quick blossoming of satisfaction in her heart — she was supposed to be nice.

  “I’m sorry too. I should have told you instead of stringing you along.”

  Aw, that was a sweet apology, although she couldn’t exac
tly tell him he was sweet — she’d had enough boyfriends to finally get that guys didn’t like being described with the same term as a chocolate croissant. She gave a wide smile. “Thanks. That’s nice of you to say that.”

  How weird. Spenser looked a little dazed. Almost dazzled. No, that couldn’t be. Maybe he was confused. She didn’t think she’d used any weird words from her British historical romance novels.

  She kept smiling, trying to ignore the silence stretching tighter and tighter. Before the rubber band snapped, she tilted her head and blinked rapidly. “Spenser?”

  He started slightly. Funny, she didn’t think he was the type of guy to zone out. Of course, she zoned out a lot but she’d never met a guy who did that.

  Her cell phone ring blasted through the small office. Saved by the bell. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Trish.”

  “Oh, hi Grandma.” She got that rolling-boil feeling in her stomach, the kind that usually came before a scolding. Why would she be calling?

  “How are you doing?”

  “Uh . . . fine.” Was there a polite way to ask Grandma to get to the point?

  “How’s your mother?”

  “She sounded better the last time I talked to her on the phone.” At least Trish hadn’t had to talk to her father. She didn’t think she could say anything civil to him just yet.

  “I heard you needed an apartment.”

  At last, that’s why Grandma had called. “No, my roommate’s just been . . . weird lately. What did you hear?”

  “I was at Jennifer’s house when you called her.”

  “My roommate is being really strange. I was just complaining to Jenn.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. One of the apartments I’m renting vacated, and I had it completely remodeled. It’s in Mountain View, although not as near Castro Street as you are now.”

  “I can’t afford to rent an apartment by myself, Grandma.”

  She chuckled, which set off Twilight Zone music in Trish’s head. Grandma rarely laughed, and not often with that condescending tone to it. “I’ll give it to you rent free if you’d like.”