“Okay?”
“Okay.” She couldn’t hide her smile any longer. “Let’s do it. Let’s be wild. Let’s be reckless. Let’s run away from all our worries and cares—so long as you promise wewillbe back to resume all those worries and cares by the end of tomorrow.”
“I promise.”
“Then, yeah. Okay. Let’s go. Just give me ten minutes to pack.”
He dropped a kiss to the back of her hand. “Thank you.”
“Ooh, I know,” she said as they both climbed out of the car. “We should go to Franklin. How amazing would it be to visit the site of one of the most active and thriving PTAs in all of middle Tennessee, including Nashville?”
“You want to go to Franklin, we’ll go to Franklin. Tonight I’ll go anywhere for you,” he said, trailing her into the house. “I’ll do anything.”
“We should bring Lottie along.” She grinned over her shoulder.
“I’m not doing that.”
They didn’t end up in Franklin. Instead they’d driven a ways east until they landed at a hotel on the outskirts of a city called Cookeville.
“All right,” Nate told McKenna the following morning when she met him in the lobby, freshly showered and more rested than she’d felt in a long time. “I’ve got good news and bad news, and then a little more good news, which may lead to bad news. But first, how’d you sleep?”
“Great,” McKenna said, lifting her damp curls so she could adjust her shoulder bag. “You?”
Nate looked relaxed this morning, wearing jeans and the teal triathlon T-shirt she remembered from the first time they met. “Not bad. I’m a little surprised because usually I don’t sleep well the first night I go anywhere.”
“Guess all that dancing you did last night with the Golly girls took it out of you.”
The left side of his mouth lifted in a cute lopsided grin. “Hope I didn’t make you too jealous.”
“Not at all. In fact—” McKenna lifted a finger, then dug into her shoulder bag to pull out the special Polaroid picture she’d been saving since last night. “I thought you might like to have this.”
She huddled close to his side so they could both admire the way she’d captured Nate’s utterly blank expression while one of the Golly girls had her arms wrapped around his neck with one heel kicked up and her head tossed back in the middle of a mouth-wide-open guffaw. “Figured you’d want to show it to your kids someday. The moment their mother—or possibly their aunt, hopefully you’ll be able to tell the difference by then—swept you off your feet.”
McKenna barely had the words out of her mouth before Nate’s fingers were poking into her ribs. “Ah,” she squealed, twisting away from his tickles. “A simple thank you would have sufficed.”
He snatched the picture and shoved it into his back pants pocket. “I knew you were going to be trouble the moment I met you.”
“Says the man who forced me to run away with him.”
“Oh? Is that the version you’ll be telling our kids someday?”
McKenna squeaked out a laugh as heat flooded her cheeks. “I think you just made me blush, Nate Lambert.”
He tucked his hands in his pockets, hitting her with a tender smile as the corner of his hazel eyes crinkled behind his glasses. “Should I apologize?”
“Only if your master plan here is to flirt and make me blush inside a hotel lobby all day. You said you had good news and bad news. Let’s start with the good,” McKenna said, wrapping her damp curls into a bun on top of her head.
“Right. Good news is this town appears to have a great donut shop not too far from a charming little bookstore.”
“Hey, that is good news. What’s the bad?”
“Neither are open on Sundays.” Nate winced at his phone screen. “Looks like most of the restaurants and shops downtown are closed today. But don’t worry. We’re right next door to a Waffle House and Shell gas station, so I think we can still get a taste of the unique sort of charm this town has to offer.”
McKenna laughed. “Was that the other good news you mentioned?”
“No, the other good news is the lady at the check-in desk saidthere’s a lot of walking trails around here. She even mentioned one with a couple of waterfalls. But I’m afraid the bad news might be you don’t have the best shoes for doing something like that.” He dipped his head toward her Birkenstock sandals.
“Au contraire, Nate Lambert.” McKenna dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out a pair of size twelve orange canvas sneakers. “Saw these at Marty’s Mercantile the other day when I was wandering around town and knew we were meant to be. Packed them last night just in case.”
