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request for a conversation during my office hours. It was because I was worried about her, I reassured myself. It was because I wanted to welcome her to our church and give her comfort and guidance, because I sensed that she was someone who was not easily lost, not easily broken, and for something to send her into a strange confession booth and bring her to tears…well, no one should have to bear those kinds of burdens alone.
    Especially someone as sexy as Poppy.
    Stop it.

    It wasn’t too hard to find Poppy again. In fact, I did literally nothing except jog past the open tobacco barn on my morning run and collide into her as she rounded the corner. She stumbled, and I managed to stop her fall by pinning her between my chest and my arm.
    “Shit,” I said, yanking the earbuds out of my ears. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
    She nodded, tilting her head up and giving me a small smile that gave me chills; it was so perfectly imperfect with her two front teeth peeking behind her lips and a sheen of sweat covering her face. At the same time, we both realized how we were standing, with my arms wrapped around her and her only in a sports bra and me without a shirt. I dropped my arms, immediately missing the way she felt there. Missed the way her tits pushed against my naked chest.
    In the future: only sideways hugs , I told myself. I was already seeing another cold shower in my future.
    She put her hand on my chest, casually, innocently, still giving me that small smile. “I would have fallen if it wasn’t for you.”
    “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been at risk of falling at all.”
    “And yet I still wouldn’t change a thing.” Her touch, her words, that smile—was she flirting ? But then her smile widened, and I saw that she was just teasing, in that safe, playful way that girls do with their gay friends. She saw me as safe, and why shouldn’t she? I was a man of the cloth, after all, bound by God to be a caregiver of his flock. Of course, she would assume that she could tease me, touch me, without bothering my priestly composure. How could she know what her words and voice did to me? How could she know that her hand was currently searing its outline onto my chest?
    Her hazel eyes flickered up to mine, green and brown pools of curiosity and intelligent energy, green and brown pools that reflected grief and confusion if you cared to look long enough. I recognized it because I had worn such a look for years after Lizzy’s death, except in Poppy’s case, I suspected that the person she was grieving—the person she’d lost—was herself.
    Let me help this woman , I prayed silently. Let me help her find her way.
    “I’m glad I saw you,” I said, straightening up as her hand fell away from my skin. “You said earlier this week that you wanted to meet?”
    She nodded enthusiastically. “I did. I mean, I do.”
    “How about my office in, say, half an hour?”
    She gave me a mock salute. “See you there, Father.”
    I tried not to watch her run away, I really did, but I promise I only looked for a second, an infinitely long second, a second long enough to catalog the gleam of sweat and sunscreen on her toned shoulders, the taunting movements of her ass.
    Definitely a cold shower then.

Half an hour later, I was back in my uniform: black slacks, Armani belt (a hand-me-down from one of the Business Brothers), long-sleeved black shirt with the cuffs rolled up to the elbows. And my collar, of course. St. Augustine gazed austerely out over the office, reminding me that I was here to help Poppy, not to daydream about sports bras and running shorts. And I wanted to be here to help her. I remembered her soft crying in the confessional and my chest tightened.
    I would help her if it killed me.
    Poppy was one minute early, and the easy but precise way she walked through the door told me that she was accustomed to being prompt, took pleasure in it, was the kind of person who could never understand why other