Kittenfish: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romantic Comedy

by Brenda Lowder

  Kittenfish Copyright © 2020 by Brenda Lowder.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including digital storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, specific locations, and incidents are either imaginary or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  Published by Bold Wanderer Press.

  Cover design by Julianne Burke at Heart to Cover LLC.

  Editing services by Happily Editing Anns.

  www.brendalowder.com

  Acknowledgments

  This story has been six years in the making—from that first flash of an idea in the shower one morning to the one million thirty-seventh revision that is now complete and bound with paper and glue or pixels and can therefore no longer be altered, forever and ever, the end. Or so I’m telling myself. It’s the story I wanted to tell, the book of my heart, and the title that captured my imagination.

  A big thank you to my insanely talented cover artist Julianne Burke Fangmann of Heart to Cover LLC, and to my fabulous and almost clairvoyant editors, Ann Suhs and Ann Riza of Happily Editing Anns.

  Thank you to my dear friends and early readers Selena Darter, Amy Maclure, Heather Jenkins, Dawn Anderson, Heather Ratliff, and Jenn Chini. Thanks to my critique partners and awesome writers Jeff Lowder, Kerrie Turner, Jill Cobb, Terra Weiss, Deena Short, Shelby Van Pelt, Jenny Ling, Eliza Peake, and Sarah Murphy.

  Thanks to encouraging friends Sandra Ho, Nadia Turner, and Mychelle Rucker.

  I am beyond blessed to belong to some groups of amazing and generous writers.

  Thanks to the amazing Forum Writers, especially Sharon Pegram, Mary Beecroft, Deborah Mantella, Gary Henderson, Eleanor Egan, Jill Glascock, D’Ann Renner, Johnna Stein, Amy Williams, John Witkowski, Harmon Snipes, Gary Smith, Charly S., Robert Snipes, Peter Bein, Uchenna Okafor, Mr. Kim, Dee Huggins, Brooke Metz, Wendee VanOrder, Kathy Powers, and the late Kirk Martin.

  Thanks to my Persisters, the Romance Writers of America ® Golden Heart ® class of 2018 and their support and generosity.

  Thanks to Georgia Romance Writers ® and the wonderful authors I’ve gotten to know through this amazing organization. I’m also in love with their annual conference, Moonlight and Magnolias.

  Thanks to the Atlanta Writers Club and their awesome conference.

  Thanks to Laurie Scheer and the fantastic writing program and conference of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  Thanks to my Moms Write group, especially Laura Taylor, Jacquie Bosma, Joanna Borseth-Ortega, Majken Selinder Nilsson, Liz Saigal, Shekeenah Reynolds, and Tara Sabo.

  Thanks to Diana A. Hicks, Kat Mizera, and Karla M. Jay for advice and encouragement.

  Additional thanks to Selena Darter and Rowboat Web Services for my beautiful website brendalowder.com.

  Thanks to the wonderful author friends who’ve inspired and helped me, especially Nicki Salcedo, Sally Kilpatrick, Tracy Solheim, Susan Carlisle, and Tanya Agler.

  Thanks to the amazing Sarra Cannon for all her wise advice and her wonderful Heart Breathings group.

  Thanks to all my family on both sides. I love you all!

  Thanks most of all to my best friend and true love, Chris, who makes every day a romantic adventure, and to our two amazing children, who fill my world with wonder.

  Thank you to my readers! I’m humbled and grateful that you would choose to spend time with my stories. I wish you all your own happily ever after.

  Also by Brenda Lowder

  Keeping the Pieces

  Body Jumping

  For my stars, Ards and Dars

  Chapter One

  Please, God. Anything but a strip club.

  “What?” My mother squeals through the phone at my ear. “Liam’s going to a strip club for his bachelor party tonight?”

  “What? No. Of course not.” I lean my back against the front door. New rule for Marissa Ryan’s Guide to Life: Keep all internal fears just that—internal. “Liam’s friends are taking him to Topgolf to whack golf balls off the side of half a building tonight.”

