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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.”
