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time.
    “Then I suppose you don’t want me to be your escort at that benefit you’ve been talking about?”
    “The auction for the Boucher Center,” she said wincing when she remembered she’d brought it up to him months ago. “No, I think it would be best if I went alone.”
    He didn’t immediately answer, as if he expected her to change her mind. She didn’t and the tension on the line was nearly palpable.
    “Well,” he finally said. “I guess there’s nothing more to say. Take care of yourself, Samantha.”
    “You too.” Her heart twisted a bit. She hung up and told herself it was for the best. It was over, and that was that.
    All of her friends thought she was nuts not to marry him. “If I were you, I’d set my hooks in him and reel him in faster’n you could say prenup,” her friend Corky had confided over shrimp bisque less than a month ago. Corky’s eyes had twinkled mischievously, almost as brightly as the three rings she wore on her right ring finger—prizes from previous relationships and marriages. “I don’t know why you’re so uptight about the whole thing.”
    “I’ve been married before, and I believe in the old once burned twice shy routine.”
    “I thought it was once bitten.” Corky had broken off a chunk of bread as she glanced out the windows of the restaurant to the slow-flowing Mississippi, where a barge covered with gravel was chugging upstream.
    “Samey-same.”
    “The point is you’ll never find a better catch than David, believe you me.” Corky had nodded, her short blond curls bobbing.
    “Then you take him.”
    “I would. In a heartbeat. But he’s in love with you.”
    “David’s in love with David.”
    “Harsh words, Sam. Wait til you get back from Mexico, then you tell me,” Corky had said with a naughty smile. As if hot sand, even hotter sun, and, she implied, far hotter sex, would change how Samantha felt. It hadn’t. The sand had been warm, the sun hot, the sex nonexistent. It had been her problem, not his. The fact of the matter was that she just wasn’t in love with the guy. Period. Something about him grated on her nerves. An only child, a brilliant scholar, David was used to having things his way. And he always wanted them to be perfect.
    Life wasn’t supposed to be messy, which, of course, it always was.
    “All men are not Jeremy Leeds,” Corky had said, wrinkling her pert nose as she mentioned Samantha’s ex-husband.
    “Thank God.”
    Corky had signaled to the waiter for another glass of Chardonnay, and Sam had absently stirred the soup while trying not to conjure up images of her ex-husband.
    “Maybe you’re still not over him.”
    “Jeremy?” Sam had rolled her eyes. “Get real.”
    “It’s hard to get over that kind of rejection.” “I know about this,” Sam had assured her. “I’m a professional, remember?”
    “But—”
    “Jeremy’s flaw is he falls in love with his students and doesn’t take his marriage vows very seriously.”
    “Okay, okay, so he’s yesterday’s news,” Corky had said, waving the air as if she could push the subject of Jeremy Leeds out the window. “So what’s wrong with David? Too good-looking?” She’d held up a finger. “No? Too eligible—never been married before, you know, so there’s no baggage, no kids or ex-wife.” She’d wiggled another digit. “Oh, I know, too rich…or too ambitious. Too great a job? Lord, what is he, CEO of Regal Hotels?”
    “Executive vice president and director of sales for the eastern United States.”
    Corky had flopped back in her chair and thrown her hands over her head as if in surrender. “There you have it! The man’s too perfect.”
    Hardly, Samantha had thought at the time. But then she and Corky, friends since second grade in LA had always had different views on boyfriends, courtship and marriage. One lunch hadn’t changed anything, and the trip to Mexico had convinced her—David Ross wasn’t the man for her, and that was just fine. She