by Gina Wilkins
Lynette thought of this as a game? Having Tate pretend to be a husband and father?
“It would be kind of funny,” Emma murmured, her almond-shaped dark eyes crinkling with a smile as she looked from Kim to Tate and back again. “I would love to see you towing Tate around like a bossy wife.”
Tate eyed Kim in teasing appraisal. “You think she’d be a bossy wife?”
Emma giggled. “No, I just think it would be funny if she acted like one toward you.”
“I have no interest in being any kind of wife,” Kim reminded them, aware that embarrassment made her sound more cross than she intended. “Daryn and I get along quite nicely by ourselves.”
Lynette’s smile faded. “I know your father and stepfathers all left you eventually, but that doesn’t mean all men abandon their families, Kim. I could name lots of couples who have been together for a long time, including my parents. You’ll meet someone someday who’ll always want to be there for you and Daryn.”
Kim shrugged, having no intention of discussing any baggage she carried from her past with her lunch companions. “You know what they say—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m quite content with the life I have. Now if only I could convince my mother of that.”
“She’d never understand it,” Emma said perceptively. “Not if she’s the type who always has to have a man in her life to feel complete.”
“Bingo,” Kim murmured.
“Then maybe you should just skip the reunion rather than risk a permanent falling-out with your mother,” Evan remarked. “Besides, I still believe it would be hard to fool everyone. Even for Tate.”
“Maybe Kim’s the one who doesn’t think she could make it work,” Tate said, his ego still piqued, apparently, by his partner’s doubts. “She said she didn’t want to go to the reunion and pretend to be married because she’s a terrible actor.”
“I said I’m a bad liar. It’s not necessarily the same thing as being a bad actor. And that’s not the only reason I don’t want to get involved in this.”
“Of course not.”
She frowned at him, trying to decide if he was patronizing her.
“Well?” Lynette prodded impatiently. “Are you going to at least think about doing what your mother asked? Especially if Tate’s willing to go along?”
Feeling everyone’s gaze focused on her, Kim bit her lip, warning herself not to let her friends sweep her into this impulsive plot. “I’ll think about it. But I’m still inclined to say no, even if it makes Mother mad. She’ll get over it. Probably.”
Lynette’s dimples flashed again. “You take your time deciding.”
Something told Kim that Lynette would do her best to help with the decision—and by help, she meant persuade. Studying Tate’s rather challenging smile through her lashes, Kim felt a sudden surge of nerves, wondering if she was insane for even considering this reckless scheme.
She had to admit that there’d been a time when she would have jumped at the chance to pull a practical joke of this magnitude on her annoying family—but that was before she’d grown into a responsible, serious-natured single mom, she reminded herself. Her impetuous, adventurous, wild-oats-sowing days were behind her now.
But maybe she could indulge in one last, reckless escapade before settling into a maturely circumspect future?
* * *
“Tate, why don’t you give Kim a kiss? We’ll tell you if it looks natural.” Emma made the suggestion as if it were perfectly reasonable, then looked vaguely surprised when Kim spun to gape at her. “What? You want this to work, don’t you?”
Kim wasn’t sure why Emma, Lynette and Evan had gathered at her house at noon on Friday, nine days after that fateful lunch, before she and Tate departed for the four-hour drive to Springfield, Missouri. Kim and Tate had both taken the afternoon off work for the trip, but the others had wasted their lunch break for this. Evan, apparently, was there primarily to make fun of his partner. Emma and Lynette had shown up presumably to make sure Kim didn’t back out at the last minute. Which, she admitted privately, was a definite possibility.
She had spent the past nine days changing her mind so often she now had a dull headache. Even standing outside her house preparing to start the drive, she dithered about whether she should risk any future contact with her mother and just call off this whole crazy scheme. Tate was still taking the situation as a big joke, even as he loaded his suitcase into the back of Kim’s hatchback, stuffing it among the numerous bags and miscellaneous accessories necessary for traveling with a nine-month-old.
