This was something Ingrid and John pulled off with great success, both of them having excellent educations and a wide range of travel experiences. Sarah, however, had been outside the county only once, to visit relatives in Ohio, and her formal education had ended, as it did for all Amish children, at fourteen. Confronted with the role of hostess, she seemed to forget that she was quite well-read and had some understanding of current affairs gained through the pages of Ingrids Newsweek.

Of course, it didn't help matters that the current guests were … well, strange.

Sarah sat in her chair unable to think of anything much to say while the Mortons and Lisbeth Parker stared at her as if she were an oddity in a museum.

Matt cleared his throat in an attempt to break the silence. “Mrs. Parker, it's too bad your husband wasn't feeling up to joining us.”

She gave Matt a vacant look, then flinched as if she'd been pinched, and batted her long false lashes at him. “Oh, well, travel doesn't agree with Tim,” she said, pouring a little brandy into her coffee. “He has a delicate constitution.”

“I&d be happy to take a look at him—”

“No! No,” she repeated, calming herself. She resurrected her beauty queen smile and bestowed it upon everyone in the room. “It's nothing serious, I assure you. He simply needs his rest.”

Matt's brows rose and fell as he looked across the room at Sarah. She gave a small shrug. As yet no one had seen the mysterious Tim Parker.

“I can imagine he needs lots of rest,” Marvin Morton growled, his eyes fixed on Mrs. Parkers fantastic bosom. His wife gave him a sharp jab in the ribs.

Mrs. Parker changed the subject abruptly, going into a long, bizarre account of her recent trip to her optometrist, who had prescribed a single contact lens that she could wear in either eye. No one seemed to know any appropriate comment to make about that—except Mr. Morton, who told her the guy was probably a shyster, as were most doctors. Matt ground his teeth for a minute, then launched onto a detailed explanation of the pro bono work he did at a free clinic in North Minneapolis. The point was lost on Marvin, who turned the discussion into a racist commentary on the abuses of the welfare system.

Sarah watched it all unfolding with a sense of dread and helplessness. She tried to imagine how Ingrid would have handled the situation, but could only think that Ingrid and John would never have gotten into this kind of conversational snake pit in the first place. Heavens, her whole adventure of running the inn was turning into a nightmare. She should have known better than to believe she could handle this. She was after all, despite her longings to the contrary, just a simple Amish woman. Dreaming about being a part of that other world and pulling it off were two very different things.

She looked around the room and bit back a moan of despair. Matt was plainly furious with Mr. Morton, who had expanded his monologue into anti-Semitism. Mrs. Parker was pouring another dollop of brandy into her coffee cup. Blossom was sneaking off with one of the beauty queen's heels. Some grand evening this was turning out to be. The evening from hell.

“So, you're Amish, Sarah,” Mrs. Morton said, dragging the topic back to the one thing Sarah wanted most to avoid talking about. She was quite certain the imperfections in her hostess skills were already glaringly apparent to the one person she wanted most to impress—Matt. Now she would have the spotlight thrown on her background and way of life, which couldn't have been more separate from his if she had been from Mars. And he would be able to see how truly unsuitable for him she was.

And what was the difference? she asked herself. The sooner he came to his senses, the better for both of them.

“Yes, Mrs. Morton, I'm Amish,” she answered politely.

“So what's that like?”

What an enormous question. Sarah sat with her hands folded in her lap, struggling to formulate a reasonable answer, but Mr. Morton beat her to it.

“You've seen what its like, Peg. It's like living in a hippie cult commune.”

“Mr. Morton!” Matt protested, all his newfound protective instincts rearing up inside him. He'd sat through the man's diatribe on every other minority group, but this was the end. This ingrate had insulted Sarah, Sarah the sweet and innocent, and Matt wasn't going to have her subjected to abuse of any kind.

“Well, it is,” Morton pressed on, waving his cigar. “I read all about it. They mate up their young folks like sheep and most of them have two or three wives.”

“Mr. Morton, that's enough!” Matt bolted out of his chair, ignoring the pain it caused him. He was too angry to notice something as trivial as cracked ribs. He leaned toward the older man with a menacing expression. “If you want to be a bigot at least have the decency to do it in the privacy of your own home.”

“Bigot!” Morton exploded. He rocked himself up off the couch. “You can't call me that!”

“I just did.”

