Operation: Married by Christmas by Debra Clopton Page B

scene looked great to him, but he’d learned pretty quickly that Haley wasn’t looking to please anyone but herself. Until she was satisfied with the drawing she was making, it wasn’t going to do any good for him to try and convince her that she was being too hard on herself.
    â€œAre you this tough to please all the time?”
    She bit the pencil she’d been tapping against her chin while she studied the work. “Yes. And I know what you’re going to say—I used to be a pushover. I was, but I realized if I wanted to be a success I had to change. So I did.”
    He’d been standing back getting the full view of the sketch and now he dropped to one knee beside her. “Is that so?”
    She flashed him a sassy grin that reminded him of the girl he’d known, and for a moment he almost forgot that they didn’t really like each other anymore.
    Will grinned back at her. She was different, and it just didn’t fit. But what did he know? Over the last few days, she’d been quiet, but so had he. Today, something was different. She’d walked into the workshop earlier and started talking. Though they hadn’t, until this moment, talked about anything remotely personal. She’d asked all about Mule Hollow and his work. She seemed genuinely interested.
    However, he noticed that she was careful not to ask him why he’d left Mule Hollow in the first place. After all, before she’d walked away from him, he’d planned to live in Mule Hollow. It was the main reason she’d left. But her leaving him had changed his plans. Unable to face all the memories and being pitied by everyone, he’d taken a job with a Dallas architecture firm owned by a couple of his college buddies. Haley Bell Thornton had no idea how badly she’d torn his world apart. Relentlessly, her memories held and followed him everywhere he’d moved.
    Hunkered down beside her on the cold concrete, he got lost staring at her profile as she scrutinized the large sketch. Aware he was in a danger zone, he forced his gaze to the drawing. “It looks…” his eyes were drawn back to her “…good. But then I didn’t see anything wrong with it in the first place.” He itched to touch her, suddenly wanting to trace his finger along her jaw. Instead he curled his fingers into a fist and pressed it into the floor.
    Unaware of the effect she was having on him, she shook her head, took her pencil and made a new line then erased the first one again.
    â€œMaybe now. Better, don’t you think?” She slid a glance at him, her eyes dancing, drawing him like magnets to lean closer.
    â€œBetter,” he croaked, humoring her while he sprang to his feet and moved away from her as fast as he could. What was the matter with him? Just because she’d come in today with less of a chip on her shoulder and the desire to talk didn’t mean anything had changed. He was a fool for letting his emotions conquer his resolve.
    â€œWill,” she said softly, her tone causing his step to falter. “Will, what happened to us?”
    Her question took him by surprise. So much so that he almost blurted out that he didn’t have a clue, except that her vision of fortune had lured her away.
    â€œI mean,” she chuckled suddenly. “It’s like now I’m you and you’re me. I used to be the haphazard, abstract one and you were the toe-the-line, everything-had-to-be-just-so guy.”
    Will almost laughed at the irony. He’d thought she was talking about them as a couple and she’d meant as people in general. With space between them, he considered her thoughtfully for a moment, then lifted a shoulder. What could he say? “Like you said, people change.”
    â€œI’ve always been fascinated by the why of it though. What makes a person make the change?”
    Will had started walking to his welding machine, but her words stopped him in his