again. “But guard yourself.”
He almost rolled his eyes. “Got it,” he said. Agreeing with someone like Margo was always easier than trying to correct her. “I’m just going to fix her car and send her on her way.”
“That’s what everyone thinks with best intentions. The next thing you know, you’ll be going on dates, then… heartbreak. Just like…”
He rubbed his eyes. “Don’t say it, Margo, please.”
“Iris.”
She said it.
No longer smiling, Kace frowned. “Margo…”
“I always felt bad about hooking you with my daughter, Kace. I knew she wasn’t ready for a solid relationship. She’s a lot better for it now that she’s grown up some.”
“I know where this is going,” he warned. “No. Just no.”
“I saw it then, and I’m seeing it now, is all I mean,” the older woman protested. “Certain girls, they’ve got a look about them. The town’s too small. People like her get itchy for bigger and what they think’s a better place.”
He stifled a heavy sigh. “She just wants me to fix her car.”
“That’s what she says now. Just wait until she’s had a chance to look at you for a while. You need a girl vetted to small towns. One who knows what she wants already, who likes the fact we ain’t got big town amenities, like museums and zoos and such. One who doesn’t care we ain’t got more’n a bar to spend our downtime in, and yet who won’t want to live there.”
Here we go again. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Someone like the woman Iris is now.”
Bingo.
“All right, look,” he cut in firmly. “Iris and I had—”
“An unfortunate situation, but you know she’s ready to forgive you. You just got to find it in your heart to forgive her, too. Nobody blames you for what you did. Hell, I’m her mama, and I don’t blame you. T’were pure provocation to step out on you the way she did.”
And everyone in town knew it, which had been the problem now for most of the two years since his marriage of seven months fell apart.
“She didn’t step out on me, Margo,” he said flatly. “She slept with our neighbor. She had, in fact, been sleeping with him practically from the moment we married. She lied to me, to my face, I can’t even guess how many times.”
“And God got her back for it. She got pregnant, and your neighbor’s a skunk.”
“He’s not my neighbor anymore. He moved to Utah.”
“Serves him right. The point is, you gave her a lot to think about when you… you know… did what you did.”
“I spanked her ass,” he reminded her. Sure as hell, no one else in town was about to forget that part. It had been anything but his proudest moment.
He’d been beyond pissed when he confronted Iris. When she’d lied to his face yet again, he just snapped. The next thing he knew, she was over his knee, and he was paddling her ass harder than he’d ever spanked in his life. He didn’t even know how many swats he’d given her—eight, ten, twenty—before he snapped back to himself enough to be appalled. Never would he have considered himself to be the sort to strike a woman in anger. It was hard to regret ending his marriage, but he regretted spanking her for her infidelity.
“As I said, you were provoked, but I know she misses you.”
Water under the bridge and that bridge long burned down.
“I also don’t want to see you making a mistake with a woman who’ll hit all them knightly buttons inside you but has no intention of sticking around.”
“Warning received,” he diplomatically replied. “But I have no plans to involve myself with the nice lady who broke down on the road to town. I’m just going to fix her car.”
“You say that now.” Margo sniffed. “But I know you, young man, and I know she’s your type—blonde, pretty, injured, and in trouble.”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Thank you for the call, Margo, but I have to go. I’ll take extra care, I promise.”
“Give Iris a call!”
Not a chance.
He hung up the phone, then shook his head. He didn’t have a type, but even if he did, he wasn’t about to make a fool of himself over a customer, especially not one he’d only just met.
Chapter Two
She should have stayed in the garage and put her foot up.
Alone in the cab of ‘Daddy’s’ tow truck, she clung to the door with one hand, the edge of her seat with the other, and