Excerpt of A Little Bit Engaged by Teresa Hill

"So, have you and Joe set a wedding date yet?"

Kate Cassidy barely managed not to choke on her carrot- stick appetizer.

Trapped in the corner by an interior designer, she swallowed hard and relaxed her facial muscles in hopes of avoiding that really unattractive expression she wore when she just wanted to scream.

It was truly an unattractive look.

Kate knew because she'd looked in the mirror one day while she made it, hoping it wouldn't be that bad. But it was. She'd vowed to eradicate the expression from her face, but it was hard. Especially lately, when someone asked that question. Third time this evening at the Board of Realtors dinner, in fact.

"Not yet," she said quietly, with what she hoped was a bit of a smile.

"Oh." The woman, Gloria someone, waited expectantly for Kate to elaborate, which Kate wasn't going to do. She'd learned that if she was silent long enough, most people quit asking and went away. But Gloria wasn't budging.

Okay. If things got really bad, she could always sink so low as to play the sympathy card. Sorry, Mom. She let her expression fall, allowed a shimmer of tears to come into her eyes.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Kate. I guess it's just too soon, huh?" Kate nodded with what she hoped was appropriate sadness and grief, hoping her mother would understand. Kate had finally found something she didn't know how to handle. All her plans that had always gone so well seemed to have fallen apart, and she didn't know what was right anymore or what to do. It had started with her mother's death and spilled over into every aspect of her life.

"It just takes time," Gloria said kindly, making Kate feel worse. "And Joe's such a sweetie. I'm sure he understands."

Kate wasn't so sure he did. And she didn't want to think about it. She wanted to ignore the whole mess and hope it went away or solved itself, or that the answer just dropped out of the sky or something.

Vaguely aware of new voices around her, Kate looked up to see Charlie Sims, president of the Magnolia Falls, Georgia, Board of Realtors.

"Kate, how are you?" he asked, extending a hand.

"Great, Charlie. How are you?"

"Couldn't be better, my dear. Have you met my wife, Charlotte?"

"No, I haven't." Kate smiled down at the pint-size blonde on Charlie's arm.

Charlie introduced them, and then Charlotte launched into a tale about their recent wedding. Kate didn't listen. She was too busy planning her escape. Was there anyone in this room who didn't know that she and Joe were supposed to have married this summer but hadn't because Kate's mother's cancer had come back and she'd died in the spring?

There. Kate spotted two absolute strangers in the corner. She was ready to make her excuses when Gloria said, "Oh, that sounds like fun. I'd love to do that."

"Fabulous," Charlie said, sounding genuinely appreciative.

That got Kate's attention. She wanted Charlie to be happy with her, because there wasn't a real estate agent in town Charlie didn't know. He was a veritable gold mine of referrals for Kate's fledgling mortgage company.

"What about you, Kate?" Charlie's wife asked.

"Care to come join us?"

Kate stood there with her mouth open. She had no idea what she'd just been asked to do, but if Gloria could do it, surely Kate could, too. Anything for Charlie and his referrals.

"Of course," Kate said. "Sounds like fun."

"Oh, it is. The kids are great," Charlie's wife said. Kids? They were doing something with kids?

"If you two will give me your fax numbers, I'll send you an application. Fax it back, and we'll match you up."

Kate wasn't sure if she'd just applied for a job or joined a dating service. Match us up? No, that couldn't be right. Everyone here wanted news of her upcoming wedding to Joe. Plus this was something to do with kids. It couldn't be dating.

Kate obediently gave Charlie's wife her fax number.

It wasn't until the next day, when the fax arrived, that she vaguely remembered something about Char-lie's new wife taking over as director of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program, and that Kate had just volunteered to be a Big Sister.

Okay. How hard could that be?

Maybe she'd get lucky, and her little sister would be one of the few people in town who wouldn't question her about why she and Joe hadn't gotten married yet.

Ben Taylor hovered at the end of the hallway leading to the front door, assessing his chances of sneaking out of his office without getting caught, and thereby avoiding a lecture from his nearly eighty-year-old secretary.

Her long-distance vision wasn't good, and she hated her bifocals. Ben figured the odds were at least three-to-one against her noticing him leaving. Which meant he could put off for now her lecture about his unfortunate tendencies to wander about, loose in the community, doing his freelance, do-gooder thing and getting into trouble, all while just trying to help people.

Ben really tried to help. He wasn't sure if he was just bad at it or if people's problems were getting worse. It seemed no one walked in with a simple issue he could solve anymore, and really, wasn't he here to solve problems?

"Should have just kidnapped the girl," he muttered to himself. "Or maybe held her hostage until I could talk some sense into her."

"You say something, Pastor?" It was Rose, the nice lady who lived three blocks down and came to clean every other day.

"No, ma'am." Ben sighed. "But I'm going out for a few minutes. Will you tell Mrs. Ryan if she asks about me?"

"Sneakin' off again, Pastor?"

"Maybe," he admitted.

