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in this weather in a wedding dress and just drove away ?”
    “No! Well, not exactly. It wasn’t raining when I left Houston.”
    Marc drew back. “Houston? You drove all the way here from Houston ? That’s over two hundred miles!”
    She held up her palm. “Now, it’s not as bad as it sounds. See, I was going to drive to Austin, but then the hotels were all full because of parents taking kids back to college, so I thought I’d go to San Antonio. But when I headed that direction, the rain came and there was an accident and traffic was a mess and I was running out of gas, so I got off the freeway to find a gas station and then I got lost. And then there was the deer, and…” She shrugged weakly. “And here I am.”
    Marc had news for her. It really was as bad as it sounded. “You need to call somebody to come get you.”
    “No!” she said. “Whoever I call will talk me into getting married. And I can’t do that. I’ll be miserable for the rest of my life!”
    All this should have kicked off Marc’s usual reaction to a crisis, which was to wade in, take control, and solve the problem, but he’d never encountered a problem like this. A woman who ran away from her own wedding into a driving rainstorm? In what weird universe did that happen?
    “Okay,” Marc said. “Your car. Is it drivable?”
    “Well, it’s kinda wrapped around a tree. No windshield. So I guess I’d say…probably not.”
    “You’re two hundred miles from home. Do you know anybody in the area? Anybody at all?”
    She shrugged weakly. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know where I am.”
    “Didn’t you bring a map with you?”
    “No. I didn’t exactly plan to run away.”
    “Still, you might have stopped along the way. Regrouped. Gotten organized. Put a little thought into—”
    All at once she put her hand to her stomach and started to weave, her eyes dropping closed. Marc took hold of her wrist to steady her. It felt cold from the rain and so fine boned he could wrap his entire hand around it.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked.
    “Sorry. I’m just…I’m just having a hard time…breathing…”
    “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
    “No,” she said, her face contorting. “It’s this dress. It’s so tight. And my stomach feels funny. I haven’t eaten much in the last couple of days.”
    “Why haven’t you eaten?”
    “Because my dress was too tight. I needed to be able to get into it on my wedding day.”
    “I’ll get you some crackers—”
    “No. The dress is too tight. If I eat something, I’ll barf it right back up.”
    She hadn’t eaten because the dress was too tight, but because the dress was too tight, she couldn’t eat? One of Marc’s biggest pet peeves was circular logic that led nowhere. How did anyone get off a roller coaster like that?
    “And it’s worse now,” she said, her breath fast and shallow. “I think the dress is drying and shrinking. I need to get out of it.”
    “But you don’t have any clothes to put on,” Marc said.
    “No. I have clothes. They’re in my luggage.”
    “Where’s your luggage?”
    “In my car.”
    “And your car is in a ditch.”
    “Yeah.”
    Marc sighed. He was no psychic, but he was having no trouble predicting the near future. He was going to be wading through a muddy ditch to pull suitcases out of a wrecked car.
    “Where did you have the accident? East on the highway or west?”
    She looked at him blankly.
    “Never mind,” Marc said. “Surely you’ll know which way to go once we reach the gate.”
    “The gate?”
    “My front gate. I’ll take you to your car to get your luggage. Then I’ll drop you off at a hotel in town. You can check in, get cleaned up, and change clothes. Then tomorrow you can deal with your car.”
    “But the weather—”
    “It’s letting up.”
    Actually, Marc wasn’t too sure about that, but it didn’t matter. One way or another, he was taking her to town. Then he’d get back to his football game and pretend