“When’s the big day?” His cousin asked.
“We haven’t?—”
“Let them breathe.” Kellan’s dad laughed. “He just got home.”
Thank God for Frank Fox.
“I need to use the restroom.” I stood. Caught Kellan’s eye and jerked my head toward the hall.
He nodded slightly. “I should probably?—”
“Oh! Before you go anywhere.” His mom disappeared into the kitchen. “I have those wedding magazines I promised to save.”
Wedding magazines. Dear God, his mother had been collecting wedding magazines.
My stomach dropped like a stone, twisting into knots as I stood there, frozen. How long had this been going on? How many people knew? I felt lower than low about lying to everyone. These people had been as much my family as his over most of my life. How could I ever make them understand?
She came back in, magazines in hand. “And Linda next door wants to host the shower.”
I forced a smile to my lips that I prayed didn’t look like a grimace. “That’s so nice of her.”
Kellan’s hand found mine under the table and squeezed. What did that mean?
I knew what I wanted it to mean. That I just needed to be patient, and he’d help me find my way out of this scrape that didn’t make absolutely everyone in his family hate me forever. But as the lunch wore on, I wasn’t sure that even my ever capable best friend could perform that kind of miracle.
Three
Kellan
From her seat beside me on the sofa, Tate radiated annoyance. I doubted anybody but me would’ve noticed. She was too well-bred, too polite to give voice to whatever was running through her head. Which, after the past several hours, had to be something along the lines of For fuck’s sake, let us be alone already so we can talk! As curious as I was to get the story about exactly how our “engagement” had come about, I was as perversely determined to let this ride as long as possible because it played so neatly into my own plans to prove to her we could be something other than the friends and business partners we always had been. So I’d played in to every single effort my well-intentioned family had made to keep me in the center of everything with Tate by my side.
All through lunch she’d been nervy, twitchy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Again, not so obvious that anyone but me was likely to notice. That was the benefit of having been best friends since kindergarten. I could read her like a book most of the time. Honestly, if somebody had asked me before I got off that bus today if Tate Cavanaugh ever surprised me, I’d have said no. She was as predictable as the sunrise, a lover of organization and spreadsheets. A child of divorced parents, she liked to know what The Plan was for everything, always. She needed that stability. I got that. Those were all the reasons I’d known Mountain Laurel Landscaping would do just fine without me during my deployment.
And yet she’d shocked me today. Down to my very marrow.
I’d imagined that homecoming kiss a thousand times over the past year. In quiet moments between missions. In the dark, before sleep claimed me. During endless hours of training. But I’d never once thought I’d get it. Not without talking to her, confessing the feelings I had no idea what she’d do with.
But I’d sure as hell gotten that kiss, and the reality of it had blown every single one of those fantasies clear out of the water. Her lips had been soft, eager. There’d been nothing hesitant or tentative about the way she’d pressed against me, her fingers curling into the front of my uniform. The scent of her—honeysuckle and sunshine—had filled my head, dragging me under like the sweetest kind of drowning. And when I’d cupped her face, angled her head just so to take her mouth exactly how I wanted, she’d made this sound... Christ. I was gonna hear that sound in my dreams for the rest of my life.
But the thing that kept playing on repeat in my head—the detail I couldn’t let go of—was how she’d kissed me back.
There’d been heat there. Real heat that had nothing to do with putting on a show to back up whatever lie she’d gotten caught up in. Her tongue had tangled with mine, hungry and desperate in a way that spoke of genuine want. And yeah, maybe I was fooling myself. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see because I’d spent the better part of a year trying to figure out how to move us out of the friend zone without destroying everything we’d built together. But I didn’t think so.
So I’d let my family run interference. Let them monopolize my time and attention while keeping Tate close. Because that kiss? That hadn’t been faked. And until she managed to get me alone and try to explain whatever circumstances had led to this engagement charade, I was going to savor every second of having her exactly where I wanted her.
Right beside me, where she belonged.
I shoved up from the sofa. “Reckon we should head on over to the MacAvoys’ for the cookout.” There’d be more people there. More excuses to draw this whole thing out.
That set off a whole slough of goodbyes to the extended family. I accepted hugs and handshakes and promises of seeing them all soon. Then it was down to my parents, sister, and Tate.
Mom fussed with my collar one last time. “Now you’re sure you don’t want to change before heading to the MacAvoys’?”
“Let the man breathe, Carol.” Dad clapped me on the shoulder. “He just got home.”
“I’m good, Mom.” The familiar routine of her mothering settled something in my chest that had been wound tight for months.
Tate jangled her keys. “We should get going.”
