Chapter 1
White Sands National Monument,
outside Alamogordo, New Mexico
Thyme
I’m standing, barefoot, in cool, white gypsum sand, holding a waxed plastic saucer sled. The afternoon desert sun beats down on my shoulders, but, somehow, the sand beneath my feet doesn’t absorb the heat.
Victor pushes his sunglasses up to the crown of his head and squints at me, grinning. “You ready to lose?”
“Not a chance, Callais.”
I situate my sled on the peak of snowy sand and sit in the plastic circle. I arrange my legs lotus-style and lean forward over the front edge of the sled. Beside me, Victor lowers himself into his saucer and scrunches his legs up in front of him, knees to chest.
Amateur.
His weight is distributed all wrong. But that’s not my problem.
“Ready?”
“I’m ready.” I flash him an intense look.
“On the count of three. One, two, three!”
We push off and careen down the dune. Well, I careen down the dune. When I reach the bottom and tumble, breathless and laughing, out of the bright orange sled, I look around for Victor. He’s stuck a third of the way down the hill, beached in the sand.
I double over with laughter while he scoots himself toward the bottom, pushing with both hands.
“You’re not exactly aerodynamic,” I tell him once I’ve caught my breath.
“You cheated.” He stands up and wipes the sand from his palms.
“I did not!”
I swat at him with my free hand, and he catches it, pulling me close to his chest. I nestle in, trash-talk forgotten, and tilt my chin up so I can meet his eyes.
“Wanna kiss a winner?” I offer.
A slow smile spreads over his lips, then he takes me up on my invitation.
As he covers my mouth with his, I think—for at least the hundredth time—what a great idea this road trip was.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when he asked me to join him on a cross-country trip. He was assigned a series of articles on the economic situation in towns throughout the South and Southwest and thought it would be fun to drive across the country as he reported on the issue. He invited me along.
Summer in New York City is steamy, stinky, and stale. You can quote me on that. Because I’d already decided not to take summer classes, I didn’t have school to worry about. My biggest client—media mogul Cate Whittier-Clay—shares my opinion of summer in the city, so she, her husband, her daughter, and their nanny (Victor’s sister Helena) fled Manhattan for the French countryside until the beginning of October. She set up an online video classroom environment so she and I could continue her personal training sessions remotely, and she encouraged me to make it available to my other clients, too.
So, there was quite literally nothing keeping me in the city. And my boyfriend was offering me a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. Even though I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, I packed my bags in record time.
And now, here I was, digging my toes into the world’s largest known deposit of gypsum sand thanks to Alamogordo’s desert climate, which prevents the salt from evaporating. I mean, we’re sledding. In the desert. In September.
I giggle at the absurdity, and Victor pulls his head back to search my eyes.
“You’re having a good time.”
“I am. And not just because I kicked your sorry butt,” I tell him.
“I’m glad.” He releases my hand and digs into the pocket of his khaki shorts.
“Me, too. This is … perfect. You, me, and the endless New Mexico sky.”
His grin turns serious. “I like the sound of that. You. Me. Endless.”
A weird, tight note creeps into his voice. I furrow my brow. What’s he up to?
He fumbles in his pocket for a moment, and then a small, velvet box appears in his palm. He pops it open and I glance down at it. The sun glints off the ring inside the box, and I have to look away.
“Thyme, will you—”
No. No, no, no. Please don’t.
I don’t say the words, but I’m thinking them as hard as I can. Surely the message will get through by telepathy or osmosis or … magic? He can’t ask me to marry him. He can’t.
“—marry me?”
My brain goes on the fritz. I stare at him, feeling fuzzy and numb and abjectly miserable, for the longest minute of my life.
I study his face. His warm brown eyes. The scar near the corner of his full lips. The curl of hair that insists on trailing over his forehead no matter how much hair pomade he uses.
His eyes are locked on mine. Waiting.
I love him. I love him more than I imagined it was possible to love another person. Every day is better because he’s in it. He’s smart, sarcastic, kind, funny, generous, and gorgeous. He’ll make a great, thoughtful partner and, someday, an involved and loving father.
And I’ve known for a while, or at least suspected, that this day was coming. He’s dropped plenty of hints over the past year, and his interest in matrimony really ramped up after the second of my two sisters was married last fall.
Finally, I find my voice. “I’m really sorry. But … my answer’s no. I can’t. I can’t marry you, Victor.”
His expression shutters, and he snaps the ring box closed.
Suddenly the heat feels oppressive, smothering.
He drops his gaze from mine. After a moment, he clears his throat. “Let’s return these sleds to the ranger station and go get some lunch. How’s that Mexican place in town sound—the one the guard at the missile testing ground told us about?”
His voice is level and impersonal. That fact, more than anything, is my undoing. My eyes fill with hot, fat tears and I stare down at the orange saucer sled by my feet, watching it blur and undulate as I try not to cry.
