Page 52

Gabe stared at the damage, then at her. “You sabotaged me.”

“I was trying to save it.”

“You kissed me. To distract me.”

“You kissed me,” Mara pointed out.

“That sounds like an argument we could spend some time on.”

“I’m not in any hurry. I keep forgetting I’ve only known you a few days.”

The words caught him by surprise. “Does that bother you?”

“No.” She met his eyes. “And I keep waiting for it to.”

They went back to carving, Mara beside him now instead of across the table, their shoulders touching every so often as the light slowly began to fade. By the time they finished, the sun had dropped behind the mountains. Mara set a small lantern inside her pumpkin and stepped back.

Gabe looked at hers, then at his. The woodland scene she had carved glowed across the side of hers, the shapes rougher now that it was lit but still recognizable. His pumpkin bear looked deranged. One eye was higher than the other, part of one cheek had collapsed completely, and the light shining through the crooked mouth made the whole thing look faintly alarming.

Mara stood beside him in silence for several seconds.

“You can laugh,” Gabe told her.

“I’m trying not to.”

“No, please do, because then I win the funniest pumpkin carving,” Gabe said. “Which was my goal all along.”

She gave in, leaning against his shoulder as she laughed. Gabe put an arm around her and looked at the two pumpkins side by side.

“Yours wins most scenic pumpkin carving.” He tilted his head to one side.

Mara looked up at him. “Well, since we both won our categories, why don’t we go and celebrate? We do have the bottle of wine.”

Gabe could have stood there quite happily for a while longer, but the air was cooling fast now and he remembered the basket he had left in the truck. “And I brought food.”

Mara straightened. “You did?”

“I own a bakery. It seemed irresponsible not to.”

“That might be the best argument you’ve made all evening.”

He went back to the truck and returned with a basket and a folded blanket. By the time he got back, Mara had retrieved the wine from where he’d set it down earlier.

They ate on the blanket with their backs against a stack of hay bales, the bottle of wine between them. Mara poured only a little into each of the plastic cups Gabe had brought, and he lifted his after she did.

“To expert wine buying.”

“I told you, I barely remember what Kris said about it.”

“Then we’ll judge it on whether we like it.”

“That was more or less my system.” She glanced at the bottle. “That and the pretty labels. But we should keep that between us. I’d hate to offend Kris and Cassia.”

They touched cups. The wine was good. Gabe couldn’t have said anything more intelligent about it than that, and Mara seemed relieved when he admitted it. For a while they talked about nothing particularly important.

Eventually Mara went quiet. She was turning her cup slowly between her hands, looking toward the darkening field. “The vineyard was good,” she said.

“You sounded happy when I called.”