“Sorry, my mind was wandering.”
“You want some more tea?”
She held up her empty glass, and he filled it. “Last time” kept going through her head. A few days from now it would be like they’d never met. Their whirlwind relationship would be finished and they’d go back to the way they had been. She had a vision of herself alone in her little apartment, a hundred dresses on her lap. Maybe she’d take some refresher courses and try to get a job as a conservationist in Williamsburg.
She looked across the table at Mike. When they’d come in, he’d removed his clean white shirt and his shoes and socks. Now all he had on was his perfectly pressed black trousers and the belt with the little gold buckle. She’d ironed his trousers that morning and she’d chosen that belt when they were in Fort Lauderdale. His whiskers were very black and she knew he hadn’t shaved before they went to see Mr. Lang because he’d been too busy making love to her. As for Sara, she’d removed her dress and was wearing her favorite blue teddy.
She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t. He was telling her about the cameras they’d installed in the fortune-telling tent, but she could tell that he was worried about something. She hoped it was the case and not what she feared, that he was thinking about how to let her down easily when he told her she was just another victim that he’d had to rescue.
“Can you remember all that?” Mike asked.
She hadn’t been listening, but then she’d heard it all before. “Tell no one we’re married. That’s to be dropped on Greg when I see him.”
“And?”
“Be sure and get him into the open. To get the ultimate effect, I’m to shock him by telling him that just before our wedding I ran off with another man.”
Mike raised an eyebrow at her sarcastic tone. “I hear his wife had a face-lift and she’s looking good.”
“That’s nice,” Sara said as she cleared the table.
“Your mother texted me that I’m to go to her house early tomorrow to get dressed.”
Sara had her back to him as she stood at the kitchen sink. “In your kilt. Nearly all the men from Edilean will be wearing them, even my father and he hates dressing up. Luke will—”
Before she could finish her sentence, she was crying. Instantly, Mike had her in his arms. She buried her face in the warm skin of his shoulder and the tears kept coming.
Picking her up, he carried her into the bedroom, where he put her on the bed and stretched out beside her, his arms around her.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said.
He handed her a tissue and stroked her hair. “It’s all right to be frightened. I wish you didn’t have to do this, but we need to surprise Vandlo, and only you can do that. From the second you’ve told him that his plan has been foiled, we’ll tail him so close that he—”
“It’s not that,” she said. She ran her hand across his bare chest, her fingers in the dark hair. Would they ever be together like this again? Who was going to make her go to the gym? Who was going to hold her when she cried? And make her laugh?
“Then what is it?” Mike asked. “You can tell me.?
?
But she couldn’t tell him. Her pride and her fear of yet another rejection wouldn’t allow her to tell him what was bothering her.
They lay together in silence for a while. Sara knew they should get up and start getting ready for the fair. Mike would have to put on a kilt, and she knew that would cause a lot of laughter. And Sara had some long-skirted, medieval-looking dresses she wore, and of course Luke would have saved one of his wildflower circlets for her hair. She looked forward to it all, but right now she couldn’t bear to separate from Mike.
Lifting her left hand up, he looked at her rings.
Sara turned onto her back, her body pressed against his. She could feel the fabric of his trousers against her bare legs. Again “the last time” rang in her head.
“They look good on you,” he said.
“They’re the most beautiful rings in the world.”
“Everything was such a rush when I chose the diamond ring that I wasn’t sure I was getting the right one.”
“My mother didn’t help you?”
“No. She stood by the computer and hovered over me like a bird of prey. I don’t think anyone’s ever made me as nervous as your mother does.”
“Me either.”