“Brother Matthew.”

Todd Lawson patted me on the shoulder, smiling broadly in the same creepy sort of way my father had been doing since I told him last night that I’d changed my mind, that I wanted my place in the Guardians restored. It was pride, the sort of pride I had expected at my high school graduation and the day I left for boot camp, but had never really seen until now. Pride that I was willing to rejoin God’s army.

“I’ve been talking to Tucker Gardner about you. He’s pleased that you’ve decided to return to the fold.”

I inclined my head slightly. Tucker Gardner was a mild-mannered grocery store manager a little more than ten years older than me. He’d been with the Guardians from the beginning, keeping to the back of the pack like he had one foot out the door in case things turned bad.

I guess he’d finally made the decision to put both feet in.

“They want you to come to tonight’s meeting at the church. They’ll discuss your penance then.”

“Penance?”

“You didn’t think you’d be welcomed back without some sort of punishment for your defection, did you, son?”

I glanced at my father. “No, sir.”

“Don’t worry, Zachariah,” Todd said. “Your boy will take it with all the grace God has instilled in him.”

“Of course he will,” my father agreed, but the worry in his eyes suggested he didn’t have as much faith in me as Todd did.

“Kari will be so happy to hear about your change of heart, Matthew. You should come to dinner tomorrow night, tell her yourself.”

I lowered my head slightly. “Yes, sir.”

This was going to be complicated.

I couldn’t get out of that office quickly enough. Todd Lawson was a stuck-up asshole, and his daughter was a prissy Daddy’s girl. I hadn’t liked her much in high school, and I certainly didn’t like her now. But I couldn’t stand in Lawson’s fancy legal offices and tell him that I had no intention of giving his daughter the time of day, let alone anything else. Jack had told me it was important that I win the trust of everyone involved with the Guardians, and that included Lawson.

From what I could tell, Tucker Gardner was the new leader of the Guardians, but Todd Lawson was pulling the strings from the outside. As a lawyer, he couldn’t get his hands dirty, but that didn’t stop him from coordinating with Gardner and anyone else he needed to deal with.

Like my dad.

I wasn’t sure what role my father played in all this, but I knew he was involved somehow. His daughter had married Jack Stone, the Guardians’ most vocal opponent, and his son had defected from the Guardians to join Stone’s side, yet my father was still a high bishop in the church? That meant that he had some pull somewhere, some strings that kept them from turning on him the way the church had turned on Truesdale when he was ousted from the bank.

The Guardians had fired on Truesdale’s house. They’d wanted him dead, and all he’d done was allow the community to see that he was a cuckold and lose his job. The comparison suggested that my father wasn’t a threat in the same way Truesdale was. Truesdale knew something that someone was afraid he’d release. My father? Maybe he didn’t know anything. Or maybe he knew too much.

I was almost afraid to learn which it was.

I was still thinking about it when Whit walked into the bar a few hours later. As she had the day before, she drew my attention from the second she stepped through the door, her full body dressed in a silky white dress that fell like cream from a pitcher down the curves of her hips. I stood to welcome her, my hands already shaking as she found me in the small crowd, her eyes brightening at the sight of me, a soft smile parting her pale lips.

“Hi,” I said, slipping a hand over her jaw to draw her in for a kiss. She sighed against my mouth, her breath sweet, hot.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She shrugged, her eyes not quite meeting mine. I lifted her chin and kissed her again, letting my lips linger against hers for a second longer than required. When I stepped back, she was blushing, her hand pressed between her breasts.

“You’re something else, Matthew Pearce.”

“Thank you, Whit Ellington.”

She giggled a little. The bartender came over, and she ordered a shot of tequila, downing it quickly when he set it before her. She ordered a second, downing that, too, before focusing on me.

“I’m not dragging you away from work, am I?”

I rolled my shoulder slightly, the lie rolling off my tongue much more easily than I was comfortable with. “I quit my job.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“I decided that selling car ports wasn’t all that bad.”

“Private security just isn’t your thing, huh?”

“Not the job. The people.”

“Oh?”

I glanced at her. “The only reason I got the job was because the boss married my sister. No one there trusted me. And I was always given the lowest jobs, the ones no one else really wanted.” I shook my head. “Not my idea of career advancement, you know?”

