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Countdown to the Perfect Wedding
Teresa Hill


Tate Darnley approached his nuptials like a business transaction – romance wasn’t a factor.But the minute he met unassuming chef and single mum Amy, he knew there was more to marriage than sealing the deal. Now, as the clock ticks down to his perfect wedding, he has to ask himself – which woman will he marry?!










Amy and gorgeous man both froze, leaning over the spilled bag of powdered sugar.

The cloud had enveloped them—sugar was sprinkled over their faces, their hair, getting in their mouths, even up their noses.

She blinked. Yes, there was a bit on her eyelashes, too.

The man coughed. Amy did, too, sending tiny puffs of white powder into the air once again.

“Oh, my God, I’ve probably ruined your suit,” she said, afraid it had cost more than several months’ rent on her apartment.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll just take this off right here.” He shrugged out of his jacket, more powder flying as he did.

He peeled off his tie next. He started to unbutton the shirt, but then quit when he had it half-off. “Is this…Do you mind?”

Amy shook her head.

Mind was not the word.

More accurate ones would be…

Appreciate the sight before her?

Oh, my.




About the Author


TERESA HILL tells people if they want to be writers, to find a spouse who’s patient, understanding and interested in being a patron of the arts. Lucky for her, she found a man just like that, who’s been with her through all the ups and downs of being a writer. They live in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, in the foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, with two beautiful, spoiled dogs and two gigantic, lazy cats.




Countdown

to the Perfect

Wedding


Teresa Hill








www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To my niece, Rachel, who has welcomed her first child,

Ashley Nicole, into the world and brought incredible

joy to my parents, now the happiest

great-grandparents ever.




Prologue


Eleanor Barrington Morgan smiled and nodded, she hoped with nothing but a mixture of happiness and acceptance showing in her face, as her most favorite person in the whole world, her godson, Tate Darnley, told her he’d met yet another woman.

This one was an investment banker.

“Mmm.” She nodded, having to grit her teeth beneath her smile. “Someone from your office?”

“Yes,” Tate said.

Eleanor could just picture her, disciplined as could be; fastidious in her dress, diet and exercise plan; highly intelligent when it came to numbers and strategy; working her little fanny off to get ahead.

She probably came to bed clutching a spreadsheet, not quite able to let it go completely.

Eleanor’s husband used to be that way. He was an investment banker, cool, calculating, highly intelligent and with the warmth and interpersonal skills of a deep freeze. She’d endured thirty years of trying like a fool to change him, to figure out what was wrong with her that she couldn’t make him love her or want her the way she wanted to be loved, and she wanted so much more for Tate.

Instead, he’d been raised by a stockbroker, become a venture capitalist himself, and showed all the signs of following in all of their footsteps.

Especially in his choice of women.

She wanted to weep, to scream at him, to try to knock some sense into him, to tell him there was so much more to this world and to life other than money, the latest business deal and numbers. But of course, a Barrington-Holmes woman simply did not do those kinds of things. She’d been raised to be too dignified for that.

So she sat there and smiled and nodded, until he kissed her on her cheek and left. Her best friends at Remington Park Retirement Village, Kathleen and Gladdy, saw him go and came to hear the news right away.

“He found another one,” Eleanor told them. “Just like the last one and the one before that, it sounds like. How can men be so stupid?”

Kathleen and Gladdy shook their heads and sighed, having heard it all before.

“That first woman like that? Did she make him happy? No,” Eleanor said, answering her own question. “The second one? Was he happy with her? No. The third one? Not even close, and now, here we are. Number four, who sounds like a clone of the first three. I could tell by the way he talks about her. No real emotion there at all, no excitement, no warmth. Just all this bunk about compatibility and shared goals. Please! It sounds like they’re going into business together.”

Kathleen frowned. “What exactly is your objection to… trying to gently nudge him toward someone else? Someone you think would make him happy?”

“Well, Mother always said we shouldn’t meddle,” Eleanor said.

“Oh, please.” Gladdy dismissed that with a huff and a smile. “What kind of mother is that? And besides, you told me your mother died twenty years ago. It’s not like she’s going to come scold you for anything now.”

“I know, but…well, the honest truth is I’ve tried before to steer Tate in a different direction, and…I’m afraid I’m just no good at it,” Eleanor admitted, much as it cost her to say so. She was raised to never admit any kind of inadequacy she might have.

“Oh, honey.” Kathleen laughed. “We can fix that. Gladdy and I are terribly good at meddling. Just ask anyone. What we pulled off with my darling granddaughter Jane…”

“It was a thing of beauty. A master feat,” Gladdy bragged. “And now, Jane’s happy as can be, and believe me, we despaired of Jane ever truly being happy. In truth, sometimes we despaired of her ever so much as going on a date.”

Kathleen nodded. “It was bad. Very bad. I don’t think anyone but Gladdy and I ever thought we could save Jane, but we did. We can save your godson, too. Just say the word, and we’ll go to work.”

Eleanor sighed. She’d heard this story. Practically the whole of Remington Park had been involved in the match-making scheme and had a blast doing it, she’d been told.

Her people, the Barringtons, and her husband’s, the Holmes, were just repressed, stuffy, private people, crippled emotionally and quite possibly beyond all help, Eleanor sometimes thought, and it was hard, breaking the patterns of decades, the ones imprinted on the very DNA in every single cell in one’s body.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she said.

“Don’t worry.” Gladdy patted her hand reassuringly. “We do.”

Eleanor tried to be good. Truly, she did. She stayed out of Tate’s supposed love life, although honestly, she doubted there was any kind of love involved, emotional or physical. Poor thing.

And what did her noninterference get her?

Six months after first mentioning her, Tate announced he was engaged and finally admitted the woman he’d been seeing all that time was none other than Victoria Ryan! A girl he’d known for years. They’d practically grown up together, acting more like brother and sister than anything else. And Victoria, unfortunately, had the most disagreeable mother. Eleanor shuddered at the thought of ever having to face that woman over a holiday dinner table or, even worse, at a wedding.

Still, Eleanor thought it wouldn’t last. No woman ever really had with Tate. She wasn’t worried, wasn’t sorry she’d stuck with her plan of not butting in.

Six months after that, the wedding—a huge extravaganza in that mausoleum of a place Eleanor once called home—a mere two weeks away, she was hungrily searching for any signs that the nuptials would somehow fail to take place.

Two days before the first of the family guests were scheduled to arrive for the five-day event, she was desperate and went to Kathleen and Gladdy.

“Well, the simplest thing, of course, is another woman,” Kathleen said quite calmly in the face of Eleanor’s outright panic.

“But, he’s not seeing anyone else,” she explained. “Not that I know of.”

“No, I mean, we have to find him another woman—a real one, not an ice sculpture,” Gladdy told her.

“Where are we going to find him a real woman in two days? He’s been dating for fifteen years and hasn’t found one yet,” Eleanor said. “And even if we did find one, what then? It’s not like we can guarantee he’s going to fall for her. I mean, he’s a man, and we all know what most of them are like. But he’s not a rat. I just don’t think he’s going to be looking for another woman on the weekend of his wedding.”

“We put them together and see what happens. That’s all it should take,” Kathleen said, sounding remarkably confident.

“Yes, and we all know just the woman!” Gladdy announced, glancing into the kitchen, where Amy, their sweet, most favorite former employee, newly graduated from cooking school, had arrived with a special birthday cake for one of the ladies in their cottage who’d always been a favorite of hers. “Eleanor, didn’t you say you were going to hire a chef for the weekend? To feed all those guests staying at your house?”

“Yes, I did. A lovely man named Adolfo.”

“He’s going to come down with something at the last minute,” Gladdy said, pointing to the woman in the kitchen. “And you’re going to replace him with her.”




Chapter One


Tate Darnley was later than he’d planned getting to the house Wednesday night and a little bit tipsy. Victoria’s father and some of Tate’s colleagues had thrown a little cocktail party in honor of their upcoming wedding, and the champagne had flowed freely.

He came in through the side door leading past the servants’ quarters and the kitchen, as he always did, hoping to avoid any friends and family members who might have already arrived for the long weekend, looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet before things got too crazy for the wedding.

