It was a pleasure to look at the real man, now that the formal wear was off and stashed somewhere in a garment bag. And he had thought she was beautiful. He wasn’t the first man to say so, but she’d never believed any of the others. How could she when she didn’t see herself that way? Parr had made her believe she was a gorgeous goddess for a little while. That, and the way he listened and his gentle touch and scorching kisses made her dizzy, in fact. Mary Beth still didn’t know what to make of their moonlit encounter.

She stayed put. The brothers’ argument seemed about to escalate.

“You’re so self-righteous.” Bobby Joe, weighing in.

Parr didn’t respond to the jab. A lot of folks, not just him, thought his brother had been indulged too much over the years. Parr wasn’t to blame and he couldn’t fix it now that he was thirty-two. His brother wasn’t much younger but he didn’t act his age, that was for damn sure.

“You’ve got no sympathy for us lesser mortals. I don’t measure up to your lofty standards anymore than Dad did.”

That made Parr wince. Mary Beth didn’t miss the way his face paled under his tan.

“Why bring up the old man? He’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Yeah, and we both know he’d be alive and well and still with us if it hadn’t been for you.”

Parr refused to take the bait. This was an old quarrel between the brothers, one that he could never win without destroying Bobby’s illusions about the man who had fathered them.

“Excuse me.” Mary Beth had decided it was time to make her presence known.

“Sweetheart!” cried Bobby Joe, jumping to his feet and attempting to hug her. She didn’t push him away but she wasn’t falling for the phony act either. She stood there rather stiffly until he quit.

“How are you, Parr?” she said quietly, stepping a short but decisive distance away from his brother.

“I’m all right. Yourself?”

She gave a faint shrug. For a few seconds, Bobby Joe didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Then he stuck his hands into the pockets of his track pants and stayed standing, as if that would give him some advantage over his brother. “Well. Here we all are. Mary Beth, I wanted to thank you for accepting my mother’s invitation to stay here for a little while.”

“I’m very fond of your mother,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone, folding her arms over her chest. “Daddy’s talking to Alma now, in fact.”

“Don’t be like that,” he pleaded with her. “I know we can work things out.” He reached out to try and take her hand, then dropped his at his side.