The Best for Last (5 page)

Oh my
. Kitty could feel tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Sweetheart!” Dad looked alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“That's…that's the most
wonderful
thing I've ever heard in my life!” Kitty said. Then Sharon burst into tears as well and the two of them hugged for a third time.

Steve and Dad grinned at one another the way guys do when they see women acting weepy.

“This calls for more champagne!” Dad said jovially, waving the waiter over to the table. He turned to Kitty. “So what do you say, sweetheart? Will you do me the honor of being my best man?”

“Of course!” Kitty's head began to swim. Her father was getting
married
. To the lovely and totally age-appropriate Sharon, who had two daughters and an indeterminate number of grandchildren. The whole thing seemed so
normal
.

“So what are your plans?” Steve asked.

“We're hoping to get married next weekend,” Sharon said.

“Next weekend?” Kitty squeaked. “As in,
next
weekend?”

“I know it doesn't give us much time, but like Alan said, all we want is a quiet, intimate family wedding.”

Dad's voice got husky with emotion. “We've waited all our lives to find one another and we don't want to waste another second.”

Kitty blinked. The whole thing was so…romantic. “Where will the wedding take place?”

“That's the best part!” Dad said. “We want to do it right here in Whispering Bay. That way Sharon's family can make a beach vacation out of it. There's nothing like the beautiful blue waters of the gulf, is there, Kitten?”

“Uh, no. Good idea, Dad,” she said weakly. Her father was getting married next weekend.
Here
. In Whispering Bay. And she was the best man! She was thrilled, of course. But she was still trying to figure out how the whole thing had happened.

“Kitty and I would be honored to host a dinner the night before the wedding,” Steve announced.

They would
?

“Oh, that's so nice, but not necessary,” Sharon said.

Steve took Kitty's hand and laced it through his. “We insist, don't we, hon?”

“Yes! Um, yes, we insist. Please, we'd love to host a dinner for you and the whole…family.” It occurred to her that not only would Sharon be her new stepmother, but she'd have stepsisters, as well. And stepnieces and nephews? Was that a thing? Her head started spinning again and she hadn't even had that much to drink. Had she?

“Fantastic!” said Dad. Then he poured her some more champagne and the last thing Kitty remembered was Steve shaking his head and laughing as he helped her climb into bed later that night.

CHAPTER FIVE

K
itty opened one eye to see a bright, angry light streaming in through the blinds in her bedroom window. Her head spun and her mouth felt as if it were stuffed full of sand. “Why is the sun mad at me?” someone croaked.
Oh God
. She was that someone.

“Good morning, beautiful.” Steve placed a tray next to her on the bed. “Or should I say, good afternoon?”

She sat up and blinked. Afternoon? How long had she slept? The smell of something fattening and delicious hit her nostrils. Maybe life was worth living after all. “Is that bacon?”

“And coffee and eggs and toast. As well as a couple of Tylenol.” He grinned. “How are we feeling this morning?”

“
We
feel like crap.”
He
, on the other hand, looked completely unaffected by last night's shenanigans. He wore a red, short-sleeved polo shirt and beige shorts with docksiders. Casual, yet neatly masculine at the same time. She downed the Tylenol then reached out for a strip of bacon. It was perfectly crisp, exactly the way she liked it. Still, she wasn't letting him off the hook that easy. “Why did you let me drink so much last night?”

Steve sat on the edge of the bed. “I don't know. You're kind of cute when you're drunk. Plus, then I can have my way with you.”

She glanced down to find herself wearing nothing but an old T-shirt of his. “Did we have sex and I just don't remember?”

He pretended to look wounded. “Are you telling me you can't remember what happened last night? The, and I don't think I'm exaggerating here when I quote you, ‘greatest night of your life'?”

She gulped down a big swig of the coffee. “Did I really say that?”

“Yep. You did.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You're in an awful good mood. And I know it's not because we had sex last night, because believe me, I might not remember everything, but I would have remembered
that
.”

He leaned over and pecked her on the cheek. “Good to hear I'm still memorable in the sack.”

Her mind rewound its way back to last night's events.
Oh no. Please. Let this be some kind of drunken hallucination.
“Did I…did I tell my father I was going to give him a bachelor party?”

“Yeah, but you called it a stag party.”

“Oh my God.”

Steve laughed. “Don't worry, he said it was unnecessary.”

“And…the wedding is a week from today and we're really hosting a party for them the night before? I mean, all that
did
happen. Sharon isn't just a figment of my imagination?”

“It all happened. As a matter of fact, they're right next door.”

“Who? Sharon and my dad? What are they doing at Viola's?”

“Wow. Remind me never to feed you champagne. They're next door, as in, the bedroom next door.”

