Mirror of My Soul by Joey Hill (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

was a beautiful round stained glass window depicting a dove taking flight. The bird clutched a red rose with bright green leaves in her beak and a circle of cobalt blue framed the diamond-etched glass. Below, embedded in the wood floor of the raised altar area, was a wooden cross. A minister’s pulpit was located just to the left with a small table for candles waiting to be lit. Since a handful of them already were, she wondered if Tyler had come here earlier. Three phrases were embroidered on the linen tablecloth.

In memory. In prayer. In comfort.

“You restored this for your wife. To honor your love for her.”

When he looked unsure of her reaction, Marguerite rose on her toes and brushed his lips with her own, tasting the rain between them, the heat of the storm. “Tyler,” she murmured softly, “you are such an idiot.”

A light flashed in her eye that Tyler would have recognized as teasing in any other woman, but he’d never seen her do it before. Not with him.

“A man devoted and faithful to his wife, who cared for her to the very end, even after she left him.” She shook her head, her lips pursed. “And I find myself with such a horrible man. Stalking me, by his own admission.”

Holding on to his hands, she leaned back from him on her bare heels. Swayed back and forth, the prominent display of her nipples as arousing as her sudden mischief.

“I can’t think why so many women would find a man like you invaluable. It’s

probably just pity,” she decided. “A man with so few brain cells needs a woman to watch out for him.”

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Tyler shook his head, smiling despite himself. She squeezed his hands. “Did she get a chance to come here?’

He nodded. “When we first came in here, she did a dance, an impromptu ballet up the aisle, along the pews.” He remembered it with warmth. “She loved to dance. Used it to express her every mood the way the rest of us use our voices or our faces. She brought her whole body into it. That day was a dance of joy, of reverence. You reminded me of her a little, just now. Out there. Your spontaneity.”

Seeing he was flustering her, he changed the subject. “You seem to enjoy the peace in here. I guess I expected you might have some issues, some anger with God.”

Marguerite shrugged. “I’m not sure I believe in the idea of a deity that

micromanages our lives.”

She considered the cross. “In almost every country I’ve visited, there are pictures of a Goddess specific to that culture. Mother, lover, friend. Many different faces. The first time I looked out over a tea plantation, it was an overcast day, but it was so incredibly awesome, beautiful. It filled my heart. At that very moment, the sun came out.” Her gaze shifted to him. “It felt like She saw it through my eyes, felt how amazed I was by it and that made Her smile.

“I feel sometimes the same way when I’m being a Mistress, like I understand it all without words. The way you do when you’re in a church like this and it all gets quiet.

Everything gets so clear in my head, so peaceful. I’m part of Her at that moment, as it was always intended and everything makes sense. I can see and feel inside my

submissive’s soul, know what he best needs, give him that.

“You can think all sorts of nonsense when you’re crazy.” Her lips curved a little. “I guess what I’m saying is that God or Goddess, They have a plan. I believe that. There’s too much wonder for there not to be. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I have to believe my mother and brother are somewhere, happy.” She added the last, softly. “And so that keeps me from hating. So you finished it after she died?”

Here in this place, he couldn’t evade a question from her. Not with the spell she had just woven, the sacred presence she’d invited to fill the air between them. “Yes. It took a little longer, because I took over doing a lot of the work myself. When I…there was a time things didn’t make sense to me.”

“When you came back from Panama.”

He shook his head. “I’d fire that woman if I knew how to operate a vacuum.”

“Maybe she thinks you should be as honest with me as you’re demanding that I be with you. Or do you think I can’t take it?” She arched a brow.

He lifted a shoulder, moved down the aisle toward the wooden cross hung there.

Marguerite followed, trailing her fingers over the silken wood of the pews, watching him. When they got to the cross, Tyler lifted his fingers, pressed them into a gouge in the wood. “I did that, when I came back.”

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Mirror of My Soul

She stepped up next to him, pressing her shoulder to his, and put her fingers in the same spot. It looked to have been caused by a tool, perhaps a chisel. “While you were working in here?”

“Yes. I’m not a great craftsman, but I wanted to… I needed to do something. And the more I hammered and sanded in here, the more the silence… It’s as you said, God is in the silence. And sometimes it’s hard to be in the same room with Him.

“After I did it, I brought the local minister here, showed it to him and asked him if there was a way he could bless it, purify it. I felt like I’d somehow desecrated it. He told me, ‘The cross is supposed to bear pain and sorrow, betrayal and anger, so that it may help you forgive yourself.’”

Marguerite felt the emotions emanating from him. The strain of keeping the rest under careful control was evident from the tension in his face, his shoulders. He was trying to give her more of himself, just as she’d