one of my fiancées wanted to go camping with me. Charlie would love to go camping.” And he could hardly wait to get her alone in a cozy tent.
“What’s this about camping? I thought you were going to ask her to dinner first.”
“Well, dinner, or…I don’t know. Camping would be nice.”
“It would be a disaster! I know you, and you would not stay in your own little pup tent. No. Camping is out. O-U-T, out.” Sam took a quick drink of his beer and glared at him.
Mark shrugged. “It was just an idea.”
“A bad idea. Some guys can handle getting physical early in the relationship without losing their perspective on the situation. Take me, for instance. I’ve never proposed to a woman after making love to her the first time. With you, it’s like an orgasm kills off half your brain cells. One night of nooky and you’re headed for the altar. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I admit I’ve made that mistake a few times.”
“No kidding.”
Mark sighed. “I’ve always moved too quick on this proposing business. I can see that now.”
“Good. Glad to hear it. Then you’ll let me go with you to Austin and make sure you don’t screw this one up.”
The very thought of dragging Sam along made Mark cringe. “Now, Sam, how’s that gonna look? No telling what she’ll think if I have to bring my best friend along when I go to meet her for the first time. She’ll think I don’t trust my own judgment, or I’m lacking in confidence. It’s the wrong way to start out.”
Sam shrugged. “Then do it your way. I’m sure Jack will agree to be your best man. Maybe I’ll tell him to bite the bullet and buy a tux. I’d be money ahead if I’d done that instead of renting one each time. And he can forget about writing a wedding toast. Talk about a waste. On the other hand, he should remember to bring a big box of tissues to the ceremony. No, make that two big boxes. One wasn’t enough for this last disaster, by the time I’d passed them out to Deborah, her four bridesmaids, her mother, her—”
“Okay, okay! So you’re going with me to Austin.” But how he’d manage to make a good impression on Charlie under such circumstances was beyond him. It would be a damned awkward visit.
Perhaps he could come up with a good cover story…
Sam smiled. “That’s more like it. You know, I could go for a hamburger. Want a hamburger?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I’ll go find our waitress.”
“Okay.” While he was gone Mark started brainstorming. He’d pulled a few excellent stunts in his college days. Like the time he and Sam had both wanted to date the same girl their senior year. Mark had gone in drag to the cafeteria and confided in this girl that Mark O’Grady had spent two years in China learning lovemaking secrets from the geishas. Sam never had a chance after that.
Hey, wait a minute. What if Sam needed a blind date when he went down to Austin? What if he was afraid to ask anybody out, because…because the woman he’d been dating had turned out to be a man. Perfect. So then Mark could ask Charlie to come up with a date for Sam, to get him back on track. While Sam was kept busy with her, Mark could get busy with Charlie. Brilliant.
Sam returned and slid into the booth. “I’m glad you came to your senses about taking me along to Austin.”
Mark smiled, feeling much better about the situation now. “I can’t have a wedding without you being my best man.” That was certainly true. If Sam wasn’t standing up at the altar with him, it wouldn’t seem like he was really getting married. Of course, he never really had gotten married. But this time would be different. He could feel it.
“You sure look perky all of a sudden,” Sam said.
“Why wouldn’t I? I’m going to meet the woman of my dreams.”
Gazing at him over the top of his beer bottle, Sam cleared his throat. “Mark, old buddy, one of your more endearing traits is your eternal optimism. But I want you to entertain the possibility that Charlie is not the one.”
“But she is.”
“I hope so, but the truth is we might have to put another ad in Texas Men and troll for more prospects. Because I’m not—I repeat, not—going through this again until I’m convinced that you won’t back out at the last minute.”
“I’m telling you, I won’t back out. Charlie’s the real deal.”
“That remains to be seen. Go ahead and set up the weekend, but remember that there will be no getting horizontal with your darling Charlie if I have anything to say about it. You need to get to know her really well before that happens.”
“But I do know her!”
“Only what she tells you in the letters, pal.” Sam sipped his beer. “Only what she tells you in the letters.”
2
A WEEK LATER, Charlie tried not to hyperventilate as she stood in front of the three-way mirror in Ashley’s shop. The plunging neckline of the red dress nearly reached her belly button. If she had the nerve to buy this dress, it would go perfectly with some red high-heeled sandals she’d seen in a store window down the street.
She’d never owned anything like this dress in her life, but it fit the image she was trying to project for Saturday night’s date with Mark. The longer she wore the dress, the more she believed in her seductive powers.
“Way too daring,” Ashley said.
“No, I think this might be the one.” Charlie turned this way and that to see if she looked sufficiently sexy. “But I wish it had a slit up the side.”
“It used to.” Ashley pulled a blue dress off the rack. “When I saw you eyeing that one the other day, I stitched it up. There’s such a thing as over-exposed. Even so, that dress is cut way lower than I thought. Try this one instead.” She held out the blue dress.
Charlie glanced at it. “Nope. It has sleeves.”
“Try it.” Ashley shoved the dress closer. “It matches your eyes.”
“Who cares? All my life I’ve been wearing blue because it matches my eyes. And you know what that dress is? Boring. I will never get Mark to drool if I wear that. I’ll look like Alice in Wonderland. I might as well tie a blue bow in my hair.”
“You wear that red number and he’ll drool, all right. I’m worried about what will happen after the drooling part.”
Charlie turned to face her sister. “Okay, let’s get to the bottom of this. Why are you so paranoid about the possibility that Mark and I will have sex on the first date?”
Ashley avoided her gaze and hung the blue dress on the circular rack. “Because I’m your older sister, and older sisters are supposed to keep their little sisters away from the Big Bad Wolf. At least on the first date.”
“That’s weak
