Uncross My Heart Read Online Free PDF

voice. That’s all I can tell you about her.”
    As I hurried toward the chapel, I left him behind. Anticipation of sparring with a woman of intellect on this crisp morning had my blood up. I’d read her article on the cranking out of fundamentalist crazies by seminaries that cared more about their profits than their prophets. I knew her stance on religion in general, that it was the last great traveling salvation show, akin to medicine wagons and magic acts involving bodies sawed in half.
    I rehearsed answers to supposed questions. It’s up to the student to find the religious training that speaks to him or her and then determine how it will fit into a life and a career. Many of our students never enter the church at all but become better businesspeople because of the underlying spiritual understanding they’ve gleaned from Claridge.
    I rounded the corner of the chapel prepared to educate or do battle, and there, directly ahead of me, seated on a marble bench, a woman in an electric orange leather jacket, her short hair framing her face, fed a large gray squirrel. Stopped in my tracks, I watched the light cascade down through the branches of the elegant old tree and create reddish highlights on her golden hair. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Perfectly manicured hands, the fingers artistic, in the act of lining up small nuts on the bench for the patient little rodent, who paused before selecting one. She laughed softly as the furry animal munched down on the treat.
    I was transfixed, as if I’d been transported to another time, another dimension, a place outside my knowing. I felt at peace and slightly disoriented, as if I’d just left all care and worry and, in fact, couldn’t even remember what had been troubling me. The mid-1800s painting by Sandys flashed through my mind of the fearless Mary Magdalene—who cast out seven demons, was accused of being a prostitute, and guarded Jesus’s body after his death—her hair gorgeously sunlit like this woman’s at this divine moment.
    The woman on the bench looked up as if to inquire of my stare, and when her eyes met mine I must have sighed. She was breathtaking.
    “You’ve tamed the forest creatures,” I said.
    “Not my intent. Beauty is in the untamed.”
    My heart jolted as I recognized the voice, and my head involuntarily tilted to match the angle of hers.
    “Would you by any chance be Vivienne Wilde?” Vivienne Wilde sounds great and looks spectacular? If I have to fight Hightower’s demon, it’s a blessing she looks like an angel.
    “Yes.” She seemed momentarily surprised, gave me a quick appraising glance, then stood up brusquely. Her demeanor changed as she dusted off her hands and offered one in a solid handshake. “Are you Dr. Westbrooke?”
    “Alexandra. Welcome to Claridge.” I felt light-headed as I took her hand, and my mind fanned through the various reasons why that might be, settling on my not having had enough protein for breakfast.
    “Would you like to finish feeding—”
    “No, let’s take the tour.” Even in her orange spiked heels, she was still a bit shorter than I and hardly seemed to be the theological terrorist Hightower described. “So it’s Alexandra without the i ? Unusual name.”
    “My father wanted to name me MacArthur, thinking Mac a perfectly acceptable female name, but my mother intervened and the compromise was Alexandra, after Alexander the Great.”
    “Maybe he thought you’d be a fighting priest.” For a moment I could envision an ancient battle in which warriors fought for someone as lovely as she.
    “Very peace-loving, actually,” I reluctantly confessed.
    “You weren’t while you were at Berkeley.” I cut my eyes at her as if to ask how she knew that. “I Google everyone I’m meeting. You were particularly interesting—early liberal leanings.”
    “Youth ultimately learns its lesson.” I let the topic die, preferring to hone in on the tour and avoid any discussion of my past.