My Stubborn Heart

by Becky Wade

  Kate nearly passed out at the thought. “No. Velma, let’s be clear on this: I do not want you to set me up with either of them.” She could withstand a lot of embarrassment, but she didn’t think she could survive Velma Armstrong as her romantic representative.

  “Might want to rethink that. I’m a good matchmaker. What do they call them in the Jewish culture? A yenta? I’m a yenta.”

  Kate wasn’t so sure Velma had that definition right. Didn’t yenta mean a gossipy busybody? “No, thank you. I don’t want a matchmaker.”

  Velma’s gaze didn’t flicker from Kate’s. “Then take this free advice: More makeup, Kate. And you need more jewelry, too.” She indicated her own rings, which decorated even her pointer fingers and thumbs. “Men like a little flash.”

  Kate could only stare.

  “I’ll just say one more thing.”

  Kate winced, waited.

  “At that Victoria Secrets they’ve got some of those push-up bras. A really tight one, a really high one, might do you a world of good.”

  Thankfully the second female visitor of the day didn’t come in advocacy of the push-up bra. Theresa came sheerly for the love of antiques.

  Kate spent forty-five minutes with her looking over, admiring, and discussing the newly placed furniture and artwork. For days, Kate had been considering where to put what. With just a few exceptions, she was thrilled with how everything looked in the spots she’d picked. They still needed couches, armchairs, rugs, lamps, and a couple of coffee tables. But with the fresh paint, the shiny floors, and the wonderful old furniture standing sentinel in every room—the house had taken a radical turn for the better. It was becoming what it had been meant to become: a graceful, tasteful, impeccably restored, and well-loved country house.

  She and Theresa completed their tour in the dining room, gazing appreciatively at the Queen Anne table and chairs.

  “Just look,” Theresa murmured, “at those cabriole legs and the pad feet. I could just die!”

  “I know!”

  Theresa slid her hand across the top of the nearest chair’s back. “A scrolling crest rail.” Then she indicated the carved piece of wood that ran straight up the back of the chair. “Do you know what this is called?” As they’d gone along, Theresa had begun to quiz Kate, clearly pleased by her newfound client’s knowledge of antiques.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “This, my friend, is a vase-shaped splat.”

  The sound of approaching footsteps came from the front room and they both looked up as Matt filled the doorway. He was a recipe for heartbreak: powerful body, worn-in jeans, a pale blue long-sleeved Under Armour shirt, and his ball cap pulled low.

  He stopped when he saw them. “Excuse me.” He dipped his chin slightly and made to continue by on his way to the kitchen.

  “Matt,” Kate said, holding him up, “this is Theresa. She’s going to be appraising all the antiques for Gran and me. Theresa, this is Matt Jarreau. He’s restoring Chapel Bluff.”

  A scalding blush burst to life on Theresa’s cheeks, then rolled across the rest of her face. Lamely, she lifted a hand in a kind of half wave. “Hi.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Matt said.

  “You too,” Theresa answered.

  Awkward silence. “Staying for dinner tonight?” Kate asked Matt.

  “Can’t tonight.” He moved toward the kitchen. Kate hated the stilted way he talked to her now, as if every word had been gouged out by a knife. He ducked out of the room.

  They both listened as he said good-bye to Gran, who was clanging around in the kitchen preparing high tea, then exited out the back door.

  “Kate!” Theresa hissed. “You didn’t tell me that Matt Jarreau was working here.”

  “Was I supposed to have told you?”

  “Of course! That’s Matt Jarreau.” She pointed emphatically toward the door he’d left through.

  Kate nodded, smiling. “I know.”

  “Matt Jarreau, for heaven’s sake.” Her gray eyes rounded. “I have a crush on him. Doug and I joke about it. I’ve told him that if Matt Jarreau ever asked me to run away with him, I’d be out the door in a heartbeat. And Doug always agrees that yes indeed, if Matt Jarreau ever wants to run away with me, then I’ll have his blessing.”

  “Oh.”

  “You definitely should have warned me!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “I didn’t know what to say to him! Am I blushing?”

