Chapter Eight

      GEORGIA KNEW SHE was in trouble when she spent more than five minutes trying to decide what to wear for dinner with Lucas Ramsey.

      The rain was a factor, of course. With it had come a blast of Arctic cold, so she wanted to stay warm and dry. Pizza meant jeans or khakis and a sweater, but her favorite sweater needed to be washed. When she realized she was dithering, she settled on a creamy Aran knit she’d bought on a trip to Ireland and brown corduroy pants. But even while she pretended this was all about the weather, a no-nonsense voice in her head pointed out that she had nylon athletic pants and a windbreaker that would do the job perfectly.

      The truth was she was hoping to make a better impression than that.

      Her own tiny house was in Woodfin on the road between Asheville and Weaverville, although both towns were part of the greater metropolitan Asheville area. Woodfin was a town of about three thousand, and Weaverville was somewhat smaller and more picturesque, although she usually traveled into Asheville proper for shopping and dinner, because that was where Sam and Edna lived.

      She parked on the street just down from the restaurant and grabbed her umbrella. She hadn’t eaten at Blue Mountain Pizza, but she knew the place by reputation. Usually it would be crowded, but on a Monday night in the pouring rain, she suspected they would have their pick of tables.

      Lucas was waiting at a corner table and stood when she entered. The room was friendly, with lemony walls and cozy dark woodwork and bar. Although it probably wasn’t as busy as usual, it was still crowded, with the tables pushed close and people laughing. Best of all, it smelled heavenly. Garlic, oregano, freshly baked pizza crust. Fatigue melted away and anticipation ignited.

      She took the chair across from Lucas and smiled, glad the place was noisy and casual. “The perfect antidote for a long day and too much rain.”

      “I’m looking forward to warmer weather and outdoor seating. They have live music tonight, but we’re a little early.”

      She removed her raincoat and settled in, stilling her hands when she realized they were fluttering along a coat sleeve like a girl on her first date. “I don’t live far away. I just never seem to make it up here.”

      Their server, a young man in a black T-shirt sporting the restaurant logo, came to take their drink order. Lucas ordered a local beer, and Georgia asked the server to make it two. After consultation Lucas added an order of garlic knots as a starter, a delicacy for which the place was well-known.

      She was glad she didn’t have to wait until the pizza arrived. She’d missed lunch entirely.

      “So you’re new to the area?” she asked after the server left.

      “I’ve been here about two months. I live over the hill from the Nedley farm. My house belongs to a friend, who uses it in the summers. He’s out of the country for a year, so he’s renting it to me.”

      “What brought you here?”

      Their beer arrived before he could answer, along with a promise that the garlic knots would be out soon. Lucas held up his mug in toast, and she tapped hers against it.

      “I’m a journalist,” he said. “In Atlanta, although these days I’m just a guest columnist. Newspapers are hanging on by their fingernails.”

      “So your job was...compressed?”

      He smiled at her word choice. “It was compressed, but that was my choice. I’m also a novelist. I write a mystery series about an Atlanta cop. The books have done surprisingly well, and I decided that’s what I wanted to concentrate on.”

      She was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I don’t read mysteries, so your name’s not familiar.”

      “What do you read?”

      “Nonfiction mostly. Biography, memoir, psychology.”

      “And education, I bet.”

      “Guilty as charged.”

      “Don’t worry. Police procedurals aren’t everybody’s cup of tea. But I started out in the Metro section and spent so much time in police stations trying to get the real scoop that finally my main character, a detective named Zenzo Brown, just came to life and started making demands.”

      “That must be pretty amazing. Like having an imaginary friend. My daughter had one of those for years, until third grade. Then Marigold just up and left. I think I missed her more than Samantha did.”

      “So you have kids?”

      “Just one, and she’s thirty. But I have a fabulous granddaughter.”

      “And no husband.”

      Lucas had changed into jeans and a sage-green sweatshirt over the shirt he had worn earlier, and if anything, he looked even more attractive. They had to lean forward to be heard, and their noses almost touched. She tried to remember the last time she’d sat this close to a man who wasn’t on the BCAS faculty.

      She tried to remember the last time she had wanted to.

      “I had one,” she said. “He died a long time ago. In Beirut, when the marine barracks were bombed. I haven’t wanted another.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Me, too. He was a good man, and he was cheated out of watching his daughter grow up.”

      “I was married, too. She didn’t want kids, but she didn’t tell me until we were a couple of years into it. I come from this strange Scots-Italian family, and all my siblings have at least three. I thought I’d have the same. The marriage dissolved somewhere between ‘I never want to have children’ and ‘I’ve met somebody who can give me a better life.’” He gave a wry smile. “I was easily fooled back then, but three years of marriage and a decade and a half in the newspaper biz took care of that.”

      She supposed the intimacy that had developed so quickly between them wasn’t too surprising. It was some odd kind of shorthand, like a more mature form of speed dating. Get past the preliminaries quickly, and move on...to what?

      “Why are we telling each other all this?” she asked, since the question intrigued her and all her filters seemed to have disappeared. “We’re supposed to be talking about Dawson.”

      “We’ll get to him.”

      The garlic knots arrived with marinara dipping sauce. They conferred for a moment and, before their server disappeared again, ordered a large Carolina Dreamin’ pizza to share.

      “I need to be honest with you. I actually know more about you than I’ve let on,” Lucas said. “Before I approached you about Dawson, I wanted to know who I was dealing with. So I looked you up online. I can’t seem to help myself. It’s my journalist genes.”

      She set down her mug, not all that surprised, but definitely