What he’d hoped would be a small, family-only affair had turned into an extravaganza, and Victoria, normally the epitome of calm and grace under pressure, now seemed like a woman trying to steer the Titanic through a vast, bottomless ocean, fraught with all sorts of confusion and peril.

It was a little disconcerting, but not overly so. Tate had always heard weddings made just about everyone crazy. It would all be over soon, and he and Victoria could get on with having a life together, which he expected to be nothing but smooth sailing—two intelligent, hardworking people with the same goals, same values, who’d known and respected each other for years. How could they go wrong?

Tate checked himself for any twinge of impending nerves, happy to find none. He was even whistling a bit, striding down the back hall when the most amazing smell hit him.

Tangy, citrusy…lemons, he decided.

Something sweet, too.

Lemons, sugar no doubt and…some kind of berries? He groaned, it smelled so good.

Someone preparing food for the wedding, he supposed, and yet, he didn’t remember anything that smelled that good at the various tasting menus they’d sampled, at Victoria’s insistence.

He lingered in the hallway, thinking if he couldn’t get a bit of that sweet lemony thing right now, who could? After all, he was the groom. So he turned around and headed into the big, open gourmet kitchen, finding a slender young woman clad in a starched white apron, her copper-colored hair tied back in a braid, testing the firmness of a plate of lemon bars she’d just pulled from the oven. That luscious smell was even more irresistible here in the kitchen.

A boy of maybe seven sat on a high stool beside her, pouting for all he was worth. “One?” he asked. “Come on, Mom. Just one?”

“Max, you already had two from the earlier batch. Any more and you’ll be sick, and I can’t have you sick this weekend, because I can’t take care of you and cook for all these people.”

“But—”

“No.” She didn’t let him get out another word, as she slid her lemon bars one by one onto a waiting cooling rack. “Now stay here, and guard these for me. I just used the last of the powdered sugar, and I have to search the pantry for more.”

The boy pouted mightily but held his tongue.

Tate waited until the cook disappeared into the butler’s pantry and the even bigger pantry closet in back of that and then strolled into the kitchen, saying, “Wow, that smells amazing.”

The kid looked up and frowned. “Yeah.”

Just then, from deep inside the pantry, Tate heard a woman’s voice call out, “Tell me you’re not eating those, Max? Because I counted them already. I’ll know if you do.”

The boy sighed and looked resigned to following that order. “I’m not.”

“Just not fair, is it?” Tate said quietly to the boy.

The kid shook his head. Judging by his expression, he was trying to convince Tate he was a poor, abused child, left to starve among all this bounty.

Tate finally got a good look at the things. Lemon, indeed, and something pinkish mixed in. “Lemon and strawberry?” he guessed.

“I dunno. They just taste really good.”

“I’m sure,” Tate agreed, sniffing again. “Raspberry. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Do you remember?”

“I think so,” Max said, looking none too sure of himself. “Mom calls ’em sugar daddies.”

“Oh.” Tate nodded. Interesting name. “Because she’s going to sprinkle powdered sugar on top of them?”

“’Cause of Leo,” Max said.

Leo?

Sugar daddies?

Surely the kid didn’t mean what Tate was thinking? “So, Leo is…your dad?”

“No.” Max shook his head. “A friend of mine and my mom’s. She cooked for him and stuff, and he liked her a lot.”

“Oh.” Tate didn’t dare ask another thing.

“She got to go to cooking school ’cause of it,” Max said, obviously a talker. “She always wanted to go to cooking school. And I get to go to school, too, someday. I mean, I didn’t really want to, but Leo left me some money for that, too. Not cooking school, but…the big place? You know?”

“College?” Tate tried.

Max nodded. “I guess I have to go.”

“So…Leo was a good guy, I guess,” Tate said, at a complete loss as to what else to say to the kid about that particular arrangement.

“You ever have a sugar daddy?” Max asked.

Tate grinned, couldn’t help it. It was like trying to have two completely different conversations at once. The kid was talking about his mom’s dessert, wasn’t he?

“No,” Tate said. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“They’re the best thing my mom cooks,” Max confided. “And she didn’t even have to go to cooking school to learn to make them. She already knew.”

“Wow,” Tate said.

Max leaned in close and whispered, “She won’t give me another one, ’cause she thinks I’ll get sick if I have one more. But I won’t, really. Maybe she’ll give you one, and you can…you know…share with me?”

Tate loved it. What a little schemer. Life would never be dull with this one around. He reached out and ruffled the kid’s hair, thick and dark reddish brown and just getting to the unruly stage where it really needed to be trimmed.

“I’ll do my best,” Tate promised.

“So, did you ever have the other kind of sugar daddy?” Max continued.

“Other kind?”

Max nodded. “Like Leo?”

Tate cleared his throat to stall for time. “I…I don’t think so.”

“Know why mom called him that?”

“No, Max, I don’t,” he said carefully.

“’Cause he was so sweet, and he was like a dad. He took care of us.”

“Oh.” Tate nodded, thinking that was about as good of a G-rated explanation as he could think of. “Well, I’m glad for you. And your mom.”

From their hiding place in the dining room, ears pressed to the wall shared with the kitchen, Eleanor groaned softly, throwing a horrified look to her friends and companions in meddling, Kathleen and Gladdy.

“Sugar daddy? Tate’s going to think Amy’s just awful!”

Kathleen, Leo’s loving widow, sighed and admitted, “Okay, so it’s not going particularly well at the moment.”

“Well? It’s a disaster!” Eleanor exclaimed.

“Not completely,” Gladdy pointed out. “I mean, your godson is surely not going to think we brought Amy here to fix her up with him. Not from what he just heard from our dear Max.”

“No, he’ll think she’s a gold digger! A kept woman, looking for her next sugar daddy to take over where Leo left off!” Eleanor could have cried right then and there.

The wedding was less than ninety-six hours away.

“Just give it a moment,” Kathleen said, calm as could be. “See what happens. Your godson barely knows Amy, but he’s clearly interested in her cooking and quite taken with Max.”

“Why would he even want to know her now?”

“For the lemon bars, if nothing else,” Gladdy said, sounding absolutely sure of herself.

Eleanor sighed, feeling doubtful about the whole mess, but stayed where she was, her ear pressed once again against the wall.

Amy found the powdered sugar, finally, but only after climbing on a rolling ladder that slid from one end of the tall pantry wall to the other and nearly climbing onto the top shelf to reach into the back and get it.

This was the most amazing pantry she’d ever seen. And the kitchen was a chef’s dream.

She climbed back down the ladder, powdered sugar in hand, her nerves still zinging from the first moment she’d seen the house—mansion was a better word, castle not far from her thoughts when she’d first seen the giant, weathered stone building—and realized what she’d gotten herself into.

She didn’t have the experience for this, having literally just graduated from her single year of cooking school last week. She’d gotten hardly any prep time at all, because she’d come in at the last minute, filling in for the unfortunate Adolfo. And just for fun, she hadn’t been able to find a sitter with so little notice, so she’d had to bring Max. Eleanor swore that one of the three nannies expected to accompany various invited relatives would be happy to watch over Max, and that there was another seven-year-old boy coming for the long weekend wedding, so he’d have a built-in playmate, too.

At least Amy had gotten a good bit of the baking done tonight. Making the lemon bars—her favorites, her specialty—had helped calm her down.

She was opening the bag of powdered sugar as she walked back into the kitchen, hoping Max had actually listened to her and hadn’t scarfed down another one, and there he was, sitting on his stool, guarding her desserts, with an absolutely beautiful man, dressed in what she was sure was a very expensive suit, talking earnestly with her son.

Amy paused there for a moment, unable to help herself. The man was standing in profile, dark blond hair, cut short and neatly, a bit of a tan on his pretty face, contrasting nicely with the stark white shirt and deep blue tie and suit. His whole image positively screamed of both money and privilege, and he looked like he’d been born to live in a place like this.

Completely out of her league, Amy knew in an instant.

Still, a woman could look every now and then, couldn’t she?

The last man in her life had been Max’s father, and look how badly that had turned out. She’d been understandably cautious since then.

Max spotted her and called out, “Hey, Mom! Guess what? This is my new friend Tate, and he’s never had a sugar daddy before!”