  “Just a little.”

  Theresa groaned. “I always blush when I’m embarrassed.”

  “It’s almost all gone now.”

  “Do you have any idea how lucky you are? It’s very difficult to run into Matt Jarreau around this town. Since he moved back to Redbud, I’ve only seen him a handful of times. Twice I got super lucky and spotted him at the grocery store. . . . Oh no! Look at what I’m wearing.”

  Theresa had on a gray sweat suit sprinkled with black dog hair along the outside of one leg, a lavender shirt with an overstretched neck hole, and running shoes of medium age. Her curls shot out from her head in seventeen different directions. “How mortifying.”

  “You look adorable,” Kate said, meaning it.

  Gran breezed into the room carrying a glazed buttermilk cake.

  “I’m going to dress up next time I come, Beverly,” Theresa said.

  Gran set down the plate. Blinking in confusion, she asked, “On my account?”

  “When Kate called to tell me the antiques were in, I just couldn’t resist. I had to run by for a quick peek. But next time, when I come to begin the appraisal, I’m going to be looking très professional.”

  “Oh goodness, no,” Gran answered. “Just wear whatever you’re comfortable in.”

  “Well . . .” Theresa glanced at Kate. “Maybe I’ll go for business casual then, if Matt Jarreau is going to be around, so that I’ll look marginally impressive. Will I have a chance to redeem myself with him?”

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “He’ll be around.” Whether he’ll be worth talking to is another matter.

  “Is he wonderful?” Theresa looked back and forth between them. “He is, isn’t he?”

  “He’s wonderful,” Gran assured her. “A darling, darling boy. So smart and handsome and kind.”

  Handsome, yes. Smart? Fine. But kind? That wonderful, darling boy isn’t even being civil at present.

  “He’s quiet and reclusive, right? That’s what I hear.” Theresa sighed dreamily. “I love that whole dark, intense, brooding thing.”

  This conversation was beginning to annoy Kate. Why was everyone so eager to adore Matt in sunshine or rain, good behavior or bad, happy mood or grouchy?

  “Can you join us for tea, Theresa?” Gran asked.

  “I wish,” Theresa moaned. “I love to ruin my appetite for dinner.”

  Gran laughed. “A girl after my own heart.”

  “But I have to go,” Theresa said. “I dropped my kids off at my neighbor’s, which means I’ll have to pay her back by watching her two hyperactive children. This visit’s already going to cost me.” She patted her pockets, started looking around for her purse. “Next time, I’ll definitely stay for tea, and then you’ll have to give me an opportunity to return the hospitality.” She located her purse, slung it over her shoulder, and straightened. “Halloween’s less than a week away. Do you have plans?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “Then come and spend it with us. My house will be a mess and I’m sure the whole evening will be complete chaos, but I can promise you candy corn.”

  “Candy corn?” Gran asked delightedly.

  “Candy corn,” Theresa confirmed.

  “We’ll be there,” Kate said.

  Tyler Of The Charm And Cute Surfer Hair had finished his official duties at Chapel Bluff, but stopped back by on Friday morning to ask Kate out.

  Kate was upstairs, painstakingly cleaning the inside of a hope chest when he found her. The whole time he was leaning against the bedpost putting in a respectable amoun
t of small talk, the whole time she was wiping down the chest and chatting back, she knew exactly what he was working up to. And she felt . . . fine about it.

  Tyler was seriously appealing. But for whatever reason, she didn’t have, in her heart of hearts, that mysterious something for him. That something that gave you goose bumps. That made your heart pound when the phone rang. That made you stare at the other person’s lips. She liked to affectionately call that something hormones. Bummer of bummers, she didn’t have hormones for Tyler.

  Yet.

  Hormones were usually either there from the beginning or not at all. But sometimes, sometimes, they came on gradually. So a single girl of any age and experience ought to know better than to turn down a date with an attractive guy strictly based on lack of hormones.

