Yesterday's Scandal (The Wild McBrides 3)

“I want to see you again,” he said, his voice gruff. “When can you get away?”

He didn’t think he needed to clarify that he wanted to see her alone. She smiled at him in a way that let him know she understood. “Soon,” she said. “I want to be with you, too.”

He almost kissed her again. Instead, he reached for the door handle of the truck. “I’ll call you later.”

“You do that,” she said, then turned to rejoin her friends.

So what, exactly, had he accomplished? he asked himself as he turned out of the Davenports’ driveway and onto the road that would take him to the Garrett house. He’d learned that there was a good chance Jonah McBride had been his father—something he’d already figured. He’d caused Sharon to be embarrassed by her brother’s behavior—and they’d both known it was a possibility. And, even though he knew the McBrides weren’t prone to gossip, he’d made the relationship between Sharon and himself the focus of attention at least briefly that afternoon.

What had he accomplished? Damned if he knew.

But it was becoming harder and harder for him to think of the McBrides as just a group of people who owed him answers and apologies.

JAMIE WAS POISED to pounce almost the moment Sharon returned. “Well?” she said while the others were busy taking care of the little ones and putting away cookout supplies. “Anything you want to share with me?”

“What do you mean?” Sharon asked, though she knew very well what had piqued Jamie’s curiosity.

“You’re seeing Mac Cordero, aren’t you? I’d heard around town that you are, and now that I’ve seen you together, I think the rumors might have some merit for a change.”

Sharon still wasn’t sure who’d started that rumor. She and Mac had been very discreet. They’d hardly been seen in public together. She could only assume that some of the construction workers had reached certain conclusions from watching them together—which only proved that men were just as bad as women to spread gossip, she thought with a shake of her head.

“Mac and I have been spending some time together. But it’s still very early, Jamie. Much too soon to make any predictions.”

Jamie laughed and patted Sharon’s arm. “Don’t worry, I’m not starting a betting pool. I just thought it was sweet the way he looked at you. It feels great to have a guy walking into walls when you’re around, doesn’t it?”

Flustered, Sharon laughed. “He doesn’t actually—”

Jamie waved her hand dismissively. “I was speaking metaphorically, of course. Mac could hardly take his eyes off you all afternoon, even though he was very discreet about it. He’s like Trevor, I think. It isn’t easy for him to express his emotions, but he feels them very deeply.”

Sharon remembered the afternoon when she had watched Mac and Trevor descending the stairs of the Garrett house side by side. Even though they were very different physically, she’d had the feeling that they were quite a bit alike in other ways.

“I guess you’ve heard Jerry’s been telling everyone in town that you dumped him for Mac.”

Sharon frowned. “No, I hadn’t heard that. Has he really been saying those things?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s really quite bitter about it.”

Sharon put a hand to her head. “I wish he wouldn’t do that. It isn’t as if Jerry and I were ever really a couple. There was never any talk of a future between us.”

“Men.” Jamie heaved a dramatic sigh. “There’s no understanding them.”

Sharon heartily agreed.

Abruptly turning serious, Jamie touched Sharon’s arm again. “I know your mom’s away and you have a lot on your plate now, with your brother and everything. I remember how terrifying it was starting a new relationship. I know how it feels to fall for a complex, exasperating man with emotional baggage—which I would bet big money describes your Mac as well as my Trevor. If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me.”

“Is it that obvious?” Sharon heard the touch of wistfulness in her own voice. “That I’m falling for him, I mean.”

Her eyes ruefully sympathetic, Jamie smiled. “Sweetie, you might as well be wearing a sign.”

Sharon groaned.

“Maybe I’m just particularly sensitive to it because it hasn’t been that long since it happened to me,” Jamie encouraged her. “Maybe no one else noticed.”

Glancing automatically at the others, Sharon decided that every other woman there seemed to be surreptitiously watching her and Jamie. Oh, yes, she thought. They had noticed.

She might as well have been wearing a sign.

MAC WAS SITTING at his kitchen table again, brooding. His notes were spread in front of him, but it was the photograph in his hand that held his attention. A bottle of bourbon sat on the table, a half-empty glass near his elbow. He didn’t drink often, but tonight there had seemed to be no reason to stay completely sober. He had nothing better to do and no one to do it with.