Page 58 of An Overdue Match
“She’s playing hard to get,” Tai said to Penelope.
Penelope nodded. “She does that. Especially since—” She cut herself off.
Tai wanted to asksince what, but he knew he wouldn’t getan answer out of either of the sisters. He chose instead to pretend he didn’t hear the beginning of the sentence.
“I’m sure she just didn’t want to encourage me. Although there’s nothing she could do todiscourage me.”
Penelope seemed to study him for several long minutes. “Good,” she finally said. “My sister isn’t easily won, but she’s worth the effort.”
Tai pierced Evangeline with his gaze. “I’d go so far as to say that she’s wortheverything.”
25
“Why are you punishing yourself? If you ask me, Brett did a fine job of that all on his own. You didn’t deserve it then from his hand, and you certainly don’t deserve it now from your own.”
“I’m not punishing myself.”I’m protecting myself.
But Penelope doesn’t get it. She thinks I’m being stubborn. She doesn’t understand that I’m hanging on by a thread, the last string of my self-preservation.
The truth is, I’m not as strong as she is. If our roles were reversed, if she’d been the one to develop alopecia and lose her hair and the man who was supposed to promise to love her in sickness and in health, she wouldn’t have let the knocks keep her down. She would’ve found a way to rock her baldness—in a sophisticated, ladylike way, of course.
But I’m weak. I’m weak, and as Tai has pointed out, I care what other people think of me. I don’t want to be whispered about behind my back. I don’t want to be pitied or treated differently. I don’t want people’s opinions to change when they see me without a wig.
I don’t want Tai to look at me differently.
I’m weak because I crave the way his eyes darken with desire when they capture my own. I’ve sworn off love formyself because I can’t go through the pain of watching that flare of interest in a man’s eyes dim again. Yet every secret smile, every flirtatious remark, no matter how disingenuous I might tell myself it is, has been slowly filling a corner of my empty heart.
I’m weak because I don’t want to go back to when that corner of my soul was a dried-up well. I’m weak, and I’m stuck. I don’t want to go back, but I can’t allow myself to move forward. Either direction would be like pulling a plug and watching everything that has been filling me up drain away once more.
“Give me one good reason. One good reason that doesn’t include Brett in any sort of way.”
“If you’re so obsessed with the man then why don’t you date him?”
“He’s not my type.”
“But he’s mine?”
“The reason he’s not my type but he’s yours is the same. The man has eyes only for you, Evangeline. Listen to me. Any man who looks at you the way Tai does is your type.”
Pressure has been building in my chest ever since this conversation started. Now I feel as if my lungs are going to explode if Penelope doesn’t change the topic. I grasp at anything that might make her stop acting like a hound dog on a hot trail.
“He’s blackmailing me.” The words explode from my mouth.
Penelope’s face darkens as she goes completely still. “What did you say?” Thunderclouds roll behind her eyes.
I wince. I really shouldn’t have opened my big, fat mouth. “Well, it’s more like we struck up a bargain than blackmail in its strictest sense. But don’t worry about it. Just ... maybe now you can stop singing his praises and trying to get me to throw myself at him.”
“Oh, I’m going to do a lot more than worry about it,” she seethes.
Gosh she’s scary when she gets like this. I’m almost afraid to ask. ... “What are you going to do?”
Her nostrils flare. “I don’t know yet, but I’m not going to just sit here. I should’ve protected you from Brett. This is my chance for a do-over.”
I set my hand on her arm. “Don’t.”
She eyes my hand holding her back. “Why not? What aren’t you telling me?”
I have no choice. Unless I tackle Penelope to the ground and physically keep her from marching out the door in a crusade for my honor, I have to tell her the whole story.
