The Sometime Bride (9 page)

“Where to?” Carrie asked, a fine sweep of color caressing her cheeks, but only half as tenderly as Mike wanted to at this moment.

“Someplace special,” he said, lowering his window just a crack to let in a refreshing breath of cool evening air.

But, deep inside, Carrie knew that it scarcely mattered. Someplace special seemed to be right here with him.

****

Chapter Nine

Mike hoisted Carrie down from the top of the split rail fence and led her into the vineyard.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked, clutching his mystery paper bag to his chest.

Carrie inhaled deeply, absorbing the scent of summer hills and lilac. For acres before them, rows upon rows of trellised vines bloomed in lush cornucopias splendor, their endless trail spilling toward the tumbling Blue Ridge. Mountain upon haze-tipped mountain fell backwards in smoky array, blending infinitely with the settling twilight.

“It’s gorgeous, just gorgeous,” Carrie said, talking not only of the scenery around them. For in this afternoon alone, she’d seen something altogether different in Mike. Not the tempting bachelor, nor the friend with a penchant for making her smile. But a regular family man. Carrie was certain now he hadn’t been fabricating his desires for that white picket fence. Mike was good in a crowd, great with people -- young and old alike. And playful to boot. Carrie was sure he’d make an excellent father.

“Care to sit?”

Carrie looked down, realizing Mike had removed his jacket and laid it as a cushion on the ground for her to protect her clothing.

“You know,” she said, taking a seat and arranging her dress on the jacket to defend it from the spreading clay-dotted grass around them. “Alexia was really a very stupid woman.”

Mike grinned in surprise and scooted in beside her on the splotchy earth. “Kind of you to say so.”

“I mean it,” Carrie assured him. “But she was smart in one regard.”

Mike raised his brow in expectation.

“Picking you out in the first place.”

Mike sputtered a laugh. “Alexia always was a good shopper.”

Carrie tried to keep her eyes focused ahead of her, but it was impossible not to be drawn to the man beside her. Never in her life -- nowhere in the world -- had Carrie St. John come across the likes of Mike Davis. He was handsome and charming, absolutely. But much more importantly, he was genuine.

“You know the thing about Alexia --”

Carrie reached out and latched onto his rugged chin. “Mike.”

He stopped mid sentence and questioned with his eyes. Beautiful, earth-moving, sea green eyes.

Carrie settled her other hand at the side of his face. “Shut up and kiss me.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” he hummed, closing in.

After they’d necked like teenagers for nearly twenty minutes, Carrie felt something moist and clammy seeping onto her outer thigh.

“Oh my God!” Mike said looking down in horror at the leaking paper bag pressed up against Carrie’s leg. “Your beautiful dress!”

Carrie puzzled at the mysterious green stain on her leg. She wiped a hand against the sticky mess, then brought a palm to her nose. “Mint?”

“Mint Chocolate Chip,” Mike said, sheepishly unrolling the bag. “Ice cream sandwiches.”

Carrie threw back her head with a belly laugh. “Ice cream sandwiches! And there I thought you’d gotten us another elegant vintage of wine.”

“Carrie,” he said, pulling a clean handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing the side of her clothing. “I’m so sorry about your dress. I forgot all about --”

“That’s alright,” she said, giving his chin an affectionate nuzzle. “I did, too. And, no worries. The dress will wash."
 
And, if it didn’t, she could always get another. But Carrie was as certain it wouldn’t be so easy to replace Mike Davis. “Think they’re still any good?”

“Of course! A little soggy, maybe,” he said, pulling the soppy package from its dripping bag. “But edible, nonetheless. How about it?”

“I’d love one."
 
Carrie smiled. “Mint chocolate is my absolute favorite. How on earth did you know?”

“Wild guess,” Mike said, grinning naughtily. “And, your Grandma Russell told me.”

“Cheater!” Carrie said, swatting him playfully across the chest. “You just wait till I corner some of those old high school chums of yours and get the dirt on you!”

“So, you’re not disappointed then?”

Carrie warned herself to proceed with caution. “In...?”

“The ice cream. I mean, it may not be the rare vintage you were --”

“I love the ice cream. I don’t think any man has surprised me with ice cream before."
 
Much less, spread it on my thigh, she heard herself thinking, but thank God didn’t say. All of a sudden Carrie was developing lots of innovative ideas about what she and Mike could do with ice cream. But not here, not now, not in the middle of somebody else’s vineyard.

“What is this place?” Carrie asked, taking a bite out of her dripping sandwich and delighting in its fresh minty taste. Nightfall was almost upon them, shadows stretching long over the vineyard. The top third of the mountains had already faded to black. If they didn’t head back soon, they might have difficulty finding the car in the darkness.

“Just a place I stumbled on long ago.”

“It’s yours?!” Carrie asked, surprise and delight firing her eyes. “I should have known you were a vintner! Now, it all makes perfect --”

“Carrie,” Mike answered, crestfallen. “It’s not mine."
 
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he’d only worked here as a hired hand during his high school summers. That his background was much more modest that hers ever was. He and his Dad never had a nice home -- of any size -- to call their own. They had rented and lived out of trailers. His graduation from Ashton had been thanks to a full athletic scholarship.

“Maybe you should buy it, then?” she continued, seeming happily excited by the notion. “It would make a wonderful investment!”

“Investment?"
 
Mike had never been able to invest in anything beyond his next month’s rent.

Carrie appeared to pick up on his mood and halted. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, wadding up her ice cream sandwich wrapper and balling it in her fist. “It wasn’t my place at all to suggest that.”

