The Sometime Bride

that.”
    Carrie looked up and arched both eyebrows.
    “Class of Ninety-two.”

Chapter Four

    “The plan is impossible,” Carrie said, stabbing into her salad with her fork.
    “Improbable, maybe,” Mike said, biting into his burger. “Nothing is impossible.”
    “But you’re talking about walking into a big group of my relatives and friends and convincing them we’ve been an item for—what?—a year and a half now? They’ll see through it in an instant.”
    “Not if we’re convincing,” Mike said, shaking his head. He set down his burger and picked up his bottle of imported beer. “Besides, how much do these people really know about Wilson Haywood anyway? You said the two of you met in New York.”
    “We did.”
    “That your relationship was mainly on weekends.”
    “It was.”
    “Sometimes there, sometimes here—right in quaint little Mill Creek.”
    “What, precisely, is your point?” Carrie asked, sipping her iced tea.
    “My point,” Mike said, taking a swig of beer, “is that your relationship with Wilson wasn’t exactly…normal.”
    “Oh, and you’re such an expert on normal relationships,” she pointed out with a broad sweep of her knife.
    Mike bolted backward in his chair. “Watch it with that thing! Don’t slay the messenger. I’m just telling it like it is. People don’t see you all touchy-feely with your fiancé, they might figure, well, that’s just a product of how things developed.”
    Carrie took exception to what he was suggesting. On the one hand, he might just be trying to save her some trouble by playing things cool like she wanted. On the other, he might very well be insinuating that Carrie was a cold fish. Which she certainly was not. And clearly wouldn’t be with a man like Mike Davis standing beside her.
    “And if things were ‘touchy-feely,’ as you put it, between me and Wilson?”
    “Were they?” Mike asked, little crinkles tugging at the corners of his sea-green eyes.
    Carrie put down her knife and thought about that. The truth was, no. Wilson had been very businesslike in a number of things, including in his relationship with her. She’d even sworn he’d timed their lovemaking so as to be less disruptive of the professional calls he’d always placed before—and afterward.
    “Well?” Mike pressed, his honey complexion taking on a deeper hue that perfectly complemented his rugged appeal. It was hard to picture him in real estate, when the word outdoorsman was written all over his chiseled face. Not to mention his hard-toned body.
    “Well, if you must know,” Carrie began, feeling the slightest bit naughty but not the least bit ashamed of her duplicity. “Wilson was quite an affectionate man.”
    Mike choked on his pickle. “That so?”
    “Oh yes,” Carrie said, putting on her most confidential face. “It was somewhat embarrassing actually. PDA to the max! Sometimes, I practically had to beat him off with a stick!”
    “A stick?” Mike gave up on his pickle and took a long drag of beer. “That doesn’t mean you’ll be hurting me, does it?”
    “Not in the least,” Carrie assured him, feeling a familiar ache wend its way all the way down to her bones. An ache that told her she was going to enjoy this little party a lot more than she’d originally suspected.
    “Ah darn,” Mike said with a Cheshire-cat grin. “But, no worries. We can work around that.”
    “You just remember your mission,” Carrie cautioned him sternly, again with the knife.
    “Anything you say, oh knife-wielding one.”
    Carrie laughed and looked down at her hand. “No cracking jokes at the shower. Got it? Especially none that would give the two of us away.”
    “Your wish is my command.”
    Carrie wondered about that. Wondered, especially, if she’d been just a tad bit rash in insisting this thing between her and Mike remain simply “friends.”
    “You’re awfully quiet,” Mike said, cocking one eyebrow. “Thinking up those three wishes?”
    But, honestly, Carrie only found herself thinking of one. About how nice it would have been if Wilson had been a bit more like Mike. More relaxed and easy to get along with.
    “It’s funny, really,” she admitted over the rim of her tinkling glass, “but I was thinking about how different you are from Wilson.”
    Mike settled back in his chair. “And that—at this precise moment in time—would be a compliment?”
    Carrie smiled and set down her glass. “You’re a nice man, Mike Davis.”
    “Ah-ah,” he