Kitty sat all the way up. “My dad and Sharon are in this house? Right this very minute?”

He frowned. “You didn't want them to go to a hotel in Panama City or Destin, did you? I mean, I just assumed you'd want them here so I invited them.”

“Of course, yes. Good thinking.” She shoved another piece of bacon in her mouth.

“Are you all right? Just the other night you said how much you wanted your dad to find a nice woman to settle down with. I would think you'd be ecstatic.”

“Of course I'm ecstatic! It's just…all happening so fast.”

“Finish your bacon and go back to bed,” he said. “I got this.”

“What exactly do you
got
?”

“The wedding. We only have a week to go so we had to work quick. I already booked a private room at The Harbor House for the family dinner. The events manager is emailing me a menu, but I thought I'd leave the food details up to you and Sharon. As for the flowers and the music, that's gonna be a tough one on such short notice, but I've got Stacey making calls.” He glanced at his watch. “Your dad and Sharon have a meeting with the Reverend Donalan this afternoon and then later your dad has a fitting for a new suit, so we need to scram.”

He was arranging for flowers and music?
“But…how—”

“Don't look so shocked, Rip Van Winkle. While you've been sleeping the day away, everyone else has been busy. Apparently, Sharon and your dad are big members of the Methodist church where they live, so they've already gotten the green light from their minister back home.”

Kitty shook her head, trying to clear it. His Rip Van Winkle joke wasn't far off the mark. It was as if she'd woken up in an entirely different universe in which Steve had become the Martha Stewart of wedding planners. An image of him going over wedding cake samples almost made her giggle. Except…it really wasn't funny.

A tiny voice in her head said that something wasn't right here. When it came to business, Steve was an action guy, no doubt about it. But helping her father plan his wedding? It was as if he couldn't sit still. Like there was something else going on beneath the surface and he was covering it up with this uncharacteristic flurry of activity. Or was she just being paranoid again? He'd spent the entire day helping her father plan his wedding while she'd snoozed away a major hangover. Maybe guilt was making her see something that wasn't there.

“You're taking my dad to get fitted for a suit?”

“You're a little slow on the uptake today, huh? We have exactly six days to pull this wedding together. So yeah, I hooked him up with a guy in Destin who owns a men's shop. Then afterward, we're playing a round of golf.” He walked over to the closet and pulled out a small suitcase. “I'm going to move into the Mexico Beach house for a few days. I need to go through the house before the inspection and take out the fixtures that aren't in the contract. You know, the stuff I bought in Italy. That'll take a while and it seemed dumb to keep going back and forth from the house to here.”

He was moving into the Mexico Beach house
?

“I'll go with you,” she blurted.

“And leave your dad and Sharon here all alone? I thought you could use some alone time with them before the wedding. To get to know Sharon better.”

His explanation about wanting to go to the Mexico Beach house seemed completely reasonable, thoughtful even, but in the almost year they'd been together, they'd never slept apart. The idea of him not being here when she got home from work… She missed him already. Which was ridiculous. He hadn't even left yet.

“How long will you be at the beach house?” she asked, gingerly making her way out of bed. She needed to shower and get with the program.

“Like I said, just a few days. I thought maybe one night this week we could say good-bye to the house. In style. I'll even cook dinner.” His dark eyes got that smoky look in them that she instantly recognized, and she was flooded with relief. She knew him well enough by now to know exactly what “in style” was code for.

#

“So you're skipping out on Bunco this week to have good-bye sex with Steve?” Pilar asked, taking a sip of her mocha skinny fake-milk latte (with the real sugar added).

It was Monday morning at The Bistro and Kitty had dropped by to have an impromptu powwow with Shea and Pilar. Frida had brought them their coffee and bagels and had decided to join them in a table near the back facing the gulf.

“Just good-bye to the house,” Kitty said, careful not to let her temper get away from her. “Not good-bye to
us
.” She'd been avoiding Shea and Pilar ever since last week's disastrous Bunco night, but she couldn't keep the news of her father's wedding from them for long. Or from the rest of the town, either.

“Tell me it isn't true,” Betty Jean Collins had said, grabbing her by the arm the second she'd walked in The Bistro door this morning.

Kitty liked Betty Jean the way you liked sesame seeds on your bagel. They were there for a purpose, but what that purpose was she didn't know. Then of course, there was the way they got stuck in your teeth… “What isn't true?” she'd asked.

“That your father is getting married before you!”

“It's true,” Kitty had replied.

“I heard your man already moved out. I hope you aren't mad at me about the card.”

Kitty had been about to set Betty Jean straight about Steve “moving out” when the last part of her sentence struck home. “Card? What are you talking about?”

