“Sure.” It had been quite a while since Abigail had eaten. In a rush this morning, she’d skipped breakfast, and she’d been too nervous to eat all day. When the polls finally closed at dinnertime, the entire team had waited with bated breath for the vote count.

Of course, there’d been food at tonight’s victory party, but there she’d been too busy fielding congratulations and questions about her future plans to eat anything. She’d told everyone she was looking forward to going home to the family ranch. After about the hundredth lie, she’d made her escape to the hotel sports bar.

“Steak?” Lucky asked with a nod toward the glowing red sign for Calbert’s.

She shook her head. “Too many people I’ll know in there.”

“Thai?” he suggested, zeroing in on a smaller, lower-key restaurant a few doors down.

“How about a burger from the drive-through?”

Bert’s Burgers, half a block down in the other direction, catered mostly to a teenage crowd. Much as they’d tried to get out the youth vote, Abigail doubted anyone under the age of twenty-one would recognize her.

“We don’t have a car,” Lucky pointed out.

“We can walk to the drive-through and take the burgers down to the lake.”

He arched a skeptical brow. “You sure?”

She nodded.

There were some picnic tables on the lawn by the beach. The election party fireworks finale was planned for later on the waterfront. But it would take place on the wharf at the opposite end of the bay. This time of night, their only company in the picnic area would be the mallard ducks that slept in the marsh.

“Not much of a date,” he noted as they took advantage of a break in traffic to cross in the middle of the block.

She couldn’t help smiling at that. “This is a date?”

“Not in my book.”

“So why are you worrying about the aesthetics?”

They stepped up on the sidewalk on the other side of the street.