“I get it.”

I tilted my head, watching her face because, well, I could watch her face all day and never get bored. “From experience?”

She smiled. “Yes.” She lifted the third shot of tequila the bartender had set in front of her and lifted it in a sort of salute. “But we’re not here to talk about work. We’re here to enjoy each other’s company.” She drank the liquor, grunting as it burned her throat.

I lifted my own drink—a tumbler of plain soda—and made the same gesture before taking a swallow.

“So, Ruthie got married?”

“She did. About four, almost five, months ago.”

“Who to? Not that Albert guy she was seeing in high school?”

“Albert Calico? No.” I laughed. “She didn’t even like him. She just went around with him because she felt sorry for him.”

“Then who?”

“His name’s Jack Stone.” I lifted my glass again, almost wishing it contained something stronger than sugar. “He’s from Memphis, and he thinks he’s a real hot shot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He and his brothers run this big security firm back there, and he got the bright idea to open a satellite office here. Thinks it’s his place to turn the town upside down or something.”

“Sounds like you don’t think much of him.”

“He’s her husband. Not mine.”

“Good for me, I guess.”

She smiled, peeking at me from under a veil of hair. I took some bills out of my pocket and tossed them onto the bar, snagging her hand as I stood.

“Let’s get out of here for a few minutes.”

She followed, holding so tightly to my hand that my fingers went numb. She kissed the back of my shoulder as we walked, standing so close that I could feel the line of her body pressed to mine. I clicked the button that unlocked my car, but when I went for the front door, she blocked me and opened the back door, sliding across the bench seat with a shy little smile.

What could I do but dive in behind her?

Whit slid into my arms, and we began to kiss, a kiss that was at the same time sweet and passionate, gentle and aggressive. It was a kiss of beginnings, of long-buried passions, of a desire that began before either of us truly understood what desire really was. It was a kiss that was nearly desperate, but patient.

I buried my fingers in her hair, drawing her as close to me as I could get her. My hand slipped over her side, her waist, her hip. Her hands moved over me, too, one hand on my side as the other explored the contours of my chest. A part of me ached to get her out of there, to get to a bed somewhere, a place where we could take our time and explore each other for a long time. But a part of me was content to be where we were. It was almost like we’d come back to where we should have begun, back to the teen years where this sort of thing was a common pastime.

Had we missed out, not finding our way to each other all those years ago? Or was it meant to happen this way? Were we supposed to wait until we were more mature, until we were ready for the complications that came with a lasting relationship?

I just wished she hadn’t come along now. Things were about to get dark in my life. Going back to the Guardians, trying to make nice with the very people I’d vowed to stop months ago, was going to make this an obstacle I might not be able to overcome.

I should tell her.

I should kiss her a while longer.

Her breath was so warm against my skin, her touch so perfect against my body. I slipped my hand under the skirt of her dress, let my palm slide along her outer thigh. She sighed, reaching down to pull my hand closer to those places that ached in close contact like this. She was wearing soft cotton panties that felt better against my hand than they had any right to. The warmth that radiated from underneath made me burn with a fever I don’t think I’d ever felt before—not at this temperature, anyway. And the taste of her, even with the burn of tequila on her tongue, was the best thing I’d ever had in my mouth.

Was it possible to have this much need all at once without absolutely exploding?

“Whoa, cowboy!” Whit suddenly said, pushing my shoulder to keep the weight of my body from pushing her down against the seat. “Slow down!”

“I’m not sure I can.”

I sat up despite my words, untangling myself from her. She blushed as she sat up, tugging her skirt back down around her knees.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, her confidence fluctuating.

“Don’t be.”

“I am, though. I keep…I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.” I leaned close and kissed her cheek lightly. “You’re perfect.”

She groaned. “Quit saying all the right things!”

“What do you want me to say, then?”

“I don’t know. But not that.”

“Okay. You’re a bitch for not giving me exactly what I want!”

She laughed. “That’s better.”

I pulled her toward me, tugging her head against my shoulder as I slid my arms around her shoulders. “We can take this as fast or as slow as you want it, Whit. I’m just happy to spend a little time with you.”