Amy stopped short, thinking she’d really done it with that name. At least the beautiful man in the hideously expensive suit didn’t know the whole story behind it.

And then, Max, who just didn’t know when to close his mouth, piped up and added, “Not one of your lemon bars or one like Leo.”

Amy winced, closed her eyes tightly for a moment and cursed inside. She must have blushed at the same time, and then she started trying to explain, talking with her hands, as she often did, forgetting all about the powdered sugar.

It slipped from her hands.

She grabbed for it and so did the man, but they both missed.

The package hit the hard tile floor with a big thump, and the next thing she knew, an explosion of finely powdered sugar rose up into the air, in her and the man’s faces.

Amy and the gorgeous man both froze, leaning over what was left of the bag, the cloud having enveloped them, sprinkled over their faces, their hair, getting in their mouths, even up their noses.

She blinked. Yes, there was a bit on her eyelashes, too.

The man coughed. Amy did, too, sending tiny puffs of white powder into the air.

Max laughed so hard he nearly fell off his stool.

It was like something out of a cartoon he would watch, this puffy cloud of sugar rising up and enveloping them like a sweet fog, coating everything in a fine sheen of white.

Max started to get down off the stool, but Amy stopped him. “No. Stay right where you are!”

“Mom—”

“I’ve already made a huge mess. The last thing we need is you over here making the mess even bigger,” she said, then turned to the man. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

Okay, she did, but no way she was admitting it.

He didn’t look mad. He looked ridiculous with sugar all over him, and no doubt, she did, too.

“Oh, my God, I’ve probably ruined your suit,” she said, afraid it cost more than several months’ rent on her apartment.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

Sugar drifted off him as he smiled and shook his head. Even his eyebrows were coated in white.

She couldn’t help it. She reached for him, trying to brush some of the sugar off his suit. Not that it was really working. Powdered sugar was indeed the texture of powder, too fine to brush off, mostly just sinking into the grain of the fabric and leaving a faint imprint of white.

“I’m afraid I’m making it worse,” she said, still trying anyway to get the stuff off him.

He held up his hands to get her to stop, which she did, feeling even worse about how she’d had her hands all over the man. Just trying to help, truly. She honestly feared the cost of the ruined suit.

“Sorry,” she said again.

“I’ll just take this off right here,” he said, shrugging out of it, more powder flying as he did it.

“Wait, let me get you something to put that in, or you’ll have powdered sugar all over the house.” She pulled out a fresh kitchen garbage bag and held it out to him as he put the folded suit jacket into it.

He peeled off his tie next, depositing that in the bag, too.

Looking down at his shirt and pants, he brushed himself off as best he could, started to unbutton the shirt, but then quit when he had it half off. “Is this…do you mind?”

Amy shook her head.

Mind was not the word.

A more accurate one would be…

Appreciate the sight before her?

Oh, my.

He had no way of knowing what she’d promised herself long ago, when Max was born. That one day, she’d have a man in her life again. First, it had all been about Max, overwhelmingly Max, and the work she needed to do to support them both. Then she’d gone to cooking school and had no time for anything but that and Max. But she’d promised herself that once she graduated, had a good job and things calmed down, got a little easier, she’d let herself…at least think about a man again.

She hadn’t thought that would be any kind of problem. Her first and only real experience with men had been such a downer. But seven years had gone by. More than seven, since she really had a man in her life, and here she was, newly graduated, working her first real, if short-term, job and…

Maybe she was more ready than she knew, because he…

He just looked so good.

She groaned just a bit at the sight of him, lean as could be, and yet…Well, she hadn’t seen such a perfect specimen of man outside of an advertisement for cologne or men’s jeans in ages—maybe even her whole life.

He wadded up the shirt and put it in his bag of clothing, looked down at his pants and then smiled back at her. “I think I’ll stop there.”

Max laughed from his perch on the stool. “You have eyebrows like Santa.”

The man looked from Max to Amy, puzzled.

“They’re white, too,” she told him.

He brushed at them, not really getting the job done, then looked to her questioningly.

“No. Not quite, I’m afraid,” she said. “Plus, it’s in your hair.”

He dipped his head toward her, standing perfectly still then, waiting. She had made the mess. She supposed she was responsible for cleaning it up, even the part that was on him.

Cautiously, she moved close enough to brush the sugar off him, catching a whiff of aftershave, something minty and yummy smelling, somehow coming through the overwhelming aroma of sugar and lemon that permeated the room. With the side of her thumb, she reached up and stroked her thumb across his eyebrows. Nothing too scary there. But then she had her hands in his hair, his truly gorgeous hair.

Lord, it had been a long, long time since she’d touched a man—an attractive man anywhere near her age—in any way at all.

Never thought it would happen in a borrowed kitchen with her son looking on and one of the biggest messes she’d ever made in her life all around them.

She finished with his hair, trying to ignore the softness of it, the thickness, the luxurious feeling of touching him.

Darn.

She dropped her gaze, clearly a mistake as her breath stirred some of the powder that now clung to the little springy curls of hair on his chest. Not gonna go anywhere near that, she promised herself, gazing at the pretty swell of tanned skin and taut muscles that made up Mr. Perfect’s absolutely perfect-looking chest.

Max laughed again. The man, who’d looked completely at ease only moments ago, looked a little taken aback now, a little surprised, a little uneasy.

She caught a whiff of champagne on his breath. She was that close.

So, he’d been drinking. The whole long weekend was a giant party, after all.

“I think I just made it worse,” she confessed.

“I’ll live. Promise. I’ve made messes of all kinds in this kitchen and survived them all.”

“Oh, no,” she groaned. “I just remembered the housekeeper, Mrs. Brown. She told me not to dare make a mess of any kind, that she’d spent weeks getting the house ready for this, and…well…she scares me.”

“Me, too,” Max piped up.

“Me, too,” the man said. “She scares everybody. Always has.”

“You better clean up your mess, Mom,” Max said.

“Yes, I’d better,” she said, looking around once more to assess the situation and figure out where to start.

That’s when she realized how far and wide a cloud of powdered sugar could travel. It had even gotten Max, his clothes, his hair, his adorable, grinning face.

“I’ve never made a mess this big,” he claimed, making it sound like he should be rewarded for that.

“Good for you, Max,” the man said. “But your mother’s right about Mrs. Brown. We don’t want to make her mad, especially on a weekend like this. So you and I need to help your mother clean this up.”

Max frowned. “I’m not good at cleaning up messes. Mom says I usually just make a bigger one while I’m trying to fix the first one.”

“He does,” Amy agreed.

“Well, then let’s think about how to do this.” The man looked around the room, then back to Max. “Are you and your mom staying back there in the bedroom off the pantry?”

Max nodded.

“How about I carry Mad Max to the bathroom, trying not to get powdered sugar on anything between here and there, and then Max gets in the shower.”

“I already got clean once today!” Max protested.

“We know, Max,” Amy said, “but the only way all that sugar is going to come off you is if you do it all again. So, let Mr…?”

“Tate, please,” he said. “Tate Darnley.”

“Hi. I’m Amy. I’m filling in at the last minute for the personal chef who was supposed to be here for the long weekend, to keep everyone staying in the house fed, and Max….”

“I just came to play,” Max said. “There’s gonna be another boy here, and we’re going to play.”

“It would be great if you’d haul him into the bathroom for me. Max, be still, and let’s try not to make a mess along the way, okay?”

Tate Darnley carried her son as if he weighed nothing at all, through the bedroom she and Max were sharing and into the attached bathroom, then stepped back out of the way for Amy to take over.

Max grumbled, but a few moments later, he was in the shower. Then there Amy was, standing in a tiny bathroom, still coated with sugar, Max on the other side of the shower curtain and Tate relaxing as he leaned against the doorway, grinning back at her.

“You have powdered sugar all over you, too. Worse than Max did. Maybe even worse than I did,” he told her.

She turned and looked in the bathroom mirror, wincing at the image reflected back at her. She was covered in powdered sugar, too.

“Are those suitcases on the bed yours and Max’s?” Mr. Perfect asked.

She nodded, and he grabbed them both, setting them just inside the bathroom door.

