A Way With Women. Jule McBride
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“Macon,” she returned just as calmly. It was the first time she’d spoken his name aloud to him since he’d come home, and doing so did such funny things to her heartbeat that she shot an involuntary glance over her shoulder, as if Bruce was still alive and might catch her out here alone with another man. Just looking at Macon McCann made her feel that guilty.
“We need to talk, Harper.”
Thankfully, the screen was safely between her and Macon. Everything inside her was tightening as it did whenever he got this close. It would be impossible to convince herself that the heat suffusing her skin was anything other than pure lust, but she tried, assuring herself that nothing could be as brutally punishing as this god-awful Texas heat. “Talk? About…?”
“You know why I’m here.” Pulling a sheet of crumpled pink bubble-gum scented stationery from his back pocket, Macon waved it in her direction, then re-pocketed it. “Mind if I come in?”
She considered, nervously lifting a hand to smooth her hair, his penetrating glance making her conscious that she’d brushed it up into a loose topknot, just the way he liked it, leaving long stray sexy wisps curling against her neck. She’d put on a strappy white sun-dress embroidered with bluebonnets, too, which showed plenty of cleavage. Licking her lips against their sudden dryness, she assured herself she’d only dressed this way because of the heat. Blowing out a shaky sigh, she said, “No, you’d better not come in.”
Macon didn’t bother to ask why not. He knew why not. He considered the matter even longer than she had. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Okay. I guess you’re right. I’d better not.” After a moment, his eyes locked on hers with an intensity that made her shudder. “Aren’t you coming out here then?”
His perusal was sapping strength from all her joints, so she wasn’t sure she could step over the threshold if she tried. “I don’t think I’d better come out, either.”
Losing patience, he raised an eyebrow in question. “So, you’re going to stay in there, barricading the door?”
“I’m not,” she defended on a rush of pique. “But should I be barricading my door? Am I in trouble?”
Since they were nose to nose, it was definitely a good thing the screen was between them. “I’m not here to have a battle of wits, Harper.”
She couldn’t help but flash him a quick smile even though her stomach felt awfully jittery—probably from all the coffee she’d drank this morning. “Wouldn’t a battle require two people with wits, Macon?”
“As ever,” he retorted, “your tongue’s sharp as spurs.”
She couldn’t quite believe how quickly she’d lost control of the conversation, and yet her heart tugged as she thought of the letters she’d read this morning. All those women were in such trouble. “In this day and age, a woman had better be sharp,” she said pointedly.
“Especially if she’s tampering with the U.S. mail.”
“You didn’t have to come here. You could have simply called the sheriff, Macon.”
“And have you arrested? I thought of that myself, and it’s sorely tempting, but there’s more than just you to worry about. Did you think of that, Harper?”
Hearing him say her name made her heart skip a beat, but she ignored that and squinted through the screen. “Think of what?”
“Of Cordy. Your son. He’s a good kid. I’d hate to see him minus a mother, which is where he’ll be if I call the sheriff and you go to jail.”
For a second, she ceased to breathe. As far as she knew Cordy and Macon had been introduced—on the rare occasions she’d run into Macon, Cordy had sometimes been with her—but Macon had said Cordy’s name so familiarly, almost as if their relationship were personal. Knowing she should feel more relief about Macon not taking legal action, she managed to say, “You’re letting me off the hook? Don’t tell me you found a heart in Houston.”
He stared at her a long moment, his expression bemused and faintly accusatory, as if she’d somehow wronged him. “I always had a heart, Harper.”
As if she didn’t. Nervously, she scraped a thumbnail on the screen. “If you don’t intend to take any action, why’d you come over?”
His gaze flickered over her dainty dress, his voice lowering with a huskiness he was obviously trying to fight. The barely heard words were rough, but there was no mistaking the innuendo. “Do you want me to take some sort of action, Harper?”
She imagined she knew exactly what type of action he meant. “Of course not!”
Eyeing her dress, he didn’t look convinced. Only when he touched the screen did she realize she was still running her thumbnail across it. His fingertip brushed her thumb through the metal, the touch lasting just long enough to assure her there was still an electrical spark between them. “Please,” he muttered, “could you stop that? It’s driving me crazy.”
She couldn’t help but say, “Maybe I like driving you crazy.”
Everything about him seemed to still at her words. He frowned. “I came over because what you did is wrong, Harper. You know that.”
Yes, and she also knew that if he studied her neck any harder where the pulse was beating out of control, she’d lose her self-control. “You should be illegal.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Silently, she stared at him, cursing that sudden teasing lift at the corners of a mouth that kept reminding her of how well he kissed. She’d meant to fight how his voice always dropped directly into her bloodstream with a dark ripple, but here she was—heart racing, hamstrings quivering, shaky all over. Trying to regain her equilibrium, she lifted her chin a notch. “It wasn’t meant as a compliment.”
“No? Then how’d you mean it?”
Having no answer, she watched in horrified fascination as one of Macon’s big hands suddenly curled over the doorknob. She’d always loved his hands. Huge, slender-fingered and tanned a rich copper, they were a working man’s hands. “Macon,” she managed to say, her pulse staggering drunkenly as he came into the dim hallway, and she stepped back to accommodate him, “I’m sure I didn’t invite you in.”
“Memory,” he returned. “Never your strong suit.”
That was rich. Didn’t he recall being with Lois Potts the night he was supposed to run away with her?
“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