As soon as the meeting was over and people began to disperse, he grabbed her arm and dragged her out the back door. “What the hell was that?”
“She’s insufferable,” Rose said. “I’m sick of her taking shots at my family. And Emmett is included in my family. I have a bad taste in my mouth from that already.”
“She’s one of those people,” he said. “She means well, but she can’t be flexible. She doesn’t have friends, she doesn’t have a family support system the way that you do.”
She crossed her arms and looked up at him like he’d betrayed everything they were. “So I’m supposed to feel sorry for her?”
She was being...not as good as she could be. Or not as good as he gave her credit for anyway. To him, she was...bright and irrepressible but never mean. And Barbara might be difficult, but in the end she was a woman abandoned by a husband, whose son had abandoned her too, and Logan hated that.
It scraped against all his own feelings about his mother, and no, Barbara wasn’t like his mother. Not even close. But his mom had been judged and she’d felt ostracized. And maybe Barbara was just...reacting to what she thought the town might give her back if she didn’t lead with judgment of her own.
He knew what it looked like when women were left hurt and vulnerable. Victims of the choices men made, and scorned more than the ones that abandoned them ever would be.
He’d thought Rose would have the compassion to understand, too.
“Yes,” he said. “You should. She doesn’t have anyone. You should give her some level of sympathy, a little bit of grace, dammit.”
“Suddenly you’re the expert on how to treat people?”
“At least in a room full of people, you should have the good sense to be kind to somebody who isn’t working with as much as you are. Her husband is gone. He left her while their son spiraled into addiction. And you know that. So does everyone in that room. Doing things for the town is all she’s got. Badly done, Rose.”
He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. Didn’t know why everything about her was getting under his skin the way that it was now. But he couldn’t stand to look at her. Not at this moment. So he turned and he walked away, leaving her there with no further explanation.
ROSE FELT WOUNDED. Scraped raw and even worse... Guilty. It wasn’t fair. Barbara Niedermayer had deserved that. And what she had done wasn’t that mean. She needed to be taken down a peg or two, and Rose had done it.
His face, his disapproval. It made her chest burn with humiliation.
Logan was often... Well, he was bossy like an older brother. He gave her a bad time. He told her she didn’t know what she was doing or thinking, in that way an older sibling with a superiority complex might.
But this was different.
This wasn’t him looking at her like a kid and claiming greater experience. He wasn’t pretending to be long-suffering. He wasn’t picking on her just to irritate her.
He’d looked at her like...like... It was disappointment and anger all in one and somehow it seemed to take down a wall between them.
On his side, he was the protector. On her side, the impetuous one that pushed and cajoled him and reluctantly made him smile.
That look... It had been something else and it burned her down in her soul.
She pushed it away because anger was easier.
How dare he? How dare he treat her like this? He wasn’t perfect. He might think he was, all high-and-mighty and certain of attraction and teeth.
He didn’t know everything. And he didn’t get to tell her how to behave.
When she got into the car with Iris, she was still fuming. And of course, Logan had taken off immediately after scolding her like she was a child. He was such an absolute ass.
“Are you all right?” Iris asked.
“No,” she muttered.
“I don’t remember you ever losing your temper like that before,” she said softly, the words a gentle introduction to the subject, but Rose could sense there was more emotion beneath her sister’s words.
“I always lose my temper,” Rose said. “I’m plainspoken. I say it like it is. The fact that anybody was surprised by that today is not my problem.”
“You’re often plainspoken, but you don’t usually embarrass people.”
She gritted her teeth. “Are you going to lecture me, too?”
“Who else lectured you?”
“Never mind,” Rose said. She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to reflect on the impression his fingers had left on her arm, and the way his eyes had burned into her as he’d read her the riot act.
“Fine,” Iris said. “Don’t talk to me. Maybe you should talk to Logan.”
Her head whipped around. “What?”
“Well, he’s the one that you usually go to when you need to discuss something. And obviously something is going on with you.”
“Nothing is going on with me. It’s too bad Elliott wasn’t at the meeting.”
“Yes,” Iris persisted. “Something is going on with you. I can tell because you don’t want to talk about it. You so profoundly don’t want to talk about it that you changed the subject to Elliott. I’m almost tempted to think that the real reason you’re trying to set me up with him is because you need distracting from something that concerns you.”
“I...” Rose sputtered. “I do not. Nothing is different with me. Nothing.”
Silence settled in the car.
“Is that the problem?” Iris asked gently.
“No,” Rose said. “Why would that be a problem?”
“It is for me sometimes. Nothing is different with me, either. And that’s hard. I’m so happy for Ryder and Sammy, and I’m happy for Pansy and West. But I’m a little bit sad for me.”
In the middle of her misery, Rose felt slightly validated. Because she’d just known Iris wasn’t happy. She knew it. “We’ve all been one thing for so long,”
