"I love chocolate-chip cookies, though."

He shook his head. "I've proved everything you threw at me the night at the Mountaineer, haven't I? I don't know anything about you."

"You know that I don't like hot dogs," she said gently.

She could have been bitchy, but she was being nice. It was one of so many good things about her. Why had it taken him so long to notice? He'd gone through most of his life barely thinking about Kristy Brown, and now he couldn't think about anybody else.

She wrapped her hot dog back up, returned it to the bag, and picked up a chocolate-chip cookie. Before she took a bite, she opened a paper napkin and spread it over the lap of her jeans. The jeans, along with her plain white blouse, had disappointed him. He supposed she'd decided to save her short skirts and tight tops for Mike Reedy.

He pulled the paper off his straw and punched it through the lid covering his large Cherry Coke. "So, I hear you and Mike are seeing each other." He tried to sound casual, as if the topic were of no more interest to him than last week's weather.

"He's a very nice person."

"Yeah, I guess." Tendrils of silky dark hair curled around her cheeks. He wanted to brush them back, and, for a moment, he imagined doing it with his lips.

She gazed at him. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Say it." She sounded impatient. "I know when you have something on your mind."

"It's just-Mike's a great guy, don't get me wrong, but-In high school, he was a little-I don't know. Maybe a little wild or something." For someone who was a pro at public speaking, he was making a mess of this.

"Wild? Mike?"

"Not now." He was starting to sweat. "No, it's like I said, he's a great guy, but he can be a little… spacey. You know. Distractible."

"So?"

"So." His throat was dry, and he took a sip of Cherry Coke. "I just thought you should know."

"I should know that he's distractible?"

"Yes."

"All right. Thanks for telling me." She bit into one side of the chocolate-chip cookie. Neat. No crumbs dribbled over the upholstery. He realized how much he liked Kristy's orderliness. Not just because she made things easier for him, but because his own interior world was so often chaotic, and she calmed him.

He wasn't calm now, however. That black-lace rumba perfume was getting to him, along with her neat white blouse buttoned all the way to the neck. Even as he told himself to change the subject, he plunged in again. "I mean, if he's driving or something, he might get… You know."

"Distracted?"

"Yes."

She set the cookie on her napkin, those seductive little finger rings glimmering. "Okay, Ethan. What's this about? All evening you've been acting strange."

She was right, so he didn't know why he was suddenly so angry with her. "Me? You're the one who decided to show up wearing jeans!" Only after the words had left his mouth did he realize how inappropriate they were.

"You're wearing jeans, too," she pointed out patiently. "Granted, you ironed yours, and I didn't, but-"

"That's not the point, and you know it."

"No, I don't know it. What are you trying to say?" She added the cookie to their growing pile of discarded food.

"Did you wear jeans the last time you went on a date with Mike?"

"No."

"Then why are you wearing them with me?"

"Because this isn't a date?"

"It's Friday night, and we're parked in the next-to-last row of the Pride of Carolina! I'd say that's a date, wouldn't you?"

Her eyes snapped, no longer gentle at all. "Excuse me? Are you telling me that, after air these years, the great Ethan Bonner finally asked me out on a date, and I didn't even know it?"

"Well, that's not my fault, is it? And what do you mean, finally?"

He heard a long labored sigh before she spoke. "Just what is it you want from me?"

How could he answer that? Should he say, "I want your friendship," or "I want the body you've been hiding away all these years"? No, definitely not that. This was Kristy, for pete's sake. Maybe he should just tell her she had no right to keep changing around on him, and he wanted things back the way they were, but that wasn't true. At the moment, he only knew one thing. "I don't want you sleeping with Mike Reedy."

"Who said I was?"

The fake diamond studs flashed in her earlobes. She was mad at him. Well, fine, he was mad at her, too, so what difference did the truth make? "I looked in your purse this week. The condom you had in there is gone."

"You looked in my purse? Mr. Honest Ethan?"

The fact that she seemed confused, rather than angry, took some of the wind out of his sails. "I apologize. It won't ever happen again. I was just-" He set aside his Coke. "I was just worried about you. You shouldn't be sleeping with Mike Reedy."

"Then who should I be sleeping with?"