Betty Jean had blinked. “Never mind. Just remember, if it wasn't me, it would have been someone else. A man like yours…well, I guess technically he isn't
yours
. But a man like that isn't going to stay available for long. Gotta go now!” Then she'd scrambled back to join the rest of her group at their table.

It was official. If men were from Mars and women were from Venus, then Betty Jean was from a different galaxy all together.

“I had the weirdest Betty Jean encounter just a few minutes ago,” she said to the girls. “Well, weirder than usual anyway.”

Pilar, Shea and Frida all gave each other guilty looks. “What kind of encounter?” Frida asked cautiously.

“Something about giving Steve a card. And she knew Steve had moved into the Mexico Beach house, which is strange, because how on earth did she find out about that?”

Pilar put her coffee down with a sigh. “I'm afraid everyone knows, Kit.”

“Everyone? What do you mean?”

“Viola saw Steve put a suitcase in his truck and then she mentioned it to Gus, who told her that Steve is staying at the Mexico Beach house. From there it spread to the rest of the Gray Flamingos, and then of course I knew from you, and then—”

“Never mind,” Kitty said wearily. “You're right. Everyone knows.”

Shea shook her head. “You can't keep news like that a secret in Whispering Bay.”

“He only moved into the house so he can do some work on it before the inspection. He has some really lovely pieces in there that aren't part of the sale and he's going to remove them and replace them with other fixtures. Like this gorgeous sink in the kitchen that he bought in Milan. He's taking that out to put it…well, you know, in another house someday.”

This was met with silence.

“Honest. We're all good,” she said. “You should see how much work he's doing for Dad's wedding.”

“Speaking of which, I met Sharon,” Frida said, perking up. “She and your dad came by early this morning for coffee and muffins and she invited us to the ceremony.”

“She did?” Kitty tried not to look as surprised as she felt.

“Of course she did,” Pilar said. “We told her all about how we've been your best friends since fourth grade, which makes us like your sisters, really, and how the rest of the Bunco Babes are like your family, so she invited us all to come. She seems perfect, Kit, not at all like your dad's usual type. You must be so happy!”

“I am,” she admitted. And she was. Yes, of course she was.

“How's your mom taking the news?” Pilar asked.

“I haven't spoken with her yet,” Kitty admitted.

“Don't put that off,” Shea said. “You know how testy she can be. So what are you wearing to the wedding? I hear you're going to be the best man,” she added with a giggle. “Which is just so dang sweet.”

“I'm going shopping with my dad later this week.”

“Wear green. You look fabulous in green,” Shea said.

“Shea's right,” Pilar said. “Pick out something green. Or blue. You look good in that, too.”

“And the wedding is going to be at the Methodist church? What about the reception?” Frida asked. “And who all is going? We want details!”

“Rehearsal dinner is at The Harbor House and the reception will take place immediately after the ceremony at my house, catered by some company in Panama City that Steve's assistant found. It will be simple and elegant. Cold shrimp, canapés, champagne, and cake. The flowers and the organist have already been taken care of and Sharon's two daughters will be her matrons of honor. They're wearing peach, so I'm not sure about the green. Dad will be wearing a dark blue suit, so I was thinking of coordinating with him. As for the guest list, it will mainly be Sharon's family and Steve and I. And well, all of you, I guess.”

“Wow,” Shea said. “You did all that in two days? I'm impressed.”

“Actually, Steve did most of it. I told you, he's really into this wedding.”

More silence. Which wasn't like them at all. Usually her friends had absolutely no trouble saying exactly what was on their minds.

“Okay, what's going on?” Kitty demanded.

Frida sighed. “I think this should come from one of you,” she said to Shea and Pilar.

“Rock, paper, scissors?” Shea asked.

Pilar nodded. She tossed out scissors but Shea won out with rock.

“Best two out of three?” Pilar pleaded.

Kitty crossed her arms over her chest. “Out. With. It.”

Pilar put on her I-have-to-give-someone-bad-news face. “Did it occur to you that maybe the reason Steve is so into this wedding is because he's trying to avoid
another
wedding?” she suggested softly.

Kitty opened her mouth to speak, then snapped it shut.
Damn it.
She really hated when they were right. She blinked back a tear. “It might have occurred to me, maybe. I don't know.”

Frida took her hand. “I swear, Kit, just say the word and Steve is persona non grata here. If he wants coffee, he'll have to go to the Starbucks in Destin. Or make it himself.”

What
?

Kitty snatched her hand away. “Is that why you were so rude to him the other morning? Because you think he's just messing with me?”

“I wasn't rude to him. Not really,” Frida said defensively. “I just told him he had to pay extra for his milk.”

“I'm only going to say this one more time,” Kitty said as sternly as possible. “Steve and I are fine. And if we're not…then we'll work it out. But if you're rude to him, then you're rude to me. Got it?”