  I have zero worries that Liam would go to a strip club. He’s as committed and fulfilled in our relationship as I am. He wouldn’t dream of going. Viewing other women half-naked or fully naked would bore him to tears. He always told me that once he met me there wasn’t another woman in the world who’d hold his interest. He said I was his everything bagel—managing to work a reference to our shared love of deli foods and the place we met into the same romantic sentiment. And of course he’s my everything bagel too. Although secretly I call him my asiago bagel because I like those more, but I just don’t tell him. He’s a little too attached to his metaphor.

  It’s me I’m worrying about going to a strip club. Kya and Blaire had better not spring one on me. I’m not willing to see any naked chests that don’t belong to Liam. And he just has the one.

  “So what’s this about a strip club?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just a joke Blaire made. You know how she is. But I convinced her to keep the bachelorette party to something I want to do. We’re going to a Sip ’n Paint place to create drunk masterpieces.”

  “That sounds like fun, sweetheart.” Despite her words, I can hear the frown in my mother’s voice. She’s silently objecting to the drunk part. “Although not really advisable for the night before the wedding.”

  A trail of rising bubbles floats through me. I’m getting married tomorrow. To the man I love. Forever. My joy is so big it will pop free of my body, and I’ll be able to dance around the room with it.

  There’s a shuffle on the front path, and I spin around to peer out the peephole. Liam’s brown loafers step into view.

  “Mom, I’ve gotta go. Liam’s here.” Even after three years, saying his name makes my heart fly.

  “Have fun at the Sip ’n Paint!”

  “I will!”

  “And don’t worry about any of the wedding details. It’ll all go perfectly.”

  With my mom running the show, it was sure to. “Thanks, Mom. Bye.”

  “Bye!”

  I tuck the phone into my ruffled apron pocket. The doorbell rings and my heart does the rumba—it would take two to tango—like it always does when I know Liam’s waiting on the other side. I take a deep breath, smooth my skirt, and count to three before marching in place so it doesn’t appear I’ve been lurking in my entryway waiting for him. Which I have.

  I flex my smile muscles and fling the door open.

  “Hello, gorgeous.” Liam lounges in the doorway, and that, right there, those words, are what make me melt into a chocolate ganache. An overheated chocolate ganache without a double boiler, cooking right on the burner. He makes me feel beautiful, and my heart warms under the heat lamp of his smile.

  “Marissa.” His perfect mouth caresses my name.

  “Liam.” I throw my arms around him and mold my lips to his until I can’t breathe and have to step back for air. He works his hands up between us and only then do I notice the bouquet.

  “Flowers!” I beam my appreciation and take them into the kitchen. There’s a quote from my favorite French film that says deep down women know love doesn’t exist and so they cherish the proof of it—jewelry, chocolates, flowers. I, on the other hand, know love exists. My parents are a glued and glittered shining example of it, but I don’t mind receiving steady proof.

  Liam trails me to the kitchen, pulling off his tie as I fill the vase with water. “This is such a treat.” I gesture to the flowers but also to him. The
wedding may be tomorrow, but we’re maintaining our separate residences until then. I don’t always get to see him right after work. Starting tomorrow I’ll get to see him all the days forever after.

  “Tarek’s picking me up. Or I’m driving him.” He shrugs and hangs his tie over the back of a kitchen chair. I almost want to take a picture of this tiny symbol of our upcoming joint domesticity. “He and Kya are riding over together.”

  My best friend and her brother often share rides. Tarek annexed himself to our friendship when Kya and I were in fifth grade together after my family moved from southern California to Atlanta. Twenty years later we still haven’t shaken him.

  “Great.” I finish arranging my flowers and put them in the center of the table, rotating the vase a quarter turn so the Stargazer lily catches the light on its pink-tinged petals. “Blaire should be here at seven.” Blaire’s my best work friend and has never been Liam’s—or anyone else’s—favorite person.

