Summer Nights (Fool's Gold #8)(41)

His sleep-deprived brain slowly clicked into place. Right. Heidi and Annabelle were friends. Annabelle had been upset. She’d probably called her friend to talk, because that’s what women did.

He took in Heidi’s angry glare, the determination in her stance and nodded. “I’ll go into town.”

“You do that.”

Thirty minutes later, he felt as if he’d slipped into an alternative universe. He’d managed to get coffee at the Starbucks, but when he’d gone by the feed store to place an order, the manager had told him he would have to go elsewhere.

“My wife knows Annabelle,” the man had told him. “Darlene volunteers at the library. She said you weren’t welcome here anymore.”

Shane gaped at him. “This is your business, isn’t it?”

The man gave him a pitying look. “Dude, have you ever been married?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should know better.”

Shane wasn’t sure if he meant for asking the question or messing with Annabelle in the first place.

“It wasn’t what they’re saying,” Shane protested.

“You didn’t tell her you’d slept with her to get her out of your system?”

Shane swallowed. “I might have said something like that, but…”

The other man waited.

Shane drew in a breath. “Right. I’ll leave.”

“You’re going to have trouble all over town,” the man called after him. “This is Fool’s Gold. You can’t mess with one of the women and then act as if it didn’t happen.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

Shane stepped out into the still cool morning and looked around. There weren’t a lot of people on the street but those who were fell into two camps. The men ignored him and the women gave him the evil eye.

Still holding on to his coffee, grateful the Starbucks was part of a national chain and not a local place or he wouldn’t have been served coffee at all, he walked toward his truck.

He wanted to stop and tell everyone he wasn’t the bad guy. That he and Annabelle had jointly agreed to have sex and the fact that he didn’t want to marry her when it was over didn’t make him a jerk. All he’d done was…was…

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and swore. He’d told her he’d used the experience to get her out of his system. As if she were some kind of virus he had to get over. They’d had amazing sex and then he’d walked out. With her throwing things at his head.

He hadn’t meant it the way it had come out, but he didn’t get points for being stupid, either. He looked back at the feed store, then shook his head and walked to his truck. He’d stepped in it big-time. The question was, what was it going to take to fix things?

* * *

ANNABELLE CHECKED THE invoice against what had been ordered. Adding new books to the library’s inventory usually made her happy. Today it was less about the thrill and more about whether or not she could concentrate. The fact that she could focus on work would be enough of a win, she told herself. Happiness would follow with time.

The good news was Shane might have been a jerk, but he hadn’t broken her heart. They hadn’t been together long enough for that to happen. So while she had a bruised ego, she wouldn’t have scars. She felt a little foolish for having misjudged him, but everyone got to make a mistake now and then. It was what she did about the mistake that would speak to her character.

She turned away from her computer and stared out the window. What bothered her the most was that she’d been so wrong about him. She’d been going around all happy that Shane was one of the good guys—nothing like her ex. But in the end, he’d been a lot more like Lewis than she wanted to admit. He’d used her for his own purposes, not once thinking about her feelings.

Someone knocked on her office door. She glanced up and said, “Come in,” at the same time, only to realize Shane was standing in the doorway.

Immediately her heart began to pound and very specific parts of her body cheered in anticipation. Her stomach clenched, her thighs felt a little quivery and the sense memory of how he’d felt inside of her made it difficult to think about anything else.

All right. Maybe she wasn’t as over him as she should be.

“Do you have a second?” he asked.

He looked good, she thought bitterly. All tanned and strong, wearing those worn jeans, the ones that were faded and soft looking. Why couldn’t he have grown a hump in the past two days? Or a second, small but unattractive head?

She motioned to the chair across from her desk and laced her fingers together on her lap.

“Is this a library issue or something else?” she asked.

“Something else.”

She waited. Whatever he had to say, she would listen, then answer and send him on his way. She was calm. She was controlled. She would gather her strength from the spiritual remnants of the powerful Máa-zib women who had first come to this part of the country. And if that didn’t work, she would go crying to Charlie. Because she was pretty sure Charlie could beat up Shane. Or at least give it a good try.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I behaved badly.”

She stared at him. “Really? In what way?”

He drew in a breath. “Come on, Annabelle. You know what I’m talking about. After we had sex I said I was leaving because I’d gotten you out of my system.”