The Sometime Bride

expectation and didn’t break away. Rather than pause, she seemed susceptible to the same raging pull that had engulfed Mike’s senses. Her eyes lingered tantalizingly on his own—beckoning, promising. She let out a little gasp, lightly moistening her lips.
    “Ready to order?” the maître d’ inquired, slicing the air between them.
    “Not on your life,” Mike said, slamming down his napkin.

Chapter Six

    “Excuse me,” Carrie said, abruptly pushing back her chair. “I’m going to powder my nose.”
    Thank God, Carrie could hear herself thinking. Thank God, thank God, thank God! If that maître d’ hadn’t interrupted just in the nick of time, who knew what would have happened?
    Carrie knew exactly.
    She pushed her way into the ladies room and made a beeline for the faucet, where she ran the water cold.
    Get a grip, Carrie, she warned herself sternly, dousing some paper towels and dabbing them at her neckline and brow. Water streamed from her neck to cleavage, reminding her of the effect Mike Davis had inspired at the pool. What was it with this man and water! Every time Carrie thought of him…
    Carrie looked up into the mirror and found her face a heated flush
    And this was supposed to make things all better? Getting tangled up with someone new when her heart hadn’t even had half a chance to heal was going to somehow alleviate the ache in her life?
    Carrie shook her head at the woman in the mirror. Plain old girl from Virginia was right. To look at her now, no one would ever suspect her worldly sophistication. They’d liken her, in fact, to some high school hayseed, fallen right off the turnip truck.

    Mike sat at the table, dumbfounded. This had to be the longest nose-powdering in history, he thought, staring down at his and Carrie’s lukewarm entrees.
    She’d agreed to let him place the orders, but then had bolted like a minnow in the path of a manta ray.
    Mike racked his brain for something—anything—he could have done wrong, but all he came up with was that “almost” kiss. Now, if he had kissed her and botched it miserably, he would have understood her wanting to take flight. But he hadn’t even gotten his chance. And, no matter what excuses she planned to offer to the contrary—and Mike was quite certain that was what she was doing at the moment, concocting excuses—there’d been that unmistakable look in her eye that said she’d wanted him to take it.
    Mike had been with plenty of women, enough of them to know when one wanted kissing and wanted it badly. Was it really possible all his years of training could fail him now?
    Mike stood from the table, thinking he should go check on her. As far as he knew, Carrie didn’t own a black Jaguar to escape in, but Mike supposed it was possible that Carrie could decide to run out on him just as Alexia had.
    Mike was just rounding the corner where trellised vines climbed heavenward when he ran smack into Carrie.
    “I was just coming to check on you,” he said when she halted in surprise.
    “Sorry,” she said with a trembling smile. “I had to collect myself.”
    “You doing all right?” Mike asked with concern.
    Carrie looked at him, then pursed her lips to keep them steady.
    “Carrie?”
    Her eyes fell to the ground as she slowly shook her head. “It’s no use, Mike,” she said, her voice cracking up. “This whole charade is—”
    “Who says it’s all a charade?” Mike asked, stepping forward and taking her by the elbows.
    “Mike,” she said, looking up and trying her damndest to look tough. Be in control. But Mike could see Carrie St. John was no more in control of her own racing heart than he was of his. “This thing, this arrangement, simply isn’t going to work.”
    “Says who?” he asked, stepping closer as a couple of departing diners scooted around them on the pathway. “Did you find that on some literature in the ladies’?”
    Carrie heaved a sigh without smiling, but he could tell she was loosening up.
    “Or perhaps,” he said, sliding his arms around her waist and tugging her into his rock-solid frame, “you found something disparaging written about me on the bathroom walls?”
    Carrie looked up at the impossible man and shook her head, trying to deflect the comfort of his humor, trying to make herself believe that nothing Mike Davis could say could possibly make things seem any better.
    Mike reached out and tilted her chin. “None of it’s true, Carrie,” he said, his mouth closing in. “Except