  Liam rolls his eyes. “If she’s not late.”

  “She won’t be late,” I say automatically.

  He cocks his head and gives me a knowing look. “She’s always late.”

  “She’s not always late.” I hurry on before he can contradict me, “And I know she won’t be late tonight for my bachelorette party that she planned.” Which had better not be a strip club.

  The doorbell rings, and Liam pushes off from where he’s leaning on the counter to answer it.

  I can hear Tarek’s attention-seeking voice before they’re even through the door.

  “Wow! Smells good in here, Duchess. What’re you cooking?”

  Inside, deep inside where I bury all my middle school and, okay, high school and college social trauma, I bristle at the nickname. Tarek began calling me “Duchess” on that humiliating day back in seventh grade. A day that remains the pinnacle of the worst days of my life, right above getting two teeth drilled before the novocaine kicked in and squatting in the swim team yearbook photo so the tampon string on the inside of my thigh was memorialized. But my face betrays nothing. Like my mother before me, I’ve learned how to keep it all locked inside and make an outward show of poise and restraint.

  “Peanut butter cookies,” I say as I take them out of the oven using the pastel floral mitts my mother made me for Christmas to coordinate with the matching ruffled apron she had made.

  “Are you going to put the chocolate on top?” Tarek crowds his six-foot two-inch frame into my tiny kitchen and my even tinier personal space to peer at the cookies. I flatten myself against the counter to avoid brushing up against him. Some women—weak, sad, intelligence-challenged women—think he’s breath-catchingly attractive, and he thinks we all do. He’s suave and slick and a total player. He’s everything that’s wrong with the dating pool today and the reason I’ve stuck to the shallow end wearing floaties. Until I met Liam, of course.

  My mouth presses into a hard line. “When they cool. When I get back from the party.”

  “You think Blaire’s throwing the kind of bachelorette party you can put your feet up and eat some cookies after?” my bestie Kya asks as she strolls into the kitchen. I leave my cookies to go hug her.

  “Yes. Because that’s what I asked for. A bachelorette party with just you two at a Sip ’n Paint where I can create a bad landscape I’ll hang on the inside of my closet.”

  “Yes, please tell me it will be that type of party.” Liam’s hazel eyes sparkle, and his grin is wry.

  Kya shakes her head. “Have you met Blaire?” My shoulders fall, and I mentally resign myself to whatever night of reckless abandon Blaire will shove me into. Anything short of a strip club.

  “I thought you’d be freaking out about the wedding more.” She changes topics and looks me over with narrowed eyes, presumably for signs of stress or an impending Bridezilla rampage.

  I smile and radiate the peace I feel. “It’s all done. The venue, the decorations, the caterers. It’s all handled, and Mom’s on call for any last-minute emergencies, which she says I’ll never have to know about.”

  Kya bobs her head knowingly. “Yeah. Your mom’s awesome.”

  “She really is.”

  “Tell her I want her to plan my wedding. In two years. After I find a fiancée.”

  “Will do.”

  “You ready?” Liam nods at Tarek in that bro’s way that can mean asking a question or answering it and anything in between.

  “I guess, since I’m not getting any cookies.” Tarek lingers too long on the word and makes it sound suggestive.

  “I always get cookies.” Liam smiles smugly, and I tilt my face up for a kiss, but he bypasses me and snags an actual cookie from the pan.

  “Wow! That’s hot.”

  “Told you,” I say without looking over.

  “Hey, throw me one,” Tarek says over my head.

  “No, don’t,” I tell them both.

  Liam ignores me and flips one from the pan straight into Tarek’s waiting hand.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s hot.” Tarek winks at me and then ducks as I brandish my oven mitt at him. “Don’t wait up for him, Duchess!” He drags Liam out the door so fast I don’t have a chance to kiss my fiancé goodbye.

