Viv,” Alexis called, nudging her sister’s shoulder. When Vivian turned, Alexis gestured toward Nick. “You need to feed your man. He looks ravenous over there.”
Nick bristled. While he appreciated Alexis’s thoughtfulness, he was not Vivian’s man. Not in any way, shape or form.
Except, unfortunately, that in a way he was. She’d bought him. With money. For a purpose as yet unknown to him. Unfortunately, she was very possibly expecting a date out of this. He knew perfectly well that many of the single ladies in the crowd were bidding on men for just such a reason. It was enough to make a single man shudder.
“Oh, Nick, I am so sorry,” Viv apologized, laying a familiar hand on his forearm. “I completely forgot about you.”
“Yeah. No kidding.” His arm trembled as he fought the urge to jerk it out of her reach.
She’d forgotten about him? Ouch. He didn’t want to admit it, but her words stung his ego. Even if it was Vivian Grainger. Even if he shouldn’t really care whether she was thinking about him or not.
She ignored his attitude, if she even noticed it, apparently choosing to take the high road and stay cheerful instead of descending into bickering. Typical of what he knew of Vivian Grainger—her glass was always, annoyingly, half-full.
“I packed my basket with all kinds of goodies,” she informed him. “Turkey and Swiss sandwiches and BLTs. Potato chips, a couple of deli salads and one of Phoebe’s delicious cherry pies for dessert. I hope you like cherry.”
Cherry happened to be his favorite. But as hungry as he was, he would have eaten it even if he didn’t care for it.
“And I packed a special surprise.”
In general, he didn’t like surprises—but this one sounded like it was something to eat. His mouth watered at the possibilities.
“You’ll be happy to know that everything I’ve packed today is legitimately store-bought,” she continued, without letting him get a word in edgewise, were he inclined to do so.
Which he wasn’t.
“I know the whole point of this was to serve the best of Serendipity’s down-home country cooking, but trust me when I say you would definitely not want to eat my cooking. I can’t even boil soup.”
“Water,” he corrected absently, wondering when, if ever, they were going to get around to actually eating the food she was yammering about.
“What?” she asked, confused. She folded her arms over her stomach and swayed slightly, as if she was unsteady on her feet. Instinctively, he pressed a palm to the small of her back to support her.
“Water,” he clarified. “The saying is, ‘You can’t boil water.’”
“Oh.” She straightened her shoulders and waved him off, seeming to recover from the dizziness that had come over her moments before. “Whatever. But I do have bottled water.” She paused, giggling. “To drink. Not to boil.”
He was having trouble following her train of thought, if there was one. Once again he thought of a butterfly, flittering from flower to flower.
Only this particular flying insect was revved up on caffeine or something.
“And your basket is—where?” he finally asked, hoping for a straight answer but not really expecting one.
To his astonishment, she grabbed his hand and tugged him across the green.
“We’re right in the middle.”
Smack in the middle of the chaos. Now, why was he not surprised?
“It’s not that I’ve never cooked before,” she said earnestly, as if she thought he really wanted to know, while spreading a fuzzy purple blanket on the plush green lawn and flopping down on it. She reached into her ribbon-and-plume-decorated picnic basket, which Nick thought resembled an exotic bird, and withdrew two sandwiches. Her gaze turned distant and her lips bowed into a frown. “It’s just that I’m not very good at it. Let’s just say the whole experiment was a failure.”
She paused and her voice made a distressed hiccupping sound. In one blink of an eye her expression filled with deep sadness. Nick’s gut clenched and his natural protective male instinct started blaring five alarms.
Her response seemed a bit of an overreaction for a burned roast or whatever she’d had. What could have possibly happened to make her that upset? Had someone yelled at her? Hurt her feelings? If so, that hardly seemed fair. Cooking wasn’t everyone’s forte.
His instinct was to probe further, but then, just as quickly as the pain in her eyes had appeared, it was gone. She shook her head and cheerfully went on as if she’d never faltered.
“Would you like turkey and Swiss or BLT?” She punctuated the question with a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh.
She held out both sandwiches to him and he gratefully accepted a turkey and Swiss, which was tightly wrapped in cellophane and marked Sam’s Grocery. She unwrapped her own sandwich, shook two packets of mayonnaise and globbed it onto her BLT.
“A little sandwich with your mayo?” he teased between bites of his own meal.
She grinned. There was a lot of sunshine in that smile, so much so that it occurred to Nick that he ought to be wearing aviator shades.
“How sad the world would be without mayonnaise.” The black clouds of her past had definitely lifted and her disposition could easily have rivaled Mary Poppins and her spoonful of sugar.
It was hard to keep up with her.
Her eyes glowed with excitement as she reached back into the basket. “Ready to see your surprise?”
He nodded in anticipation, hoping it was food and not tickets to the opera.
He nearly cheered when she pulled out a bucket of hot wings. He was sure he was gaping. How could she possibly have known they were his favorite? What kind of a coincidence was that? The deli counter in Sam’s Grocery only carried hot wings on special occasions and they sold out fast. She would have had to put her order in early to get this batch.
“How—how did you guess?” he stammered.
She wriggled her fingers at him and spoke in a Dracula voice. “I r-r-read your mind.”
“You sure did,” he agreed, reaching for a hot wing. “Or my belly.”
“If you want the truth, after I decided you were the guy I was going to bid on, I called your mother.”
“You did what?” He choked on the hot wing and nearly spit it out. He didn’t know if he was more shocked that she’d planned in advance to bid on him or that she’d been in contact with his mom.
“To find out what your favorite food was. I figured that was the least I could do. Alice was very helpful.”
He groaned and swallowed. He could only imagine just how helpful his mother had been. Next thing he knew, his mom would be inviting Vivian over for dessert and toting out the baby pictures.
He felt a slight guilty twinge for thinking like that. Ever since his dad had died, it had been a struggle to get their mom to show enthusiasm about much of anything. He should be glad that Vivian’s call seemed to have sparked some of that old matchmaking excitement in her. Yet that didn’t make the thought of anyone pushing him and Vivian together any less off-putting. He decided to put aside his worries for now and focus on the food. Buffalo wings were too delicious to be spoiled by aggravation or dread.
“Mmm,” he groaned. “Best Buffalo wings I’ve ever had. Bar none.”
“I’ve never really understood that part,” Vivian admitted. She’d taken a piece of chicken for herself, but took little more than a nibble before putting it back on her plate. “Buffalo don’t have wings. And anyways, I don’t think I’d like to eat a buffalo.”
Nick