I was surrounded by Drew, assaulted on all sides.

I didn’t want this. I wanted none of it. I wanted my mother to be healthy. I wanted Chicago and books. I wanted comfort and contentment and predictability. I wanted my knitting group and Tuesday night shenanigans.

Maybe one day I’d find a nice normal man—an accountant or an actuary—who tinkered with clocks. I’d be up front about the arrangement so there’d be no hurt feelings, and he’d be content with companionship in lieu of passion.

Or maybe I’d just have my friends and myself, and that would be great. I could deal with that. I was fine with that. That was my life now, and I was happy.

What I didn’t need or want was a bossy PhD game warden from Texas with sexy brains and sexy eyes and sexy everything. Because my heart was now smarter than he was sexy, it warned me that Drew would be my biggest mistake yet. I didn’t have the strength to recover from the death of my mother and another man making me feel like trash.

“Why would you say that?” My voice was a bit shrill, and I had a hard time keeping the volume low enough to be considered indoors appropriate.

“Because it’s true.”

I shook my head, slowly at first, then faster. “You are such an ass.”

I stood from the table, scraping my chair against the floor, but then I hesitated. He’d made dinner and cleared the dinner plates. Good manners dictated that I needed to clear the dessert plates and do the dishes.

Instead of leaving indignantly like I wanted to do, I surprised us both by pointing to his barely-touched pie and demanding, “Are you finished with that?”

“Why? Do you want my pie?” He asked this as though he was offering me more than pie, and the softness of his tone caught me off guard.

I sputtered for a few seconds then said, “No. I don’t. I don’t want your stupid delicious pie.”

I grabbed my plate and fork and the dish of remaining pecan pie and its cover. I marched to the kitchen, chucked my plate in the sink, covered the pie plate, and found a home for it in the refrigerator.

Then, my fury a cloak of impervious distraction, I crossed to the sink and began doing the dishes.

I’d finished our bowls, dessert plates, and utensils, and was about to go back to the table for the glasses when Drew reached around me and turned off the faucet.

“Sugar, stop doing the dishes.”

“Fine. They’re all done anyway.” I turned away from him and reached for the dry towel on the counter. “I want to go home. Will you please call one of my brothers to take me home?”

“Ash….”

“Listen, Drew.” I faced him, my heart pounding in my chest, and I summoned every bit of ingrained politeness I had. “Thank you for dinner. Thank you for the shower and your soap and your shirt. Thank you for driving me here and for carrying me down the hill. Now will you please call one of my brothers to take me home?”

His eyes seemed to be searching mine. His expression was guarded, but I perceived flashes of dejection and misery there.

“I’ll take you home,” he said quietly.

I glared at him, debating whether it would be better to ride in his truck back to Momma’s, or if waiting at his house until one of my brothers showed up was preferable.

“Fine.” I turned on my heel and walked at a decidedly normal pace to his bathroom. I gathered my bag and the dirty clothes, pausing for a moment when I saw Drew’s dark gray shirt in the mix. There was nothing for it. I would have to wash it along with the black one I was wearing.

Then, I would give them back to him the next time he was at our house because I wanted nothing from Drew Runous.

CHAPTER 11

“Why is it,” he said, one time, at the subway entrance, “I feel I’ve known you so many years?”

“Because I like you,” she said, “and I don’t want anything from you.”

? Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The next morning I awoke to the sound of voices. Actually, just once voice.

It was Drew’s.

This was surprising because we had not parted on friendly terms when he’d dropped me off the night before.

The drive home was silent. I jumped out of his truck as soon as he slowed enough for it to be safe. I heard him curse just before I shut the passenger door. He had walked me to the porch despite my chilly disregard of him, and I’d slammed the front door in his face.

Presently it sounded like he was reading aloud. His voice was low, even, soft, and very, very near. I opened my eyes and glanced around the den from beneath my half-closed lids. He was sitting with his back to me in a wooden chair, and my mother was turned slightly toward him.

The first thing I noticed was that he was wearing his exercise clothes. His back was damp with sweat. The second thing I noticed was the passage he was reading. It was one of my favorites from Elizabeth Gaskell’s very romantic novel North and South in which Mr. Thornton—dashing and desirable, yet scorned by the uppity Ms. Hale—makes his proposal. Miss Hale believes, quite pridefully and wrongly, that he makes the offer of marriage only because he is honor bound to do so. Therefore, Miss Hale rejects the dreamy Mr. Thornton.

“‘I do not want to be relieved from any obligation,’ said he, goaded by her calm manner. ‘Fancied, or not fancied—I question not myself to know which—I choose to believe that I owe my very life to you—ay—smile, and think it an exaggeration if you will. I believe it, because it adds a value to that life to think—oh, Miss Hale!’ continued he, lowering his voice to such a tender intensity of passion that she shivered and trembled before him….”

Stupid Miss Hale.

Why are heroines in romantic Books—despite their cleanliness and enviable lifestyles—so unlikeable? It’s like they’ve been hit with a vanilla ninny stick, devoid of personality and blind to the gift before them. They’re doomed to wander in ignorance until the last thirty pages of the book. By then I’m usually actively rooting against a happy ending because the fantastical fictional men deserve better.

This is true for ninety-eight percent of romance Books, with notable exceptions being Jane Austen’s heroines Elizabeth Bennett and Anne Elliot.

In real life, it’s the other way around.

Men are so clueless, self-centered, and undeserving, each a bland replica of the other. They’re motivated by sex, sports, hunting, cars, and food. If they can’t screw it, cheer for it, shoot it, drive it, or consume it, then it might as well be a diva cup or a maxi pad.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sound of his voice because despite my mixed and uncategorized feelings about him, Drew was coming to the best part.

“She did not speak; she did not move. The tears of wounded pride fell hot and fast. He waited awhile, longing for her to say something, even a taunt, to which he might reply. But she was silent. He took up his hat. ‘One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be…to be….’” Drew stumbled over the passage then paused.

I opened my eyes in time to see his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. When he continued, his voice was more subdued, almost sad. “‘You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love. But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part….’”

He stopped reading, and I got the impression in the stretching silence that he would not continue.

My eyes were drawn to movement on the bed where my mother lay. She lifted her hand and set it on his knee. I saw that her eyes were still closed as though she slept, and I strained to hear the words she spoke.

“You read very well, Andrew. Very nice.” Her words were slurred, and this made my eyes sting. Her words had been slurred and slow for the past few days, a byproduct of the morphine.

“Thank you, Bethany.” He covered her hand with his, and I frowned at the familiarity of the gesture.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

I could see his hesitation; it was a tangible thing, a struggle. At last, he said, “I know I haven’t been around much.” My heart twisted a little when I heard the compassion in his voice. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, not so bad. How’re you?”

“I’m…well.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About a half-hour.”

I frowned at the entire exchange. My mother didn’t seem at all surprised that Drew—Andrew as she called him—had taken it upon himself to read her awake after entering the house and positioning himself in the room she shared with her daughter.

Something was amiss. Rather, I was missing something.

“Is Ashley awake?” Momma asked.

I quickly closed my eyes, endeavored for complete motionless, and heard his chair creak as he shifted his weight.

After a few beats he said, “I don’t think so. She hasn’t moved since I came in.”

The chair creaked again, presumably when he turned back to my mother.

There was a trace of amusement in her voice when she next spoke. “And what do you think of my Ashley?”

I stopped breathing, all my muscles tensed, and I became absorbed in my own stillness. He didn’t respond right away, but his chair creaked again.