“Kiss her?” Closing the hatchback with a snap, he turned to respond to Emma. “You mean, now?”
Always the ultraorganized, detail-oriented member of the group, Emma nodded thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t hurt to practice before you leave.”
Tate grinned. “I don’t think I need practice kissing.”
Kim would just bet he didn’t. Even the thought of kissing Tate made her toes curl.
Emma rolled her dark eyes in response to Tate’s quip, but continued seriously. “I’m assuming you haven’t kissed Kim before. If your first time is in front of her family, it could be awkward.”
Kim nearly choked. As if this weren’t already awkward enough! “Even if Tate and I really were married, I doubt we’d be kissing in front of my family. I tend to be private with that sort of thing.”
Looking up from the baby she was holding and cooing to, Lynette gave a little shrug. “Emma’s right. You two have to look comfortable together if you’re going to make this work. And frankly, Kim, you’re the one who needs the practice. You keep looking at Tate today as if you’ve never seen him before.”
While the others laughed, Kim felt her cheeks warm, and it had little to do with the stifling early-August heat. The truth was, she did feel almost as if Tate were a stranger to her today.
Prior to last week, she’d believed she knew him quite well, that he was one of her good friends—her inconvenient attraction to him notwithstanding. Now, with him preparing to accompany her to her family reunion—as her husband, no less—she wasn’t sure she knew him at all. For example, she couldn’t figure out exactly why he’d agreed to participate in this crazy charade. It certainly wasn’t because he needed the hundred dollars from his business partner.
“I still don’t understand why your mother felt the need to lie to everyone,” Evan mused, his thoughts apparently similar to hers, if for another reason. “It’s not like being a single mom is considered all that shameful these days.”
“You’d have to know my mother and her sister to understand,” Kim said with a wry shrug. “They just can’t comprehend how a woman could be happy without a man in her life. Which explains why Aunt Treva just ended her third marriage and Mom’s on her fifth. The minute one loser leaves, Mom hooks up with another one. Every time I talk to her, she reminds me that all three of her children were conceived within wedlock—even if it was by three different husbands. She said she had to tell her mother and her sister I was married or she would never be able to hold her head up in the family again.”
“Bizarre,” Emma agreed, “but still, if you’re going to convince your family that you and Tate are a settled-in couple, you’re going to have to work at it a little.”
“You know, this is really getting out of hand,” Kim said abruptly, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Let’s just forget the whole thing, okay? Thanks, Tate, but I won’t be needing you this weekend, after all.”
Emma and Lynette swapped a look as if they’d predicted this moment. Lynette shifted the wide-eyed baby on her hip. “You can’t back out now, Kim. You want to see your grandmother, remember? And you wanted her to see Daryn at least once.”
“So, I’ll go alone. I’ll tell the truth—that I never married and that Daryn’s father isn’t a part of ou
r lives.”
“And expose your mother’s lies to everyone?” Sympathy for Kim’s plight reflected in Lynette’s green eyes. “She would never forgive you. I know you’ve had a rocky relationship with her, but are you really ready to burn all your bridges with her?”
Hearing her own concerns put into words, Kim sighed. “I don’t know. Situations like this one have made me keep my distance from her, but she is my mother… .”
“Exactly.”
“So, I’ll go along with the fabrication, but I’ll tell everyone my husband had to work or something and couldn’t join me this weekend.”
“You’d never get away with it,” Evan predicted with a wry smile. “You said yourself, you’re a terrible liar.”
“How bad could it be if I accompany you?” Tate asked. “We’ll show up for the reunion, I’ll stand close to you and smile a lot, you introduce your grandmother to your daughter and then we’ll make an excuse to leave early. Your mother will owe you an enormous favor and you can hold it over her head forever to make sure she never drags you into a mess like this again.”
