The low murmur of voices punctuated by the whining of a blender coming from the direction of Trese’s kitchen penetrated Jason’s sleep haze, dragging him back from the edge of a decades-old recurring nightmare and signaling him it was time to get up.

As if to punctuate the point, his cell phone started vibrating against his hip. He rolled from his stomach to his side, nearly falling off the sofa as he stretched out the kinks that were the result of confining his length to a sofa that offered more style than comfort. Easing back his waistband, he squinted down at the cell phone tucked against his hip.

Zak. Second time too. “Meet me over at my office,” he’d texted. Or more likely his wife or secretary had. Zak was as slow keeping up with technology as he was innovative in his approach to ministry. But he usually managed to get results, regardless. All caps too. And not even eight o’clock.

He had to be kidding. Jason’s first free Saturday in a month, and Joanna here with him and not settled yet, with a suitcase full of issues for them to work through. Of course, Zak wasn’t to know he’d found Joanna—or how. That their prayers for her had been answered by means of a “chance” encounter between Jason and Russell, the cop who’d taken her to Agape’s women’s shelter while Jason had been busy playing judge and jury and ignoring her phone calls.

Zak certainly wouldn’t know of the emotional roller coaster ride Jason and Joanna had both been on. Wouldn’t know that the same godson who’d agreed with him in prayer for Joanna’s safe return had acted like a jerk once he found her and had made her cry. Or that she’d fallen asleep on him later at Trese’s house out of sheer emotional exhaustion, leaving him no choice but to put her to bed in his old room and play chaperone downstairs on Trese’s living room couch.

He could just picture Zak’s reaction to the idea of him chaperoning Julian. His eyebrows would doubtless shoot upward, and he’d say something like, “Very thoughtful of you, but what I’d like to know is—who is chaperoning you?”

A grin tugged at Jason’s mouth. Whatever else his concerns, Zak’s relief that Joanna had been found safe and sound would outweigh the other considerations. He’d doubtless agree that whatever he wanted to see Jason about could wait till Monday. Zak didn’t tolerate sloth, but neither was he a slave driver. And he understood better than anybody else what Jason had gone through those agonizing couple of days when Joanna had been lost somewhere in Destiny. Knew what it would mean for Jason to have found her unhurt and just minutes away from the ministry where he spent his days and quite a few of his evenings.

Never mind the fact Jason hadn’t followed Zak’s instructions to contact him the minute he found Joanna. Truth was, if Jason had been thinking straight, he wouldn’t have agreed so readily to it.

Still, Zak had been clear not only in his instructions but his rationale—the same as they’d been when Jason was seventeen years old and six feet plus of hormones: steer clear of temptation and any appearance of impropriety. And Jason had agreed to abide by his instructions. And besides being his godfather, lifelong mentor and pastor, Zak happened to be his boss.

Jason considered the message again. No hint of the smile that usually softened Zak’s commands. Still, this wasn’t pastoral chat from the weekly bulletin. How widely could one smile via an alphanumeric medium?

He was the only one who had slept in, Jason discovered when he went upstairs to use the bathroom. Trese’s bed was made and her room deserted. So was Joanna’s. Julian’s door was locked as usual to conceal the mess it doubtless was.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Jason found Joanna looking wide awake and fresh in pink cotton and pressed jeans in place of the travel clothes he’d put her to bed in. And she was at the kitchen counter inches away from the man Jason was there to protect her from, being served up one of his ghastly green shakes.

Instantly, Jason’s mood soured. Wasn’t that just like sin? Subject the part of you that lives forever to all kinds of abuse, and then torture yourself trying to preserve the part that was going to rot one day.

Jason could barely acknowledge Joanna’s shy smile in his haste to glower a warning at Julian. Tanks and shorts, indeed. Even if he’d come down not knowing there was a lady in the house, he could have gone back up and changed. Instead of out here parading his bulges and pretending at the same time to be domesticated.

