Silver Linings

patient man. In fact, Hugh thought he'd exercised more patience with Mattie Sharpe during the past year than he had with every other person in his whole life combined.
    The entire, convoluted mess was his own fault, of course, as Cormier had taken pains to point out a few months ago.
    “ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Hugh. You're old enough to know that. You have only yourself to blame for the situation in which you find yourself. Now you're going to have to work very, very hard to get her back. I rather think the exercise will be good for you .”
    Hugh, as Cormier had carefully explained, had made the fatal blunder of rejecting Mattie's heart and soul a year ago. But he had compounded his error by taking her body, which she had offered along with the rest.
    The lady apparently held a mean grudge. Cormier had warned him that women were inclined to do that.
    There had been only one night with Mattie because Hugh had been booked on a plane back to St. Gabe the next morning. His stormy engagement to Mattie's brilliant, dazzling sister, Ariel, had at last ended in a hurricane of tears and recriminations. Ariel never did anything without a lot of melodrama, Hugh had discovered to his disgust. He was only grateful he'd found it out before the wedding. In the end he had wanted nothing more than to escape to his island and lick his wounds.
    The last thing he'd intended doing that final night in Seattle was spend it with the quiet, restrained, obviously repressed, business-obsessed Mattie.
    Mattie, whom he'd barely noticed while he struggled to deal with the fire and lightning that was Ariel.
    Mattie, who had been waiting quietly in the wings all along, knowing that the engagement to Ariel could not last.
    Mattie, who had nervously called him that last night in Seattle and asked if he would come to dinner.
    To this day Hugh was still not quite certain why he had accepted the invitation. He knew he had not been fit company for anyone, let alone someone as quiet and unassuming and nervous as Mattie. He had been consumed with rage, both at Ariel and at himself. All his fine plans to head back to St. Gabe with a wife in hand had gone up in smoke. Hugh, as Charlotte Vailcourt had frequently noted, was not accustomed to having anyone mess up his plans.
    There were a lot of reasons Hugh had not gotten to know Mattie well by the time his engagement to Ariel had ended. For one thing, he simply had not spent much time with her. He had been too busy quarreling with Ariel over her unexpected refusal to move out to St. Gabriel. Ariel had somehow gotten the impression that Hugh had been planning to move to Seattle. The battle, once joined, had taken up every spare minute of Hugh's time.
    But another reason why a man tended not to notice Mattie right off was that she was very different from Ariel. Mattie was a quiet, warm rain where Ariel had been a full-blown storm.
    Everything about Mattie was more muted and less obvious than her sister.
    Ariel's eyes were a fascinating, witchy green. Mattie's almost green gaze was softened with gold into a shade that was closer to hazel. Ariel's hair, cut in a dramatic wedge, was jet black; Mattie's, worn in a prim coil, was a warm honey brown.
    Both women were slender, but Mattie's figure, which was nearly always encased in a severe, conservative business suit, seemed flat and uninteresting. Ariel, on the other hand, always appeared willowy and dramatic in the one-of-a-kind clothes she favored.
    But that last night in Seattle something about Mattie had tugged at Hugh's senses. She had looked like a calm port in which to rest for a while after the storm. He had been lured gently into her web by an oddly old-fashioned womanly charm that was entirely new to him. The home-cooked meal of pasta and vegetables and the quiet conversation had been both soothing and simultaneously arousing. Her anxiousness to please had been balm to Hugh's lacerated ego. Her shy, rather hesitant sexual overtures had made him feel powerful and desired.
    He knew she was not his type, but when the time had come he had taken Mattie to bed and lost himself in her warmth. He had been deeply aware of a sense of gratitude toward her.
    The next morning Hugh had awakened with a hangover and the gnawing certainty that he had made a really stupid mistake.
    The last person he had wanted to get involved with at that point was another Sharpe sister. He'd had it with the women of the clan. In fact, he'd had it with women and city