Hot Under His Collar Page 2

  Decades of scandalous, harmful, traumatizing behavior by priests had thinned out the ranks of the faithful and those who answered the call to minister. Patrick believed that initiatives like the pre-K program, things that actually helped people in the community, could turn the ship around. The fact that people in the neighborhood surrounding St. Bart’s now knew a priest who wasn’t a total creep was actually getting butts in pews. The pre-K program was a more important part of his ministry than saying Mass.

  Losing it would be devastating, and he couldn’t let it stand. “How much do we need?”

  “We’re twenty-five thousand dollars short when it comes to paying for the teacher’s salary and the necessary supplies.”

  “Shit,” he said quietly.

  “Language, Father.” Sister Cortona gave him the same look that Sister Antoninus used to give him and his best friend, Jack, when they threw spitballs during class. It was withering.

  “We can’t lose this program.” He was adamant about that. He would do whatever it took to keep the pre-K kids learning. He was so agitated that he stood up and started pacing. “There has to be something that we can do.”

  “We could start charging a larger fee.” When Patrick threw her a look that he hoped was just a little bit as withering as hers about his language, she added, “Just a small amount of a larger fee.”

  “None of the kids could afford it.” Well, virtually none. All the public schools in the neighborhood were Title I schools—low income. The families that sent their kids to the pre-K program needed to save their money for food. If St. Bart’s started charging higher tuition, their enrollment would drop almost immediately. “Could we hit up the Dioceses for more money?”

  That elicited a snort from the good sister. “You could try, but the archbishop isn’t as susceptible to those pretty fuckin’ green eyes as the silver hair brigade at daily Mass is.”

  Patrick ran his hand through his hair, which also elicited a snort from Sister Cortona. He didn’t think she actually thought that he was a useless pretty boy, but she liked to deploy any weapons at her disposal to keep him in line. Making derisive noises about his good looks helped her do that. In her mind, she probably thought that grooming his thick black hair at all was unbecoming to a man of the cloth. She took her vow of obedience rather loosely, but she was good with the numbers and could pinch a penny until it bled. Which made her indispensable.

  He suddenly had a searing headache and just barely suppressed the urge to bang his head on his desk. The last thing he needed was Sister Cortona telling him that he would ruin his pretty face that way in her perfectly annihilating deadpan voice.

  “Could we do a fundraiser?” he asked. That, at least, gave him a concrete, external goal that would keep him from spending too much time in contemplation or trying to have a conversation with God, who never seemed to answer.

  “It would have to be a mighty big fundraiser.” She did not sound hopeful, but that only motivated Father Patrick. There was something about her faint praise and dry insults that he found very inspirational. If he were in therapy, that would be something that he would look at.

  “I’ll look into it.” He’d save the pre-K program, and he would feel good again. Probably. Definitely.

  CHAPTER TWO

  PATRICK HELPED HIS FATHER behind the bar at Dooley’s three nights a week. It was time that Patrick could ill afford away from his duties, but even Sister Cortona looked the other way because he did it in the name of being a dutiful son.

  His father didn’t thank him, just looked him up and down and said, “I suppose you’ll do,” every time he walked in the door.

  Danny Dooley was a hard, stubborn man from a long line of hard, stubborn men. Patrick’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all run Dooley’s their entire lives. Patrick’s great-grandfather had practically shit every brick of the exterior, the way that Danny told it.

  Now that Danny wasn’t as hale and energetic as he had been, he couldn’t run the place all on his own. And, someday, he wouldn’t be able to work behind the bar at all. Patrick tended bar that night while his father went over the books at the end of the bar, near the doors that led to the office.

  Even as an adult, Danny liked to keep an eye on his sons when they were in his domain. Didn’t matter that they were both adults and Patrick was a functioning adult. It still made him feel deeply cared for that his father wanted to be around him. Even if his father wasn’t much of a talker, he never worried about where his paperwork was. He’d never done his own taxes. His father might not have been free with pats on the back or words of affirmation, but he was steady.

  Chris had started making noises about them selling and had gone as far as to field a few offers. He didn’t want anything to do with running the business now that he was an attorney on the way to making partner at his firm. Uncharitably, Patrick thought that his meteoric rise had a whole lot more to do with his brother’s gift for bullshit than it did with his smarts.

  Patrick would never be able to take the place over, and Danny had never quite accepted it. His father would have liked to put any connection with the Catholic Church in the ground along with his wife, but Patrick had prevented that by entering the seminary.

  All three of the Dooley men were at a permanent impasse when it came to what to do with the family legacy. The prospect for any legacy at all was in severe doubt at the moment. Unless Chris got his head out of his ass—which would take major surgery or a true miracle in Patrick’s view—his brother wasn’t going to find anyone willing to put up with him beyond a few weeks. And Patrick was obviously not going to be carrying on the family name.

