To maintain contact, he took her hands. He’d known this conversation was coming because his position between Laurel and Mac was untenable and unsustainable, but he hadn’t yet worked out how to navigate or negotiate any kind of peace. His shock and dismay at learning what a negative role Mac had played in Laurel’s past was too new. His feelings for her were too recently renewed. In the back of his mind lurked the idea of finding a way for Mac to redeem himself in Laurel’s eyes … but how?

Suddenly, Laurel spoke again, her voice small. ‘Tonya suggested that if I can’t let the past go, I should remember that Mac will always be your brother but girlfriends come and go.’

‘Damn.’ Irritation boiled up in Grady. ‘I love my colourful sister-in-law but she doesn’t know the whole story.’

Laurel’s lip trembled. ‘She’s got a point though. It would solve the whole problem if I left you alone.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he snapped, fear and shock blazing through him.

‘How can you argue with her logic?’ she demanded. ‘He’ll be your brother all your life. How many girlfriends have you had?’

He stared at her, searching for the right words. ‘We don’t have to take Tonya literally. Don’t let Mac-of-the-past spoil everything for Laurel-and-Grady-now.’

Laurel dropped her gaze. A tear splashed on her oversized shirt, landing among the paint spatters. ‘I keep explaining to people that I can’t choose how I feel. I just feel.’

She was silent for so long that Grady murmured, ‘Shall I leave you to paint?’

She nodded without making eye contact. ‘Thanks. It might make me feel better.’ The blazing smile she’d greeted him with might as well not have happened. It had been, he supposed, a reaction surprised out of her on first seeing him but then the issues between them had surged up and made her sad and uncertain instead.

Despondently, Grady trudged back across those damned playing fields through snow that seem determined to make the village beautiful despite the ugly situation he had to deal with, the landscape softened as the flying flakes wrapped it in cosy white arms. The village hall car park was almost empty but the lights still blazed from inside. Guilty that he didn’t feel like lending a hand with dismantling the stalls, he cleared his windscreen of its snowy coat and started his truck, his headlights reflecting off the whirl of snowflakes in the frigid air.

He’d only brought the truck to transport the gourds and was parking on his drive barely a minute later. Turning up his collar against the flakes that seemed set on sneaking icily down his neck, he unloaded his remaining stock and broke down the empty boxes for recycling, stamping on the cardboard to relieve his battling emotions.

He was in love with Laurel.

He loved Mac but was currently feeling resentful towards him.