Priest by Sierra Simone Page A

always assumed the best of people, always. But I guess I was a little surprised at the depth of her earnestness to help—I had been when she’d told me about Haiti too.
    “Is it because you think I’m some sort of fallen woman?”
    I dropped the mop in the bucket and looked up. She was closer now, close enough that I could see where a small cloud of flour had settled on her shoulder.
    “I don’t think you’re a fallen woman,” I said.
    “But now you are going to say that we are all fallen sinners in a fallen world.”
    “ No ,” I pronounced carefully. “I was going to say that people who are as smart and attractive as you don’t typically have to cultivate skills like kindness unless they want to. Yes, it surprises me a little.”
    “You’re smart and attractive,” she pointed out.
    I flashed her a grin.
    “Stop it, Father, I’m being serious. Are you sure that it isn’t because I’m a smart, attractive, advantaged woman that you don’t feel that way?”
    What? No! I had been one class short of a Women’s Studies minor in college! “I—”
    She took another step forward. Only the mop bucket was in between us now, but the bucket couldn’t stop me from noticing the elegant curve of her collarbone under her sundress, the faintest suggestion of cleavage before the bodice began.
    “I want to be a good person, but more than that, I want to be a good woman. Is there no way to be both completely woman and completely good?”
    Shit. This conversation had gone from taxes to the darkest corners of Catholic theology. “Of course, there is, Poppy, to the extent that anyone can be completely good,” I said. “Forget the Eve and the apple stuff right now. See yourself as I see you—an openly loved daughter of God.”
    “I guess I don’t feel so loved.”
    “Look at me.”
    She did.
    “You are loved,” I said firmly. “Smart, attractive woman that you are—every part of you, good and bad, is loved. And please ignore me if I fuck up and make you feel any differently, okay?”
    She snorted at my swearing and then gave me a rueful grin. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to corner you like that.”
    “You didn’t corner me. Really, I’m the one who’s sorry.”
    She took a step back, like she was physically hesitating about telling me what she was about to say. Finally she said, “Sterling called me last night. I think…I guess I maybe let it fuck with my head.”
    “Sterling called you?” I asked, feeling an irritation that was way beyond the scope of professional concern.
    “I didn’t answer, but he left a voicemail. I should have deleted it, but I didn’t…” She trailed off. “He repeated all those things he’d said before—about the kind of woman I am, where I was meant to be. He said he’s coming for me again.”
    “He’s coming for you? He said that?”
    She nodded and red rage danced at the edge of my vision.
    Poppy evidently saw this, because she laughed and put her fingers over mine, where they’d been gripping the mop handle so tightly that my knuckles had turned white. “Relax, Father. He’ll come here, try to woo me with more stories about vacations and vintage wine and I’ll reject him. Again.”
    Again…so like last time? Where you let him make you come before you made him leave?
    “I don’t like this,” I said, and I said it not as a priest or a friend but as the man who had tasted her just one flight of stairs away from here. “I don’t want you to meet with him.”
    Her smile stayed but her eyes changed into cold shards of green and brown. I suddenly appreciated what a weapon she would have made in a boardroom or on the arm of a senator. “Honestly? I don’t think it’s any of your business if I do meet with him or not.”
    “He’s dangerous, Poppy.”
    “You don’t even know him,” she said, removing her hand from mine.
    “But I know how dangerous a man can be when he wants a woman he can’t have.”
    “Like you?” she said, and