  Despite the cloud of uncertainty over the future of Dooley’s, it was comforting to be there.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS INCREDIBLY FOOLISH for Sasha to suggest that she and Nathan meet at Dooley’s bar on the South Side of Chicago. She’d known that as soon as she’d hit send on the text. But she’d been annoyed that Nathan left it to her to find a place for them to go even after he’d been the one to ask her out. Besides, Nathan worked for the baseball franchise on the South Side, and Dooley’s was convenient to his office.

  Sasha was blowing this one tiny thing out of proportion because she didn’t want to like him. Her friend Bridget had given her the side-eye when she’d complained. Easy to do when one was affianced to the one non-terrible billionaire on the face of the planet.

  Even Hannah was giving him a break. “Maybe he was trying to be polite,” she’d said with a shrug. A year and a half ago, her best friend would have lit into a soliloquy about how suspicious it was he couldn’t make such a simple suggestion, but times had changed. Hannah was deeply in love with her handsome, brilliant, patient, and kind husband.

  And Sasha was still alone. And dating. And hating every single second of it.

  She didn’t hate it enough to not put care into it—especially if Father Patrick happened to be filling in as the bartender. If Patrick was there, maybe she could direct some of the lust he inspired in her at Nathan and try to spark something. And, if Patrick was reading a dusty leather tome all alone in his priestly cell—not that she’d imagined this scenario often at all—then Nathan would benefit from her efforts to look nice.

  Winning all around.

  When she walked in the bar, her gaze was immediately drawn to the man behind the bar.

  Patrick was there, sans collar, with his sleeves rolled and his hairy forearms revealed all the way up to his elbows. Dear God in heaven, please forgive me. He was so gorgeous that she lost a step. When he looked up and grimaced at her, she could have been knocked over by a flutter of wings from a butterfly across the planet.

  Coming here was a worse idea than she’d thought when making the venue suggestion. She should have listened to her better angels—the ones that she’d tied up and gagged in the recesses of her mind when sending that text.

/>   She didn’t know how long she stood there, waiting for her sense to return. But she knew that it hadn’t returned when Nathan appeared in front of her out of nowhere.

  He even did that thing where he waved a hand in her face. “Are you okay?”

  No, she was absolutely not okay. She was deeply not okay. She was aflame with desire to lick a priest’s forearms while she was supposed to be on a date with another man.

  She was not okay, and she’d done this entirely to herself.

  But instead of saying all that, she put on her “I’m dying to be your best girl” smile—another Finerghty woman classic—and said, “Just fine.” She shook her head and knew that her long, dark hair would fall nicely over her shoulders and her pretty, pink silk blouse. “A long day is all.”

  Nathan smiled at her, and it was so sweet that she made a valiant attempt to forget about the man standing behind the bar, who was pointedly not looking at her.

  This guy was way too nice for her to sort-of-kind-of use him to try to resolve her crush on Father Patrick—which wouldn’t work anyway. “Listen, do you want to go someplace else?”

  “No way.” Nathan looked around the dark bar, with its quiet booths and dark wood and stained-glass beer advertisements. “I love this place.” He winked at her, which caused an internal cringe. “Points for picking it out.”

  Gross. Why did guys always insist on giving points for things? It was as though overcompetitive, hyper-toxic masculinity had to bleed its way into everything. She tried to remember what her therapist had told her about making snap judgments about people and how that limited her. She took a deep breath and imagined that maybe his father hadn’t shown him enough affection. If things worked out, she could tell him she hated the points thing later on.

  Regardless of him giving her points for something he should have done and the questionable wink, she let Nathan steer her into a corner booth, where she sat with her back to the bar.

  Not being able to see Patrick had to help. She would try to give this man with a nice smile and a pressed shirt a chance. He had a good job, wore a nice watch, and he was right there. It would be a lot easier to convince herself of the appeal of his availability with her back to Patrick.

  Nathan went over to the bar and ordered them drinks. Sasha did her level best not to turn around and scrutinize both men side by side. That would be a terrible idea. And she was mostly successful. She didn’t turn around until Nathan put down his card and said, “Keep it open.”

  He must have thought that this was going to last for longer than one drink. Sasha girded her loins for two hours of small talk, then shook her head. She was just here to get to know him better. A first date was low stakes. She tried to reframe it as something that could be fun. When had she stopped being curious about other people?

  Probably around the same time that she’d gone on her thousandth first date. Still, she could pretend. One thing that she would have to keep from her upbringing was faking it until she made it.

  When Nathan returned to the table, she put on her best smile and said, “Thank you,” even though he hadn’t asked her what she wanted. She took a sip of her vodka and soda, and it was strong. Must be Patrick looking out for her.

  Must not think of Patrick.

  She smiled at Nathan. “So, tell me about your job.”

  When he started detailing the finer points of ticket sales for a professional baseball team for ten minutes, she blocked out everything else.