“Thank you.” Amy pulled out Max’s pajamas, ready to tuck him into bed. “Max, remember soap and shampoo. It doesn’t count if you don’t use those.”

“Awe, Mom!”

“I mean it, Max,” she said, raising her voice to talk over the sound of the shower, trying to put fantasyland firmly behind her.

“Great kid,” Tate said softly.

“Thank you.”

“I bet there’s never a dull moment with him around.”

“Never.”

“What is he? Five? Six?”

“Seven,” Amy told him, then could read exactly what he was thinking.

She’d started young with Max.

“I was sixteen when he was born, living on my own with him by the time I was seventeen.”

Tate nodded. “That must not have been easy.”

“No, but Max was worth every bit of it.”

“Then I’d say Max is a lucky boy,” the man said.




Chapter Two


Okay, that was a comment right out of fantasyland.

Maybe she was dreaming after all.

Because most men were freaked out by the idea that she had a son she was raising on her own, and none of them seemed too concerned about whether she was a good mother to Max—one reason she’d stayed far away from men for the past seven years.

“Thank you,” she said, as she looked up at this man, Tate Darnley.

Where did you come from? she wanted to ask him. How could you be so perfect? Or at least, seem so perfect?

There had to be a major flaw in him somewhere, something she just hadn’t seen yet but would no doubt discover at any moment. Some crushing flaw. She told herself to focus, that there was work to do, a giant mess to clean up, and yes, she really had been a little afraid of Mrs. Brown and her spotlessly clean house, her admonishment to Amy not to dare mess up anything.

Amy started unbuttoning her white chef’s coat, wanting to leave it in the bathroom, because it really was coated with sugar and wearing it while trying to clean up the mess in the kitchen would only make more of a mess. Glancing up, she saw that Tate was still there, backing out of the doorway to the bathroom now, a little flare of something in his eyes, as she watched him watch her.

“Don’t worry,” she said, laughing a bit. “I’m not…I have something on under this.”

“Of course.” He nodded, still watching, still looking a bit puzzled and confused.

What she had on was a plain black tank top with spaghetti straps and a built-in bra—nothing fancy, nothing too revealing and exceedingly comfortable. It got hot in a kitchen in a chef’s coat.

So why did she feel as self-conscious as if she’d just peeled off her clothes down to the skin? What a weird night.

“So,” she said, looking up at him and trying to pretend a nonchalance she certainly didn’t feel. “I should get back to the kitchen.”

He nodded, still standing in the doorway, took a tentative step forward, watching her as he did, like she might want to run away and wanting to give her a chance. “You’ve still got powdered sugar in your hair.”

“Oh. Forgot.” She started swiping at it, sugar going this way and that as she brushed her hands through her hair and along the braid. It just wasn’t working, and she finally took her hair out of the braid.

“Bend forward,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

And then he had his hands in her hair.

Nothing overtly sexy about it, just that she loved it when anyone fooled with her hair. Even the hairdresser. It was one sad but true little secret thrill she’d allowed herself over the years. Letting a really cute guy cut her hair. And now, Mr. Perfect had his hands in it, brushing out a cloud of powdered sugar onto the floor.

She whimpered a bit, hopefully nothing that could be heard. And yet, she couldn’t help herself. Mr. Perfect had his hands in those little curls of hair at the nape of her neck, then brushing along her shoulders, her collarbone and then her chin.

He backed up suddenly, like a man who’d been burned, then said, “Looks like some of it got down the collar of your chef’s coat.”

Okay, that was it. She had to get out a little bit more. Obviously it was time, when she started to melt from a guy brushing sugar out of her hair.

He finally stopped, stepping away from her. “I did what I could, but…”

He certainly had. More than enough. And the way he was looking at her…she moved quickly, ruthlessly, to tug her hair back into place in the braid.

“I have to get back to the kitchen,” she said firmly. “I don’t want anyone else to see the mess I made. Max?” she raised her voice to make sure he heard. “I’m going to leave the bathroom door open just a crack, and I’ll be right next door in the kitchen, okay? Your pajamas are right outside the shower. Come find me when you’re dressed?”

“Mom, I’m not a baby!” Max protested.

Mr. Perfect laughed and said, “Come on. I’ll help you clean up.”

Don’t, she thought. Just…don’t.

But he followed her back into the kitchen. Powdered sugar was on the countertops, the sink, the floor and, in what seemed like some cosmic joke, coating the top of the lemon bars.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing to them. “That’s why I went and got the extra bag of powdered sugar. To coat the top of the lemon bars, and somehow, by dropping it, I managed to do just that. Do you ever feel like the world is just sitting back and laughing at you?”

“Not very often. Although,” he said, staring at the lemon bars, “I will cop to coming in here planning to beg, borrow or steal one of those.”

She grabbed a dessert plate from the cabinet, a fork and served one to him at the breakfast bar that was part of the big island in the middle of the kitchen. “I think you’ve earned it.”

He held up a hand to refuse. “I promised to help you clean up.”

“I know, and I appreciate it, but right now, the lemon bars are still warm. They’re even better when they’re still warm from the oven.”

He hesitated, sat on one of the high stools, picked up the fork but didn’t use it. “The other thing is, I kind of promised Max I’d help him get another one, too. Or maybe…just a bite of mine.”

She shook her head. “The kid never quits. Never. Not with anything.”

Tate Darnley shrugged. “I had to ask. We bonded over our desperate desire for dessert.”

“I’ll save him some crumbs,” she said. “Unless you want to share yours with him.”

“I don’t think I like the kid that much,” he said, holding a forkful to his mouth and sniffing it like it was some kind of fine wine and he was drunk on it already.

Amy had grabbed a hand towel, planning to start cleaning but couldn’t help herself. She had to watch him take that first bite. She loved watching people who really loved her food, and she wanted very badly for him to absolutely adore hers.

He put the forkful in his mouth, his lips closing around it, eyes drifting shut and groaning in an exaggerated but highly flattering way, savoring every bit.

“Oh, my God. That’s amazing!” he proclaimed.

Amy laughed like she hadn’t in years, feeling silly and free and just plain happy.

“Thank you, but I know it’s not that good,” she insisted, leaning against the other side of the kitchen island from him, purposely keeping a good foot and a half of counter space between them.

“No. I mean it.” He groaned again, the sound to her lonely ears seeming decidedly sexual in nature. “I could die happy right now. It’s that good.”

“Then you’d never get to finish eating it,” she told him, gazing up into the most gorgeous pair of chocolate-brown eyes with lashes a woman would kill for, thick and full and dark.

“You’re right. I can’t die yet. I’ll eat the whole thing, and then…” He took another bite.

Amy laughed again, thinking it was an absolute joy to feed some people, to feed this man, especially.

He licked his lips, groaned again and now he smelled like lemon bars.

He’d taste that way, too.

She couldn’t help the thought. It was just there. She loved those lemon bars, and it occurred to her that she’d never tasted one on a man’s lips. And she wasn’t going to let herself start now.

She wasn’t even sure if he was just happy and having a good time, enjoying something sweet, or if he was flirting with her. Honestly, it had been that long since she’d been out in the man-woman world that she wasn’t sure.

This could all be wishful thinking on her part, nothing but a little bit of champagne and a great dessert to him. Although he did have a look that said perhaps he shouldn’t be sitting here laughing and having such a good time while eating her food.

She glanced down at his hand, looking for a wedding ring and finding none. Okay, he wasn’t wearing a ring. So what? Some men didn’t. And even if he was free as a bird, it didn’t mean anything.

He took another bite of his lemon bar, still appreciating every bit, still being very vocal in that appreciation, then adding, “I mean it. Never in my life have I—”

All of a sudden, Amy heard a hard tap-tap-tap of high heels across the hard tile floor of the kitchen. Tate obviously did, too, because they both turned toward the sound. She hadn’t heard anyone come in, had been sure they were alone.

Now, standing just inside the kitchen door was one of the most polished, perfectly put-together women she’d ever seen—a tall, regimentally thin blonde, wearing what Amy suspected was a very expensive designer suit, a cool, assessing look on her face and a hint of fire—possibly outrage—in her eyes.

“Never in your life have you…what, darling?” she asked.

