Her Sister's Fiancé. Teresa Hill

course they do. They love you. They’re miserable without you.”

      “They were miserable with me. You and I made them miserable.”

      “Well…they’re over it,” he said.

      It was true, wasn’t it?

      Not over being mad at him, but certainly over being mad at her.

      “They could not possibly be over it,” she insisted.

      “Sure they are. Call them. They’ll tell you.”

      “I can’t talk to them,” she said, like he was an idiot for thinking she could.

      “Of course you can.”

      “Joe…what we did…it was awful. It was horrible! I’m so ashamed of myself that I couldn’t stand to face them. That’s why I had to get away.”

      “Okay,” he said. “I get that. But you’ve been gone for six months. Believe me, they’re all over being mad at you. I mean…they weren’t even that mad at you to start with. They’re mad at me. Everybody is. You don’t have anything to worry about. Everybody in town blames me.”

      She looked horrified at that.

      What? What had he said? He ran through it again in his head.

      Everybody in town blames me.

      Okay, maybe that was a bad thing to tell her, but it was true.

      “That’s terrible,” she said.

      “Well…” What could he say to that? “Not really.”

      It was uncomfortable and annoying and frustrating, but not awful.

      “No, it is. It’s not fair at all,” she said. “It was me. I was the one. It was my fault.”

      “No, it wasn’t,” he claimed. So what if he thought she’d bewitched him or something. He was a grown man, responsible for his own actions. He wasn’t going to blame this on her.

      “It was. Oh, God, I feel even worse now! They all blame you?”

      Joe puzzled over that. It wasn’t at all what he had intended to say, but at least she was listening to him. They were having a conversation, and she didn’t look like she was going to run away any minute or cry.

      Jax had said to do anything it took to get her back. Joe knew this wasn’t what he meant, but he was starting to think it was the one thing that might actually work. He knew her, knew how her mind worked and how kindhearted she was. It would be much easier to get her to come back in order to help someone else out of a jam than to help herself.

      “Okay, yeah, it’s been awful,” he said, watching her face as he did. Oh, yeah. This would work. “The way you ran away like that. They all thought I must have just been…toying with you, which made what I did even worse.”

      As if he’d ever been one to toy with women. Her brother toyed with women. Joe did not.

      “But, it wasn’t like that,” she insisted.

      He didn’t argue that it had been very much like that, just went on, spinning things any way he could to make it most likely that guilt would bring her back.

      “And then, when everyone found out about you and me, and then you left…they all thought I dumped you.” Had he dumped her? He supposed it could have looked like that as he tried to keep his distance and not make anything worse, tried to not do another stupid thing and kept hoping the whole thing would just blow over. “Everybody thought I was so awful to you, you couldn’t even stand to be in the same town with me.”

      Joe decided it sounded remotely plausible and potentially highly guilt-inducing on her part.

      Enough to make her come back?

      He hoped so.

      Joe figured once he got her back, it was up to Jax and his sisters to keep her there. They hadn’t said anything about him having to keep her there, just to get her there.

      “But everyone in town loves you,” Kathie said.

      “Not anymore.” He tried to look devastated by that, even if he was more mad than anything else.

      Was it working?

      “But it wasn’t your fault. It was my fault. All of it!”

      It wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t. He’d kissed her. More than once. While he was engaged to her sister, someone she loved and he loved, too.

      But if Kathie thought it was her fault, then she’d think it was up to her to fix it, and she couldn’t do that from here. She could only do that from Magnolia Falls.

      Jax would kill him if he ever found out what Joe said and Joe might dislike himself a little bit more for saying it, but he was with Jax and her family on this—she needed to come home. It was where she belonged, where everyone she loved and who loved her was, and that wasn’t something to walk away from in this world. Life was hard enough without people on your side.

      “Hey, don’t worry about it,” he said, still trying to look devastated. “People will get over it. I’m sure of it. And it’s not like the bank’s business is suffering or anything because of it. Not really—”

      “It’s hurting the bank’s business?” she asked.

      “Did I say that? No. Not really.”

      “Yes, you did. It must be.”

      He shrugged. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. Some new scandal will hit town, and everybody will forget about how awful I was to you and Kate.”

      Kate.

      That gave him another idea.

      He knew she loved her sister.

      “And I don’t think anyone really believes Kate’s so mad at you that she can’t forgive you,” he added on a whim. “Or that silly rumor about her ordering you to leave town and never come back!”

      “They think she threw me out of town?”

      “No. I don’t think anyone really believes that. They know Kate. They know she’d never do that. The idea that she had you stand up for her at the wedding, so she wouldn’t look so bad, and then turned around right afterward and ran you out of town…that’s just silly. Forget I even said it.”

      Kathie looked horrified. “I never thought of them blaming you and Kate.”

      “And don’t think of it now. Really. We’re fine. We’ll weather this. It’ll just take some time.”

      “It’s not right,” Kathie insisted.

      “It’s fine,” he said again.

      “No, it’s not. And I can’t let this happen. I have to do something.”

      “Well…if you really want to help—”

      “What? Tell me what to do?”

      “I think if you came back for the summer and saw Kate, it would show everyone that those silly things people are saying about Kate not forgiving you and running you out of town…that would be over. Everyone would know it wasn’t true.”

      “Yes, they would.” Kathie squared her shoulders, looking determined and very, very sad. “And you. I can’t have them thinking you’re to blame for all of this. I’ll have to spend some time with Kate, and then I’ll have to spend some time with you.”

      No, no, no, Joe thought.

      Not him.

      Not him and her.

      No.

      That was not part of the plan.

      “I’m fine,” he insisted.

      “No, I have to make this right. They think you…that