  * * *

  —

  PATRICK DIDN’T LIKE THAT Sasha was in his dad’s bar. He didn’t like that she would be here any night, and he really didn’t like that she was here the night he’d happened to agree to fill in for his dad. And he really didn’t like that she was here with a date. Generally, he needed to brace to see the woman. Like, before the wedding last Saturday, he’d run an extra two miles in the hopes that he wouldn’t react to her. Because he shouldn’t even be thinking about her.

  He knew he couldn’t avoid her because she was his best friend’s wife’s best friend. They were bound to run into each other, unless he avoided his best friend, and that wasn’t going to happen.

  Sasha got under his skin. There was something about her shiny perfection that irked him. And she was very beautiful and made him think of things that were not helpful for a priest to think of.

  When they’d first met a couple years ago, he’d thought he had died and was encountering an angel. Her face was pale and almost cherubic—with a ski-slope nose and a cleft in her chin. She was almost too beautiful to look at straight on.

  But now, he thought she was probably a witch sent by some malevolent force to make him question his sanity.

  Mostly he got through the whole celibacy thing with vigorous exercise and pretending that he didn’t have a dick. Sasha, with her sweet smell that reminded him of the summer during college he’d spent in Greece, silky brown hair, and doe eyes, definitely reminded him that he had a dick. More than any other woman he’d met since Ashley, she reminded him of the deep satisfaction that could come from earthly, carnal love. Every time he saw her, he had to pray that God would remind him of why he’d taken his vows. Christ’s love was assured and infinite, and it would never leave him.

  Christ’s love survived death. And when he was a grieving and heartbroken twenty-one-year-old man, he’d found that so compelling that he’d committed his life to it.

  He’d made a life inside it, and he was of service to his community and to God. What he did and who he did it for was important. Joining the priesthood had saved him—he owed his life to the Church.

  Seeing Sasha, feeling the things she aroused in him—remembering who he’d been before—made him forget who he was supposed to be now. He couldn’t do anything with his attraction, so he tried to block out its source.

  He would not waver.

  But even with her back to him, it was impossible to ignore her. So he scrubbed the already clean bar that was older than him and had kept his belly full and his feet shod for over thirty-two years. He promised himself he would pour an extra-large draught of the good scotch his brother had given him for Christmas before bed. He might not be able to have a woman to keep him warm, but whiskey was permissible. The peat would scrub his nostrils of the sweet fig scent that Sasha had brought into the bar with her.

  He tried desperately to ignore her presence while she was on a date in his bar with a man who looked entirely too appropriate for her.

  But Sasha Finerghty made him feel helpless in a way he hadn’t felt for a decade. As soon as that slick guy had put his hand on the middle of her back, he’d wanted to leap over the bar and snatch it away.

  He had no right to.

  He had an obligation not to.

  But he still wanted to.

  Patrick was saved from unsuccessfully trying not to imagine Sasha’s date with a black eye by Jack walking into the bar. At that moment, he wanted to curse his best friend for bringing Sasha into his orbit, and so his greeting was probably a bit sharp. “What are you doing here?”

  “Whoa, buddy.” Jack held up his hands. “Trouble in the God salt mines?”

  Patrick sniffed and grabbed a glass to pour his friend his favorite beer. Jack sat down and glanced over his shoulder. “Or girl trouble?”

  “I don’t have girl trouble.” That was a lie. Sasha was plenty of trouble. And he tried not to lie almost as much as he tried not to imagine how smooth the skin on Sasha’s thighs would be or what it would be like to be able to touch her.

  “Sure.” Jack gave him a smile that said he didn’t believe him. Of course he would see it all; they’d known each other since Jack was born about a year after him. Their moms had been best friends, and now they were best friends. More like brothers, really. Jack would know what it looked like when he had a crush, and he wouldn’t keep his mouth shut about it. That just wasn’t how their friendship worked—and Pa
trick usually appreciated it. But not now.

  “I actually do have church problems that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” Patrick’s role required him to be a counselor to everyone, but he didn’t feel like he had anyone to talk to—other than Sister Cortona. She was more likely to point out more problems when he needed solutions. But Jack could sometimes be a sounding board for him. Patrick hated to ask, but now seemed to be the time.

  Jack took a sip of his beer. “Shoot.”

  “We might have to close up the pre-K program at St. Bart’s.” Even saying it caused a pang.

  “Seriously? Even after all that good publicity about the test scores?”

  “Yeah.” Patrick let out a sigh and put his head on the bar. “And it’s not like the kids at St. Bart’s”—who were mostly Black and Brown—“will be welcome at any other Catholic schools nearby.”

  Jack just snorted in understanding of the subtext of his message. Extremely helpful.

  Patrick was about to turn and pour himself a whiskey when Jack said, “Maybe we can help.”

  Jack was part of a “we” now. And Patrick was happy for him. He never thought he’d feel anything about not being part of a “we.” But now, with Sasha across the room—he’d never let her out of his line of vision, even when he was talking to Jack—and his best friend as a smug married, he felt something. Something he wouldn’t put a label on.