Yeah. If was not the operative word. She had been more than willing.

“Mary Beth lacks experience.” Alma rinsed her hands and briskly dried them with a dish towel. “Your brother is her first serious relationship.”

“She confides in you, huh?”

“Sometimes. But never mind that.” She hung up the towel and looked straight at him. “You’re a powerfully attractive man, Parr. It would be hard for her to resist you if you decided to turn on the charm. Your brother does not need competition from you.”

Parr got the point. “All right. I’ll talk to her.”

“Today?”

“Right now.”

Mary Beth hadn’t joined her father in the den after dinner and had refused to take a stroll with Bobby Joe. She wanted to go home, to escape the Weston brothers.

Dinner had been a strained affair with Howard and Alma creating most of the conversation. When Parr had joined his mother in the kitchen, Mary Beth headed for the backyard, where a small pool, still concealed by its winter cover, took up the middle of a concrete patio and manicured flower garden. By April in Mississippi, everything that bloomed was reaching for the sun.

She snapped off a tiny leaf from a fragrant herb and crushed it in her fingers, feeling low.

Why had Parr been ignoring her? He must know how badly she needed to talk to him. She was so confused, so utterly bewildered by the sudden changes in her orderly life. She had planned everything so carefully: her engagement party, her bridesmaids’ get-togethers, her huge church wedding to come.

She and Bobby Joe had even decided to live in the big, rambling, ranch-style house with Alma until they could build their own dream house once they found the perfect plot of land.

If only Luellen had stayed married.

If only Parr had never kissed her, held her, touched her. But he had, and nothing would ever be the same again. Now she understood what other women meant when they talked about wanting a man. A real man.

One look from his onyx eyes and she was lost. The spark of fire in their dark depths had ignited an answering blaze in her soul. Bobby Joe didn’t make her feel like that. Parr’s powerful masculinity was very different. It defined him in every detail. He was gallant in an old-fashioned way that melted her resistance.

Bring that back, she thought to herself. When had women gotten into the habit of putting up with overgrown boys?

Parr Weston was a man with a capital M. And while she was on that subject, he was drop-dead sexy. That deliciously dangerous quality was heightened by his physical confidence. All the same . . .

It was possible that Parr was just as emotionally confused as she was. Certainly it had to have been a shock, finding out that the woman you’d been passionately consoling was your brother’s fiancée.

Ex-fiancée.