“Wait,” Mitch said with gruff tenderness, and though he didn’t touch Shay in any physical way, he restrained her with that one word.

She sank back into her chair, near tears. “I know I haven’t been very good company. I’m sorry.…”

His hand came across the table and his fingers were warm and gentle on Shay’s wrist. A tingling tremor moved through her and she wanted to die because she knew Mitch had felt it and possibly guessed its meaning. “Let me take you home,” he said.

For a moment Shay was tempted to accept, even though she was terrified at the thought of being alone with this particular man. “I have my car,” she managed to say, and inwardly she despaired because she knew she must seem colorless and tongue-tied to Mitch and a part of her wanted very much to impress him.

He rose and pulled back her chair for her, escorted her as far as her elderly brown Toyota on the far side of the parking lot. There were deep grooves in his cheeks when he smiled at Shay’s nervous efforts to open the car door. When she was finally settled behind the steering wheel, Mitch lingered, bending slightly to look through the open window, and there was an expression of bafflement in his eyes. He probably wondered why there were three arthritic French fries, a fast-food carton and one worn-out sneaker resting on the opposite seat.

“I’m sorry, Shay,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“About the house. About the hard time Ivy gave you.”

Shay was surprised to find herself smiling. She started the car and shifted into Reverse; there was hope, after all, of making a dignified exit. “No problem,” she said brightly. “I’m used to Ivy. Enjoy the house.”

Mitch nodded and Shay backed up with a flourish, feeling oddly relieved and even a bit dashing. Oh, for an Isadora Duncan–style scarf to flow dramatically behind her as she swept away! She was her mother’s daughter after all.

She waved at Mitch Prescott and started into the light evening traffic just as the muffler fell off her car, clattering on the asphalt.

Mitch was there instantly, doing his best not to grin. Shay went from wanting to impress him to wanting to slap him across the face. The roar of the engine was deafening; she backed into the parking lot and turned off the ignition.

Without a word, Mitch opened the door and when Shay got out, he took her arm and escorted her toward a shiny foreign status symbol with a sliding sunroof and spoked wheels. The muffler wouldn’t dare fall off this car.

“Where do you live?” Mitch asked reasonably.

Shay muttered directions, unable to look at him. Damn. First he’d seen her old car virtually fall apart before his eyes and now he was going to see her rented house with its sagging stoop and peeling paint. The grass out front needed cutting and the mailbox leaned to one side and the picture windows, out of keeping with the pre–World War II design, gave the place a look of wide-eyed surprise.