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what’s for dinner?”
     
    ***
     
     
    “Hey, man.” Kirk followed his friend Dave over to the baggage claim. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
    “Deb and I agreed picking you up at the airport and feeding you dinner was the least we could do after I crapped out on you at the last minute.”
    Kirk lifted a lazy shoulder. “It all worked out.”
    “How’d things go with the brunette? She was a brunette?”
    “Yeah. And okay.” He didn’t know why, but he didn’t feel like talking about Micki.
    “That bad?”
    Kirk spotted his bag and pulled it off the carousel. “It was fine. You know how cruises are. They’re pretty much all the same. Seen one island, you’ve seen them all.”
    “Right. How was Martinique?”
    “Wet. It’s a rain forest.”
    “Next trip is where? Montserrat, right?”
    “Unless I land the Cairo contract. If that comes through, Montserrat will have to wait.”
    “You think you have a chance at it?” Dave led the way to the parking lot.
    “Not really, but it would be one hell of a break. Global reputation, playing with the big boys.”
    “And in the meantime?”
    “I've got a small sweeper contract for the communications group I did the radio station job for a couple of years ago. Now they're into buying and dismantling newspapers. Project starts Monday.”
    “That soon. How long you figure it’ll take?”
    “Short and sweet. Preliminary info seems pretty cut and dry. Small-town operation, excess spending, overstaffed, stuck on doing things the way they’ve always been done. I should be in and out in less than six weeks. Eight tops. If Cairo calls, I'll be ready to rock and roll.”
    Dave clicked the key fob unlocking his car doors from several car lengths away. “Don’t you ever get tired of playing Ebenezer Scrooge? Always looking at the bottom line?”
    “That’s what I get paid for. You can’t take a company from the red to black if you ignore the bottom line.”
    “Right.” Dave popped open the trunk and waited for Kirk to load his suitcase before slamming it shut. “Listen, Deb’s waiting for us at the apartment. You don’t mind if we eat in, do you?”
    Kirk slid into the car and buckled his seat belt. “Depends on whether or not she’s taking another cooking class and plans to use me as a guinea pig.”
    “No.” Dave smiled. “Her brief foray into Chinese delicacies was her last. From now on it’s strictly down-home cooking. I’m hoping to prove a terrace is all the outdoor entertaining space we need.”
    “Ah, she’s in buy-a-house mode, isn’t she?”
    Dave pulled out of the parking lot. “Don’t start on me.”
    “I warned you, man. In the beginning they're all sweet and agreeable. Then everything goes to shit in a hand basket. First, it was the dog, now it’s the house. Next it’s the kids, then the bigger house, the college fund, and the club sports team. You’ll be locked in an office sixteen to twenty hours a day, six to seven days a week to pay for all of it. Twenty years down the road, while you’re working your ass off to pay for your family’s lifestyle, that sweet young girl you married runs off with another guy ’cause you don’t have time to have fun like you used to. The American trap. A slow, steady decline.”
    Dave shook his head. "Someday, buddy, you’re going to meet a woman who shoots all that cynicism to hell, and I plan on having a front-row seat when she does.”
    “Won’t ever happen.” In twelve years, only one woman ever made him rethink his set-in-stone rule of no strings attached. In the end, he’d resisted the temptation. No, he was safe. He doubted he would ever meet another Micki Bradford in his lifetime. “So, what’s for dinner?”
     
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    So far, so good. Almost an entire day home in her real world, and she was holding up just fine. Michelle, Angie, and Corrie sat nestled in a back booth at The Pancake House just outside the city limits. Pam offered to break her date with