He and Mrs. Ryan would have to come to an understanding about his straying from the office one of these days, but this wasn't the day, and he wasn't up to a scolding by a scrunched-over, outspoken taskmaster who reminded him of his great-grandmother.

"Will you tell her I've gone out?" he asked Rose.

"I guess I'll have to," Rose said. "I'm the only one who's not scared of her."

"I'm not scared," he claimed. It was just that... Well, she did look a lot like his great-grandmother, and he'd been raised to believe a boy never, ever argued with his great-grandmother. His father would have seen it as an appalling lack of respect. Of course, his father would have thought sneaking out like this was cowardly, which made this a classic no-win situation. He'd take the cowardly way again. Rose wished him luck and said he owed her one. He decided he'd bring her a latte from that little shop down the block. She loved them but considered them a luxury. It was the least he could do for her for saving him from Mrs. Ryan.

He was nearly to the door when Rose said, "Now, just to be clear on this, you're not really going to kidnap anyone, are you?"

"No. Promise." The church probably frowned upon kidnapping and hostage taking. He'd just have to find another way. He was supposed to be able to keep people here long enough to help them without resorting to those tactics, even if a kidnapping could have made things so much simpler.

He must be doing something really wrong. "Okay," Rose said. "I just wouldn't want to be around if Mrs. Ryan got wind of you kidnapping someone."

"Neither would I." He would really be scared of the woman then.

"So," Rose said. "What should I tell her when she comes looking for you?"

"Nothing..."

"Pastor —"

"Okay, if she threatens to pull out your fingernails one by one, you can tell her I've gone to see Charlotte Sims at the Big Brothers/Big Sisters office. But only under threat of torture. Understand?"

"Of course."

"Thanks, Rose."

He slipped out the door of the massive stone church, built seventy-five years before, and tried not to think of his shortcomings as an Episcopalian priest, as Mrs. Ryan saw them. He was too young, wasn't married and had no children, so he obviously didn't know enough about life to help people with real problems. He tended to be more informal in how he related to his parishioners and how they related to him, than Mrs. Ryan thought was proper. She thought it scandalous that he asked people to call him Ben — Pastor Ben if they really felt it was necessary to add some title to his name. And he was always behind on his paperwork.

Those were his main failings, all of which he tried not to think about as he headed for Magnolia Falls' Main Street. He'd cross that and then go four blocks over, to Vine, to see Charlotte Sims, a woman he hoped would be more successful than he'd been at helping the teenager who'd shown up at his church yesterday morning but run away before Ben could do anything for her.

Honestly, she'd hardly given him ten minutes. Was he really supposed to turn her life around in ten minutes?

Not that he'd left it at that.

He'd followed her, was probably lucky he hadn't been arrested for stalking. Mrs. Ryan would have loved that. The day that woman had to bail him out of jail was the day he was out of here for good. Defrocked. Wasn't that what they called it? He thought it sounded like an odd, modern- dance number or maybe some obscure cooking term.

Defrock the basted chicken pieces, and heat oven to 375....

Okay, so he'd like to avoid defrocking, kidnapping, hostage taking and stalking charges. He'd like to actually do some good. He'd like to feel useful. He'd like to not be afraid of Mrs. Ryan. He was her boss, after all. Not that she showed any understanding of that.

He grinned remembering how horrified his secretary had been by the girl's appearance yesterday. Truth be told, Ben had been a bit taken aback, as well.

She had badly dyed, jet-black hair that looked like she'd taken a razorblade to it, then gelled it to get it to stand up in every direction; she was wearing at least seven earrings. He didn't even want to imagine what else she might have pierced. Shannon wore a black leather jacket and tall boots, that odd white makeup on her face and nearly black lipstick.

And it wasn't even Halloween.

She looked as if she was twelve going on forty, but he'd found out she was actually fifteen, had lost her mother and the grandmother who'd raised her, and was now living with a father who couldn't have cared less about her, at least not as she told the story. She said straight-out that she didn't believe in God but was desperate enough that day to give God — well, actually Ben — a chance. Ten minutes to either help her or convince her to stay, neither of which he'd done.

And she was pregnant, which made the whole situation even more dire.

Ben had followed her, successfully avoided stalking charges, resisted kidnapping her, and found her in the parking lot of the local high school talking to one of his parishioners, Betty Williams, who happened to teach there. A nicer, more successful do-gooder, he'd never met. And Betty had told him to get Shannon into the local Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, if he could. They were full, with a waiting list a mile long. Betty had checked.

It had taken a little unauthorized deal making to get Shannon a spot at the front of the line, and he hated to make other kids wait longer for help, but there was the baby to consider. So Ben had turned wheeler-dealer, offering an as-yet-undefined favor to the director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, which was why he was sneaking out of church this morning, to see what the deal would cost him.

He arrived at the pretty brick building and was just about to grab the door, when it opened on its own.

Hmm.

He liked open doors.

He thought they were a sign that someone was doing something right.