Whistlin' Dixie (Tempered Steel Book 1) by Maggie Adams

police. Do you hear me Dixie?” he roared.
    She heard Jamie open the door. “I don’t know what you did, but you better fix it. She’s in her room crying her eyes out,” he groused.
    “Not that it’s any of your business, Jamie, but your sister misunderstood a situation she found me in tonight and I’m here to clarify it. Now get out of the way.”
    “You gave me the benefit of the doubt, so, I will do the same for you. I suggest you both calm down a little. My sister has a horrible temper and between the two of you, I feel like the house is gonna explode. Take some advice from a person who knows. Let her rant and rave until it’s out of her system, and then explain things to her. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting your breath.”
    Dixie heard Mac just on the other side of the bedroom door. She wanted to run and hide. She needed to lick her wounds and come to grips with what a fool she had been to trust Mac and his kisses. She didn’t want to listen to reason. She was hurting too badly and nothing he could say or do would erase the picture indelibly printed on her mind of him in the arms of another woman.
    So when Mac knocked softly on the door minutes later, she turned a deaf ear to his plea. “Dixie, please let me in. I want to explain what you saw,” Mac whispered.
    Oh my God! Did he think she was blind? Or just plain stupid? Or so deeply enamored of him that she was gonna let this stand?
    “I saw what I saw. I took biology. I know all about sexual reproduction. Please leave.” She was privately amazed she was able to carry on any kind of conversation with the two timing jerk. She congratulated herself on how collected she’d been, considering her temper was threatening to erupt again.
    Knocking again a little more forcefully, he pleaded. “Dixie baby, please open up. You didn’t see what you thought you saw. Please. Just let me explain.”
    “I may be young, but I’m not stupid. And I am most certainly not blind,” she snapped at him from the other side of the door. The man was unbelievable.
    “ You are the most infuriating bit of baggage I have ever encountered . If I didn’t care for you so much, I’d leave right now and never look back.”
    “You call that caring?! I call it a line of crap! The only thing you cared about begins with an “F” and ends with me losing my virginity !” Oh, God! Had she really just shouted that?
    Pounding on the door with his fist, he shouted, “Dixie Harris, you open the door this minute, or I’ll break it down!”
    “Then I’ll just have you arrested for breaking and entering. Sort of ironic, don’t you think?” she countered sweetly. She felt like crying the Mississippi River because he broke her heart, but she was not going to let that arrogant pain-in-the-ass know just how much she was hurting. She had her pride!
    “Fine. Just fine. I should’ve known better than to get involved with a little girl, anyhow. Maybe, in a few years, when you grow up and if you have apologized nicely, I might just take you back! And bring a damn soapbox to stand on. My neck’s getting sore from looking down at you!” he snarled. After giving the closed-door another good pounding, he stomped out of the house, slamming the front door.
    “Oooooh!” Dixie’s eyes narrowed to mere slits and her hands balled into fists as Mac’s last remark registered with the banging of the screen door. It was like pouring gasoline on a bonfire. She was out of her bedroom and on the front porch in seconds. Heedless of the people walking down the street, she advanced like a mad woman across the yard, screaming. “Apologize to you? When pigs fly, you Mississippi River rat. I wasn’t the one caught fornicating in the parking lot of the local pizza parlor. Hell will freeze over before I apologize.”
    Mac saw her coming out on the front porch, and he started toward her, but the smugness left his face, however, with each shouted word. By the time she was finished with her tirade, Mac’s