"No one!"

She got all stiff and starchy. "I'm sorry, Ethan, but that's no longer an option for me."

"I sleep alone. I don't see why you can't, too!"

"Because I can't, that's all, not any longer. At least you have a seedy past to look back on. I don't even have that."

"It wasn't seedy! Well, maybe it was, but-Just wait for the right man, Kristy. Don't give yourself away cheaply. When the right man comes along, you'll know it."

"Maybe I know it right now."

"Mike Reedy isn't the right man!"

"How do you know that? You can't even remember that I hate hot dogs. You don't know when my birthday is or my favorite singer. How would you know who the right man is for me?"

"Your birthday is April eleventh."

"Sixteenth."

"See! I knew it was in April!"

She arched one fine eyebrow at him, then took such a deep breath he suspected she was counting to ten. "I took the condom out of my purse because I felt stupid carrying it around."

"So you and Mike haven't…"

"Not yet. But we might. I really like him."

"Like isn't good enough. You like me, too, but that doesn't mean you're going to have sex with me."

"Of course I'm not."

He felt a stab of disappointment. "Of course not."

"How could I? You're celibate."

Exactly what did she mean by that? That if he weren't celibate, she might consider it?

"And," she went on, "you're not attracted to me."

"That's not true. You're my-"

"Don't you say it!" Feathery tendrils flew and the fake diamond studs flashed. "Don't you dare say I'm your best friend, because I'm not!"

He felt as if she'd punched him. Much of his job involved counseling others. He understood the complexity of human behavior far more than most people, so why was he so clueless about her?

The clock on the screen ticked off its final minutes. He'd always been tenacious, but she'd somehow taken the fight out of him. He knew he was hurting her, even if he didn't understand exactly how, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt Kristy Brown.

"Kristy, what's happening to you?"

"Life is happening to me," she said softly. "Finally."

"What does that mean?"

Her silence lasted so long he didn't think she would answer, but she did. "It means I've finally stopped living in the past. I'm ready to move on with my life." She looked over at him in a way that made him think she was engaged in some internal struggle. "It means I'm not going to be in love with you anymore, Ethan."

He felt as if a jolt of electricity had passed right through him, except he didn't know why he should be shocked. At some unconscious level, he supposed he'd known she was in love with him, but he hadn't let himself think about it.

She gave a soft, self-deprecating laugh that made him ache. "I've been so pathetic. All that wasted time. For eight years I sat at my desk, Little Miss Efficiency, bustling around to find your car keys and make sure you had milk in the refrigerator, and you never even noticed. I had so little regard for myself."

He had no idea what to say.

"Do you know what's really ironic?" There was no bitterness in her voice. She spoke calmly, almost as if she were talking about someone else. "I would have been the perfect woman for you, but you never noticed. And now it's too late."

"What do you mean, the perfect woman?" And why was it too late?

She regarded him sadly, as if his failure to understand disappointed her. "We have the same interests, similar backgrounds. I like looking after people, and you need looking after. We share the same religious beliefs." A slight shrug. "But none of that mattered because I wasn't hot enough for you."

"Hot enough! What kind of thing is that to say? Do you think that's all I look for in a woman?"

"Yes. And please don't patronize me. We've known each other too long."

He got mad. "Now I get it. That's what all of these changes have been about. The tight clothes, the new hairstyle, that damned perfume. You got yourself fixed up so I'd notice, didn't you? Well, I noticed, all right, and I hope you're happy about it."

The Wise God of Talk Shows clucked her tongue. Ethan… Ethan… Ethan…

Instead of retaliating as she should have, Kristy smiled. "It's a good thing you did notice, or I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to come to my senses."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's so fundamental, Ethan. So trite. But I guess the simple truths are always like that, aren't they? Rachel warned me when this started that, if I wanted to make changes, I needed to make them for myself and not for you or anyone else. I pretended to agree with her, but I didn't really understand how right she was until that day I showed up for work all dressed to kill and you were so appalled with me."

"Kristy, I wasn't-"

She held up her hand. "It's okay, Ethan. I'm not upset about it any longer. I'm even grateful. Your rejection pushed me to do some things with my life I've needed to do all along."