He made it all sound almost logical. Kim shook her head in bemusement, thinking insanity must be contagious. She didn’t know if Tate had caught it from her, who’d been infected by her mother—or if both she and Tate were being influenced by the three friends standing nearby and enjoying this spectacle. Easy enough for them, she thought with a frown.
“Tate’s bag is already in your car.” Lynette spoke as if that were the deciding factor, as if the bag couldn’t be removed quite easily. “You might as well go through with it now.”
“Apparently, she’d rather call the whole thing off than kiss Tate,” Evan commented, his eyes gleaming. “Not that I blame you for that,” he added with a half smile.
This situation seemed to have brought out a roguish side of Evan that Kim hadn’t seen much before. She’d always thought of him as the serious, disciplined partner.
“I’m thinking y’all made your bet with the wrong person,” Tate murmured, eyeing Kim with lifted eyebrows. “Kim seems to be the one who doesn’t believe she has the talent—or maybe the nerve—to go through with this. Actually, I’d be willing to make a fifty-dollar side bet that Kim’s the one who’ll blow our cover before I do.”
Even though she knew she shouldn’t let his mild taunt pique her ego, Kim still felt her hackles rise. The others watched her speculatively, and she wondered if they agreed with Tate that she was the weak link in this impromptu partnership.
She reminded herself that none of them had known her prior to her new life as a quiet-living, hardworking single mom. She’d started working at the rehab clinic after her maternity leave, and they hadn’t known her when she’d worked at another facility in a different, nearby Arkansas town, so they couldn’t be aware that this was exactly the kind of escapade she once would have thrown herself into with impish gusto. She wasn’t that person any longer—but it still irked that they so obviously doubted her.
She sighed gustily and let her youthful recklessness reassert itself—but only temporarily, she vowed. “I’ll take that bet.”
She reached out to grab Tate’s navy polo shirt and yank him toward her. Before he could finish his sputtered laugh, she pressed her mouth to his.
Chapter Two
Fireworks. Trumpets. Operatic voices bursting into song. Were there any clichés that did not spin through Kim’s mind when Tate wrapped his arms around her and responded enthusiastically to the spur-of-the-moment kiss?
She had always appreciated his lean but solid build, figuring the manual labor he did outdoors in his landscape design business built muscles and burned calories. Now she felt the strength in those tanned arms, the rock-hardness of chest and thighs.
She had always thought he had a sexy mouth with shallow indentions at the corners that could almost be called dimples. Now he demonstrated just how skillfully he used those warm, firm lips.
She wanted to believe she was the one who brought the kiss to an end, but she suspected Tate drew back first. She was too dazed to be certain. She blinked at him, wondering if she saw a similarly stunned look in his narrowed eyes before he masked any reaction behind his usual easy grin.
“Well?” he asked the others. “Did we pass?”
Lynette lifted an eyebrow as she studied Kim’s face. “Either you’re a better actor than you claimed, Kim, or Tate made that kiss work, because…wow.”
Kim’s chin lifted again in response to the implication that Tate had been in control of the kiss, regardless of whether it might just be true. Acting once more on the impulsiveness that had so often gotten her into trouble in the past, she turned to Evan. Catching the collar of his cotton shirt in both hands, she planted a kiss directly on his lips.
No fireworks this time, she noted with some dismay. No trumpets or other clichés. Evan was a good-looking, well-built guy and it was a nice kiss—but it didn’t shake her to her toenails the way kissing Tate had. Deciding she didn’t want to analyze the difference just then, she pushed Evan away and turned almost defiantly toward the others. “Any more comments about my acting abilities?”
Evan cleared his throat rather loudly. “So, maybe I should be the one to accompany you this weekend,” he said with a teasing leer, reaching for Kim again.
Emma and Lynette laughed as she dodged him, and Kim was satisfied that her unexpected move had derailed their sudden speculation about whether she was a little too attracted to Tate.
