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cabin Mimi had pointed out. He put his arm over the back of the seat and turned to look at her. “There you go.”
    “Thanks, Joe,” she said. He wondered what her hair would look like without the shrubbery. “You saved the day. I owe you.”
    “My pleasure, Mimi.” Surprisingly, he wasn’t overstating the matter. Sure, he could have done without the dirt, but he had been richly diverted for a short while.
    She pushed the car door open and swung her legs out, putting her injured foot gingerly on the ground. She winced.
    “Do you need some help getting in?” Joe asked.
    “No. I’ll be fine as soon as I get a pair of tweezers in my hand.” She smiled. “I appreciate the offer this time, though.”
    She prepared to bolt, but then stopped. She turned her head to look at him.
    “Are you hungry?” she asked.
    “Ah…I…Sure.”
    “If you’ll wait here while I get this two-by-four out of my foot and clean up a little, I can promise you the best homemade picnic fare you’re ever likely to have. How about letting me repay you a little for your kindness?”
    Joe looked down at his shirt. “I’m not company ready. I’m a mess.”
    “No one will notice,” Mimi promised. “Not here. Besides, most of the dark splotches were just water and it’s almost dried now.”
    Joe considered, which in itself was surprising. Joe was not the sort of man who appeared in public in a dirty shirt. But the shirt wasn’t really that dirty, and as Mimi had pointed out, as it dried the stains were less noticeable, and he was hungry. He’d just be very careful of which home-prepared foods he chose.
    Besides, it wasn’t as if Prescott were waiting for him with bated breath. Most likely he’d forgotten Joe was coming. Prescott might not even be there himself. Once Joe had visited Prescott at MIT, where Prescott taught, only to be greeted by a note on his apartment door that said Prescott had gone to New York for the weekend. Prescott had neglected to leave a key.
    “What do you say?” Mimi asked.
    “Is there somewhere I can wash my hands?”
    “You bet.”

Chapter Four
    After digging a half-inch-long thorn from her heel, washing her hair, and scrubbing herself clean, Mimi looked for something to wear. Unfortunately, she hadn’t driven into Fawn Creek to do laundry in more than a week. She tried on the sweatshirt and pants she’d worn while scraping the grills that morning, but even by her admittedly relaxed standards the greasy streaks were off-putting. The rest of her clothes were in no better shape. It had been that kind of week.
    Finally, in desperation, she’d searched the crawl space above the cottage and hit pay dirt: a long-forgotten beach bag filled with teenagers’ beach wear. The girl who’d worn the clothes might well be a grandmother by now, but Mimi didn’t care. They didn’t smell, they weren’t dirty, ergo they were fit for a picnic. She held up a violently blue terry cloth beach robe with orange starfish embroidered along the yoke and slipped it over her head, then hobbled out in search of her rescuer. She found him standing a short distance from the picnic tables, eyeing the feast spread out on them.
    She eyed Joe.
    He was absolutely gorgeous in a Fortune 500 sort of way, handsome, sophisticated, and really well-groomed. His dark hair gleamed; his blue eyes gleamed; his square jaw, shaved as smooth as a river stone, gleamed; even his blue dress shirt gleamed with the soft sheen of really expensive Egyptian cotton—where it wasn’t splotched with faintly damp green marks.
    In the Land of Ten Thousand Cabela’s catalogues, by dress alone he stood out like a rainbow trout amongst bullheads. His shirt cuffs were rolled up over nice masculine forearms in what she suspected was his nod to “casual,” his camel-colored slacks had a crease in them, and his loafers—doubtless made by some Italian in a little workshop in Florence—looked as soft as butter. She guessed him to be in his early forties, a