The Sometime Bride

that—dammit—was starting to hurt, “do you have…sending flowers…to my grandmother?”
    Mike gripped his hand around the offending digit and held it in place.
    “Let me go!” Carrie charged.
    “Only if you promise to stop poking.”
    Carrie glared at him and pulled back her hand, massaging its aching joints. Poking into his chest had been painful for her as well, though she didn’t dare let him know it. It had taken her over three hours to find him. She’d gone through six other Michael Davises in Redfields before she’d finally happened upon this place here. And now he owed her some answers.
    “Like some iced tea?” Mike asked, pinned to the mailbox, his eyes darting furiously between Carrie’s still-idling car and the woman in front of him.
    Carrie ran a frustrated hand through her tangled hair. “Well, for heaven’s sake,” she said, her shoulders sagging just a tad so their positioning didn’t look quite so combative. “I’m not a bee that’s going to sting you.”
    “Tea?” Mike repeated, his voice coming out an octave higher than intended. Okay, Mike, he told himself, now would be a good time to think up the reason you did that. She obviously wants an explanation. But do you understand it first?
    All he knew was that when he’d awakened that morning feeling sunny, sending flowers seemed the perfect thing to do. Gracious. Thoughtful. And the truth was, he adored Carrie’s grandmother—along with the rest of her extended family.
    Carrie set a hand on her hip and shook her head. “All right, I’ll come in for tea, but under one condition. You promise to be completely honest with me.”
    “That cuts two ways, Carrie,” Mike called as she walked back to her car and yanked her keys from the ignition.
    Criminy. She hadn’t even considered that.

    Carrie sat across from Mike at his kitchen table in his tiny but tidy efficiency apartment. Carrie looked around, somehow finding all the cleanliness disheartening. More undeniable proof of just how highly unsuited to each other the two of them were. What had she been thinking?
    “Well,” Carrie asked, setting down her glass. “I’m waiting.”
    Mike was waiting too. Waiting for something brilliant to occur to him. But all he could come up with was the very embarrassing truth: he’d wanted to impress Carrie’s family.
    “It wasn’t meant in malice, Carrie,” he began tentatively, pushing aside his tea glass.
    “Well, of course, I know that!”
    “Well, then…?” he asked, gently pacing his words, lest her iced-tea glass wind up on his head. “Why are you so darned mad?”
    “I’m mad because… Because…” Carrie faltered. She was so furious she could barely form her words. But what, in truth, drove her anger was even beyond her comprehension. All she knew was it had something to do with Mike inserting himself deeper in her life than he had a right to go.
    “We made a deal, you and I.”
    “That was ages ago.”
    “Three days,” she corrected without blinking.
    “Well, it seems like ages, Carrie. It seems impossible I’ve only known you that long. The two of us, we…”
    “What?” she demanded, looking him square in the eye.
    “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it too?”
    Carrie pushed back from the table and stood. “No way. No way, Mike, are you turning the tables back on me. We are not here to discuss my feelings!”
    “Okay,” Mike said, taking a lingering sip of tea. “Shall we discuss mine, then?”
    Panic gripped Carrie by the throat. What was happening here? No! She was here to confront him. She was furious! And there he was looking—what? Humble? Self-effacing? Forgivable?
    Carrie bit into her bottom lip and dropped back down into her chair. “What do you mean by that?”
    “What I mean,” he said, looking right through her with earnest green eyes, “is that you said you wanted honesty. I’m prepared to fess up, if you are.”
    Carrie gulped and grabbed her tea glass, which was empty.
    “Refill?” she asked weakly.
    “In a moment,” he said, reaching across the table and encircling the hand that gripped her glass with both of his. “First, we talk flowers.”
    Carrie tried to steady her resolve, remind herself of just how infuriated she was. But when she looked at him, really looked at him, Carrie knew in her heart Mike was telling the truth. He hadn’t sent those flowers to upset her. Or anybody else, for that matter.
    “So why?” she asked, the still air settling around them as Mike