Amy gulped, thinking this woman might be even more frightening than the housekeeper, Mrs. Brown, and feeling as if she’d been caught red-handed and not with a mess that had anything to do with sugar.

“Victoria?” Tate said, getting to his feet and going to her side, giving her a little peck of a kiss on her perfectly made-up cheek. “I didn’t know you were here.”

She laughed, clearly not amused. “Obviously.”

“I was going to say,” Tate told her, “that I’ve never tasted anything as delicious in my life as these lemon bars Amy made.”

A beautifully arched eyebrow arched even higher at that, Victoria’s look saying she didn’t believe a word of his explanation, although her gaze had to take in the fact that he had indeed been sitting here eating a lemon bar, Amy firmly on the other side of the kitchen island, not doing anything but…

Well, admiring the sights and sounds of him eating that lemon bar. But that was it. Everything else had been pure fantasy. Amy stepped back, clutching her dishcloth and wishing she could disappear behind it.

Victoria turned to Tate and asked, “Where are your clothes?”

Okay, that didn’t look so good—the fact that he was standing there in nothing but his pants.

“They’re right here,” Amy said, grabbing the white garbage bag that contained his things. “I had a little accident with some powdered sugar, and it got all over his shirt and…the rest of his things. Sorry.”

He walked over to her and took the clothes, mouthing “sorry” and looking like he meant it. Then he said out loud, “Thank you, Amy. I didn’t introduce the two of you. Victoria, this is Amy…I’m sorry, I don’t think I got your last name?”

“Carson,” Amy told them both, trying to look like someone who didn’t matter at all, someone here just to cook and stay out of the way and certainly not cause trouble.

“Victoria, this is Amy Carson,” Tate said. “Amy, this is Victoria Ryan, my fiancée.”

Fiancée?

“You two are the ones getting married?” she asked, smiling desperately.

“Yes. In four days,” Victoria said coolly, nodding barely in Amy’s direction. “And you are…?”

“House chef for the weekend. Something came up at the last minute with the man Eleanor hired, and she asked me to fill in,” Amy said, still clinging to that smile.

Victoria gave her the once-over, much as she’d done her shirtless fiancé, a most thorough assessment, then said, “You certainly don’t look like a chef.”

Amy felt her cheeks burn and felt decidedly bare everywhere else. “I made a mess of my chef’s coat, too.”

And then realized it sounded like they’d had some kind of crazy food fight, which she supposed was better than what it might have sounded like, with all that moaning and groaning Tate had been doing when his fiancée walked into the kitchen.

This was bad on so many levels.

She looked down at the floor, at the mess she was standing in, up to the ceiling, to the wide swath of countertop between her and Ms. Perfect, the perfect companion for Mr. Perfect. And then Amy’s gaze landed on the lemon bars. Thinking she had nothing to lose, and that the silly things did tend to put most anyone in a good mood, she picked up the platter they were on and held them out to Victoria.

“Lemon bar?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” the woman said.

“Well, we should let Amy get back to her work,” Tate said, then looked down at what was left of the lemon bar on his plate. Looked longingly, Amy thought, despite what had just happened.

His fiancée saw him, too, and shot him a look that said, “You’re kidding, right?”

He just smiled, grabbed the thing and practically shoved the rest of it in his mouth, and then led his fiancée out of the kitchen.

Amy stood there, watching them go, not listening in but not really able to keep from hearing as they walked away, either.

“What was that?” Victoria asked.

“Nothing. She told you that she spilled some powdered sugar. It was like a mushroom cloud, rising up and enveloping everything in its path—”

“Sugar? That’s what you have to say? Sugar? Tate, we’re getting married in four days—”

Tate tried to respond. “My clothes are right here in the bag. You can see for yourself—”

“You can’t do this now. Not now.”

“I didn’t do anything. Nothing happened. I stopped to talk to her little boy—”

“I didn’t see any little boy—”

“He was a mess, too. We put him in the shower—”

“We?” Victoria asked.

“Yes…I mean…Victoria, I am not this guy. You know that. I am not this guy—”

“I thought I knew that—”

“You know it. I’m not.”

And then Amy couldn’t hear any more.

They were gone.

Whew.

The weekend—and especially the job—had to get better from here, she told herself.

Eleanor felt a tad guilty when she saw how upset Victoria was, although it was reassuring that Victoria was at least capable of showing enough emotion to be upset. Maybe she wasn’t entirely as unfeeling as Eleanor feared.

“See, we told you to just let it be and see what happened,” Gladdy told her, having stood there beside Eleanor the whole time and listening to the whole encounter.

“It’s a start, I suppose,” Eleanor admitted. Still, time was so short, and she just wasn’t sure if anything could truly change the planned wedding at this late date. Tate loved plans, loved making them and then meticulously carrying them out, and the plan was to marry Victoria on Saturday.

“Suppose?” Kathleen gave a dismissive huff. “Look at Amy’s face right now, now that your godson’s gone, and tell me you can’t see exactly what she’s thinking.”

Eleanor peered around the corner once again and into the kitchen. Amy stood leaning back against the cabinets, eyes half shut, head tilted up toward the ceiling, a dreamy look on her pretty, young face.

“She’s thinking…it’s been a long time since she’s been anywhere near a man—any man—let alone one so gorgeous.”

“You got all that from one look?” Eleanor asked.

“No,” Gladdy admitted. “I know that from talking to her. Believe me, it’s been a ridiculously long time, but she’s had Max to take care of all on her own and work that barely pays their bills, and there just hasn’t been time for herself or anyone else. I doubt she’s had so much as a date in the last year.”

“Gladdy and I used to beg to be able to babysit for her while she went out,” Kathleen explained. “And the poor thing just wouldn’t do it. Said she’s sworn off men or some ridiculous thing like that.”

“Sworn off men? You brought someone here to lure my godson away from his fiancée within four days’ time, and she’s sworn off men? You didn’t tell me that,” Eleanor complained.

“Well, Amy obviously knows that was a mistake right now. Remember the way she looked when Tate took off his shirt? Or when she brushed sugar from his hair?”

“Yes.” Kathleen sighed, looking wistful. “Nothing like the sight of a beautiful man or the feel of running your fingers through his hair, that delicious feeling of anticipation of so much more.”

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Gladdy said.

Eleanor had to admit, “I don’t think Tate’s ever looked at Victoria like that.”

“Like he wants to drag her off into some dark corner and have his way with her?” Gladdy offered.

“Yes. Although, I’m sure he’s not a drag-her-off-into-a-dark-corner-and-have-his-way-with-her kind of man,” Eleanor admitted.

“What a pity.”

“Maybe we can change his mind,” Gladdy said. “Or maybe Amy can.”

Later that night, Tate sat outside on the patio, talking to one of his oldest and best friends. He still felt befuddled and was determined to lay out his supposed crimes in the most straightforward way possible in order to evaluate the seriousness of his offenses.

“So,” he concluded his scary tale of sugar-filled bliss in the kitchen that had turned to near-disaster in the blink of an eye, “let me have it. How bad do you think it was?”

“You got sugar all over you, took off a lot of your clothes, helped her get her kid in the shower and moaned and groaned while eating her lemon bars as Victoria walked in?” Rick asked, leaning back in the wicker patio chair.

Tate nodded. “That was it.”

“This other woman…she didn’t touch you?”

He frowned. “She brushed some sugar off me. Off my hair and my clothes.”

“And you didn’t touch her?”

“No,” Tate said quickly, then had to backtrack. “Wait. I did. I helped brush powdered sugar out of her hair. And off her neck. Maybe…yeah, her collarbone, I’m afraid.”

Rick frowned. “And you liked it, right?”

“I did.” Tate shook his head, the point where he crossed the line, right there. The neck. The collarbone. “That’s when I knew I was in trouble, when I knew I was doing something I probably shouldn’t have, as a man who’s engaged and getting married in four days.”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s where you messed up,” said Rick, who’d been married all of a year. “Tate, it’s not like you suddenly don’t notice other women or like you’re just…dead inside. It’s just that, you don’t get yourself into that kind of situation with another woman—”

“I didn’t think I was. I mean, those things she baked just smelled so good. That’s all it was. I swear. I couldn’t ignore that smell, and when I went into the kitchen, it was just the kid there, and I talked to the kid. Funny little kid—”

“Who told you about the whole sugar daddy thing?”