“Matt, stop it!” Sarah jumped up out of her chair and tried to pull Matt back to his. He paid no attention to her efforts. He and the guest were nearly toe-to-toe, Matt towering over Morton like an angry avenging angel.

“You're a rude, ignorant bigot. And if you think for one minute that I'm going to sit here and let you insult Sarah and treat her like some sideshow tourist attraction, you had better think again. Furthermore, I think you owe Miss Troyer an apology.”

Morton's whole fat head turned the color of a radish.

“Matt, stop it!” Sarah hissed behind him. She hooked a finger through a belt loop on his jeans and tried to tug him backward. He wouldn't budge.

“I'm not apologizing to anybody,” Morton said with a snort.

“Then I think you'd better leave.”

“Matt!” Sarah wailed. This was all she needed. As if her reign as manager of Thome-wood hadn't gotten off to a bad enough start, Matt was going to go and throw out the guests!

“W-el-1,” Mrs, Parker said, drawing the word into three syllables. Her gaze had turned glassy. She seemed to be able to focus only the eye with the contact lens in it, and that one she fixed on Morton. Tm with Dr. Thorne. I think you're insuffer-ufferably rude,” she said with a hiccup.

Morton snorted, “That doesn't mean much coming from a woman whose bra size is bigger than her IQ.”

“I don't have to put up with that!” Mrs. Parker said with a gasp. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pearl-handled derringer and waved it around. She rose to her feet, wobbling on one heel, trying to aim the gun. “You big lump o' Yankee lard!”

Mrs. Morton screamed. Mr. Morton's cigar fell out of his mouth and set the couch on fire. Matt dove for Mrs. Parker and knocked the gun out of her hands. It went off with a loud pop, shattering a decanter of red wine, which spewed all over Mrs. Morton, causing her to believe she'd been shot and making her scream louder. Just to put the icing on the cake, Blossom rushed in howling at the top of her lungs.

The farce had reached its climax.

“I can't believe this,” Sarah muttered. She stood, dazed, on the porch watching the tail-lights of the Mortons' car bob off into the dark distance.

“Good riddance,” Matt grumbled.

Sarah turned on him. “I can't believe you did this!”

“Me!” he exclaimed, splaying a hand across his chest as if she'd just stabbed him. He was the picture of confused, thickheaded male innocence. “What did J do?”

“What did you do?” Sarah rolled her eyes and clamped her hands to the top of her head as if she were afraid her temper would force her hair to stand straight on end. “You had to start a fight with a guest!”

“Sarah, the man was insulting you!”

“Ridicule is nothing new to me. I would have handled it.”

“Well, I handled it for you.”

“I wouldn't have fought with him. It's not our way.”

“Yeah, well, it's my way,” Matt said in a huff of injured male pride. He jammed his hands on his hips and scowled. “If the Silicone Queen hadn't pulled that gun, I probably would have punched him in the nose.”

“Wonderful. Violence to defend the nonviolent.” Sarah shook her head at the irony. “I don't need a protector, Matt Thorne. I can take care of myself. I know you come from a violent world, but I am not a part of that world.”

There it was, plainly spoken, the line between them drawn as clearly as if she had taken a stick and pulled it across wet sand. Matt leaned against the porch railing and knocked his head against a post. She was right. In his attempt to defend her innocence he had sullied it with violence. He had dragged her down to a low level by starting a fight over her. He sighed and closed his eyes. Had the world he lived and worked in so tainted him that he had become a part of the problem? He had only wanted to help, both in going to work at County General and in coming to Sarah's defense.

“I only wanted to help,” he mumbled miserably.

Sarah was too caught up in her own worries to notice Matt s pain. A part of her thrilled to the idea of Matt rushing to her rescue like a knight on a white horse, but having that particular fantasy come true was undoubtedly going to cost her dearly. She could see it now. Ingrid would fire her and she would have no choice but to go back to the farm. Her father would try to take control of her life again, and she would end up miserable and married to Micah Hochstetler, doomed to a life of drudgery, never to have an adventure again.

“I'm going to lose my job,” she said with a morose sigh.

Matt turned toward her, leaning his hips against the porch railing. “You won't lose your job. This was all my fault. I'll explain it to Ingrid.” It was his turn to sigh as he thought of how his sister would receive the news, 'Til explain it to Ingrid and then shell kill me with her bare hands. Will you come to my funeral?”