Queen Bee Goes Home Again by Haywood Smith

was funny. Not one bit.
    God and I both knew perfectly well that I was nobody’s idea of a proper companion for a Baptist minister. Mary Lou Perkins would go through the roof.
    When I’d first moved home ten years ago, Grant Owens had told anybody who’d listen how I’d gotten high on weed (completely not my fault) and slept with him (which I hadn’t, at the last minute, but I might as well have, because I’d planned to do it), making me notorious in Mimosa Branch forever.
    God knew I hadn’t followed through on the affair, thanks to a serious case of the giggles when we got into bed, but I don’t think anybody else believed the truth. Except Tommy, God love him. So I’d been branded a loose woman without ever having tasted the sweet nectar of sin.
    Wouldn’t you know.
    I cleared my throat. “Well, if you’re ready,” I told the AARP Adonis, “why don’t we get started?” I held open the front door for him, letting in the waves of heat. “It will be simpler if I drive, because I know where the showings are.”
    He didn’t make any of the usual man-noises that my male customers did about letting me drive. He simply said, “Great,” then followed me to my car and got into the passenger seat.
    â€œThis is a really nice car,” he said as we pulled out. “I used to have a minivan, too, but I had to give it up. Literally.”
    Curious, I asked without thinking, “What happened?”
    He grinned and looked out the window. “My ex got it in the divorce.”
    I almost wrecked.
    A divorced Baptist minister?
    He was starting out with two strikes against him!
    Times, they were a-changin’ in Mimosa Branch, for sure, but even that didn’t mean this man could be seen with me without causing a scandal. Never mind that over half the congregation had been divorced at one time or another.
    When it came to divorce and remarriage, the convenient Baptist excuse was for the guilty parties to claim they weren’t really saved when they were misbehaving and got divorced, but I don’t buy that. Christians have the same choices non-Christians do, so they can sin like anybody else. And when it came to this guy, I didn’t think that excuse would fly with his congregation. I’d seen him preaching on the big Christian cable channel as I’d surfed past.
    Connor Allen looked at me with that same mischievous smile. “At least I didn’t lose my job. She ran off with a much richer man who paid her a lot more attention than I ever did, so I had scriptural grounds for letting her go.” His tone lightened. “Apparently, God hadn’t called her to the ministry, only me. I gotta tell you, it broke my heart, and hurt even worse because I was the one who’d neglected her. I felt like such a failure, but my congregation didn’t judge me. Very humbling.”
    Boy, was he forthcoming.
    â€œI lost my husband to a stripper ten years ago,” I confessed. “Well, to be perfectly accurate, I told him I wanted a divorce after he said he wanted to have us both. Was that scriptural grounds?”
    Connor Allen chuckled. “Definitely.”
    â€œThat’s a relief.”
    Instead of preaching at me, he changed the subject to safer ground. “Julia said you grew up on Green Street. Where do you live?”
    Seriously direct, but his lucent personality went a long way to allay whatever questions I might have raised about his motives.
    â€œActually, you’ll see it when we visit the last listing. I recently lost my house, so for the moment, I live with my mother and my brother, right next door to the listing.” I changed the subject back to business. “Will you be needing a financing contingency?”
    â€œNot if we stay in budget. I owned my former house long enough to pay it off,” he said. “Since most churches sold their pastoriums decades ago, we ministers have had the chance