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the car, panting noisily. “I’m okay. I’m…fine. I’m just glad…I could…be…of service.”
    “Look, if you’re going to have a heart attack, I can hop.” Her tone was stiff, but her expression was worried.
    “No,” he gulped.
    “Listen, I can’t drag you into that car, and even if I could, the hospital is half an hour away. Let me down.”
    “I got it.” He staggered the last ten feet and lowered (dropped) her to the ground.
    She lifted her injured foot, bracing herself against the car as Joe opened the back door. She pivoted, plunked down, and pulled her legs in after her. He shut the door and got into the driver’s side, glancing into the rearview mirror as he slid behind the wheel.
    “So, where to?” he asked. “Hospital? Home?”
    She met his gaze in the mirror and her eyes narrowed. “How come you’re not panting anymore?”
    “The doctors tell me I have a really impressive recovery rate,” he said, eyes on the road as he turned over the engine and shifted the car into gear.
    “You were faking the groans.”
    “Not faking. Exaggerating,” he said. “I did consider faking an attack and letting you perform CPR, but I have delicate ribs.”
    She laughed. He looked up into the mirror in surprise.
    “I suppose I would have deserved it,” she said. “Let me try to redeem myself.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you very much for rescuing me. You’re a true white knight and I’ve been acting more like the dragon than the damsel. Looking more like the dragon, too. Scales and all.”
    He smiled back. “Ah, damsels are overrated. How often do you get to pick up a woman with a higher-than-average specific gravity?”
    “True,” she said without missing a beat.
    He grinned, enjoying himself in a way he hadn’t for a long time. He’d never really thought much about it, but right now he was struck by the fact that for all its ostensible glamour—the exotic locales, the various cultures, power and wealth—the life he led might be a bit, well, boring. Most of his time was pretty tightly scheduled, he met few people in a strictly social way, and he had few experiences either socially or work related that he didn’t fully anticipate. This place, this situation, but most of all this woman were completely unanticipated.
    He turned his head. “I’m Joe.”
    “Hello, Joe.” She trailed the name out à la Lauren Bacall. “I’m Mimi.”
    “Mimi.” He liked it. “Where can I take you, Mimi?”
    “If you just follow this road another quarter mile you’ll come to a Y. Keep to the right and in another few hundred feet I’ll be home.”
    “You sure you shouldn’t have a doctor take out that thorn? It might get infected.” You could never be too careful about open wounds.
    “Oh, there’ll be some docs at the picnic. True, they’ll be veterinarians, but a thorn’s a thorn, right? Everyone on the lake and half the people from Fawn Creek’ll be there.”
    Joe wondered whether Prescott would be there, too. From what Mimi described, this picnic had to be very close to his house.
    “Sure?”
    “Absolutely. Believe me, I won’t lack for attention.”
    No, he shouldn’t think so, he mused as he drove the short distance. As the mud and weeds began to flake off, a nice set of features was emerging. Not classically beautiful, not cute, but oddly attractive.
    He followed the Y she described to a narrow, rutted drive lined on both sides with cars and pickups and a few SUVs. Groups of people and flocks of children were passing back and forth through a row of little, dilapidated cabins.
    “Told you everyone would be here,” Mimi said. “Pull off here. See the cottage at the far end? The one with the striped beach towel hanging outside the front window? If you could pull your car up really, really close to the door, I can dash in before anyone sees me.”
    “You got it,” Joe said, bumping over tree roots and hummocks until the back door of the car was parallel to the screened door on the