When I have a handle on my emotions, I raise my head. But he’s already trudging across the sand, headed back to the rental jeep without waiting for my response. I swallow hard around the lump in my throat and set off behind him. My heart’s hammering wildly.
I can almost hear my sisters. Thyme, what have you done?
* * *
We return the sleds to the ranger station in silence, brush the gypsum sand off our feet in silence, and drive to the adobe restaurant in silence.
After the waitress seats us and brings us each a glass of water and a laminated menu, I crack.
“So, what? You’re not going to speak to me for the rest of the trip? Maybe I should get a flight back home.”
Victor looks up in surprise from his phone, which he’s been fumbling with under the table ever since we were seated.
“What? No, I ….” He trails off and places his phone facedown on the table. “Sorry, I was texting your sisters.”
I goggle at him. “You’re kidding. Right?”
If anyone is going to seek sympathy from my sisters, it’s going to be me. Although, truth be told, I’m not so sure either of them will understand.
He gives me a sad smile. “I had to tell them the surprise party’s off.”
I’m still reeling from the engagement ambush, now he’s talking about a surprise party.
“What?”
“I stupidly assumed you’d say yes. So, Sage and Roman and Rosemary and Dave were planning to meet us in Vegas the day after tomorrow to celebrate.”
Ooof. My stomach seizes like he’s delivered a gut punch.
“Victor—”
Just then, the waitress reappears with a basket of hot, greasy tortilla chips that are obviously housemade and an array of salsas.
“Gracias,” Victor says in a solemn tone that manages to be totally polite while at the same time conveying ‘we’re in the middle of something here.’
She nods and glides away, quickly and quietly.
I toy with a chip, breaking it into pieces.
“You were saying?”
“I want to explain—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation, Thyme.”
The pain in his voice drags my eyes away from the chip crumbs falling onto my plate and up to his face.
“Yes. I do. I love you.”
He narrows his eyes. “But you’re not in love with me?”
“No!”
The only other couple in the restaurant both turn to look at us.
I lower my voice several notches. “That’s not it. I am in love with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
I reach across the table and cover his hand with mine, holding my breath and hoping that he won’t yank his hand away. He doesn’t.
I exhale. “I don’t think we should get married.”
“Yet, you mean?”
“No, ever.”
“You don’t want to be married?” He tilts his head and studies me.
“No. Well, that’s not true. I do want to be married. To you. I just don’t want to get married.”
He shakes his head, a blank, confused look in his eyes. “I don’t follow.”
“What happened at Rosemary’s wedding?”
He purses his lips and thinks. “Your sister and Dave were married. You and I danced until dawn. Sage and Roman got engaged. I met your parents.”
“Before all that.”
“I don’t know, Thyme. A lot happened.”
“Yes, you do know. Rosemary was abducted by a loan shark and held captive in a storage container. My parents were arrested.”
He frowns.
“Mmm-hmm. And what happened at Sage’s wedding?”
Understanding lights in his eyes, but he pretends not to know what I’m driving at. “Sage and Roman were married. You and I danced until dawn. Your parents were furloughed from prison so they could be there.”
“Did you forget Sage’s house was vandalized, her dress was caught up in a bankruptcy, her rings were stolen, she needed stitches, and, oh yeah, she fainted?”
“In fairness, that all happened weeks before the wedding.”
“Sure, I’ll give you that. And, in fairness, none of it would have happened if they hadn’t been getting married.”
I wait for him to try to argue the point, but he shrugs as if to say I’m right, but so what?
I sip my water and wait for him to catch up. The liquid is cool as it travels down my throat, but the glass is sweating in my hand. Or maybe my hands are sweaty. It’s hard to tell.
“Wait—that’s why you don’t want to get married? Because your sisters’ weddings hit a few snags?”
His incredulous expression is something out of a poorly done high-school play: broad and exaggerated. I try to stifle a laugh and fail.
“A few snags? I think you mean a series of catastrophes, disasters, and dramas.”
“Thyme, all that matters is they were married at the end of the day. I mean, isn’t that the point?”
My laughter dies as tenderness swells in my chest. Yes, that is the point. And, at the end of the day, I do, very much, want to marry Victor. I just don’t want to have a wedding.
I catch my lower lip between my teeth, thinking.
“What?”
“What what?”
“I know that look. You’re devising something.”
“Not devising … just … do you really mean that?”
He squeezes my hand. “Of course I do.”
I put down the glass and fill my lungs with air, then let out a long, slow breath. “In that case, Victor Callais, will you elope with me?”
His expression stays neutral but he blinks. Once, twice.
“Elope?”
“Yeah,” I say, warming to the idea that only crossed my mind for the first time less than thirty seconds ago. “I mean, we are heading to Las Vegas after Arizona. Unless romantic comedies have lied to me, we can get married there, easy peasy.”
“That’s true.”
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