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She shrugged lightly, wondering why she’d even started this conversation. “I guess you’re right. It’s just a hard lesson to learn as a child.”
And one that left lingering scars, she added silently. Scars she never wanted to inflict on her daughter—and never wanted to add to her own barely healed collection.
Parking behind Bob at the curb of an older brick house at which several other cars already filled the driveway and lined the street, Tate killed the engine and turned to face her before releasing his seat belt. “I think we should make a pact today.”
“What kind of pact?”
Taking her by surprise, he reached out to trace her bottom lip with one fingertip. “You let out that old Kim—the daring, mischievous one—just for today. Throw yourself into this silly bet as if it were for a million dollars. Keep your mother so confused even she doesn’t know any longer what’s true and what’s fabricated. Have a great time, collect a dozen stories to tell our friends during lunches for the next six months, let Daryn be pampered and coddled all afternoon. Have fun, Kim. Just because you’re a mom doesn’t mean you can’t still let loose and have a good time occasionally—even at a wacky family reunion.”
Her mouth tingling from that brief, light contact, she swallowed. “Um—”
“Besides,” he reminded her with a smile so roguish and sexy it made her lungs stutter, “we have a side bet, remember? I’ve got to pay you fifty dollars if you pull this off.”
She cleared her throat. “You’re going to regret making that bet when I take your fifty.”
Looking pleased with her response, he chuckled. “Evan bet me a hundred, remember? I’m still going to come out fifty ahead. Unless, of course, you screw up, and then I’ve got a hundred from him and fifty from you. I might just treat myself to the Emperor’s Platter next Wednesday.”
The Emperor’s Platter was the most expensive item on the menu
of the Chinese restaurant where they met each week, and a running joke among the five friends who all lived on budgets while establishing their careers. Deciding she didn’t want Tate reporting back to their friends that she’d been a stick-in-the-mud—or worse, a failure at holding up her end of the plot they had all conceived—Kim raised her chin. “I might just order the same thing—on your fifty.”
“Bring it, cupcake,” he taunted.
She laughed. “You’re on, pretty boy.”
They might have sat there teasing—okay, flirting—for several minutes longer had they not been summoned impatiently by Kim’s mother tapping on the hood of the car.
“Are you two coming in?” she called through the glass, her hands filled with one of the dishes she’d brought for lunch—and that Kim suspected Bob had been primarily responsible for preparing.
Kim reached for her door handle. “I’ll get the baby. Would you bring the diaper bag, please, honey?”
Laughing again in response to the open challenge in her tone, Tate opened his door. “Yes, dear.”
Betsy insisted on preceding Kim and Tate into Grandma Dyess’s house, so that she could “announce them,” she explained.
“Mom, we don’t need to be announced. We’re not exactly royalty.”
Her mother merely laughed and crowded in front of them at the door. “I just want to let everyone know you’re here.”
“Emperor’s Platter,” Tate murmured humorously in Kim’s ear.
She gave him a look, but took the hint to let her mother’s dramatics pass without further argument.
Keeping Bob at her side, her mother reached out to ring the doorbell. Kim drew a breath, gave her daughter a little hug, then glanced at Tate.
“I should probably apologize in advance,” she whispered when he tilted his head toward her.
He chuckled and startled her by brushing a kiss against her cheek. “Not necessary,” he murmured.
Daryn reached out with the hand not holding Mr. Jingles and patted Tate’s cheek. And it was in that position—his mouth near Kim’s cheek, Daryn’s hand on his face—that Kim’s aunt Treva first saw them when she opened the door. If they had been trying deliberately to pose as a happy little family at that moment, they couldn’t have done a better job.
Or maybe that was exactly what Tate had intended.
Her mother beamed at them in approval. “Treva, I’m so glad to finally introduce you to my dear son-in-law, Tate Price, and my sweet little granddaughter, Daryn. Kim, honey, say hello to your aunt,” she added as if Kim were still a child.
Feeling Tate give her waist an encouraging squeeze with the arm he’d wrapped loosely around her, Kim forced a smile. “Hello, Aunt Treva. It’s nice to see you again.”
A near-duplicate of her one-year-older sister, Treva also wore her hair fluffed and curled and bleached. She was a few pounds heavier than Betsy, but dressed in much the same manner—a thin, short-sleeve, animal print summer jacket over a tan scoop neck tank and fashionably cropped pants with sequined flip-flops displaying a bright pink pedicure. Betsy’s jacket and capri set was decorated with a field of poppies on a pale yellow background, and her tank top had sparkly studs around the neckline, but other than that, they were almost identical down to the glittering flip-flops and colorful toenails.
