LITMIR.BIZ

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Janey’s eldest brother. Darn it all. She should have known her family wouldn’t be able to let her be for long.

      “Well, my first question is answered,” Mac said, looking like he wanted to punch Thad out but good. Mac turned back to Janey, looking as much a law-and-order man as ever, even without his sheriff’s uniform. “You are here. And you’re safe from the elements.” Mac swept a hand through his close-cropped dark hair and scowled at Thad. “I’m not so sure about the rest—”

      “Mac, please.” Janey held out both palms, in a staying gesture. “This is not the time to go all protective on me.” She was so tired of her brothers doing that!

      Mac stepped beneath the overhang. He positioned himself between Janey and Thad and scowled from one to the other. “It looks like the perfect time to me.”

      Janey pushed past Mac. She took Thad’s hand in hers and rested her face against his shoulder. “I know what I’m doing,” she insisted stubbornly. Even if Thad—who had gallantly followed her lead and encircled her waist with his arm—didn’t. Yet.

      Mac arched a skeptical brow. “Do you?” he ground out, his look reminding Janey of all the times she had behaved recklessly in the past to prove a point with her smothering, overprotective family, and then regretted it later.

      “I think your sister has a point,” Thad interceded, tightening his grip on Janey as possessively as if they had something passionate and enduring going on between them to defend, instead of just a simple, highly experimental, flirtatious kiss. “She is a grown woman. A savvy businessperson, as well as a mother.”

      “Oh, my Lord.” As Mac stared at them, his face began to lose color.

      “What?” Janey said, wondering what completely unfounded conclusion her eldest brother had jumped to now.

      Mac gave her a frank, assessing look as rain continued to pour down from the sky in heavy sheets, just to the left of them.

      “You haven’t…” Mac said with a telltale lift of his brow. “Please. Tell me you’re not…”

      “Not what?” Janey demanded impatiently.

      “Trying to work off Chris’s camp fees that way, are you?”

      Mac was teasing, Janey saw finally.

      And he wasn’t.

      “Very funny,” Janey said stiffly, irritated her brother could even hint she would be irresponsible enough to use her femininity on some unsuspecting man to get her way. “And no, I am not.”

      Now it was Thad’s turn to look as if he felt like punching someone out on Janey’s behalf, Janey noted. She felt oddly pleased as Thad stepped protectively in front of her. “If you weren’t her brother,” Thad warned Mac, “you’d be eating a knuckle sandwich about now.”

      No less on guard, Mac shot Thad a warning look. “I’m glad you feel that way,” Mac stated bluntly. “Because if you didn’t want to defend her honor just now that would really say something about your character or lack thereof.”

      “Remind me to tell you about the ‘tests’ my brothers put all my prospective beau through.” Janey pushed out the words through tightly gritted teeth. Older or younger, it hadn’t mattered. All five members of the Hart posse had been perfectly capable of saying the wrong thing at the right time to ensure her romances with the guys she dated before Ty went absolutely nowhere. And Janey knew now what she had realized then—that her siblings’ “interruptions” and “interferences” had been as well planned as they had been executed.

      “Make fun all you want,” Mac told her smugly. “But they worked, didn’t they? No one tried to take advantage of you as long as the five of us were around.” It was only when she had gone off to Colorado, on spring break with her friends, that she had gotten herself into trouble by getting involved with Ty. And Janey knew her entire family still felt that wouldn’t have happened if they had been nearby to stop it.

      Mac looked back at Thad and continued with a candor that was serious now and strictly man-to-man. “Listen, I know my sister comes off as headstrong and impetuous, and I’ll be the first to grant she has a wild streak a mile wide. But bottom line, she’s a lot more innocent and naive than she seems at first look. None of us want to see her hurt. And I am speaking for every one of her brothers, as well as her mother now.”

      It was official. Janey felt as if she were back in high school. No. Make that junior high.

      “I understand,” Thad told Mac soberly as the two of them shook hands. “And I have no intention of hurting her.”

      Janey felt like stomping her foot. “Excuse me. I think I might have something to say about this!” Janey interrupted, mortified.

      Oblivious to her upset, Mac looked back at her. Now that he had extracted the chivalrous agreement from Thad, Mac was ready to move on to other subjects. “Mom has been worried out of her mind about you and Chris. You really should have called her to let her know you’d had sense enough to get off the trail,” Mac scolded.

      Janey released a sigh. You’d think the goings-on at The Wedding Inn her mother owned and ran would be enough to keep anyone busy. “She’s in the middle of a wedding, isn’t she?”

      “That doesn’t stop her from worrying about all of us. You know that. She’s been checking her machine every five minutes. And had she known what you were really up to tonight—” Mac frowned, recalling the kiss he had walked in on.

      The kiss Janey would have given anything to have an instant replay of, before the passionate mood was spoiled, perhaps permanently. Not that she was looking for romance, she amended silently. Especially with a sports-minded man like Thad Lantz. On the other hand, there were principles to be adhered to. Ground rules to be set. And she had promised herself she would not allow any familial interference in her life when she left Colorado and moved back to North Carolina.

      Janey wondered what it would take to show her family she was perfectly capable of living her life, and even embarking on new romance if she so chose, without their constant commentary and interference. She smiled at her brother sweetly, then warned, “One more word, Mac, and I swear I’m going to punch you out myself.”

      “I APOLOGIZE,” Janey told Thad the moment Mac had left.

      “Why?” Thad turned to face her, nothing but gentleness on his handsome face. “He obviously loves you a great deal. All your brothers do.”

      Janey shrugged, wishing Thad wasn’t so understanding, so completely unruffled by the totally unnecessary family set-to he had just witnessed. It would make it easier for her to keep the emotional barriers up if he weren’t so darn wonderful in all respects. She drew a bolstering breath. “That doesn’t give them the right to interfere in my life,” she countered stubbornly.

      Thad took her hand in his and tugged her closer. “They’re just reacting to any perceived dangers to you the same way you react to threats to Chris,” he told her.

      Janey hadn’t really thought about it that way.

      “I know,” Thad continued understandingly, tightening his fingers on hers in a way she liked way too much, “because I have a younger sister, and I’ve been tempted to lock her up and throw away the key more times than I want to count.”

      Janey tried not to think how comforting it was to stand here, talking like this, even as she cautiously withdrew her hand from his lest it lead to anything else unsettlingly intimate—like more kisses. “Right. I know Molly,” Janey said briskly, trying not to get too caught up in the moment and what had happened between them earlier. Like it or not, she still had a son to consider, a well-ordered life she didn’t want turned on end. She’d had enough of that kind of uncertainty when she was married to Ty.

      Ignoring the tingles in her hand, Janey continued. “She worked summers at The Wedding Inn before she went off to college. How old is she now?” she asked curiously, aware there was a pretty big age difference between Thad

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