In The Stranger's Arms

His eyes seemed to ice over and a muscle twitched in his cheek, so she was surprised when he answered. “Nearly a year. Have you ever been married?”

Turnabout was fair play, and it served her right for being nosy. “Not quite,” she admitted, dismayed that the subject could still tighten a knot in her stomach well over a decade after the fact. “I was engaged once, but it didn’t work out.” What an understatement! Carter Black had changed her life.

“My turn to say sorry,” Wade said, distracting her from the past, “but I don’t think I’ll bother.”

Still pushing aside the bad memories, she wasn’t sure what he meant, but she realized it was time for a change of subject.

Before she could come up with something totally innocuous, he spoke again.

“What’s it like to grow up in a small town with the same bunch of people?” he asked. “Is it boring or comfortable?”

She took a sip of her iced tea. “A little of both, I guess,” she replied, exchanging waves with two men she knew slightly when they came into the café.

Wade glanced over his shoulder before turning back to Pauline. “Is it true that you all know everyone else’s business?”

Her smile felt forced. “People gossip, just like they do anywhere, but I don’t think it’s worse than anywhere else.” It’s only the scandals that people remember, she wanted to add, like when you catch your fiancé kissing another woman. “I take it you didn’t grow up in a small town?” she asked instead.

He set aside his empty soup bowl. “Me? No, not unless you call Sacramento a small town. We moved around when I was a kid, but always in that same area.”

“That must have been difficult,” she replied as she glanced at her watch, shocked to see how much time had passed since she’d left the shop. “Always being the new kid.”

He ran a hand over his short hair. “No kidding. I’ll bet Steve was a jock, though. What did he play, football?”

“What do you have against jocks?” she asked curiously. “You probably played sports in school.” Wade certainly looked athletic, with his rangy build and muscular arms.

To her surprise, he chuckled, a nice, masculine sound. “I was a real geek in high school,” he admitted. “Member of the math club, president of the science club. But it was always the athletes who got the babes. You know, the guys with lettermen’s jackets and no necks.”

An image flashed across Pauline’s mind of Lily and Steve on her prom night, a golden princess in a long pink dress on the arm of her broad-shouldered prince in his rented tux.

Lily, what happened? She wondered silently. You seemed to be so much in love with each other.

It sure as heck wasn’t the first time that Pauline had been totally wrong about that emotion, but she didn’t plan to make the same mistake again.

“I can’t picture you as a geek,” she blurted.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Wade drawled, his smile widening. “Back then, I was skinny and uncoordinated, with a tendency to stammer whenever I tried talking to girls, which wasn’t often. How about you? I’ll bet you were in the popular crowd.”

“No, my sister was the pretty one.” Pauline fiddled with her straw. “I was a brain, a girl geek, I guess you could say.”

The intensity of his gaze made her uncomfortable. “Your sister must be something if she’s prettier than you,” he said gallantly.

She made a production of checking her watch again. “I really should get back to work.”

“Yeah, me, too. I’ve got a couple of things to do before Frank gets up here with the truck.” He slid from the booth without even trying to wrestle the check from her and donned his sunglasses. “Thanks for lunch. I’ll wait for you outside.”

“You all come back soon,” the waitress told Pauline after she had paid for their meal and added a generous tip. “Enjoy the afternoon.”

Wade was leaning against his car, watching an older couple casting lines off their sailboat. When Pauline approached him, her footsteps crunching on the crushed shells of the parking lot, he straightened.

“You look as though you’d like to join them,” she observed as he held open the passenger door for her. “Do you have a boat?”