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Kristy kicked off her shoes. “Dead Man’s Gulch? Now I’m picturing alkali residue and bleached cow skulls.”
“Not exactly romantic.”
She did a double take. “Why would we want romantic?” Then she immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut. They weren’t dating. They’d been particularly clear on that point a few minutes ago. She should have let the comment pass.
He bent over the cooler, swinging open the lid. “I mean in the generic sense.”
There was a generic sense to romantic?
Nope. She wasn’t going to ask.
He retrieved a bottle of wine. “Oh, look,” he announced. “The hotel packed Chateau Le Comte merlot. Now that’s hardly generic.”
He gestured for her to sit down on the blanket then took a seat beside her. The wind waved its way through the mesquite trees, while birds twittered from branch to branch. Jack rustled through the cooler, retrieving two long-stemmed glasses, a corkscrew and a plastic-covered platter of cheese and wafers. Making quick work of the cork, he poured them each a glass of the wine.
He smoothed back his dark hair and held his glass up for a toast. “To us,” he said, his eyes going silver in the brilliant sunshine. “In the generic sense.”
Everything inside Kristy relaxed. There was something so reassuring about his expression. It told her they were okay. They could go ahead and goof around, drink wine, see the sights, and it didn’t have to lead anywhere.
She clinked her glass against his. “You know, this is about the strangest thing I’ve ever done.”
He took a sip. “Yeah? Well, for me, it’s not even close.”
She tasted the fragrant wine. It was smooth and light, the flavor bursting in her mouth. Then she eyed him up. “You do realize that absolutely begs the question …”
He grinned. “It does, doesn’t it?”
She nodded encouragingly.
He thought for a moment. “Let’s see. If I had to choose, I’d say it was the fire.”
That definitely got her attention. “You lit something on fire?”
“Hunter lit something on fire. I was only along for the ride.”
Kristy took another sip of the merlot. “It was Hunter’s fault. Of course.”
“It was definitely Hunter’s fault. He was upset. Still, if it wasn’t for the gypsy and the elephants, we’d have been fine.”
“You’re making this up.”
“I swear it’s true. We were maybe fourteen and fifteen. We all went to the circus. Dad being Dad, and Gramps being Gramps, we got a special pass to go behind the scenes.
“Hunter decided to get his fortune told. But special pass or not, the wrinkled old gypsy made us pay twenty bucks. Trouble was, back then, we weren’t as grounded in reality as we are—”
Kristy scoffed, practically choking on her wine.
“What?”
“Grounded? Your private jet has mechanical trouble, so a helicopter is picking us up after a bottle of Chateau Le Comte at the Grand Canyon. You call that grounded in reality?”
His eyes narrowed. “You want to hear the story or not?”
“Absolutely. Sorry.”
“At least now I know I have to pay for the helicopter and the jet,” Jack muttered.
“You’ve made amazing progress,” she allowed.
“I have. Anyway. I told Hunter to keep his money. But he wouldn’t listen. He paid her, and the gypsy gave us the standard someone-close-to-you-has-suffered-a-loss spiel.”
Kristy had seen con artists at work before, testing basic questions until the subject engaged with one of them. “It could be an economic loss or a personal loss,” she mused aloud, attempting to put the right quavering note in her voice. “Or maybe ‘he has dark … no, light hair.’”
Jack jumped back in. “‘He’s old … no young … no maybe middle-aged …’”
“‘Wait a minute,’” Kristy cried. “‘He might be a she!’”
“You definitely get the drift,” said Jack. “But Hunter was pretty impressed. The gypsy ‘saw’ that he’d cheated on a test and stolen his father’s Jamaican rum, and he was convinced she could tell the future.”
Kristy leaned back on her elbow and took another sip of her wine, trying to picture Jack and Hunter as spoiled teenagers.
“Which would have been fine,” said Jack, gesturing with his glass. “Except she laid out the tarot cards and told Hunter he was about to meet his destiny. Tragically for Hunter, his destiny wasn’t to become a rock star, it was to marry a young redheaded girl who would give him twin daughters.”
