still couldn’t believe his best friend—his last single buddy—was tying the knot. What was the rush to get married all of a sudden? Bryan was the same age he was, twenty-eight. They had plenty of time.
The way Craig figured it, he’d get himself established in his career before he took on the added responsibility of marriage and raising a family. Say, around age thirty-five sounded right. Then he’d find a woman who was successful in her own right, someone capable and dependable like himself.
Eyes still closed, as if struggling to hold on to sleep a little longer, Marlee unfolded her legs and stretched her arms overhead. Her slow, sensuous movements made him think of lazy mornings spent in bed and languid lovemaking in tangled sheets, things he seldom indulged in. She arched her back against the seat and her breasts jutted against the thin fabric of her dress, and he felt an immediate physical response.
He forced his eyes away. He wasn’t going to get involved with this chick. She was sweet, but she definitely wasn’t his type—and the last thing he needed in his life right now was any more complications. He had too much else to think about. He’d get his career on the right track, and then he could work on the relationship side of things.
“Where are we?” she asked, her voice soft with sleep.
“Somewhere outside of Roanoke, Virginia. I’m hoping to make Kingsport, Tennessee by dark, but the traffic around Fairfax put us behind.” Too far behind for his liking. They’d have to make up some time to get back on schedule.
“What time is it?” She leaned toward the dashboard clock, squinting in the glare.
“Lunch time. I’ve been looking for a place to stop, but there isn’t any.” And they weren’t anywhere near his planned stop. The last town they’d passed had been little more than a post office and a service station. Since then, the view had been mostly trees and fields.
“That’s okay. We can have a picnic.” She reached back into her bag and began taking out items and piling them in her lap. “I’ve got some cheese. Crackers. Summer sausage. Grapes. A chocolate bar.”
He suppressed a laugh. Any minute now he expected her to pull out half a roast chicken and a bottle of wine. She turned to him once more. “It’s enough to tide us over until we can have a real meal.”
“Sounds great. I’ll look for a place to pull over.”
A few miles farther on, they spotted a sign for a roadside park. “Pull in there,” she directed.
He parked under a shady oak and they carried the food and two bottles of water to a picnic table. The air smelled of freshly mown grass and the wild irises that bloomed on the bank of a stream running through the little park.
While she arranged the meal on the table, he walked over to the stream and stooped to rinse his face and hands. He spotted bunches of watercress growing at the water’s edge and picked some.
“What’s this?” she asked when he offered her the greens.
“Watercress.” He tore off some of the crisp herb and popped it in his mouth. “The same stuff they use to make fancy tea sandwiches.”
She grinned and helped herself to the greens. “I guess if we run out of food, you’ll be able to forage for us. Do they teach that kind of thing in chef’s school?”
“The Culinary Institute didn’t take field trips to pick wild greens, no.” He took a seat on top of the picnic table, his feet on the bench below. “I learned about this stuff on my grandparents’ farm.”
“And where was that?” She sliced off a thick round of summer sausage and offered it to him.
“Arkansas. I spent every summer there.” He grinned. “I couldn’t wait for school to be out so I could go.”
“Where was home the rest of the time?” She topped a cracker with cheese and popped the whole thing into her mouth.
“New Mexico. A little town not too far from Farmington.”
“Is your family still there?”
He nodded. “My mom and dad and two sisters.” He grinned. “I’m the black sheep, moved all the way out to D.C.” His tone was light, but the words weren’t too far from truth. He’d always been the different one in his family, the one who was never satisfied.
“That’s practically on the way to San Diego, isn’t it?” she asked. “We should stop and say hello.”
He shook his head. The last thing he wanted right now was to see his dad and have to listen to another lecture on getting his act together. If he told his father he was thinking of opening his own restaurant, the old man would have a stroke. No matter that Craig knew exactly what he had to do to make this work. “We don’t have time for that.”
“Sure we do. The wedding’s almost ten days away.”
He helped himself to more sausage. “Where is your family from?” he asked, anxious to change the subject.
“Dimmitt, Texas. Can you believe it? They’re all horrified that I’ve gone off to the big city to consort with politicians and lobbyists and other evil-doers.” Her eyes widened in mock horror and he laughed again. In fact, he’d laughed more in the past three hours than he had in the past three months.
“You have a nice smile,” she said, helping herself to a grape. “Much better than that scowl you showed up with this morning.”
“Yeah, well…” He looked away. “I guess I wasn’t looking forward to this trip much.”
“Because of me…or for some other reason?”
“For a lot of reasons, I guess.” He rolled his shoulders. “Bryan’s my last single buddy. Makes me feel…I don’t know. Out of step.”
“Yeah.” The wistfulness in her voice surprised him. He looked at her again. She rolled a grape back and forth between her palms, seemingly unaware of the movement. As if she felt him watching her, she looked up. “Are you seeing anyone? I mean, anyone special?”
Something in her voice sent a prickle of awareness down his spine. “No, you?” He held his breath, waiting for her answer.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
The atmosphere was charged like the air under a high-voltage line. Suddenly they weren’t only two people on a trip together, but a man and a woman. Both unattached. The word itself implied something unfinished. Two halves looking to be made whole.
Now where had that thought come from? He launched himself off the table, eager to put some distance between himself and these disturbing feelings. But she was right behind him, running past him to the creek, where she kicked off her shoes and began wading in the shallows.
He followed, the cool water lapping at his ankles, gravel massaging his toes. Holding her arms out like a tightrope walker, she picked her way across a half-submerged log toward the middle of the stream. “Careful,” he called.
She looked back over her shoulder, eyes bright, teasing. “Come on,” she called. “It’s fun.”
He shook his head. The log was green with moss. Probably slippery as hell.
She walked out farther, and struck a ballerina’s pose, balanced on one leg. His heart pounded as she teetered back and forth. He checked the water—it looked deep under where she stood. Did she know how to swim? Would he have time to save her in the swift current? “Come back before you fall,” he said, his voice gruff.
She laughed, a musical sound in harmony with the cadence of the tumbling water. Sunlight spotlighted her hair and touched her skin with gold. “Come and get me!” she called.
He told himself he wouldn’t let her bait him. He would turn around and go back to the car and wait for her to follow. They didn’t have time for silly games like this.
But the next thing he knew, he