She’d just finished drying the flatware when she heard her phone ringing from somewhere under a pile of cardboard wrapping.
“Hello,” she said once she’d found it.
“Hey, Carly. It’s Ford. I have that article finished and I thought I’d drop it off for you to take a quick look before I send it to the printer.”
“Ah …” Carly hesitated, looking down at her ripped cutoffs and faded T-shirt.
“Listen, since it’s just about dinnertime, if you don’t have other plans, I could pick up something on the way over. They’re telling me here at the inn that Dominic’s makes a killer pizza.”
“That sounds great. I love pizza.” She pulled the elastic from her hair and shook it out, wondering if there’d be time for her to grab a really quick shower. Even her hair felt dusty. “But I have to warn you. The house is a mess. I’m a mess …”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes or so.”
“Right. Twenty minutes …”
She wasted no time heading for her room, pulling the sweaty tee off as she all but jogged down the short hall. Twenty minutes wasn’t much time, but she could at least get the sweat off. She popped into the bathroom and turned on the shower, then went into her bedroom and shed the rest of her clothes, mentally counting down the minutes.
Exactly twenty-seven minutes later, the doorbell rang. She’d had time to trade her grubby tee for a clean tank and her cutoffs for a pair of cute khaki shorts. There was no time for makeup—not even mascara—but that couldn’t be helped. At least she wasn’t a disgusting sweaty mess. She’d have to be satisfied with that. She pulled her damp hair into a high ponytail and opened the front door.
“Hi.” She stood back to let him enter, pizza box in one hand, a file folder in the other, and a brown paper bag under one arm.
He held up the box. “I hope pepperoni is okay.”
“My favorite.” She smiled and closed the door behind him.
“Mine too. Where …” He looked around.
“Come on into the kitchen.”
He followed her through the living room and the dining room, where the table was already piled high with Carly’s papers.
“Home office?” he asked as they passed by.
“Yes. It’s a great space where I can spread out to work.”
“What are you working on?” He held the box while she cleared the kitchen table of paper wrappings and empty boxes.
“The book on Carolina Ellis. I’m giving it one last look over before I email the second half on to my editor. She’s already worked over the first half.” She made a mental note to send it to her mother as well, and to send the complete work to Dallas. She gestured for Ford to set the box down and took two plates from the cupboard where she’d placed them only an hour earlier.
He held up the bag. “Bottled water, or wine?”
“I think water, thank you.”
He opened the refrigerator door to put the wine inside, then whistled.
“Whoa, Mother Hubbard. That’s some empty cupboard.”
Carly laughed. “Hey, I just moved in. Give me a few days to load it up.”
“Well, at least you have the staples. Apples and a bottle of wine.” That sexy mouth curved into a smile and Carly felt the temperature in the room rise about ten degrees.
“Do you think it’s cooler outside? The air-conditioning guy doesn’t come until tomorrow.”
“I think it’s probably about the same as in here but with mosquitoes … and those green-headed flies are swarming today.”
“What?” She frowned. “Why?”
“Why are they swarming?” Ford shrugged. “Just that time of year, I guess. And there’s a land breeze, so they’re coming this way from the marshes.”
“So we’ll eat in here. Have a seat.” She unscrewed the lid of one of the water bottles he’d set on the table and took a long cool drink. “Thanks for thinking to pick up water. Wine with pizza is generally an unbeatable combination, but in this heat …”
“Water. Right.”
She grabbed some paper napkins from the counter and took the other chair. “The pizza smells wonderful.”
He opened the lid and turned the box in her direction. She lifted out a piece and immediately took a bite. “Oh my God, whoever told you this was good was not lying.”
“Best I’ve had in a long time. There wasn’t pizza like this where I’ve been.”
Before she took another bite, she asked, “You know, that’s at least the second time you referred to having been ‘someplace.’ Where were you?” She smiled. “Or is that a state secret?”
He chewed slowly, as if deciding how to answer. Finally, he said, “I think I mentioned that I’d been in Africa.”
Carly nodded. “Right. You did. So the question should have been, why were you there and what were you really doing?”
“I was part of group that was sent there to back up the Peacekeepers, who are, for the most part, under-armed at best, totally unarmed at worst.”
“So was it part of your military service?”
“Yes.”
“And are you out of the service now?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t like talking about it, do you?”
“Not so much. It was a job, and that job is done.”
“Would you go back?”
He hesitated longer than she’d expected. “I guess it would depend on the circumstances.”
“What were the circumstances that sent you there in the first place?”
He set the pizza on the plate, his expression dark, his voice weary and grave, his words direct. “People were being slaughtered in their homes, villages being burned to the ground. Little boys were being kidnapped and made into soldiers. Little girls were being forced into prostitution.” He shrugged. “There are places in this world that are very ugly right now, where ugly things happen to very good, beautiful people. Even to the people who go in to try to help …”
A sadness washed over his face momentarily. Something in his expression made Carly feel like crying, and she didn’t know why.
“Anyway, you do the best you can to keep the killing at a minimum. Or at the very least, to keep the bad guys aiming only at each other.”
“That was the short version, wasn’t it.”
“More or less.”
Mostly less, she thought, but she let it go. They ate in silence for a few moments before he looked at the stack of cardboard boxes and asked, “What are all those boxes from?”
“The stuff I ordered online. Everything came today and had to be unpacked and washed and put away. That’s what I was doing when you called.”
He looked her over. “You don’t look so sweaty to me.”
“I jumped in the shower the second I got off the phone,” she admitted.
“That bad, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
Ford laughed, the dark moment having passed. “You wouldn’t believe how long a person can go without a hot shower. But if you’re out of polite society long enough, it’s not as much of an issue.”
They’d finished the pizza and tossed the napkins into the empty box. Carly carried their plates to the sink and rinsed them before setting them on the counter.
“No dishwasher?” Ford asked.
“You’re looking at ’er. But it won’t be too bad. Most of the time, it’ll just be me here by myself.”
“Now, that doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“It’s okay. I have a lot of work to do in a very short period of time. When the idea of the gallery was first proposed, the town council was thinking of combining the opening with the house tour they do at Christmas each year, which would have given me months to get this thing organized.” A strand of hair slipped out of the elastic to hang into her face. She pulled off the elastic, smoothed back her hair, and redid the ponytail. “When I spoke with Ed the other day, he made an offhand remark about some people on the council wanting it sooner, possibly for some town holiday at the end of the summer, but I’m trying not to think about it because I’ll panic. One month is simply not enough time.”