What might have been a slight frown on Tate’s face smoothed quickly into a grin. “Too late, pal. My bag’s already in the car. Speaking of which, shouldn’t we be on the road, Kim? And don’t the rest of you guys have to get back to work?”
Emma glanced at her watch. “We do, actually. Have fun, you two—and remember, we’re going to want to hear all the details.”
Lynette turned toward her brother. “Do you want to put the baby in her seat? It would be good practice for you.”
Tate held up both hands and backed off. “No. I said I’m not using Daryn to help me win this bet. You know babies scare me. If Kim needs my help with anything, she only has to ask, but Daryn isn’t a prop for me to rehearse with.”
Kim appreciated several things about Tate’s words, most especially the fact that he’d used Daryn’s name, rather than calling her “the kid,” as Evan was prone to do. She stepped forward to take her daughter from Lynette. Adorable in a red-and-white gingham-checked romper, with a red-and-white stretchy headband festooned with a white fabric daisy circling her fine, light brown hair, Daryn kicked and babbled, enjoying the attention. She gave Kim a slobbery, two-toothed grin and, as always, Kim’s heart melted. She’d made quite a few mistakes in her life, but she would never classify Daryn in that way. A surprise, yes, but never a mistake.
Kim fastened Daryn securely into her rear-facing car seat, then handed her the soft, stuffed monkey that accompanied the child everywhere. Settling in contentedly, Daryn kicked her feet and waved the toy enthusiastically to elicit jingly chimes from the bells inside. Kim was used to the sound, but she wasn’t sure how Tate would feel about listening to it for the next four-plus hours. Fortunately, Daryn tended to sleep during car rides, so the jingling would be sporadic.
“Would you like me to drive?” Tate offered, nodding toward the driver’s door of her car. “That would free you to take care of the baby.”
She deliberated only a moment before tossing him the keys. “Sure, why not? You might as well make yourself useful.”
Tate winked at Emma. “You’re right. She is a bossy wife.”
Everyone laughed, including Kim, though she felt a funny little jolt at hearing Tate refer to her as a “wife.” As she opened the front passenger door, she reminded herself that she’d better get used to it—at least for the next day or so.
“Oh, w
ait!” Lynette made a show of hitting herself in the head with the palm of her hand. “I can’t believe I almost forgot.”
Kim lifted her eyebrows in question. “Forgot what?”
Lynette dug into her pocket and pulled out a gold band. “I brought this for you,” she said to Kim. “You and I wear about the same size in rings, I’d think, and this fits me. Tate, did you bring yours, like I told you to?”
Tate held up his left hand, demonstrating that he was already wearing a band on the ring finger. Kim hadn’t even noticed, and it took her aback to see it there. She hadn’t thought about rings, which only proved how little prepared she was for this weekend.
“Whose ring is this?” she asked as Lynette pressed the other band into her hand.
“It was our grandmother’s. Tate’s wearing our grandfather’s ring. We inherited them when they passed away. I realized last night that you’d need rings to convince your family you’re married, so I called Tate and told him to bring his and I’d let you borrow mine.”
Swallowing hard, Kim shook her head. “I don’t want to take responsibility for your grandmother’s ring. I’m sure I have something that will work. I have a silver band somewhere, I think.”
“What can happen to it on your hand?” Lynette asked matter-of-factly. “Besides, it’s more believable with a matching set. You can return it to me when you get back. I’m going to want to hear all the details, anyway.”
“Maybe Tate should put it on for you,” Evan suggested with another wicked grin.
Wondering what had gotten into her usually serious-minded friend, Kim frowned at him and quickly shoved the ring onto her finger. It was a little tight, which was a good thing, since she didn’t want to risk having it fall off. “I’ve got it. Now, you guys had better get back to work. Tate, if we’re going through with this, let’s get on the road.”
He chuckled and opened the driver’s door. “Yes, dear.”
The others were still laughing when Kim closed herself into the car and reached for her seat belt. She couldn’t quite share their amusement.