“You’re in a place where you have good friends, lots of laughs, good food, good music,” he said, quoting her words back to her. “You have a cool job, and you live in a lighthouse. What’s better than that?”

“Not much.” He didn’t even know about the other job she had as an advice columnist to the lovelorn, ironic as that was since she hadn’t had much of a love life to speak of in years. “So I was thinking…”

“About me?” he asked hopefully.

She threw her extra marshmallow at him.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“I was thinking about Jenny’s wedding. Her second wedding, I should say.”

“What about it?”

“I’m allowed to bring a date.”

“Is that right?”

“Uh-huh. You know of any single guys who might like to go to a fun wedding with me?”

His mouth fell open and snapped shut.

She had to hold back laughter that was straining to get out.

“I know this one guy,” he said after a long pause. “He’s kind of dashing in a roguish sort of way. Movie-star handsome, absurdly talented and very interested in spending more time with a certain cute lighthouse keeper.”

“Movie-star handsome, roguish, absurdly talented… He sounds like a player.”

“Nah, he’s not. He’s too much of a homebody to be a player, although he does enjoy a little playing on occasion. He’s a one-woman kind of guy.”

“Do you have his number?”

His marshmallow caught fire, and he blew on it until it was extinguished. “Umm, you do know I’m talking about me, right?”

“Oh,” Erin said, feigning surprise while continuing to suppress the laughter. She’d laughed more with him than she had in years. “I thought it had to be someone else, because who describes himself as roguish, movie-star handsome and absurdly talented?”

“Ha!” he said with a grin that could only be described as roguish. “So I went a little far trying to sell myself as the perfect date for this important wedding of yours?”

“Little bit.” She held her marshmallow over the fire until it was toasted to a golden brown. “But if you’d like to come with me…”

“I would. I’d like to. Very much so.”

“Good,” she said, smiling at him. “I should mention that my parents will be there. Just in case that makes you want to back out.”

“It doesn’t. I’m in. But it doesn’t count as the dinner you promised me.”

A shiver of excitement danced through her at the thought of spending more time with the dashingly roguish pilot.

The Saturday-night crowd at the Beachcomber had thinned out by the time Kevin McCarthy pulled up a barstool.

Chelsea came over to him, smiling warily. “Dr. McCarthy.”

“Ms. Rose.”

She raised a brow as she put a napkin down on the bar and placed an ice-cold light beer on it. “Glass?”