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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 life in general. He just longed to go home and devote himself to his fledgling charter business.
    As he had packed his bag and phoned for a cab to the airport to catch his six o'clock flight, Hugh had tried to ease his way out the door by thanking Mattie for her hospitality. That was when she had made her plea, a plea that had echoed in his ears nearly every night since that last one in Seattle.
    “ Take me with you, Hugh. I love you so much. Please take me with you. I'll follow you anywhere. I'll make you a good wife. I swear it. Please, Hugh .”
    Hugh had fled after first making a further mess of the matter by trying to explain to Mattie that she was not really his type.
    He had not been gone more than a couple of months before he had finally admitted to himself that he had picked the wrong sister the first time around. Trying to rectify his error was proving far more complicated than he would have initially believed possible.
    “Had Cormier lived here on Purgatory for a long