Page 109 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part 1

I stand up and look at him. “If you can get Jasmine into the Vatican, she will take care of the rest.”

“Okay,” he eventually replies, voice flat. “I will pack my bags.”

“Good.” The Reverend Mother stomps her cane. “Book a flight for tomorrow.”

Thirty-Seven

Cisco

The empty laundry basket weighs heavier than a tombstone as I walk up the stairs toward the dormitories.

It’s getting late. I promised to open the church for reconciliation within the hour, but there’s another promise I must fulfill first, and since I’m leaving for Rome soon, this could be my only chance.

I pause at the third-floor landing and stare at the row of closed doors. I spoke with my team at a dinner I didn’t eat. We ironed out kinks in our plan to find the sword’s missing hilt, and now I am here.

“It’s just laundry,” I murmur to myself, knuckles blanching on the basket’s handles.

I force my feet forward, one step at a time, until I face her door—my old door. I should be knocking on the door behind me. If I were truly a man of my word, I would be throwing myself into this prophecy wholeheartedly. I would get to know Jasmine, finding out if she is the one I felt a familiarity with at the pool hall, and resigning myself to the fact that my attraction to Mercy has been wrong.

I’d thought because she made me feel more like a man that she was the one. But perhaps a man is not what God wants me to be. Perhaps the Cardinal was right all along.

I knock.

No answer.

This was a bad idea. I should go. Maybe I should let her have the night.

But I knock again.

The door swings open, and there she is. Wild hair and bright eyes, she is a vision, and knows it. Her oversized T-shirt is inside out as if she hurried to put it on just now. The logo is reversed over her breast. No bra. My gaze drops to the vibrating toy in her hand. It’s the blue, sparkly one.

“You lost, Padre?”

I stare. I always stare.

“I’m here for your laundry.” I lift the basket.

I am almost forty years old, and I can’t string a sentence together around her.

“The match,” I clarify. “I owe you a prize.”

“Never met a man so eager to get into my dirty clothes before.”

I clear my throat. “I am a man of my word.”

She leans out, scans the hall, then yanks me inside. The door slams behind us, sharp and jarring.

For a moment, we just stand there. My basket is the only thing between me and her bare legs. The faint scent of her—floral and feminine—is in the air. She turns off her toy and plugs it into the charging cord.

While her back is turned, I look about the room. It didn’t take long for her to make herself feel at home. Clothes are everywhere.

“I like what you’ve done to the place,” I tease.

“I’m impressed you’re here.” She starts moving about the room, gathering dirty clothes, scrunching them into a ball, and tossing them at me. I catch them in the basket. “Honestly, I figured you’d chicken out.”

“It’s just laundry.”

Her smirk is a wicked little thing, and I feel it down to my cock.