“Yeah.” Tate shook his head. Weird. Very weird. “And then, she came walking into the kitchen and poof! Before I even said anything to her or sensed any kind of impropriety in the situation, we’re enveloped in this cloud of powdered sugar.”

Rick shook his head. “That’s a story I haven’t ever heard before. Attacked by sugar. I had to take my clothes off, honest—”

“It’s not a story. It’s what happened. I swear,” Tate claimed, still feeling confused and fuzzy-headed from all the champagne. How had this happened to him?

“Were you drunk?” Rick tried. “Because, hey, it happens. We get drunk, we do things we wouldn’t normally do….”

“No, I wasn’t drunk. I was…just a little loose and happy. You know. Everything was good. I’m just going along living my life. Victoria’s father and all those guys from work keep making toasts to me and Victoria, and when your future father-in-law is making the toasts, you drink. You know?”

Rick nodded.

“And then…it’s like…I don’t know. It just happened.”

Rick leaned closer, whispering in case anyone else might be listening, because a dozen people had descended on the house. “You didn’t kiss her?”

“No! Nothing like that—”

“But you wanted to.”

Tate winced, not wanting to even think about that. “I…like—”

“Yeah, you wanted to,” Rick concluded, shaking his head like it wasn’t even a question.

“She had really nice hair,” Tate said. “It was reddish, and she had it in this braid. The sugar got in it, and I liked…trying to brush the sugar out of it. And then, her neck was right there. These little tiny curls that had escaped from her braid, right there against her neck, and she smelled so good. Like sugar and those damned lemon bars, and it’s been a long time since I kissed another woman. A long time. And all of a sudden, I’m thinking…I won’t ever kiss another woman again. I mean, not really kiss one. I mean, I shouldn’t. I don’t intend to….”

“But you wanted to,” Rick said again.

“Yeah, okay. For a second, I did. And then I thought…” Wait a minute. Stop. Back up. Trouble here. Get out. Get out right now. You are not this guy. You are not going to be this guy.

“So, you’re thinking…for old times’ sake? Last chance as a single man and all that?” Rick said.

“No. Really, no. It just kind of freaked me out that I wanted to. That I was curious about…what it would be like, and that…you know? I’m going along living my life, about to get married, and poof! Cloud of sugar, and I’ve got my hands in this woman’s hair, wanting to kiss her neck, even if it was just for a second or two. So, come on, tell me. How big of a jerk am I?”

“I don’t know. You’re in a gray area here,” Rick concluded. “It sounds like you really didn’t do anything awful—”

“I didn’t. I swear.”

“And we’re all human. From time to time…you know. You’re going to want to do things like that, but the key is that you don’t actually do it, and the way to do that is not to put yourself in the position to want to do it. So you don’t turn into that guy.”

“Right,” Tate said, taking some comfort in that. “Don’t get in that spot. Don’t be that guy. I should have just walked away.”

“Yes, you should have.”

“It was those damned lemon bars,” Tate said.

“Oh, please,” Rick scoffed. “They couldn’t have been that good.”

“You didn’t taste them. You didn’t smell them. I mean…they have to be in there, in the kitchen, right now.”

“And you are going nowhere near the kitchen, my friend. The kitchen is definitely off-limits to you.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I just have to stay out of the kitchen. That’s all. But you could go down there and get some for both of us. You just don’t know how good they were.”




Chapter Three


Amy did not sleep well.

She kept having nightmares in which she was being chased by a really scary bride wielding a giant hand mixer as a weapon. Really powerful mixers had always freaked her out a bit. And then the scene shifted, and she was some sort of human baked good, naked, rolled in powdered sugar and then put on display at the reception for the whole wedding party to see. She would swear she still had sugar all over her, despite having scrubbed herself completely in the shower last night. She thought she could still smell it on herself, too.

There might have been another dream where someone had been licking sugar off her body, but she refused to even think of that one, grimly forcing all such thoughts from her head.

She hadn’t allowed herself any thoughts remotely like that since Max was born, and that had worked just fine for her for so long. In fact, it had worked perfectly until a few hours ago. Right then, it was suddenly not okay that she hadn’t had a man’s hands on her in years, hadn’t sighed over the sight of one’s body or felt that little kick of anticipation that said something was going to happen.

Delicious, magical things.

It couldn’t have waited another three days? Tate would be safely married; Amy would be safely done with this first professional chef’s job. That was all she was asking for. Just a few days!

She’d imagined it all quite logically. She’d get a good job, the first one she’d ever really had, a little money in the bank, a safety net against hard times and unexpected expenses. Life would be good, settled, safe for the first time in years. And then, she’d see someone, a man, mildly interesting and attractive and she’d think…Okay, it’s time. She’d imagined herself tiptoeing, quite cautiously and sanely, back into the dating scene.

Not diving in, headfirst and naked, into a bowl of powdered sugar for someone to lick off her!

Amy willed herself to go back to sleep. She had to be up in a few hours to face Tate, Victoria and all their relatives; feed them; and hopefully become all but invisible to the entire wedding party for the duration.

She’d almost gotten back to sleep when she thought she heard someone fumbling around in the kitchen.

Amy sighed and looked at the clock.

Four o’clock in the morning?

She’d planned on getting up at 6:00 a.m. to feed any early risers who might show up in the kitchen soon after that, but 4:00 a.m. was ridiculous.

Still, someone was in there, banging the cupboards shut, fumbling with utensils. She feared if she didn’t get up and see what was going on that she might wake up to an even bigger mess than the one she’d made with the sugar.

She left Max sleeping soundly beside her, grabbed a fresh chef’s coat off a hanger in the closet and put it over her plain, cotton pajamas. She padded into the kitchen and found…

Oh, no!

Victoria!

Amy would have turned and run as fast as she could, but the woman spotted her first, looking like she might throw up at the sight of Amy.

She was still wearing that ultraperfect suit, except it wasn’t so perfect anymore. It was rumpled and wrinkled, the blouse unbuttoned by one too many buttons and coming untucked from her skirt, her hair falling out of that perfect knot it had been in earlier.

Amy decided right then that taking this job was a big, big mistake—a colossal, ultrahideous mistake. She had to find a way out of here right now. She and Max could go running off into the night, never to have to worry about Tate Darnley licking sugar off her again. But then Victoria, looking grayish in the face and clutching her stomach, spotted Amy and looked as miserable to see Amy as Amy was to see her—maybe even worse.

“Are you okay?” Amy asked finally.

“I’m afraid I don’t feel well,” Victoria whispered back. “I was looking for something to settle my stomach, and I couldn’t find anything in the guesthouse where I’m staying. Do you—”

“Let’s try some soda crackers to start with,” Amy suggested, because she knew where those were already. She took the box from the cabinet and handed them to Victoria. “Just nibble, very slowly. And I’ll look for some tea. Ginger is good for settling your stomach. Or mint.”

Amy found chamomile tea. That would do. She quickly grated a bit of fresh ginger to blend with it. There was a tap that dispensed hot water at the touch of a handle, and she soon had medicinal tea brewing in a small pot for poor Victoria.

Had she really made the woman sick? Just from the stress of Victoria finding Amy with Tate?

Then Amy had an even worse thought. Victoria hadn’t eaten anything Amy had cooked, had she? Because already, there were a number of freshly prepared pasta and vegetable salads in the refrigerator, each clearly labeled for the guests to help themselves. Being suspected—or responsible—for giving the bride food poisoning at her first real catering job would be a genuine nightmare.

Victoria nibbled her cracker, looking like she was afraid of every bite she took, like it might come back to haunt her. Amy stared at the tea, steeping it again and resigning herself to waiting a bit longer. With the fresh ginger, it needed a few minutes to brew, and minutes now felt like hours.

“I am so sorry about earlier,” Amy finally said. “I swear, my son was with your fiancé and me most all the time. Even when it didn’t look like he was, he was right back there in the bathroom, taking a shower. He’s only seven, and I left the door open so I could hear him in case he needed anything. He walked back in right after you left.”

