“You sure have a strange way of showing your love.” Parr felt entitled to criticize his sullen brother if he wanted to. But one of these days, he was going to get out of the business of taking care of Bobby Joe. Just not right yet.

“That’s not for you to judge.”

“Says who? How in hell could you hook up with Luellen at your engagement party? What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” The younger man seemed eager to justify his actions. He ran his hand nervously through his short brown hair. “I had no idea Lue would show up. I told her I was marrying someone else.”

“Really.”

Bobby Joe nodded, missing the sarcasm in his brother’s one-word reply. “Yes. Even though her divorce is final, I’m not taking her back.”

“Is making out with her in a damned storage room your idea of discouraging her?” Parr demanded as he poured himself a cup of the strong black coffee and sat down across the table from Bobby Joe.

His brother’s sad-eyed expression seriously irked him. Not to mention his insincere avowal of “love.”

“We went in there for privacy,” Bobby Joe asserted. “I didn’t want Mary Beth to know that Lue was even there.”

Parr took a scalding sip and grimaced. “So how did she find you?”

“Beats me. She must have been watching me on the sly.” Bobby Joe drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “My guess is that she saw everything from the minute Lue came up to me and started talking. That’s all it was at first. Just talking.”

Parr was unimpressed. “She told me that you had Luellen nearly undressed.”

“Hell,” Bobby Joe mumbled. “Maybe I did. But you know what a hot little number Lue is. She could always heat me to the boiling point in minutes.”

“Yeah. Next you’ll be telling me little Lue knocked you down and wouldn’t let you go.”

“She practically did, Parr.”

There were several seconds of charged silence.

“How could you?”

“I’m a man.”

Parr shook his head. “A lowdown, no-account excuse for a man is more like it.”

“Could have been you. Don’t tell me you never heard of a guy going for one last fling just before—”

“Yeah, I know it happens, but that doesn’t give you a free pass to be a total jerk. If you love a woman enough to want to marry her, you wouldn’t be quick to give in to a hot little number. Isn’t Mary Beth passionate enough in bed to keep you cooled off?”

Parr hated even asking the question. His reasons were partly personal. If he knew that she went wild in Bobby Joe’s arms, then maybe it would be possible to forget about the way she’d responded to him last night. Bonus points if Parr could also forget about how desperately he had wanted her.