“Look, I’m busy.”

“You’ve let that business in the gully get to you.”

“Well, what if I have?” Maggie exploded. “I’m human. It’s a normal reaction.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” The hand on her face tilted her chin back a bit farther. “You fire up easily these days. Is it just that business that has you tense, or is there something else?”

Maggie stopped trying to pull away and stood very still. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the men watching them, or the postmistress in the window, but she had. “It’s none of your business whether I’m tense or not. Now, if you’ll stop making a scene, I have to go home and work.”

“Do scenes bother you?” Amused now, he drew her closer. “I wouldn’t have thought so, from the number of times you’ve had your picture snapped.”

“Cliff, cut it out.” She put both hands on his chest. “For heaven’s sake, we’re standing on Main Street.”

“Yeah. And we’ve just become the ten-o’clock bulletin.”

A laugh escaped before she even knew it was going to happen. “You get a real kick out of that, don’t you?”

“Well …” He took advantage of her slight relaxing and wrapped his arms around her. “Maybe. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

A woman walked by with a letter in her hand. Maggie noticed that she took her time putting it into the box. “I think we could find a better place.” At his snort of laughter, she narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t mean that. Now, will you let go?”

“In a minute. Remember when we went out to dinner the other night?”

“Yes, I remember. Cliff—” She turned her head and saw that the two men were still there, still watching. Now the woman had joined them. “This really isn’t funny.”

“Thing is,” he continued easily, “we have this custom around here. I take you out to dinner, then you reciprocate.”

Out of patience, she wriggled against him and found that only made her blood pressure rise. “I haven’t the time to go out to dinner right now. I’ll get back to you in a few weeks.”

“I’ll take potluck.”

“Potluck?” she repeated. “At my house?”

“Good idea.”

“Wait a minute. I didn’t say—”

“Unless you can’t cook.”

“Of course I can cook,” she tossed back.

“Fine. Seven o’clock?”

She aimed her most deadly, most regal stare. “I’m hanging wallpaper tonight.”

“You have to eat sometime.” Before she could comment, he kissed her, briefly but firmly enough to make a point. “See you at seven,” he said, then strolled over to his truck. “And Maggie,” he added through the open window, “nothing fancy. I’m not fussy.”

“You—” she began, but the roar of the truck’s engine drowned her out. She was left standing alone, fuming, in the center of the parking lot. Knowing there were at least a dozen pair of eyes on her, Maggie kept her head high as she climbed into her own car.

She cursed Cliff repeatedly, and expertly, on the three-mile drive back to her house.