The Right Twin For Him

“Maddie?” Patrick prompted.

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t, but she didn’t want to admit it was her ego on the rebound, not her heart. When she’d been growing up, her mother and father had always made her feel beautiful, but now she was left wondering what she actually had to offer a man. Did big breasts really matter that much? Maddie glanced down at her not-so-generous bustline and sighed again.

Maybe Ted would have found a kinder way to tell her he didn’t want to get married if she hadn’t surprised him with the punch girl. He wasn’t mean. And if she’d been able to tell him first that she was having second thoughts, they probably would have laughed about it, bypassed the church and had a great party with all that food and cake.

“You don’t look okay. You still look upset,” Patrick murmured. His eyes were more serious than she’d seen them since they’d met. He put on a good show of being easygoing, but she suspected there was a whole lot more going on beneath his nonchalant exterior than even he wanted to admit.

Maddie summoned a smile. “I’ve had quite a few shocks over the past couple days. I have a reason to be upset. But don’t worry about the other thing. I overreacted, that’s all.”

“About the ‘other thing,’ I should explain,” he said, a determined expression creeping into his face. “You’re so trusting and everything, I didn’t want you to start thinking I was some nice guy without ulterior motives. I’m a guy—of course I have ulterior motives. I’m loaded with them. Hell, I didn’t put in all that time as a rebellious teenage tough for nothing.”

“Oh, sure, you were a teenage tough. I believe that.” She made a disbelieving gesture.

“Take my word for it, I was one of the worst.”

Maddie still didn’t seem convinced, and Patrick thought about rolling up his sleeve and showing her the gang tattoo he sported on his upper arm. Oh, he’d gotten out of it quickly enough—thanks to a tough old coot whose car he’d tried to steal—but not so fast he didn’t have some scars and a broken nose from fighting. Not even his family knew everything about his escapades.

God, he’d been so angry after his father’s accident it was a miracle he hadn’t gotten himself killed.

But it wasn’t any wonder Maddie didn’t believe him. The closest thing to a gang in her hometown was probably the crew down at the local hamburger stand. He’d driven through some of the small, off-the-beaten-track towns in New Mexico. They were terrific…and about a million miles from the city.

Oh, but she did have a very sweet mouth.

Reaching out, he traced his forefinger across the fullness of Maddie’s bottom lip. Her breath caught and her golden-brown eyes widened, the pupils expanding until nearly all the gold specks disappeared, leaving a ring of velvet brown.

“I’m not nice,” Patrick whispered. “If I was, I wouldn’t be having so many notions about nibbling on parts of you. But I’m decent enough not to get involved with a woman who wants different things than I do.” He dropped his hand before he could be tempted to demonstrate exactly how much touching her appealed to him.

Maddie flicked her tongue against the spot he’d just caressed. He was certain it was an unconscious reaction. Any flirting on her part was almost certainly unintentional: she didn’t seem to have a clue about the usual games between a man and woman.

“Different things?”

“Marriage, family, permanence. That isn’t me, Maddie.”

“It isn’t me, either. After what happened with Ted and the punch girl I’m never getting married,” she said immediately.

It was Patrick’s turn to be skeptical, but he wisely kept from smiling. Maddie might say that now, but she’d change her mind quickly enough. She would meet the right man and forget all about Ted and the punch girl.

A small twinge of pain went through him at the thought. It was the same sort of feeling he’d had watching her at the cemetery, her face turned to the sky. Hell, he’d thought Beth was an innocent, but compared to Maddie, his sister-in-law was a sophisticate. Patrick had never realized it before, but innocence could be very appealing.

He cleared his throat. It wouldn’t help to start thinking that way.

“Maddie, I really am sorry.”

“Let’s not talk about it any longer,” she said quickly. “I don’t think I can take any more apologies. You wouldn’t believe how many times Ted said he was sorry.”

Patrick studied the stubborn jut to Maddie’s chin; she reminded him of an eight-week-old kitten spitting at a big old tomcat. And as the tomcat in question, he thought it was pretty funny.

And sweet. But if there hadn’t been such a gulf between them in experience, then he wouldn’t have to be so careful.

“Ted is the fiancé, I take it?”

“Ex-fiancé.”

“I hope you smashed a cake in his face, or something equally appropriate.” Patrick wished he could visit a little frontier justice on “Ted.” He might have been a troublemaker as a kid, but the O’Rourke men had always had a strict code when it came to the female half of the human race, and Ted had broken the code.

To his surprise, Maddie giggled. “Not quite. I did throw my engagement ring at him, though. I think it cut his lip.”

“Good for you.”

“That’s what Dad said. He wanted to shoot Ted, but Mom said it wouldn’t help, and we were lucky I caught him before the wedding instead of after. And there I was in the middle of it, listening to them and feeling so strange—like it wasn’t even me.” Maddie bit her lip and looked up. “You probably noticed I tend to cry easily.”

Great, another opportunity to say something stupid. That was another thing to be angry with Ted about—if Ted had been a decent guy, then Maddie would have come to Washington as a bride and he wouldn’t be having so much trouble with foot-in-mouth disease. Married women were strictly off-limits.

“There’s nothing wrong with being emotional,” he murmured.

“I don’t mean to cry. The waterworks just happen,” she said matter-of-factly. “But it was funny—after I blew up at Ted I felt frozen. Here I’d grown up expecting we’d get married and have a family, then all at once the whole course of my life was unraveling and I didn’t even cry.”

“You were in shock.”

“I guess.” Maddie rubbed the back of her neck. “It was like driving along a road with everything okay one minute and in the next minute the road and signs have all vanished and you don’t know what to do. Have you ever felt that way?”

“When my father died,” Patrick admitted. “It’s a hell of a feeling.”

Maddie got very still and solemn. “How old were you?”

“Fourteen—old enough to get in trouble and too young to understand why this terrific guy I worshipped was suddenly gone. I sure got pissed off at the world.”

“It must have been hard.”

“Like getting a knife in your gut,” he muttered.

Patrick thought about the way Keenan O’Rourke had always been there for his wife and children, at the same time working two jobs to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. How had his father done that?

“So, what do you do in Slapshot?” he asked deliberately.

Maddie gazed at him a moment longer, then lifted her shoulders, accepting the change in subject. She might be innocent, but she wasn’t dumb.

“A little of everything. Mom owns the local newspaper and I answer phones, sell advertising, take orders for the classifieds…whatever needs doing. I’m not necessary, but she likes having me around. Now I have to go right back, and everyone will come in to gossip about the wedding being canceled. It’ll be worse than if I’d stayed.”

“Why do you have to go back so soon?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I cashed in Ted’s airplane ticket to pay for the room at the bed-and-breakfast inn, but the money won’t last forever.”

“Good for you. I hope he’s the one who paid for the tickets.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “He paid for them, but unfortunately we didn’t prepay our room reservations. I thought about getting a job here, only I don’t have any real skills, and saying you’ve worked for five years as your mother’s gofer isn’t impressive on a résumé.”