“He takes it well. It’s my mother who has the hard time. She says that girls of my generation have no restraint and no shame at all. She says that girls today throw themselves at men.”
“Like you and your young man?”
“I never—”
“Didn’t he teach you about using your . . . ?” He waved his hand about in the general area of his mouth.
“No,” Cay said hesitantly, reluctant to admit that she’d lied. “Jessica told me about that. She’s had more experience with boys than my other friends and I’ve had.”
“So you didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have with the boy Micah?”
Cay didn’t like the way he sounded like her father. “He’s hardly a boy. He’s thirty years old, has never been married, and conducts services on Sundays.”
Twisting about, Alex looked up at her. “He’s a minister? You’re thinking about marrying a pastor?”
“And what’s so wrong with that?”
“You agreed to help a convicted murderer escape from prison. Don’t you think that’s a wee bit against what the good wife of a holy man would do?”
“I told you that I didn’t do it for you but for Uncle T.C.”
“And this is the man who was passionately in love with a woman named Bathsheba?”
“Yes,” Cay said, not understanding what he was getting at.
“Tell me, child, did T.C. ever do anything about his passion?”
When she didn’t say anything, he looked up at her.
“Come on, lass, I can see it on your face. What did he do?”
“Hope.”
“He hoped he’d find the woman he loved alone someday?”
“No!” she said as she put her hands on his scalp and turned his head back around. “Bathsheba had a daughter named Hope and she looks a lot like Uncle T.C.” She glared down at him. “If you keep looking at me like that I’ll pour this oil into your smirking mouth.”
Alex closed his eyes, but he was still grinning. “All I’m saying, lass, is that if you marry the pastor and people find out what you did, it won’t make life easy for your husband. But then, he might be an understanding man and forgive you for your sins.”
“I haven’t . . .” She trailed off, not sure what to say. What would Micah do when he was told what she’d done? How could she explain that she’d spent days alone with this man, had even had his head on her lap, but nothing sinful had happened? When she saw the way Alex was smiling at her, as though he actually could read her mind, she was tempted to make good her threat and pour the oil in his mouth. “Are you forgetting that you’re a convicted murderer and we’re alone out here? I know you don’t want me to talk to you about . . . about men.”
“And rightly so. I just wanted to know that you haven’t done something you shouldn’t have.”
“The more I know you, the more you sound like one of my brothers.”
“Which one?”
“Part Nate and part Tally.”
“But not the beautiful Ethan?”
“Definitely not Ethan.”
“What about the perfect Adam?”
“Adam is unique. No one is like Adam.”
For a while they were quiet and Alex closed his eyes as the smell wafted about him and Cay’s small hands worked on his scalp. “I swear, lass, that you have put me in a trance.”