Surely Victoria would get the fact that Amy wasn’t going to do anything inappropriate with a man with her son right there. Of course, her son had told Tate that Amy had a sugar daddy who took care of them both, so, if Victoria had heard about that, she might well think Amy would do just about anything.

“Your fiancé was a perfect gentleman,” Amy said.

Victoria made a face, closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her stomach again. Was she that insecure? That worried? That jealous? Was her fiancé that much of a jerk?

Amy steeped the tea bags again, thinking that surely in the entire course of human history time had never dragged by so slowly during the brewing of a single cup of tea. Finally, she thought it was ready. She’d have added sugar but was afraid to even touch the stuff in front of Victoria, so she just got out a mug and poured.

The woman picked up the mug, looked at it like it might contain some deadly poison. Honestly, did Amy look like some kind of food-poisoning home wrecker?

Victoria finally overcame her fears and took a sip of her tea.

Amy waited, Victoria waited, both holding their breath.

“Oh, no!” Victoria groaned as she turned around and threw up in the sink.

Amy fussed over her, brought her a warm, wet hand towel to wipe off with, brought her plain water to drink, got rid of all the crackers and tea in the vicinity, thoroughly flushed the mess in the sink and found some air freshener to try to kill the smell lingering in the kitchen.

Finally, she leaned back against the counter and waited, asking, “What else can I do?”

Victoria sniffled, wiped away a stray tear, looked as if she was trying to think of anything she might say and then just blurted out, “Do you know if, maybe, there’s one of those drugstores that stays open all night anywhere around here?”

Amy nodded. That wasn’t hard. “I passed a drugstore on my way here, but I didn’t notice if it stayed open all night or not. I could search the house for some medicine, if you’d like. There are ten bathrooms, at least. Surely I could find something to settle your stomach.”

Victoria shook her head, more tears falling. “I wish there was something that would settle my stomach.”

“What?” Amy didn’t get it.

“I didn’t think anything about it in the last few weeks, with all the stress of the wedding and everything, but tonight, I checked over my to-do list? It was not my daily to-do list but my master to-do list for the wedding.”

Amy nodded, as if it was perfectly normal to have daily to-do lists, master to-do lists and probably to-do lists in between.

“That’s when I realized,” poor Victoria said. “That…well…I think what I really need is…a pregnancy test.”

Amy waited, letting that fully sink in, managing to say nothing but a noncommittal “Oh.”

Perfect.

She was going to help Mr. Perfect’s fiancée find a pregnancy test? After fearing she might have broken up the wedding with the little sugar incident?

“And I know this isn’t fair at all,” Victoria said, sounding quite human now. “And I don’t really know you, and I wasn’t that nice to you before, and I’m sorry. Honestly, I am. This wedding…this wedding is about to make me crazy.”

“I hear they do that,” Amy said, trying to provide some comfort, wondering how Mr. Perfect felt about kids, hoping for Victoria’s sake and the kid’s sake that he liked them.

“Yeah, well, the thing is…could you possibly not tell anyone anything about this? I know it’s a lot to ask, and I’m sorry, but…could I trust you not to do that?”

“Of course.” Amy nodded. “You’ll want to tell people when the time is right, and I absolutely understand that it’s something you’ll want to tell your fiancé yourself, that it should be something private between the two of you. A beautiful moment for you.”

But Victoria didn’t look like she was expecting a beautiful moment. She looked like she was going to throw up again.

“Does he not want children? Because he seemed great with Max. Really comfortable and sweet with him.”

Victoria shook her head. “No, it’s not that.”

“Well, I know the timing might not be what you expected or planned, but still…You’re in love, and you’re going to have a baby.” Victoria looked even more grim. “Do you…not want children?”

“Of course,” Victoria confided, then backtracked a bit. “I think so. Someday. I just…I never thought that day would be now—or a few months from now. I just…I really don’t know what I want right now.”

“Well, okay. You need time.” Amy remembered well how that felt, from when she found out she was pregnant with Max. Adorable as he was, and as much as she loved him, he was the last thing she’d expected at that point in her life, and she had likely felt even less prepared than Victoria did now.

Amy took Victoria by the arm, guided her over to one of the high stools at the breakfast bar and urged her to sit, which Victoria did. Nothing else to eat or drink, not with her stomach as touch and go as it was at the moment, but she could at least sit. The woman looked like she was about to fall down.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Victoria cried.

“Well, first you have to find out for sure if you are pregnant,” Amy said.

That made sense. Amy doubted it would help, because she’d found that most women who were sobbing and saying they were afraid they were pregnant were well and truly pregnant. And they knew it. They’d just been too scared to have it confirmed. She knew that feeling well, from having tried to avoid for three solid months the knowledge that she was pregnant with Max.

“You know, I’m sure I’ll have to go out anyway in the morning,” Amy offered. “One of the guests will get up and ask for something I don’t have in the kitchen, and I’ll end up going to the grocery store. And when I do, I’ll get you a pregnancy test, okay?”

Victoria sniffled and stopped crying for a moment. “You’d do that for me?”

“Sure,” Amy said.

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I couldn’t stand to tell anybody I knew really well. I mean—”

“I understand perfectly.”

“They all think Tate’s perfect and that I’m perfect and that we’re perfect together. Which we are, actually. We’re just…perfect. We make perfect sense. We want the same things, have the same goals, have the same life plan and we even work in the same industry, so we understand all the pressures that go along with it and the sacrifices people make, and…it should be perfect. You know?”

Amy nodded, although honestly, she’d never been close to perfect in any aspect of her life. But she could see that Victoria obviously felt like that was the standard she needed to meet. Victoria certainly gave the initial impression of a woman capable of being perfect. And now, she was faced with failing in the perfection department, which seemed to be every woman’s lot in life, as far as Amy had seen, but she wasn’t going to explain that one to Victoria right now.

“One step at a time, okay?” Amy advised, because that did make sense. No sense looking two or three steps ahead. “I’ll get you the test in the morning, and I’ll bring it to you. Where did you say you’re staying?”

“The guesthouse, just down the driveway, past the pool and the tennis courts. Me and my parents. Eleanor, Tate’s godmother, thought we’d like the privacy of not being in the main house. Although, honestly, she and my mother have never gotten along. Something about a man, ages ago. I’ve always been too scared to ask. But Eleanor put us in the guesthouse. Which is fine, except…I’m scared my mother’s going to hear me throwing up. Oh, God, if my mother hears that…You don’t know what my mother’s like.”

“Perfect?” Amy guessed.

“She thinks she is,” Victoria said wearily.

And now, Amy really didn’t want to know Victoria’s mother.

“Okay,” she said, trying to keep Victoria focused on what was at hand, on the plan. “I’ll look for you in the guesthouse and try to avoid your mother at all costs. I just have to make sure everyone gets a good breakfast first, and then I’ll go to the store and I’ll bring the test back to you.”

Victoria nodded pitifully. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Tate woke up to a house that smelled even better than it had the night before, when the lemon bars were still warm and gooey and absolutely perfect.

How could that be? How could the woman, Amy, make something even better than those perfect lemon bars?

And he remembered the room he’d always occupied in his godmother’s house was almost directly above the kitchen. So whatever luscious things that happened to be cooking there he’d be smelling all weekend long.

He considered bashing his head against the big wooden headboard of the bed, hoping if not to drive the smell out of his brain, to perhaps knock himself unconscious, so as not to be tempted by whatever was going on in the kitchen.

Tempted by the smell, not tempted…the other way. The bad way. He was just hungry, he told himself. Hungry the regular way.

What was he supposed to do? Tate reasoned. Starve all weekend? Staying out of the kitchen was one thing but actually staying completely out of the kitchen for three more days was not going to work.

He’d just make Rick go into the kitchen and get Tate whatever he wanted. That was all. It made perfect sense. He could eat a woman’s food without wanting anything else from her, without getting into trouble or doing something stupid or making Victoria suspicious. Sure he could.

It was just food.

He got up and put on his sweats, because the grounds of Eleanor’s house were gorgeous, especially in the spring, and he loved to run here. He’d run far away from the kitchen, all the guests, Victoria and everything else. And then he’d have a perfectly reasonable breakfast without ever setting foot inside the kitchen.

