Chapter Five #4
She flinched, opening her mouth defensively, but he interrupted her. “You don’t have to tell me what it is. I can tell. All I’m sayin’ is, it’s all right if you’re not ‘fine’ with seeing your sisters get hitched to practical strangers.”
June’s chest tightened. The sincerity in his voice was unexpected… and if she was being honest, it was also unsettling. She thought she’d had him figured out. He was just a cocky cowboy with a hot temper.
Part of her was bothered that he could tell she didn’t want to get married… but then again, she hadn’t been swooning over him like Ada and Etta had with Jack and Henry.
Although, admittedly, he was the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on. But that didn’t matter—she couldn’t afford distraction.
She took a deep breath and plopped down on the ground, and he followed suit. She felt his deep green eyes fixed on her. She felt exposed. She shivered.
This version of Seth Whitman was contrary to everything she thought she knew about men like him, and she didn’t like that.
It made her feel vulnerable, and she’d promised herself a long time ago that she wouldn’t be vulnerable with another man ever again.
She would never put herself in the same position that she had with Trey.
“I’ve just managed just fine on my own,” she said sharply, turning pointedly away from him. “I don’t really know if I need to get married.”
“I understand that,” Whitman said softly. “But why do this, then? Why agree to marry men you don’t know?”
June glanced at him over her shoulder. “My sisters wanted to marry them,” she said, and although she was playing a part, she wasn’t lying. Etta and Ada were sisters to her, and they did want to marry Henry and Jack. That was the entire reason she had let it go any longer than the first day.
Whitman opened his mouth to say something, but he seemed to think better of it, and his jaw clenched. “I guess I was just trying to say you don’t have to pretend to be anyone you aren’t with me, and you don’t have to lie about what you want. I really don’t care who you are or what you want.”
June whirled on him, blazing with anger. “I don’t need anyone giving me permission about what I do or don’t have to do!” she snarled at him. “And why in the world would you bring me out here just to tell me you don’t care who I am or what I want? If this is your way of proposing—!”
She was angry. Angry as a snake. Spitting angry.
Whitman merely snorted humorlessly, which intensified the fury budding inside her gut.
“Easy there,” he huffed. “First of all, I never said I was proposing. And second of all, that’s not what I’m doing—trying to tell you what all to do. I just meant I ain’t one to judge.” Then he fell silent, staring at June with those intense eyes of his.
She frowned, at a loss for words. Why can’t I figure this man out?
She had become very intuitive in her years with Trey. He had taught her how to read people, and then how to manipulate them and take advantage of them after she got them figured out.
Seth Whitman was difficult to understand. She knew nothing about him, really. Just that he had grown up here; that he had been a good friend to Henry; and that he had been in the war.
The way he was looking at her now made her feel nothing but purely exposed. “Don’t look at me,” she warned, almost breathlessly.
“You don’t trust anyone, do you?” he asked.
“No,” she said firmly, almost harshly. “And you shouldn’t, either.”
Least of all me.
“I don’t,” he said, just as firmly, and her eyes widened in surprise. “You can be sure of that.”
“Well, then, I guess the question is, what are we doing here?” she asked, her anger getting the better of her.
“That’s the best question you’ve ever asked me,” Whitman muttered, getting to his feet to tug the reins of his horse loose.
“Okay, so what—so you just want to take me out to this spot, rile me up, and then go back on your own?” she snapped, stomping back toward Louise’s mare to untie her.
Whitman shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “Woman, why are you so angry all the time? For somebody who wants to get married, you sure aren’t agreeable at all!”
“I didn’t know the man I was going to marry was such a stick in the mud!”
“A stick in the mud?” He glared at her. “Watch your mouth.”
“Watch my mouth?” she fought back. “How about you mind your own mouth and stop talking to a lady like that! You invite me out here in the middle of nowhere to do what? To beat me in a race? To satisfy your pride?” She began mounting Louise’s mare in a fury.
“I just thought a lady might want to see something pretty!” he argued back, gesturing wildly with his hands, still holding the reins. “But I guess I was right all along—you ain’t a lady!”
“I am a lady!” June snarled. “But I am not easily wooed. If you want to court me, then you’re going to have to stop being a raging lowdown skunk!”
At this point, she wasn’t even sure why she was still arguing with him.
It was obvious the two of them couldn’t stand one another.
She hopped up on her horse. “Hiya!” She kicked the mare’s sides harder than necessary, and the startled horse sprang forward, leaving him behind before he’d even mounted his stallion.
Good riddance, Whitman. You lowdown skunk