He squeezed me. “The first time. I’ve had enough scares in the past week to last me a lifetime.”

“Oh, yeah? You should try it from my side of the situation.” I gave up and leaned my head on his chest. My heart was doing that flutter thing he could make it do, but in stereo. Confused, I concentrated, and abruptly realized that I was hearing his heartbeat while I was feeling mine-and his was racing, too.

Delight bloomed in me, filled me like water in a balloon until I felt all swollen with it, which may not be a really great description but kind of fits, because I felt as if my insides were too big for my skin. I tilted my head back and gave him a huge beaming smile. “You love me!” I said triumphantly.

He looked faintly wary. “I know. I said so, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but you really do!”

“You thought I was lying?”

“No, but hearing and feeling are two different things.”

“And you’re feeling…” He let the words trail off, inviting me to fill in the blank.

“Your heartbeat.” I patted his chest. “It’s jumping around just like mine.”

His expression changed, became tender. “It does that whenever I’m anywhere near you. At first I thought I was developing arrhythmia, but then I realized it acts up only when you’re around. I was about to go in for tests.”

He was exaggerating, but I didn’t care. He loved me. I had longed for and hoped for and dreamed of this practically from the moment I’d met him, and he had devastated me by dumping me the way he had. Oh, I’d have been devastated no matter how he’d done it, but he’d really done a number on me by not telling me why. I’d made things as difficult as possible for him this past week because he deserved it for treating me the way he had, and I didn’t regret one moment of it. I just wished I could have made things even tougher by not rolling over for him every time he touched me, but what the hell; sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

“Do you want to get married as soon as we can, or do you want to plan some sort of shindig?” he asked.

There wasn’t any doubt which one he’d prefer. I cocked my head and thought about it for a minute. I’d had the big church wedding and loved every minute of it, but church weddings are a lot of trouble and cost a lot of money-and they take time to plan. I was glad I’d gone through it once, even though the marriage itself hadn’t held up, but I didn’t feel any need to go through all of that pomp and ceremony again. On the other hand, I wanted more than just a quickie marriage.

“Shindig,” I said, and he managed to stifle his groan. I patted his arm. “But not a big one. We have to think of our families and have some sort of to-do, but we don’t have to do a big deal with ice sculptures and a champagne fountain. Something small, no more than thirty people-if that many-maybe in your mother’s garden. Would she like that, or would she be terrified her flowers would get trampled?”

“She’d love it. She loves showing off that house.”

“Good. Wait, what if you can’t find out who’s shooting at me and tampering with my car? What if I have to stay in hiding until Christmas? There won’t be any flowers then, and besides, it’ll be too cold to have a garden wedding. We can’t even pick out a date!” I wailed. “We can’t plan anything until this is settled.”

“If we have to, we’ll take the entire family to Gatlinburg and get married in one of those little wedding chapels.”

“You want me to get ready in a motel?” I asked, my tone letting him know I wasn’t crazy about that idea.

“Don’t see why not. You aren’t planning on wearing one of those long, big-skirted things, are you?”

I wasn’t, but still… I wanted my stuff around me when I was getting ready. What if I needed something and had forgotten to pack it? Things like that can ruin a woman’s memories of her wedding.

“I have to call Mom,” I said, pulling away from him and going to the phone.

“Blair… it’s after midnight.”

“I know. But she’ll be hurt if I don’t tell her right away.”

“How will she know? Call her in the morning and tell her we decided over breakfast.”

“She’ll see through that in a heartbeat. You don’t decide to get married over breakfast; you decide to get married after a hot date with making out and stuff.”

“Yeah, I really liked that ‘stuff’ part,” he said reminiscently. “It’s been eighteen, nineteen years since I’d done it in the backseat of a car. I’d forgotten how fucking uncomfortable it is, and vice versa.”

I started dialing.

“Do you want your mom to know about the ‘stuff’ part?”

I gave him a “you’re kidding me” look. “Like there’s any way she doesn’t already know.”

Mom answered on the first ring, sounded harassed. “Blair? Is something wrong?”

Caller ID is a wonderful thing. It saved so much time, bypassing the need for identification. “No, I just wanted to tell you that Wyatt and I have decided to get married.”

“What’s the big surprise about that? He told us when we first met him in the hospital, when you were shot, that y’all were getting married.”

My head whipped around and I glared at him. “He did, huh? Funny thing, he didn’t mention it to me until tonight.”

Wyatt shrugged and looked totally unrepentant. I could tell I was going to have my hands full with him over the years. He was way too sure of himself.

“Well, I wondered why you hadn’t said anything,” Mom said. “I was beginning to feel hurt.”

“He’ll pay for that,” I said grimly.

“Oh, shit,” Wyatt said, knowing good and well I was talking about him, but without knowing exactly what his transgression was. He could probably get in the ballpark, since he knew what we were talking about, but he hadn’t yet realized what a no-no it was to hurt Mom’s feelings.

“There are two schools of thought concerning these situations,” Mom said, meaning she had considered two angles of approach. “One is that you come down hard on him, so he’ll learn how to handle things and won’t make that mistake again. The second is that you cut him some slack because he’s new to this.”

“ ‘Slack’? What’s that?”

“That’s my girl,” she said approvingly.

“Why are you still awake? You answered the phone so fast you must have been sleeping with it.” I was a tad curious, because Mom always slept with the phone when she was anxious about any of us. It was a habit she developed when I started dating at the age of fifteen.

“I haven’t slept with the phone since Jenni graduated high school. No, I’m still working on these damn quarterly taxes, and this stupid computer keeps freezing on me, then losing touch with its parts. Now it’s typing gibberish. I’d love to send in the taxes typed in code, since the IRS instructions and rules are so clear even they don’t know what they’re doing. How do you think that would fly?”

“It wouldn’t. The IRS has no sense of humor.”

“I know,” she said glumly. “I could have done this by hand much faster if I’d known this stupid machine was going to go bananas, but all of my files are in the computer. From now on I’m going to keep a paper copy.”

“Don’t you have a backup disk?”

“Well, of course. Ask me if it’ll work.”

“I think you’ve got a major problem.”

“I know I do, and I’m just about fed up with the whole mess. But it’s become a point of honor now not to let this demented monster win.”

Meaning she would keep at it way past the point where any normal person would have thrown in the towel and taken the thing to a computer hospital.

Then I thought of something, and looked at Wyatt. “Is it okay if I tell Mom about the hair y’all found?”

He briefly thought about it, then nodded.

“What hair?” Mom asked.

“Forensics found some dark hair, about ten inches long, stuck under my car. Can you think of anyone with dark hair about that length who might want to kill me?”

“Hmmm.” That was Mom’s thinking sound. “Is it black hair, or just dark?”