you can meet single women your age.”
“Aw, Macy,” he complained. “Don’t start with me. You know how I am around women. Especially ones I don’t know.”
“Fine. Then we’ll find a woman you do know for you to talk to.”
He tugged her to a stop and lifted a brow. “I am. I’m talking to you.”
“A single woman,” she clarified.
He did a quick scan of the crowd, then shrugged. “Sorry, but it appears all the women here are either married or engaged.”
Macy snagged the arm of a woman who was passing by. “This one’s not.”
“Whoa,” the woman said, laughing as Macy hauled her back. “What am I not?”
“Married,” Macy replied. “Whit was complaining that every woman here was either married or engaged. I just proved him wrong.”
As the woman turned to look at Whit, resentment knotted in his gut when he discovered that out of all the available women in the room, Macy had chosen Melissa Jacobs to prove her point.
“I should have added widow to that list,” he muttered, then turned on his heel and walked away.
The next morning Whit was in the barn early, cleaning out the stalls. It was a hot, backbreaking job, but it suited his mood just fine as he had some steam to work off.
He couldn’t believe he’d run into Melissa the night before. The odds of seeing her twice in a two-week span, after successfully avoiding her for nearly seven years, had to be high.
But Whit’s luck had never been very good. Not where Melissa was concerned.
“I think you owe me an explanation.”
Startled by the voice, he snapped up his head to find Macy standing in the stall’s open doorway. That she was angry with him was obvious in the hands she held fisted against her hips.
With a frown, he resumed his shoveling. “For what?”
Dropping her hands, she marched toward him. “Don’t you play dumb with me, Whit Tanner. You know very well that you were rude to Melissa last night, and I want to know why.”
“No offense, Macy, but you’re not my mother.”
“A fact you should be grateful for,” she informed him. “If I was, I’d turn you over my knee and give you a spanking you wouldn’t soon forget.”
He snorted a breath. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she warned. “I’m about a hair away from snatching you bald-headed as it is.”
He stood the shovel up and braced an arm over the handle to peer at her. “Do you talk to Rory like that?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. I want an explanation, and I’m not leaving until I get one.”
To prove her point, she sat on a bale of hay and folded her arms across her chest. The clencher for Whit, though, was when she pursed her lips and lifted an expectant brow.
Grimacing, he shot the shovel blade beneath a pile of manure and scooped it up, planning to ignore her. He crossed to the wheelbarrow, dumped the manure, then repeated the process four more times. By the time he shot the shovel beneath the fifth pile, her steady gaze was burning a hole in his back and the heavy silence that stretched between them was screaming in his ears.
“Okay!” he said in frustration. “I left because I didn’t want to talk to her.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t. Period.” He scooped up manure, then turned to frown at her. “And you might as well go on home and irritate Rory for a while, because that’s the only explanation you’re going to get from me.”
Jutting her chin, she stood. “All right. I’ll go. But not before I have my say. Last night you insulted not only one of my guests, but one of my suppliers as well, and I think you owe her an apology.”
“If by supplier you mean Melissa, you’re crazy as a loon. She’s never worked a day in her life.”
“That just proves how little you know. I’ve bought a number of her creations, including the garden gate you tripped over.”
When he merely looked at her, she sagged her shoulders in frustration. “I know you’re shy around women, Whit. But you’re not a mean person. In fact, I can’t think of another man with a heart as soft as yours. That’s why it’s so hard for me to understand why you’d intentionally hurt a woman who has suffered such a tremendous loss, one who is struggling so hard to pull herself out of debt.”
“I did nothing but walk away. If that offended her, that’s her problem, not mine.”
“Her husband was your friend,” she reminded him stubbornly. “And from what Rory has told me, your best friend. If for no other reason than out of respect for Matt, I would think you could put aside whatever differences you might have with his wife, and offer her the kindness and support she needs and deserves.”
Macy may not have gotten the explanation or apology she thought she deserved from Whit, but she had succeeded in making him feel like a heel, a trait he didn’t feel he deserved.
Yeah, you do, his conscience argued. Macy was right. Matt was your friend. Your best friend. And friends take care of friends.
Scowling, Whit lifted a bale of hay high and heaved it onto the growing stack in the barn’s loft. “Matt was a friend, all right,” he muttered as he reached for another bale. “The minute I turned my back, he stole my girl.”
Your girl?
Yes, dammit, Whit thought angrily as he hefted the bale up. She might have been Matt’s girl first, but she’d broken things off with him and started dating Whit. And she’d still be Whit’s girl now, maybe even his wife, if Matt hadn’t stolen her away.
What did he do? Hold a gun to her head? Hog-tie and gag her? Surely, Matt isn’t the only one to blame.
His scowl deepening, Whit shoved the bale onto the stack. No, Melissa owned a part, as well. She’d made Whit fall in love with her. Even claimed to love him, too. Then, the minute he’d left town, she’d run off with his best friend.
There. You admitted it. Matt was your best friend. Y’all sure had some good times together. Remember the night the two of you stole a six-pack of beer out of Matt’s parents’ refrigerator and got drunk as skunks out by the lake?
Grimacing, Whit tugged off his work gloves. Yeah, he remembered that night, all right. And others, as well.
With a sigh, he sank onto a bale of hay and dropped his forehead to his hands, unable to stop the memories from surfacing.
Growing up, he and Matt had all but lived together, spending almost every waking hour in each other’s company. Before his mother had married Buck and was still working at the café in town, she had arranged for Whit to go home with Matt after
