of stuff that happened years ago and make Whitney feel like crap?” Phillip shot back. “You’re right. That would really suck.”
“Hey—this is not my fault. You guys sprung this on me.”
“I believe,” Jo said in a voice so icy it brought the temperature of the room down several degrees, “I told you I was asking Whitney Maddox to be my maid of honor. Whitney Wildz is a fictional character in a show that was canceled almost thirteen years ago. If you can’t tell the difference between a real woman and a fictional teenager, then that’s your problem, not hers.”
“It is my problem,” he got out through gritted teeth. “You can’t tell me that’s all in the past. What about the headlines?”
Phillip rolled his eyes. “Because everything the press prints is one hundred percent accurate, huh? I thought you, of all people, would know how the headlines can be manipulated.”
“She’s a normal person,” Jo said. Instead of icy, though, she was almost pleading. “I retrained one of her horses and we got to spend time together last winter. She’s a little bit of a klutz when she gets nervous but that’s it. She’s going to be fine.”
“If you can treat her like a normal person,” Phillip added. “Man—I thought you were this expert at reading people and telling them what they wanted to hear. What happened? Hit your head this morning or something?”
Matthew sat there, feeling stupid. Hell, he wasn’t just feeling stupid—he was stupid. His first instinct had been to protect her. He should have stuck with it. He could do that without giving in to his desire to claim her, right?
Right. He was in control of his emotions. He could keep up a wall between the rest of the world and himself. He was good at it.
Then he made the mistake of glancing at that silly donkey, who gave him a baleful look of reproach. Great. Even the donkey was mad at him.
“I should apologize to her.”
Phillip snorted. “You think?”
Damn it, he felt like a jerk. It didn’t come naturally to him. Chadwick was the one who could be a royal pain simply because he wasn’t clued in to the fact that most people had actual feelings. Phillip used to be an ass all the time because he was constantly drunk and horny. Matthew was the one who smoothed ruffled feathers and calmed everyone down.
Phillip was right. Matthew hadn’t been reading the woman next to him. He’d been too busy thinking about old headlines and new lust to realize that she might want his approval.
“Which room is she in?”
Jo and Phillip shared a look before Phillip said, “Yours.”
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