It was a good plan, Tate decided. He ran until he was about to fall down, he was so tired, and without even thinking, he headed for the back door to the house to go inside and get cleaned up.

That’s when he saw Amy leaning over the trunk of a car, unloading groceries to carry inside.

Tate had already slowed to a walk, and now he slowed even more, to a pace more akin to a crawl. A gentleman would certainly help her carry in those bags, but a gentleman would also not have upset his fiancée mere days before their wedding and would certainly not break the promise he’d made to himself just last night by heading into the forbidden kitchen again.

He hesitated there, trying to decide what to do, and that’s when she looked up and saw him, looking not just uneasy at seeing him but downright guilty, he feared.

Ah, hell, he owed her an apology, too. Surely a gentleman would do that, at least. Apologize and then stay away. Maybe after getting a huge plateful of whatever she’d been serving for breakfast as he woke up, some luscious bacon thing. There was nothing like the smell of bacon to make a man ravenous in the morning.

Tate gave her a wary smile, a not-too-interested-but-not-too-guilty one, he hoped, then walked over to the open trunk of the car and said, “Let me help you with these.”

“No, it’s fine. I didn’t get much. Just a few special requests for some of the guests.” She hung on stubbornly to the bag he’d planned to take from her.

“Really, I insist. Eleanor would scold me if I let a lady haul these things in when I was right here to do it for her.”

She now had the one bag clutched to her chest like she’d fight him to the death for it, if it came down to that. “Okay,” she said. “But I’ve got this one. You can get the rest, if you really want to.”

Tate gave her a smile that he hoped didn’t look completely forced, took the rest of the bags from her trunk and followed her inside to the scene of his downfall the night before.

It was spotlessly clean, he noted, no traces of powdered sugar anywhere, and yet it smelled divine. Fresh bread, most certainly. A hint of bacon remaining. Eggs, he thought.

His stomach rumbled as he set the bags down on the countertop by the huge refrigerator. Amy shot him a look that said he had to be kidding to be back here, right now, at the scene of the almost-crime, just the two of them alone, and him wanting breakfast.

“Sorry,” he said, thinking if she offered him anything he’d just take it and run. No time for temptation of any kind. No guilt necessary. No upsetting Victoria or anyone else.

She sighed, put the small bag she’d been carrying down in the farthest corner of the kitchen and said, “You missed breakfast.”

“Yes, I did,” he said, staying carefully in his spot, far away from her.

“And I’m here to feed the guests, so I suppose I’ll have to feed you.”

He swallowed hard, his stomach thrilled at the offer, his taste buds, too, his head telling him to be smart, to get out. But it was three days until the wedding. He’d have to eat sometime, wouldn’t he?

It wasn’t like the woman held some kind of special powers over him. She was just a woman who’d been momentarily covered in powdered sugar while he’d been tipsy, rethinking his soon-to-be lost bachelorhood and had a momentary lapse, nothing more. Surely he could eat her food and not want to do anything else to her. It was a new day, after all. He was himself again, a good guy, a logical, reasonable guy, getting ready to marry a wonderful woman, perfect for him in every way.

So it wasn’t some crazy, intense, hormone-fueled kind of passion between them. It was something infinitely more substantial than that. An honest respect and affection that had grown slowly over time into what he believed would be a dynamic, powerful, longstanding partnership, something that had a shot of withstanding the test of time far greater than any silly infatuation.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

“Thank you,” he said, smiling with nothing but politeness, he hoped. “I’d love some breakfast.”

“Sit,” she said, pointing to a high stool at the breakfast bar on the far side of the kitchen, putting cabinets and a couple of feet of highly polished black granite between them.

Perfect.

He’d stay on his side, and she’d stay on hers.

And he’d get fed and leave.

No harm done.

He went obediently to his side of the kitchen and sat, hoping no one walked by and saw him there, just…because.

Because he didn’t want to look guilty. Didn’t want to feel guilty. Didn’t want to do anything that required him to feel guilty. Because he was a good guy.

This could be like a little test he gave himself, he decided. He was a man getting married to a wonderful woman, and he could sit in this kitchen with an attractive redhead who cooked like a dream and not do anything but appreciate her…food. Yeah, this was all about the food.

He’d been bewitched by her food.

She had a nice smile, he admitted to himself, because he always tried to be honest with himself. And she smelled good, but that was mostly about the food, too, because she always smelled good enough to eat.

Oops.

No, he was okay. He was going to get it back, that Zenlike calm of a man certain of his decision to be married in three days, certain he’d done the right thing.

“Just give me a minute to put these things away, and I’ll find you something to eat,” Amy said, making quick work of that chore and then facing him from the side of the big stainlesssteel refrigerator.

“Fine. Great. Thank you.”

Yeah, he was okay.

She hummed while she worked, he realized while staying far, far away from her, as far as he could get and still be in the kitchen. Her hair was back in the braid, but obviously didn’t want to stay there. It looked as if it was constantly fighting to get out, little red tendrils of curls going this way and that.

Delicate, fieryred circles on the pale skin of her neck.

He closed his eyes, trying to block out the thought, but it was a mistake, because it made him remember being up close and personal with that neck the night before. Remembering a fine coating of powdered sugar on that neck and the urge he’d had to lick it off.

Tate winced, groaned, shook his head to block out that image, and then found Amy had turned to stare at him.

“Are you okay?”

No, he was crazy, he decided. Weddingderangement syndrome. Surely such a thing existed. Other perfectly sane, reasonable people just went nuts. Look at Victoria, after all, and how wacky and uptight she’d been the past few weeks.

“I’m fine,” he insisted to Amy, telling himself to get out, now, while he still could.

But then Amy said, “I made bacon and spinach quiche, fresh croissants, fried potatoes and freshcut fruit this morning. I could warm up something for you.”

He felt every bit of his resolve to save himself slipping away, as he once again lied to himself, pledging that he was strong enough and smart enough to simply eat this woman’s wonderful food and not get into any other sort of trouble with her.

“Okay,” he agreed.

“So what would you like?”

“All of it,” he said.

She looked back at him questioningly.

“I’ll just…” Was that bad? It all sounded so good. It had all smelled so good. He wanted it all. He shrugged, as if he could still pretend he didn’t want her food so much that he was risking his entire future by being here in the kitchen with her to get it. “My run this morning…You know? I’m always famished after a run. Anything you have is fine. Anything quick and not too much trouble.”

Was that agreeable enough? He hoped so. He certainly didn’t want to cause any more trouble. Please, let him not cause any more trouble for anyone, especially himself.

“Okay.” She nodded, pulling a big bowl out of the refrigerator and scooping out a serving of mixed fruit. “You can start with this while I warm up a plate of quiche and potatoes for you.”

She put the bowl down in front of him, along with a pretty cloth napkin and polished silver utensils, then she promptly turned her back on him to go to work on the rest.

Tate dug in to the fruit like a man half starved to death. Just plain cut-up fresh fruit. Nothing special about it, he told himself. She hadn’t done anything to it, so it had to be his imagination that it was really, really good. Or maybe the sheer anticipation of what was to come, what he’d smelled this morning—bacon, eggs in the quiche, fried potatoes, freshly baked croissants. He soon smelled it all again as she warmed things in the microwave.

He sat obediently on his stool, still having gone undetected in the kitchen with her, not doing anything untoward at all, feeling quite proud of himself. He was back, Tate the good guy, soon-to-be married, and all was right with the world. She put a plate of luscious-smelling, beautiful food down in front of him. He could smell the bacon, the golden crust of the quiche, the onions and spices mixed in with the potatoes, the warm croissant.

“Anything else I can get you?” she asked politely.

He smiled, again not too friendly, and said, “No, thank you. This is perfect. Just perfect.”

She put a small dish of butter in front of him, a salt shaker, then frowned at the pepper shaker in her hand. “Just a second. I bought fresh peppercorns for the grinder. I just think fresh pepper tastes better.”

She turned to find the little plastic grocery bag she’d stashed in the far corner of the kitchen, picked it up and pulled out a little jar, but when she went to put the bag back down on the counter, she didn’t quite make it. The bag caught half on the edge, half off, and then slid to the floor. A little spice bottle rolled toward him, and Tate bent to pick it up.




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