And why, indeed, would she suggest it? Just as breezily as if wishing could make it so. Did Carrie St. John actually have that sort of money herself? “Would you invest it, Carrie?” Mike pressed, wanting to know if his hunch was accurate.

Crimminy. Carrie had really pinned herself into a corner this time. Here she’d been all this time not wanting to let on she had money, and then she goes and says a stupid, unthinking thing like that. “Why, no. No."
 
Carrie felt herself growing warm in the chill of the evening. “Just making conversation, that’s all,” she lied, scrambling to her feet. “You know, it’s getting late...”

“I know,” Mike said, looking deep in her eyes as if trying to discern something.

“Think you could drive me back to the inn so I can collect my car and get on home? I have to work tomorrow and I’m sure --”

“No problem,” Mike said, scooping their litter off the ground, and trying to decipher what she was hiding. Mike weighed the dichotomy of her simple small town roots against the exceedingly preferential treatment Carrie had been afforded by Charles Gilpatrick back at the inn. Was Carrie St. John filthy rich, someone famous to be reckoned with?

“Who are you, Carrie St. John?” Mike asked, as the breath of night threaded silken silence between them.

“Just a simple old girl from Virginia,” she said, needing him desperately to believe it.

****

Chapter Ten

Carrie made the forty-five minute drive from the country inn to her country bungalow with her top down. The nippy evening air lit up her senses and helped her focus her attention on the issues as hand, as weaving wind whipped fingers through her long loose hair. At least she’d had her wits about her when Mike had dropped her back and the parking area and had been able to concoct that missing earring story that had allowed her to duck back inside. She’d watched out the window of the inn until a few minutes after Mike had driven away. Though he’d been insistent about staying and seeing her to her car, she’d fabricated an excuse about also having to settle some business arrangements with Mr. Gilpatrick that might take a while.

Though, in looking at his watch, he’d seemed dubious, Mike had finally acquiesced and settled for a formal goodbye on the steps of the inn. The same stone steps where Carrie had first beheld him in his dripping wet near-naked glory on that fated night they’d met.

Carrie’s throat went dry at the recollection as she sailed through the yellow light. Carrie quickly checked her review mirror, but saw, with relief, that even the cops in this sleepy berg were already in bed tonight. Carrie felt the spreading heat at her collar bone and inhaled deeply, fighting off the thought of anything that put Mike Davis and beds together in her mind. She was falling for him. Falling badly. And there didn’t appear to be a darn thing she could do about it except for trying to keep this silly illusion from blowing up smack in her face.

How long did Carrie really believe she could go on like this? A week, a month? In the outstanding event their relationship endured beyond Mike’s reunion, sooner or later he was bound to start asking questions. Already had started asking questions, Carrie reminded herself.

Crimminy.

Carried ran a hand along the back of her stiff neck as she wheeled her car onto the exit ramp that led to the isolated country route that would take her home.

Oh what a tangled weave...

Carrie slowly shook her head.

All she’d really wanted was for Mike to like her for herself. But now she wondered precisely what that was. A liar? A manipulator? Someone with just as little integrity as Mike’s old fiancée Alexia?

Carrie blinked hard as the hot tears pounding with biting force from her bleary eyes. It was no wonder she’d never found a man. There, without even trying, she’d gone and done it again. Screwed her love life all to heck and back. Love life, ha!, she thought, laughing bitterly into the wind. As if she’d ever truly known the meaning of the phrase.

Mike scurried around his apartment tossing empty aluminum cans into the recycle bin. Holy cow! He didn’t know why he had so much nervous energy. But whatever the reason, might as well put it to good use.

Mike paused in the threshold to his bedroom, mentally trying to calculate when he’d last changed the sheets. Well, if he couldn’t remember, then the likelihood was they needed changing again.

Mike tugged back the fitted sheet, trying to recall the last time he’d actually had a woman in the place. Alexia, neat-nick that she was, had always insisted he come to hers. Alexia had always insisted on a lot of things, like her pleasure first, for example. Not that Mike minded giving a woman pleasure. That aspect, in fact, excited him. But when it was that woman’s pleasure to the exclusion of everything else in the world, including the presence of her partner...

Mike shook his head and carried the pile of sheets to the washer. He was quite certain Carrie wouldn’t be like that. Carrie was a warm and sensuous woman. Inviting yet giving all at once. It was there in the way she kissed, the way she teased and beckoned with her eyes. The way her tantalizingly womanly curves ached for a masculine touch...all...over...her body...

Christ.

Mike looked down at his boxers realizing he was going to need another cold shower. His second since he’d dropped Carrie off at the inn and come home. And, for crying out loud, their parting kiss had been nothing if not chaste.

Maybe that’s what it was. She was driving him to distraction by holding back. Though, when he was being honest, Mike had to admit that Carrie wasn’t the only one who seemed adept at putting the brakes on their relationship. While their mutual attraction was too strong to deny, there was something else holding each of them back. Mike couldn’t put his finger on it exactly. But his gut told him it had to do with more than just the faux fiancé game going on between them.

Mike heaved a heavy sigh and flipped on the cold water. What was it about Carrie St. John that always left him all wet?

Carrie rolled over in bed and lazily lifted her cell. “Hello?”

“A dillar, a dollar...”

“Grandma Russell?” Carrie asked, her head pounding. She squinted against the bright light streaming in through the titled Venetian blinds.

“Lands sakes, child, did I wake you? I thought you investment types were up catching worms well before dawn!”

Carrie reached out her free hand and angled her clock radio toward her so she could read the time. Ten thirty. She’d missed her nine-thirty appointment. Carrie’s head fell back against her pillow with a thunk.