Love Remains by Kaye Dacus Read Free Book Online

she continued on past the college. Turning off before reaching Hillsboro, she wound around a couple of secondary streets to Acklen Avenue. Usually, she parked on a side street, nearly a full block away from the large church. Today, however, she indulged her laziness and found a spot near the small parking lot at the rear of the church. Must not be too many people in the early service for there to be this many parking places available near the building.
    Halfway up the stairs to the Sunday school classroom, she paused, wheezing, chest heavy. If she started coughing now, it would sap her of what little strength she had to try to make it through the morning. And she couldn’t collapse again, not in front of Bob—Patrick and everyone else.
    Her low-heeled black pumps echoed loudly against the tile in theempty corridor. As she expected, the singles’ classroom—which had been made large enough to accommodate them by the removal of the walls between three regular-sized rooms—was empty. With it being Labor Day weekend, she didn’t expect more than half their normal number to show up.
    The Sunday school director had already dropped off their attendance sheets. In a way, Zarah was glad they got new record sheets each week. That way, she didn’t have to see if someone had messed up the job that had been hers almost from the first day she’d attended this church. She pulled out the basket of name tags from the metal cabinet behind her welcome desk and started laying them out on the table on the far end of the room by the coffee station.
    “What are you doing here?”
    She cringed at Patrick’s tone and volume but rearranged a few name tags to put them in alphabetical order before turning. “I’m feeling much better.”
    Patrick slammed two half-gallon jugs of orange juice down on the beverage table hard enough it was a miracle the tops didn’t pop off and spew the sticky liquid everywhere. “Just because you have your voice back—”
    “And no fever and no headache.”
    “—doesn’t mean you’re better.” He grabbed her head—one hand wrapped around the back, the other covering her forehead and eyes. “You don’t feel overly hot.”
    “I told you I don’t have a fever.” She’d forgotten just how fussy he could be. She should have remembered—she’d wanted to kill him after she’d twisted her ankle two years ago hiking in Gatlinburg, he’d hovered so much.
    “What’s this, an exorcism?” Flannery McNeill’s voice floated into the room.
    Zarah pushed Patrick’s hands away. “Yeah, Patrick is trying to exorcise my pneumonia away.” She handed Flannery her name tag. “I thought you were going to Birmingham for the weekend.”
    Flannery made a face that would have twisted anyone else’s features into ugliness. But not Flannery McNeill with her big hazel eyes, high cheekbones, patrician nose, and full lips. She couldn’t do ugly no matter how hard she tried. She set the five doughnut boxes she’d carried in on the table. “One of the senior editors quit Friday—with a book due to the printer by Tuesday that wasn’t ready to go. I was at the office until one in the morning Friday night and then didn’t get home until almost midnight last night. But now all the changes are made and all that has to be done is for the designer to prepare the electronic files and upload it.”
    “Sounds…fascinating.” Patrick rolled his eyes.
    “Thanks, Mr. I-Hit-Things-with-a-Sledgehammer-All-Day.” Flannery propped her fist on her hip.
    “Face it, Ms. Wordy Girl. The work of a building contractor will always be more interesting than the work of an editor. Plus, no one feels like they have to watch what they say—or the way they say it—around me.”
    “As if you’d ever be bothered by speaking improperly in front of me.”
    Zarah chuckled and returned to setting out the name tags. The constant bickering between the two of them had bothered her when she first met them, until she learned that not only had