Did he know his fingers toyed with her ponytail?
"Back to the schnookered thing. Right after that, Sister Nic asked me to turn the pages for her when she played the organ during mass." Blue eyes smiled at the memory. "I was such a screwup, I couldn't imagine she really meant me and I didn't know squat about music. I figured she wanted to embarrass me as payback for when she got tipsy off that punch, hiked up her habit and did the electric slide."
She let her head fall back to rest against his arm. "You are so bad."
"You're only just noticing? I must be slipping." He looped a lock of her hair around his finger and tugged. "At any rate, I thought for sure turning those pages would be the worst punishment yet because I'd ruin the whole service. But she said to watch for when she nodded, then turn the page. I did okay. Then I realized that sitting up there, I got plenty of attention from Sister Nic, and the whole congregation."
The vision of a young Bo in need of a mother's love cuddling up next to that wise old nun on a piano bench brought fresh tears to her eyes. "And your love for music was born."
"Pretty much. There were plenty of musical instruments and teachers around. I got free lessons that would have cost a mint anywhere else." He nodded toward his guitar. "By the time I was eight, I could 'Kumbaya' with the best of them."
"That's definitely a story to make me smile. Thank you for sharing it." The man was far more generous with parts of himself than she seemed able to manage. "Sister Nic sounds like a wonderful woman."
"She is."
"Is?" She'd envisioned an ancient nun dispensing that motherly love. "She's still alive?"
"Yeah, alive and kicking at seventy-nine, sneaking her smokes in a retirement home down in Charleston. That's actually why I call her Sister Nic—as in Sister Nicotine, since she used to slip out to the prayer garden for the occasional cigarette. She's really named Sister Mary."
"In Charleston?" She struggled to get the geography of his youth untangled. "St.
Elizabeth's was in South Carolina?"
He shifted on the swing, scratching along the back of his neck. Avoiding? "Uh, no. It was up in Chicago."
"So Sister Nic has family in South Carolina?"
"Not exactly."
Which meant she must have moved to be near him. Realization trickled through. She understood enough about retirement setups for nuns and clergy to know money was scarce enough that there wasn't much picking and choosing.
Unless it was privately funded.
By someone like Bo.
Oh, God, surely it was a cold day in hell, after all, because she was about to kiss this generous, funny, bighearted man.
Chapter 9
He saw the kiss in Paige's damp brown eyes even before she swayed toward him. After a week of living together, watching her, smelling her, getting to know this sweet, sexy lady, damned if he could will his sorry ass to move off the porch swing.
Bo cupped the back of her neck and met her halfway. Soft woman and softer br**sts gave against his chest until his libido shouted an enthusiastic ooh-rah. Yeah, he was a breast man. Every guy had his preference, even if he was smart enough not to let on, and he liked supple, giving... Hell, he just liked her.
She opened to him, moist and warm in contrast to the dry cold prickling around them.
The taste of lemon pie from dessert mingled with something he was coming to recognize as distinctly Paige, mind-blowing Paige, who resurrected every bad-boy inclination he'd worked to stifle for the past week.
"Hey, you," he whispered against her kissed-full lips. "I thought we weren't going to do that again."
"We aren't." She nipped at the corner of his mouth, her hands crawling over his shoulders and up into his hair to urge him back down again.
"We're not?"
She breathed the answer against him. "Nope."
"Then what are we doing?" He had to kiss her once, twice, fast again before he could let her answer.
Her arms looped around his neck as she arched more of that tempting fullness against him. "I don't know about you, but right now most of me is singing."