Page 35 of Winning Winnie’s Hand

“Okay,” she said. “Then I will be. I thought the jousting was absolutely incredible.”

He looked at her with a wary gaze, as if he knew she was buttering him up.

She might as well get this over with, then. “Be that as it may,” she continued, “there were significant flaws with the process and with the faire as a whole that took away from how much more incredible the event could be.”

Matthew pulled on a look of arrogance she knew was specifically to veil the offense he’d taken. “Flaws?”

“Yes, quite a lot of them.”

“For example?”

She shouldn’t be flirting with fire, but then, the man was sparking already. “Well, first thing I can think of off the top of my head, the main flaw is the obsession with historical accuracy.”

His jaw twitched.

“It has made the food unbearable and the activities lacking,” she continued. “The faire doesn’t have to be factual to be fun, you know? Have you ever even tried to put something in that wasn’t one hundred percent accurate?”

“Someone tried once,” he said. “Didn’t work out.”

“Hmm. That sounds like someone suggested something you didn’t approve of, and you didn’t even give it a fighting chance.”

He glanced away for the briefest of seconds, revealing her accuracy. “It doesn’t matter either way,” he said. “You’ll be proven wrong eventually.”

“Proven wrong about what exactly?”

“About the historical accuracy of the event,” he clarified. “And your belief that there are flaws here.”

She dropped her chin with a look of disbelief. “So you think there is absolutely nothing wrong with Foxwood or the faire…at all?”

His jaw twitched beneath his beard again. She quite liked the look of it. She’d like it a lot more if, you know, he wasn’t absolutely furious with her.

“That’s correct,” he said stubbornly. “Absolutely nothing wrong at all. But there’s no point in discussing it further, as we’ll just continue to argue about it. Excuse me.”

He moved to the door, but Winnie took a step forward, stopping him. “Look, you told me to be honest. Would you rather I’d lied to you, told you it was absolutely perfect?”

He shot a frown at her. “I don’t need to be coddled with lies. But I also don’t need to hear your opinion on what you believe to be the truth. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Repeating his words more forcefully, he tried to step around her again, ready to enter his house, but indignation bubbled within Winnie.

What was she supposed to do? She had been hired to do a job, and Matthew was holding it against her. She really should let it go, and yet…

Her hand shot forward as if on its own accord, blocking him from going inside. She wrapped her fingers around the handle of the door, then pulled it closed, directly in his face.

He stepped back, a startled look in his eyes as he peered down at her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not done with our conversation yet,” she stated simply. “I wanted to talk with you so we could clear the air between us, but obviously, that’s not going to work as you seem to have a little bee under your bonnet that started buzzing the second you found out I was a consultant.”

Once again his jaw twitched. She wasn’t going to allow it to distract her this time.

“I’ll have you know,” she continued, “I don’t think it’s really fair of you to have made a snap judgment about me just because of my job title.”

“And you think it’s fair for you to have made a snap judgment about my festival?”

She pulled back. “Of course not. And I didn’t. I made an informed decision after a great deal of research and observation.”

“As if a day could tell you all you needed to know.” He looked back at the door. “You may not be done, but I am.”

He opened the door again—Honestly, what witchery was he using to push it open so succinctly?—but once more, Winnie’s pride swelled. Before he could take a step inside, she moved forward and closed the door on him again.