Page 14 of Led Astray (Hellraisers 1)

He grinned. "You seem surprised to see me."

"I am," she replied honestly. "How long has it been since you came to church?"

She had been dusting the altar in preparation for the bouquet of flowers the florist had delivered. Sunlight poured through the tall stained glass windows and made the fuzzy dancing motes look like a sprinkling of fairy dust. The light cast rain­bows on Jenny's skin and her hair, which had been pinned into a haphazard knot on the top of her head. Her jeans fit snugly. The tennis shoes on her feet were appealingly well worn. Cage thought she looked as cute as a button and sexy as all get out.

"Last Easter." He dropped down onto the front pew and laid his arms along the back of it, stretching them out on either side of him. He surveyed the sanctuary and realized it had remained virtually unchanged for as far back as he could re­member.

"Oh, yes," Jenny said. "We had a picnic in the park that afternoon."

"And I pushed you in the swing."

She laughed. "How could I have forgotten that? I screamed for you not to push me so high, but you kept right on."

"You loved it."

There was a trace of mischief in her eyes as she smiled down at him, the corners of her mouth turning up adorably. "How did you know?"

"Instinct."

When he sent a lazy smile in her direction, Jenny guessed that Cage had many instincts about women, none of them holy.

Cage was thinking back to the previous spring, to the Sun­day they had mentioned. It had been a late Easter and the skies had been purely blue, the air warm. Jenny had worn a yellow dress, something soft and frothy that had alternately billowed around and clung to her body with each puff of south wind.

He had loved drawing her close against his chest as she sat in the swing, the old one with ropes as thick as his wrists suspending it from the giant tree. He had held her against him for an unnecessarily long time, teasing her by almost letting her go before jerking her back. It had given him the oppor­tunity to breathe in the summery scent of her hair and enjoy the feel of her slender back against his chest.

When he did release her, she laughed with childlike glee. The sound of her laughter still rang in his ears. Each time the pendulum of the swing carried her back to him, he pushed the seat of it, almost touching her hips. Not quite, but almost.

It was true what the romantic poets penned about the fancies of young men in spring. Virile juices had pumped through his body that day, making him feel full and heady, heavy with the need to mate.

He had wanted to lie in the grass with Jenny, letting the warming rays of the sun fall on her face as gently as his lips kissed her. He had wanted to rest his head in her lap, gazing up into her face. He had wanted to make soft, unhurried, gentle love to her.

But she had been Hal's girl that day, just as always. And when Cage had taken all he could of seeing them together, he had stalked to his car to drink a cold beer from the cooler he kept there. His parents had demonstrated their extreme dis­approval.

Finally, to keep from ruining everyone's good time, espe­cially Jenny's, because Cage knew that dissonance within the family distressed her tremendously, he had bade everyone a snarling farewell and roared away from the park in his black Corvette.

Now he felt the same compulsion to touch her. Even in her mussed state, she looked so touchable and soft. He wondered if the wall of the church would cave in if he took her in his arms and kissed her the way he longed to.

"Who donated the flowers this week?" he asked before his body could betray his lusty thoughts.

Each year a calendar was circulated through the member­ship of the church. Families filled in a Sunday when they would provide flowers for the altar, usually in honor of a spe­cial occasion.

Jenny read the card attached to the bouquet of crimson gladiolas. "The Randalls. 'In loving memory of our son, Joe Wi­ley,'" she read aloud.

"Joe Wiley Randall." Cage squinted his eyes, a smile on his face.

"Did you know him?"

"Sure did. He was several classes ahead of me, but we ran around together some." He leaned his head far back and looked over his shoulder at a pew several rows behind him.

"See that fourth row there? Joe Wiley and I were sitting there one Sunday morning. When the offering plate came by, Joe Wiley stuck his chewing gum to the bottom of it. I thought that was hilarious. So did Joe Wiley. We followed the progress of that offering plate through the sanctuary, up one aisle, down another. You can imagine the expressions on people's faces when their hands got stuck in the gum."

Jenny, her eyes sparkling, sat down beside him. "What hap­pened?"

"I got a spanking. Reckon he got one too."

"No, I mean, the card says 'in memory of.'"

"Oh. He went to Nam." He stared at the flowers for a long moment. "I don't recall seeing him after he graduated from high school." Jenny sat motionless, saying nothing, listening to the silence. "He was a helluva basketball player," Cage said reflectively. Then he hunched his shoulders and ducked his head as though God's wrath might strike him like lightning for his curse. "Ooops. Can't say that in church, can you?"

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