The Sometime Bride

with a sly smile. “You know,” he whispered as their server departer. “I think you almost embarrassed that woman.”
    “Truth be told,” Carrie admitted, taking a sip of coffee that had grown lukewarm, “I almost embarrassed myself.”
    Mike tore open a sugar packet and dumped the contents into his cup. “Do tell.”
    But Carrie didn’t want to tell—tell this man any more than she had to. For, in a very big way, she already feared she’d told him way too much. Maybe not in so many words but certainly with her eyes. Guy who looked like that was bound to be experienced. Would certainly know when a woman was…what? Ogling him? Impossible. Carrie St. John was a business professional, a seasoned woman of the world. She did not ogle. She appraised. And every one of Mike’s assets, darn it, were starting to add up.
    “I never kiss and tell,” Carrie said, realizing afterwards just how flirtatious that sounded.
    Carrie flagged down the waitress and asked for another glass of water, wondering if she wouldn’t be better off having the waitress dump the whole pitcher in her lap.
    Mike stirred his coffee, then set aside the spoon. “Okay by me,” he assured her with earnest green eyes. “Believe me, I won’t be pressing you for details.”
    Carrie shifted in her chair, wondering why his gentlemanly assertion made her heart drop down to her belly. It wasn’t that she wanted him pressing her—for details.
    Criminy! She was a mess!
    Carrie gratefully grabbed her refilled water and downed half the glass in one long swallow. “Won’t be here for too much longer anyhow,” she said, searching for a reasonable-sounding way out of the corner she’d painted herself into. “Least ways, not long enough to engage in long-winded conversation.”
    “I see,” Mike said, studying her white-knuckled grip on her water glass. “So, then, where will you be going back to?”
    “Mill Creek,” she told him, feeling the room lightly spin around her. As ridiculous as it seemed, there was something about him that made her want to forget about going home altogether. Maybe it was in the heart-stopping way he looked at her, even when he pretended to be making normal conversation. Or maybe it was in the way he looked when he was half undressed…
    Carrie bit into her bottom lip as Mike fell back in his chair with surprise.
    “No kidding? I’m right next door in Redfields!”
    “So what are you doing up here?” she asked, trying to keep her thoughts on the straight and narrow. Straight and narrow? Holy cow! Totally wrong image! What on earth was wrong with her? Never in her life had her mind been so carnally occupied!
    His eyes fell to his coffee cup. “Maybe it’s best if I don’t kiss and tell either.”
    “You mean,” Carrie asked with surprise, “you were here with a woman?”
    He looked up, little wrinkles creasing his brow. “You find that so amazing?”
    Actually, what Carrie found amazing was that any woman in her right mind who’d come here with Mike in the first place wouldn’t still be here with him now. “What happened?” Carrie asked, softening her voice in concern. “I mean, certainly you don’t have to tell me, but—”
    “She dumped me,” Mike said, bright eyes darkening. “Sayonara. Just like that. Didn’t even have the courtesy to say good-bye. Simply walked out at dinner and never came back.”
    “No…” Carrie said, catching her breath on the unbelievable. That actually sounded worse than what had happened to her!
    “Wish I could say it wasn’t so,” Mike said with a shake of his head, “particularly after all the… Well, never mind,” he told her, fingering the rings through his pants pocket. “None of that matters much now.”
    Mike reached into his chinos and pulled out the pair of rings. “Not quite a matching set,” he said, laying them on the table. But quite an attractive pair just the same.”
    Carrie blanched and looked up. “Are you telling me that… Now, wait a minute—”
    Mike nodded. “Uncanny as it seems, my ring got tossed in the pool as well. Maybe it’s some sort of unwritten bylaw to staying in this place.”
    “Only when the guys involved are first-class jerks,” Carrie said with a hard edge to her voice.
    A rosy band of color swept across the bridge of her nose. “Oh, sorry… Didn’t mean it to—”
    “So, you’re assuming it was somehow my fault?” Mike asked.
    “Well, it’s only natural. If she felt strongly enough to throw your ring