  What they did have—she and Tyler—was great rapport. It would be a cinch to talk to him for hours. Isn’t that how all the epic marriage-making romances of her friends had begun? With those four pivotal words? We talked for hours.

  “So, Kate,” he said with his dimpled smile. “I’d love to take you to dinner. Any chance I can convince you to go with me sometime?”

  Attractiveness + Rapport = Affirmative Answer. “Sure. I’d like to.”

  He looked surprised and pleased, though she was quite sure that 99.9 percent of the women he asked out agreed. “Great,” he said. “I’m going out of town tomorrow on this camping thing with friends and won’t get back until Monday. How about Tuesday night?”

  “Sounds good.”

  ———

  Matt froze when he overheard Tyler and Kate talking. He’d been walking along the upstairs hallway on his way to the stairs when he’d heard their voices. Tyler was asking her out and she was accepting.

  In utter silence, he leaned against the hallway wall. A bolt of possessiveness, the fiercest emotion he’d felt in years, stabbed through him. Mine, he thought, shocked by his own reaction. Kate was his. His.

  Wrong. Yet his instincts were screaming at him to do something, to intervene. He wanted Kate to himself. He wanted her to be . . . What?

  What she’d been to him before. His friend.

  Right, Matt. Then why do you care who she dates?

  He held himself immobile, trying to get his feelings under control. His breath rasped tight in his throat.

  He’d known since Monday morning that this would happen. He’d been prepared for it. Then Tyler had finished work at Chapel Bluff and left. Matt had been embarrassingly relieved, thinking that maybe he’d been wrong. That Tyler hadn’t planned, after all, to take their flirting to the next level.

  Silently, Matt forced his body away from the wall and down the hallway back in the direction he’d come so they wouldn’t see him. He must be losing his mind, he thought, with a shaft of real fear. Because all he could think was mine.

  Mine!

  chapter ten

  “I’m sorry, Beverly. I can’t stay.”

  “You have to! It’s Friday. It’s poker night! Look, I’m making all your favorites.”

  Kate arrived in the kitchen in time to see Matt poised near the back door and Gran positioned near the counter, pointing out all the food she had going.

  “Lasagna,” Gran said. “I’ve been simmering the meat sauce all afternoon. Big salad. Bread—I’ll have it crispy, the way you like it. And the pièce de résistance—cheesecake with a layer of chocolate ganache on top.” Gran smiled winningly at Matt. She looked so cute, wearing her apron, a wooden spoon clutched in one hand, and her white pixie hair.

  Matt pursed his lips and shifted uncomfortably. He had on an old beige ball cap, frayed at the bill, and Kate’s favorite plaid flannel in shades of green. Though the clothes were painfully familiar, the Matt of this week had made himself a stranger. He’d been especially surly today, worse than all the other days this week. Gran had taken Kate aside three times already to worry, fuss, and cluck over him in private.

  “You have to stay,” Gran said, her confident expression beginning to waver. “We host poker night at Chapel Bluff just so you’ll come.”

  Kate tensed, waiting for Matt’s answer. He hadn’t joined them for dinner all week, but surely he’d relent tonight. He wouldn’t disappoint Gran when she’d gone so far out of her way for him. Would he?

  “I can’t do the dinners anymore,” he said flatly. “Look, I . . . I don’t want to impose on you.” He reached for his brown leather coat and started shoving his arms into it.

  Gran watched him, her expression crestfallen and confused.

  Kate’s heart thudded dully. He was going to walk away.

  “But we love having you,” Gran answered. “You’re not an imposition.”

  He stilled, his fingers on the doorknob, his gaze fixed on the floor. “I apologize.”

  Gran tilted her head to the side, beseeching. “Matt.”

  “You . . . you’ve been great. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s . . .” He shook his head, seeming frustrated with the inadequacy of his words. “Don’t trouble with me. And please don’t count on me for any more dinners. I just can’t.”

  He shouldered out the door and closed it behind him.

  In the ominous quiet of the kitchen Kate could hear the sauce bubbling, the wall clock ticking.

  She was suddenly, stunningly furious. With a growl of frustration, she went after him.