“Are you?”

I touched her cheek lightly. “Definitely.”

She sighed. “You make me feel like I could do no wrong. That’s a bad thing to do to a person.”

“Why?”

“Because…I don’t want to screw this up by getting too confident.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“There you go again, saying all the right things.”

“Sorry.”

She sat up, twisting a little on the seat so that she could see my face. “How do you not have a girlfriend? Or a wife running around with three kids on her hip?”

I laughed, trying to get that image out of my mind. “No one has ever wanted to put up with me long enough to have three kids, I suppose.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“The last few years have been complicated.”

“How? Selling your car ports to the wrong demographic? Not enough single women out there looking to protect their cars from the desert heat?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been pretty busy with the church.”

“Oh?”

I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her. Whit and her mother, needless to say, were not members of the church, though her mother was rumored to have had several relationships with male members of the church—a couple of them married at the time. I wasn’t sure she would understand what the Guardians were, or why I’d become involved with them in the first place.

I wasn’t even sure why I’d become involved in the first place.

“I was part of a group that makes it their business to protect the members of the church. In fact, I’m about to rejoin their ranks.”

“Protect the members? Like, how?”

“We cleared some gangs out of the south side of town. We escort bishops to meetings in other cities, other states. We encourage non-members to keep to their side of town.”

“People like your brother-in-law?”

I shrugged.

“Why did you quit?”

“Because some members were doing things that weren’t sanctioned by the church.” I glanced at her, feeling as though I was telling her a host of lies even though most of what I was saying was the truth. “But there’s new leadership now, and my father pulled a few strings to help get me back in.”

“Is that what you really believe? That the church has the right to influence the behaviors of people who aren’t members of the church?”

That was a tricky question. I used to believe it. I used to believe that the church was the ultimate authority on everything, that my church in particular had a better grasp on what God had wanted for his people, what he wanted us to do and how he wanted us to live. I believed that it was our purpose on earth to model our lives after the word of God and to shun those who didn’t. But now?

I think I stopped believing that when I met Tyler Sanders. I definitely stopped believing the night Tyler caused Harry Cravits’s death.

“I believe that we all need guidance in order to live our lives the way God intended. If this group can help with that, then so much the better.”

Whit was quiet for a long moment. “Do you think your brothers in this group would approve of what we’ve just been doing?”

I shrugged. “We are God’s army. We’re allowed certain privileges. Besides, we haven’t done anything too disgraceful.”

“I thought your church frowned on any physical contact before marriage.”

“Only for the female members. You’re not a member of the church.”

“Oh, so it’s okay to get freaky with the gentiles?”

I laughed, not because of what she said, but because of the tone of voice she used. She stiffened, but I kissed her neck until she relaxed. Then I kissed her lips, letting my tongue dance until she was as pliable as a newborn kitten.

“I’m not a monk, Whit. I am allowed a life outside of the church.”

“Are you?”

“But…”

She groaned. “I knew this was coming.”

“I have to make nice with the bosses, and one of those bosses is Todd Lawson.”

That made her expression tighten, her body growing as stiff as a board as she pulled away from my touch.

“You mean Kari?”

“I do. But I never cared for her, not like the way I feel about you. I’d much rather just sneak around in the back seats of cars with you.”

“That’s just what a girl wants to hear.”

“Whit—”

She shook her head. “It’s fine. Who am I to get in the way of your godly mission?”

I touched her face, drew her close to me. “I like you, Whit. I like being with you. This is just to please my father and his friends.”

“You’re a grown man, Matthew. You don’t have to please your father anymore.”

I tilted my head slightly, thinking of Jack and all that rode on what I did in the next week or so.

“I do, actually. But just for a while.”

She pulled away from me once and for all. “I can’t play games with you, Matthew. If you’re not interested, just say so, but don’t put me on a string and expect me to just walk along as if it doesn’t exist.” She opened the car door and stepped out. “You know where I am when you get your priorities straight.”

She walked away, jumping into her own car and leaving in a cloud of dust. I sat back and ran my hands over my face, wishing that had gone better. But what else could I have said? The situation was what it was.

Unfortunately.