“Hey, man,” Julian said, watching Jason warily. “Just taking care of your lady for you.”

Just so long as you know she’s a lady and she’s mine. Well, would be. One day. He hoped. If God was working on her heart like he’d started to suspect last night when, for one incredible moment, she’d seemed willing to agree that, like Zak, God was so much bigger and better than He’d been made out to be by those who didn’t know Him.

Oh yes, she was closer. Definitely a good ways closer than the skittish girl who not three months ago had branded “church people” as hypocrites and told him she wasn’t looking to join any church. Who’d eyed the Bible he handed her with such wariness it might have been a snake he was handing her and not a verse. Who’d tensed up and seemed poised for flight every time the conversation threatened to stray in the direction of God or faith or anything smelling remotely like it. Oh yeah—she was closer all right. A good deal closer.

“Closeness to the Kingdom doesn’t count,” Zak’s voice in his head interjected. “For intercession purposes, yes, knowing exactly what to pray for and how, but not as a license for disobedience.”

Right. Not to mention a good ten hours after reuniting with Joanna he still hadn’t informed Zak. On top of abandoning his post at youth meeting to go chasing after her at Phase II, nearly offending poor Luz in the process, and then got caught holding Joanna in the shadows of the pines. By Patrick of all people, the rebellious preacher’s kid he’d just lit into for disrupting the panel discussion on the whys of avoiding dating unbelievers. The same PK Patrick who had his own little fire simmering over at Phase II—only to run into his youth pastor with a girl nearly ten years his junior, and who everybody knew was no believer.

Wouldn’t matter to Zak that it had all been innocent, that Jason had only been trying to comfort her after his clumsiness piled more hurt on top of the lifetime of rejection she’d suffered at the hands of her dysfunctional family. Or that the compulsive hug he’d been giving her in the cramped confines of his Jeep had been her first. Or that he hadn’t once entertained the thought of taking it any further. He’d certainly get no points for the fact that within minutes of being deposited in Trese’s living room, she’d fallen asleep on him, while he’d been upstairs preparing his old bedroom for her. Especially considering the reason he’d had to put an entire floor between them as soon as he dropped her suitcase was to give his heated flesh a chance to cool after…

He groaned inwardly, recalling that electrically charged moment in the driveway…when a careless move on his part had resulted in an accidental brush against each other that had been too close for his comfort or hers…

He strangled the memory now and reached for the kettle, eyeing Julian unsmilingly.

“There’s hot water in that, now…don’t throw it,” Julian warned, and Joanna giggled.

Jason sent her an unsmiling look, and her grin trembled. He looked off and searched in the cupboard for a mug.

It wasn’t as if he had anything to be ashamed of. Shooting hoops in his lunch hour with some of the guys on staff and doing a twice-monthly stint with the Cross-Beam home repair ministry kept his midsection flat and the rest of him lean and hard, but he had neither the time nor the commitment to produce the kind of traffic-stopping results that Julian boasted.

As if Julian even needed a physique. Even without the body, he’d still turn heads with those pretty-boy looks and Hollywood grin that hadn’t gotten the news that he was closing in on forty. Jason slanted Joanna a look as he filled his mug from the kettle, trying to judge her reaction to the other man. She certainly was smiling and giggling a lot.

But then she looked at him, the smile fading, that uncertain, almost pleading look in her eyes, and he didn’t have to ask whose smile it was she wanted most, whose chest was the only one she’d allowed herself to cry on, or which pair of arms she had wanted holding her.

“Hey,” he said softly, melting like hot fudge. For Julian’s benefit he went over to her, right between the two of them, circling her waist from behind with one arm and dropping a whisper of a kiss close to the corner of her mouth.

“Alright, I hear you.” Julian made a gesture of surrender, picking up his shake and heading for the back porch. “I’ll be out here working out if anyone misses me.” As he slipped through the sliding doors, he let his breath out on a soft whistle and muttered to himself what sounded like, “Poor Alanna.”