  Kya munches on a cookie beside me. “Yup. I give it another two weeks and Tarek will have Liam forgetting your birthday and ducking your calls.”

  “Bite your tongue.” A deep rumble in my stomach that’s more than hunger disturbs my sense of well-being. I ignore it and transfer the rest of the cookies to a plate. The rising panic started three months ago when Tarek took a genuine interest in befriending Liam. Tarek is the textbook definition of a player. The last thing I want is for him to rub off on Liam in any way. But I’m stuck because my best friend will never ditch her hip-attached brother.

  “Since Liam and I are getting married tomorrow,” I remind her, “Liam will be too busy on our honeymoon in the Bahamas to get further corrupted by Tarek.”

  Kya laughs. “You’re right. Liam’s spared for those two weeks at least.”

  By the time Blaire arrives—late by almost seventeen minutes—Kya and I have eaten most of the cookies and decided that Ryan Gosling should be single (me) and Jennifer Lawrence should be gay (Kya).

  “What up, nerds?” Blaire greets us each with an insult and a hug but refuses to come inside, claiming we’ll make her late. She’s polished posh with an edge in her tight black skirt and revealing sequin-trimmed top while Kya is casual comfort in jeans and a T-shirt, and I’m what I’ve secretly dubbed romantic restraint in a knee-length straight skirt and cream-colored blouse with a bow.

  I glance at Kya, still looking for a clue about tonight. She shrugs, and I give up because tonight, apparently, is now. “We’re ready,” I tell Blaire.

  “You’d better be,” she says as she pulls me by my arm out the door and into the adventure of the night. Which had better not be a strip club.

  Chapter Two

  It’s a strip club.

  The car rolls up to the line in the parking lot. Before us rises the giant illuminated boot and spur of the largest male strip club in Atlanta, Cowboy Corral.

  “Wow.” I mentally sort through my emotional knots and wonder how I’m going to make it through tonight.

  “Wait till you see the inside!” Blaire bounces in her seat and points out the valet stand to Kya, who’s driving.

  “You’ve been here before?” I don’t know why I’m surprised.

  “Of course.” Blaire swivels her head to stare down her nose at me. “We had to try it out, didn’t we? Make sure it was good enough for tonight.”

  “We?” I cock my head at Kya. She shrugs.

  “Of course it’s not my taste,” she says as she unhooks her seatbelt, “but, you know—quality control.”

  I nod, but I don’t know. My gay best friend is frequenting a male strip club, and I’ve never been to one even once. I’m practically a nun.

  I take a deep breath. I’m only going to have one wedding and therefore one bachelorette party in my lif
e. I should let loose and enjoy it. “All right, ladies. I’m here. Let’s have some fun.”

  “There she is!” Blaire throws her hands up in the air. “I knew we’d be seeing Fun Marissa eventually!”

  “I just thought it would be three drinks in,” Kya adds.

  “Ha ha,” I say. “I’m fun.” And now I’m feeling like I have to prove it.

  I take three tentative steps past the velvet rope like Dorothy setting her feet on the yellow brick road and feel like I’m already getting an education.

  Inside the club are men of various shapes and sizes, but they all seem to have one thing in common—very little body hair. That and a fondness for being shiny. I wonder about their waxing bills and if they buy their body oil in bulk at Costco.

  “Isn’t this great?” Blaire gestures at the room like a game show model and then flags down a waiter to order our drinks.

  “Yeah.” I bite my lip. I feel like I should cover my eyes and view the room through secretly separated fingers.

  Kya digs her elbow into my side. “Plenty of eye candy for you, right?”

  “Right.” I try to muster interest in the eye candy, which isn’t that hard since there are several attractive men here. I find myself ogling and feeling guilty for ogling by turns. I should ignore the spectacle going on around me and focus on Liam. My love. My soul mate. My asiago bagel. And not the rippling abs of the almost-naked man on the platform beside me.