Jule Mcbride - A Way With Women

“I’m coming in,” he announced. “It’s hot out there, Harper.”

“It’s Texas,” she returned evenly as he stepped inside. “It’s hot everywhere.”

Definitely hotter in here, now that she was sharing the hallway with Macon. And yet he was right. The house was cool and dark. She’d opened the windows last night and drawn the blinds today, and even though Bruce had installed central air conditioning long ago, the house was usually cool enough without it, which was saying something in Texas. Hardly comfortable, though. With Macon crowding the hallway, she couldn’t have been more tense if she were entertaining a burglar.

Not that Macon was the least bit bothered by her anxiety. Dropping his hat over the newel post, he glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen, then upstairs. When he looked through an archway into the living room, she realized how many of Bruce’s belongings still filled the room. Leather-bound history volumes were alphabetized in glassed cases—although he’d worked as a pharmacist, history was his hobby—and the old-fashioned spectacles he collected were arranged on the mantel. It was an odd collection, but Bruce had possessed a questing mind, a focused intensity that allowed him to see even the knottiest problems through to the end. Sometimes, when he’d caught her lying awake late at night, Harper suspected he’d known she’d never really gotten over Macon.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a start, feeling renewed determination to placate Macon so he’d leave. “I know you found those letters today. I saw you leave the post office. I…I truly don’t know what possessed me to write them, Macon.”

Instead of looking relieved at the confession, he pinned her with a particularly unnerving stare. “Harper,” he said flatly, “I’ve known you for years. You always know what possesses you.”

Oh, not always. She hardly wanted to examine her motives for suddenly caring so much about her appearance lately, for wearing this dress, for instance, or for pulling back her shoulder-length ash hair or spritzing her neck with perfume. “I was only doing my civic duty,” she found herself admitting.

“My, my,” he taunted, looking genuinely amused. “That sounds so patriotic. I’ll bet the U.S. government is having a meeting right now, wishing they had a few more postmistresses like you, Harper.”

“Macon,” she returned hotly, unable to stand the way he was mocking her. “You can’t rope in poor, unsuspecting women this way. Most women who responded to your ad need help.” She exhaled an exasperated breath. “You should have read those letters!”

Tilting his head to get a better look at her, he wedged a boot heel comfortably over a stair step and raised a golden eyebrow, his voice turning silky. “You really think so?”

She nodded. “Yes, I do!”

“Hell, yes, I should have,” he retorted. “They were addressed to me!”

Her heart pounding, she glanced around, her long-smoldering desire for Macon mixing with fury over the dire situations expressed in the letters. “There were pregnant teenagers.” She defended herself. “Mothers without enough money to feed and clothe their babies, foreign women wanting citizenship because they’ve been separated from children in the U.S. Some are so lonely they just can’t take it anymore.”

His expression was infuriatingly bland, as if the catalogue of horrors didn’t even touch his heartstrings. “Are you lonely, Harper?”

The words hit a nerve. She’d survived a teenage pregnancy and a mother who’d barely earned enough money to raise her. And yes, damn you, Macon, I’m lonely. Bruce had been gone two years, and Macon’s unwanted presence made it seem forever since she’d been touched lovingly. Why couldn’t he understand? “You can’t play with people’s lives like that!”

He surveyed her curiously. “Who says I’m playing?”

“I’d forgotten how impossible you are!” she snapped. No, she’d spent far too much time remembering the heat of his mouth and how his arms felt wrapped around her back. Forgetting her hair was up, she drew shaky, annoyed fingers through it, dislodging further wispy strands. “You have no concept, Macon,” she continued with a soft sigh of frustration. “You’ve never wanted for anything, but some of those women have absolutely nowhere to go.”

“Then why not let them come here?”

“Why not?” she echoed, stupefied.

His voice was a silken thread of danger. “If you hadn’t written to them, they could have,” he told her, his tone so reasonable she was flooded with guilt. “So, do you mind explaining why you’re interfering in my love life?”

“Love life?” she repeated, the lips she’d glossed with something called Goldust Glitter parting in astonishment.

His eyes hardened. “Yes, love life.”

“Since when does meeting strangers through Texas Men magazine constitute a love life, Macon?” Did he think she was jealous? she suddenly wondered. Even worse, was she? Cutting off the intrusive thoughts, she rushed on. “Macon, advertising for a bride in Texas Men is no joke.”

He looked furious. “Am I laughing?”

“Yes!” she exploded. She leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms, the sudden drop of his heated gaze making her aware, a second too late, that the action caused her breasts to lift. “I believe you are laughing. I bet you and Ansel Walters struck a wager or something. I bet he said you wouldn’t have the nerve to advertise. Why else would you do it?”

“Because I want to get married?” suggested Macon.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “There’s got to be more to it than that. You’ve been back in town two months, Macon, and…well, I’ve heard you’ve already slept with every available woman in town.”

He had the audacity to chuckle softly. “Maybe some of the unavailable ones, too.” Before she could respond, he added, “Besides, how do you know who I’ve been sleeping with, Harper? I don’t remember seeing you in my bed.”

“You have so many women you wouldn’t remember,” she returned, offering a disgusted shake of her head. “And how can you make light of this? Do you expect me to believe you’re going to become monogamous just because a pregnant teenager or an illegal alien shows up on your doorstep?” Before he could answer, she shook her head adamantly. “Oh, no, I don’t think so, Macon.”

He squinted at her. “Why not?”

She found herself recalling his male appetite. “Because I know you.”

His voice turned silky again. “You most certainly do, Harper.”

Her heart was pounding too hard, and her lungs were nearly empty. If she didn’t take a deep breath soon, she’d get dizzy. She forced herself to do so, gathering strength. Someone had to stop this lunacy. “To be perfectly blunt, working at the post office puts me in a position to hear all the gossip, Macon.”

Unfortunately, he looked intrigued, not contrite, as if he couldn’t wait to see what she’d say next. “When it comes to me, I bet it’s juicy, huh?”

“I don’t ask to hear the gossip,” she said, not gracing his question with a response. “Nor am I saying any of this for your amusement.” She suddenly gaped at him. “C’mon. Are you denying you and Nancy Ludell didn’t leave Big Grisly’s Grill until four a.m. last Saturday night? Or that you and that new teacher, Betsy, had breakfast the next morning, before you took your mother to church?” She paused, staring at him hard. “Or that you and Lois Potts didn’t also go bowling in Opossum Creek?”

“Serious charges,” Macon returned solemnly. “Bowling should get me the electric chair. And church…why, that should rate a lethal injection, don’t you think?”

“I should be so lucky,” she muttered. “Can you honestly tell me you weren’t teaching an underage girl to drive a stick shift last week, and that when she drove your truck into a ditch—”