Countdown to the Perfect Wedding

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.