“I am exactly that.” Luke removed his hands and took the towel that Tootsie offered him. “But I found out that I’m also very fond of food. Sitting at a desk meant I had to give up doughnuts, potato chips, and cookies, or else I had to hit the gym four days a week. Since I have no willpower over food, I chose the gym.” He dried his hair and handed the towel to Diana.

Were the extra ten pounds she’d gained since she and Eli married what made him go looking for another woman? No, that couldn’t be the excuse, not when he admitted that he’d been cheating since she was pregnant, and that was only a year after they were married. It had to be something to do with her weight, though. Maybe if she’d paid more attention to her looks and the scales, he wouldn’t be leaving her.

“Stop it,” Diana whispered.

“What?” Carmen asked.

“I can tell by the expression on your face you’re thinking of Eli and blaming yourself,” Diana said.

“You know me all too well,” Carmen sighed. “I was thinking that I might start going to the Y when we get back home. Want to join me?”

Luke had said he had no willpower over food, so he exercised. She had no willpower when it came to Eli, but the gym surely couldn’t fix that. However, it could help her take those extra ten pounds off, and she might feel better about herself.

“If Diana doesn’t want to go exercise with you, I will,” Luke said. “Only let’s go to a real gym instead. Anyone else want to go with us?”

“I might want to go, too,” Diana said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

“Not me,” Tootsie said. “I’ll just eat what I want and get fat and lazy. Speaking of that, let’s make hot chocolate and watch a movie. We don’t get cable up here, but we’ve got a whole stack of movies in the cabinet over there.” Tootsie shivered as she started toward her bedroom. “And let’s light a blaze in the fireplace to get this chill out of the house.”

“I’ll do the chocolate,” Carmen offered, “and make a bag of popcorn to go with it.”

Luke picked up a box of matches and crossed the room. “Uncle Smokey always left it ready in case it was cold when they arrived. It takes the electricity a while to heat everything up.”

“Well, I’m going to my bedroom and putting on some more comfortable clothing, and then I’m going to tell Smokey all about that tornado that passed over us. We are one bunch of lucky folks to have a house still standing,” Tootsie declared.

“I’ll go through the movies,” Joanie offered, and gasped when she opened the cabinet doors below the television. “Oh. My. Goodness. Look at this selection, and they’re alphabetically arranged. Everything from Steel Magnolias to seasons of NCIS and MacGyver.”

“I love MacGyver,” Carmen said as she used a whisk to stir the hot-chocolate mixture in a saucepan. Before she and Eli could afford cable, they’d watched reruns of the original MacGyver for entertainment. She’d make popcorn. He’d have a beer, and she’d have a diet soda pop, and they’d cuddle under blankets on the sofa. That was before she got pregnant—before he had the first of what must have been several flings.

“Then we’ll binge out on that one this rainy afternoon,” Joanie said. “We’ve got the first and second season, so that might even keep us busy through tomorrow if it’s still raining.”

“Oh, it will be.” Luke got the kindling going under the logs. “The weather report says it’s going to do this all week, and there’s flash-flood warnings. Now I’m going to dash out to the motor home, put some dry things in a plastic bag, and bring them in here to change. These wet things are giving me chills, but at least I don’t have to try to dodge the hail. I think it’s stopped.” He opened the door and sucked air through his teeth. “The hail brought a blue norther with it. I bet it’s dropped twenty degrees out there.”

As soon as he was gone, Carmen turned to Diana, who was watching the popcorn in the microwave. “What’s going on with you and Luke?”

“Nothing,” Diana answered, but she didn’t look at Carmen.

“Did you hit your head when you fell?” Joanie laid the two MacGyver DVDs on the coffee table in front of a well-worn, buttery-soft leather sofa. “I call shotgun on one of the recliners.” She pointed toward a matching brown leather chair.

“Did you?” Carmen hip-butted Diana.

“What?”

“Hit your head? That’s the only way you’d be addled so badly you’d lie to us about nothing between y’all. It’s plain as the flat little snout on a pig’s face,” Carmen said.

“I kissed him. It felt good. It won’t happen again. Not only is he younger than me, but he’s rich as Midas. He’s too good a man to have his friends teasing him about a cougar who married him to get at his money,” Diana admitted in a monotone.

Carmen whipped around, her eyes bulging. “Holy crap!”

“What shocks you? That I kissed him or that I said I was a cougar?”

“The latter,” Carmen whispered. “Looking at you two, no one would ever know that you’re older than him.”

“Now, as Ma used to say on The Golden Girls, picture it: The Steakhouse in San Antonio in five years. Rebecca is married and has a new baby. Someone comes up and thinks she’s his wife and the baby is his. Imagine how embarrassed he’d be.”

“Honey, in five years, he’ll be five years older, and no one is going to think that. You’re just borrowing trouble,” Joanie said as she sat down in front of the fireplace and flipped her wet blonde hair over her shoulder so the heat would dry it. “And besides, one kiss doesn’t mean he’s going to drop down on one knee and propose next week. It just means that y’all might like to spend some real time together after we get back home and things settle down from all this drama.”

Carmen backed away from the stove and pulled her dark-brown hair up into a ponytail. In five years, would she be ready to kiss another man? She didn’t think so. Not even in ten years. She’d given her heart to Eli. He’d shattered it into a million pieces, and like poor old Humpty Dumpty, all her friends and all the miracles in the world couldn’t put it back together again.