“Ideas for the bachelorette party. And I put together a spreadsheet to keep track of costs.” I hand him a copy. “I printed out a hard copy for you, but I can send you the file in case you want to do a separate one for the guys. The way I see it, some of our costs will be separate—guysare going fishing, for instance, while we’re doing other stuff. Other costs will be joint and split evenly. Like the house rental and stuff.”
“I’ve got the house covered,” Hunter says.
I go completely still, the box all but forgotten in my lap. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ll pay for the house. No need to put it on the spreadsheet.”
Is he serious? Katherine didn’t say anything about Hunter being rich. I’m sure she would have mentioned it if he was. “You can’t do that. We’ll split it between all of us.”
Hunter shakes his head. “Ed is my best friend. I want to do this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure.” He scans my face like he wants to ask me a question. Before he can say anything more, his cell goes off, interrupting the moment. He silences the call and turns back to me.
“What were you going to say?” I ask in challenge.
His phone goes off again, and he cancels the call without even looking at the screen this time. Probably one of a roster of girls wanting his attention. He ignores it and blinks, his long eyelashes sweeping his face. “I know she’s your sister and everything.” He eyes the Bankers Box. “But this issoimportant to you. I don’t get it.”
I glance away, slightly irritated at the idea of a woman calling him at this time of night. Which is ridiculous. I have no claim over this guy. “She’s my sister. I love her. We’ve always been close. I just want to do as good a job as she would if it were my bachelorette.”
“Is that it? It feels like there’s more.” He glances between my eyes and lips, and suddenly I’m hot, self-conscious. I need some air. Hunter is poking away at my defenses. But why? And why on earth does he have to look so hot doing it?
“That’s it,” I say. “I just want everything to be perfect. Just like Katherine.”
“You think your sister’s perfect?” he asks.
“Of course she’s perfect. You’ve met her.”
Hunter shrugs. “Not my type, I guess.”
Everyone loves Katherine. There wasn’t a boy at our high school who wasn’t completely in love with her. Everyone wanted to be her friend. The kind of popularity that Katherine had could have been abused. She could have turned mean and nasty to kids not as blessed in the looks and popularity departments, but, of course, Katherine didn’t. Katherine stayed sweet and kind throughout the turbulent teenage years and all through college. She didn’t have an ugly-duckling phase, and she didn’t have a rebellious one either. She’s always been fully herself, and herself is perfect.
I huff out a laugh. “Sure. Of course Katherine’s not your type,” I say sarcastically. “You’d pass up a Victoria’s Secret model, too, huh?”
“Depends,” he says. “Maybe.”
I roll my eyes, still curious about who called Hunter. Twice. “You don’t need to pretend on my account,” I say.
“I’m not pretending. I get that you love your sister, but she’s not perfect. No one is.”
“No one except Katherine,” I correct him.
Hunter tilts his head to the side, anAre you serious?expression on his face.
“What?” I ask.
“You really think your sister is perfect. She’s the one person on this planet who doesn’t have a single flaw?”
“I don’t know if she’s the only one,” I say. “But come on. You’ve met her.”
“Yeah, and every time I do, she picks a piece of lint off my jacket, and it irritates the hell out of me.”
I clasp my hand over my mouth like he’s just confessed to the assassination of JFK. Hunter starts to riffle through my box as if he’s just told me the weather forecast.
“You can’t find Katherine irritating,” I say when I’ve regained the power of speech.
“Wrong. I can find anyone irritating. You both irritated me at lunch when you couldn’t choose what to order, even though I bet youknew as soon as you opened the menu that you were going to order the chicken Caesar salad.”