  “Are you going to talk to him?” Gran asked anxiously.

  “Among other things.”

  “Be gentle, he’s—”

  But Kate was already out the door and striding hard after him. Gentle? Gentle? She was going to kill him.

  He was almost to his truck, silhouetted against the gold air of approaching sunset. “What was that?” Kate called after him.

  He kept walking.

  She closed the distance between them, pulse throbbing hard, breath coming fast. “What was that back there?”

  He gripped his truck’s door handle. Turned to glare at her.

  “Gran made that entire meal for you, and you don’t have the courtesy to stay and eat it? Is that really too much to ask?”

  “Like I said. I can’t do the dinners anymore.”

  “Why?” She planted her fists on her hips.

  He held her gaze for a long, taut moment. “I just can’t.”

  “What? No more explanation than that?”

  “Back off, Kate.”

  His snapping dark eyes warned her to let it drop. But the anger in her rose to meet his warning, then surpass it recklessly. “You know what? No. I’ve tried backing off all week and it’s not working. In fact, it only seems to be making things worse.”

  With icy silence he opened the truck’s door and moved to get in.

  “Don’t you dare get in that car,” Kate snarled. “Don’t you dare.”

  He angled his face downward, holding himself with unnatural stillness, as if trying to overpower his temper. She watched his chest rise and fall.

  Kate wanted to shake him, hurt him, scream at him. Come on, she thought. Come on! Confront me. Fight with me!

  Without sparing her so much as a glance, he slammed the truck door and set off across the meadow toward the forest.

  She followed, behind and beside him. “Would you just tell me what’s going on with you?” she demanded. “Could you do me that favor at least?”

  He kept on as if he hadn’t heard her question. A continual wall, shutting her out. She’d managed to bear five days of him shutting her out, and she might have been able to put up with more of his bull if it had been solely directed at herself. But Gran? Who’d only ever adored him? Just the thought of Gran’s heartbroken expression back in the kitchen made her want to launch herself at his back and strangle him. “Do you think this is the best way to go about your grief, Matt? Forcing everyone away to protect yourself?”

  She stopped, tired of keeping up with him. But he didn’t slow, so she groaned and went after him again. “This recovery plan working out for you?” she called loudly.

  “None of
your business.”

  She could tell that he was furious, and perversely, she was glad.

  When they reached the line of trees that marked the woods, he finally slowed. He passed under the outermost branches of a wide elm, then stopped, covered in a blanket of shade. He presented her with his back and stared angrily away from her into the coming darkness of the forest.

  Kate gauged him, moving to the side so she could see his profile, the way the muscles in his jaw were working, the tense line of his shoulders.

  She looked down at her ballet flats and shifted her weight, causing the carpet of grass and pebbles to crunch underfoot. She waited for him to speak.

  Nothing. Still no words.

  The trees swished with the wind. She needed to calm down, to say the right thing. But what was the right thing to say to him? She had no idea. She could clearly sense the shield he’d put up between him and her, between him and the world. She could scream with the frustration of coming up against it again and again and again! “Does it make you feel better to keep people at arm’s length?” she finally asked.

  “Kate, just leave me alone.” He reached out and gripped a nearby branch so hard his fingers whitened. “Seriously, just go.”

  She flinched and crossed her arms hard across her chest to protect herself. He couldn’t stand her. He didn’t want her anywhere near him. The shreds of pride she had left demanded that she turn and stomp back to the house. And yet . . .

  “Go,” he said.

  “No.” Her brows lowered with implacable determination. “Have your family and friends been content to leave it at that? Did they all run off when you told them to go?”

  The defensive cast of his profile answered the question.

  “Shame on them,” she whispered.

  “Because they respected my privacy?” he asked with disbelief, looking across at her. His gaze seared her.

  “Maybe they respected your privacy too much. I’m not going to be content with that.”

  He dropped his hand from the tree branch and turned to face her fully. “Why are you even bothering with me, Kate?”

  “Because up until Monday morning I thought we were friends. I liked our friendship. I liked you.”