Kristy started to laugh, not sure whether to believe Jack or not.
“You laugh now,” he said. “But Hunter was convinced it was in the cards. So he decided he needed to steal her cards to change his destiny. We waited until she left the tent, then snuck back in. He paused for effect. “And that’s when the elephants showed up.”
“In her tent?”
He shot her a look of censure. “Of course not.”
Kristy made a small circle in the air with her wineglass. “Well, of course there were no elephants in the tent. Because there isn’t anything weird at all about this story.”
“The elephants were outside on the grounds. But they were heading somewhere, and they shook the ground when they passed. And then one of them trumpeted, and Hunter nearly wet his pants.”
“I’m sure he appreciates you telling this story.”
Jack snickered. “He knocked over an oil lamp, caught the table cloth on fire and burnt up the tarot cards, the table and the tent.”
“I wonder what that did to his destiny.”
“Nothing. Six years later, he met a redheaded girl.”
“No way.”
Jack nodded.
“Did she have twins?”
“Nope. They broke up.”
“That’s not a very good ending.”
“My uncle paid the gypsy thirty-five thousand dollars for the tent.”
“Now that’s a good ending.”
Jack stretched out his legs and propped himself on his elbow. “She thought so, too.”
Kristy followed his lead, straightening her blouse and jeans, then removing the plastic cover to snag a triangle of gouda. “What about you? Did the gypsy tell you your fortune?”
“That she did.”
“What was it?”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Your turn to share.”
“My life’s boring compared to yours. Did your fortune come true?”
“Not so far.”
“Well, what was it?”
He helped himself to a slice of havarti and a small, round cracker. “What do I get in return?”
“Twins?”
“Ha!” He nearly choked on the cracker.
“What do you want?”
He stared at her intently for a moment, while the waterfall roared, the breeze waved the mesquite trees, and the birds continued to twitter amidst the big, empty desert.
Kristy grew hot, then cold, and then very confused by her intense desire to kiss him.
“I’ll trade you for a secret,” he finally said.
She swallowed. “I don’t have any secrets.”
“Everybody has secrets.”
“Not me.”
Except maybe the fact that she wanted to kiss him. She hadn’t murdered anyone or knocked over a bank. She occasionally didn’t answer the phone when she knew it was her mother—especially if it was a Friday night, and she had a sappy movie on DVD and a pint of triple fudge chunk in the freezer.
But he wasn’t getting that one. No way.
Jack watched her expression for a long moment. “Your first lover,” he said.
Her throat went tight, and her voice came out as a squeak. “What?”
“Tell me about your first lover.”
She drained her wineglass, stalling for time. “I don’t think so.”
“How old were you?”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Really?” Despite herself, her curiosity was piqued, as was her imagination. She closed her eyes and gave her head a shake.
“How old were you?” he asked again, his voice husky against the birds and the breeze.
Kristy sighed. Fine. “Twenty.”
He reached behind him for the wine bottle and topped up both of their glasses. “Ah. Late bloomer.”
“No. An absolutely perfect bloomer.”
Jack grinned at her expression. “Who was he?”
“A boy I met in college. It was in his dorm room and completely unmemorable. Now, are you destined to cross oceans? Father many children? Fly to the moon?”
“Buy a golf course.”
He looked completely serious.
“What the heck kind of a fortune is that?” For this she’d told him about her first lover?
“The gypsy was a fake, Kristy.”
“She was right about Hunter.”
“The law of averages was right about Hunter. He’s dated a whole lot of women of varying hair colors.”
“But a golf course? That was all she told you?”
Jack hesitated. His eyes twitched, and he got a funny, faraway look in them. “No,” he said. “She also told me I was going to marry a woman I didn’t trust.”
“I suppose that’s better than having twins.”
It was Jack’s turn to drain his glass. “I suppose. You want to swim?”
“It’s too cold. And we don’t have suits.”
He came to his feet, placing the empty glass on the top of the plastic cooler. “There’s nobody around for miles.”
