Page 79 of My Big Fat Shifter Wedding

I chuckled and resigned myself to my fate. “Okay then. I’ll be there.”

“You better! But hey, I’m gonna go now. I need to put together a syllabus for what we need to address. Tootaloo!”

“Later.”

She hung up, her mood significantly different from the beginning of the call, and I felt quite accomplished about that. Yes, maybe I was deceiving both her and Keith but surely I was making up for that… right?

Right?

No answer came, but just like Amanda now had some tasks to catch up on, I did too.

Like, for example, speaking with Keith’s mother.

17

OLIVIA

GIRL TALK PART TWO (ELECTRIC BOOGALOO)

“You are such a sweetheart for this. You really didn’t have to do all this!”

I patted Angela’s hand where it was gripping my arm, the older woman using me for support rather than her cane. Mind you, I still had her mobility aid folded up and in my bag, but I got the impression that she was enjoying being able to blend in a bit more by not using it.

“Nonsense! I’ve been wanting to take you to a movie for months, but it was hard to justify it when the weather was so nice.”

It had been little over six months since I’d first made the offer. We’d never actually made it to the cinema. We had, however, gone on a couple of picnics with her son and dinner, but it was always the three of us. Now, it was just her and I. Which, yeah, was a bit nerve-wracking, but long overdue. Although Keith and her family dynamic was a lot different from my own, she was going to be my mother-in-law, and I wanted us to have a close bond.

Especially since, one of these days, I’d have to introduce her to my family.

“That’s true. Although, I really have to slather on the sunscreen now. I’ve found that if the sun’s out, I prefer to be out too.”

“I know what you mean,” I agreed. Ever since I stopped working full-time in my family’s warehouse office and started doing more freelance work, I discovered I preferred being outdoors rather than cooped up somewhere with recycled air and fluorescent lighting, no matter how many windows there were in the building. “There are never enough hours in the day, so why waste them being all cooped up?”

“That’s what I mean. Indoors are for nighttime and rainy days.”

“Amen to that!”

The two of us chatted back and forth on our slow walk up to the cinema and inside. It was nice to be so relaxed because I had been running non-stop in the weeks since Keith had met my family. Despite all those dark, pessimistic thoughts whispering that it was impossible for me to keep up my ruse of pretending to be human, it was working out for me so far.

Maybe, just maybe, I could pull this off.

And maybe the guilt that I was hiding something so important to me from the man I loved would also fade.

Let’s hope so, because otherwise our divorce is going to take less time than preparing for the wedding did…

Thankfully, the period romance was engaging enough to quiet those thoughts down to the dull roar that was permanently stationed at the back of my mind.

“That certainly was a romp!” Miss Angela said as we exited, her hand once more gripping my arm with a familiarity that I quite appreciated.

“That’s a good word for it.”

“And that lead actor… He sure had soulful eyes, didn’t he?”

“It’s those thick lashes. And the fact that his shirt went see-through when he got wet didn’t hurt either.”

“You’re marrying my son, young lady. Leave the ogling after handsome actors to me, thank you very much!”

I laughed, feeling much more at ease than I had been at the beginning of our little girls day out.