Also by Kirsten Sawyer
Not Quite a Bride
Not Quite a Mom
KIRSTEN SAWYER
KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
To Eleanor
for napping just enough to let me write this book.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
1
“He finally did it!” I squeal with excitement into my black cordless phone.
“He” is my boyfriend of seven (and a half ) years, Daniel McCafferty. “It” is a proposal. I guess now he is technically my fiancé, since I am wearing a stunning 1-carat (.85 carat) engagement ring on my left ring finger. On the other end of the phone is my best friend (only friend), Courtney Cambridge.
“Oh my God, Elizabeth, congratulations!” she screams back at me, sounding as excited as I feel.
This is why I love Courtney. She is the kind of friend who really cares. She sounds as excited as I feel because she feels that excited. She’s been like that since the day we met, in our freshman year at UCLA. Courtney and I were both cursed with horrible first-year roommates and so we spent most of the year in the mildew-smelling lounge eating vending machine food and trying to top each other with bad-roommate anecdotes. It created a bond that has lasted until now.
Now we are thirty-two. We have our own, roommateless apartments in Los Angeles and instead of spending our nights eating Kit-Kats in a dorm common room, we spend them eating Chinese take-out in our respective apartments on the phone.
“Tell me everything,” Courtney demands.
As I begin to tell her, in specific detail, every event of the evening, I gaze happily at my hand. The evening had begun like any other. It’s Saturday night, so of course Dan and I had plans to go out. Like almost every Saturday, he picked me up at 8 p.m. with a bouquet of roses in hand. We went to dinner at a new place on Beverly Drive and then decided to splurge on dessert. This is where the evening stopped being ordinary for a few minutes. When our crème brulée arrived, neatly wedged in the caramelized sugar was a ring. In utter shock, I looked from the ring to Daniel, still holding the spoon I had poised to dig in.
“Will you marry me?” Daniel asked, leaning over the table.
I looked once more from the bejeweled dessert into his eyes before responding, “Absolutely.” Then I took the ring out of the custard, licked it off and slipped it onto my finger. On cue, the waiter brought two glasses of champagne. We toasted and then ate the dessert.
After we left the restaurant, the night pretty much returned to normal—except for my new accessory. We went back to my apartment, had sex, I faked an orgasm, and Dan smiled proudly. Then he got dressed, I wrapped myself in a pink silk robe and walked him to the door. Some nights Dan stays at my apartment, but if he has plans for early the next morning, like he did this night, he goes back to his own apartment to avoid disturbing me on a day when I can actually sleep in. The next morning, he was playing golf with a judge, so I kissed him at the door and watched through the window as he climbed into his navy blue Audi A4 with a glowing smile. As soon as he drove off, I lunged for the phone to dial Courtney.
Just as I get to the part with the ring in the crème brulée, my call waiting beeps.
“Ignore it,” Courtney instructs.
“I can’t!” I argue, “What if it’s Dan?”
“Okay, fine,” she concedes and I click over.
“Elizabeth Castle?” the voice on the other end inquires. It’s obviously not Dan…it must be some stupid sales call.
“Speaking?” I reply in a clearly annoyed tone.
“Ms. Castle, I am calling in regards to your best friend.”
I am distracted thinking about how soon I will be Mrs. McCafferty instead of Ms. Castle and so it takes me a second to process what the caller has said.
“Courtney?” I ask after a lengthy pause.
“Oh, um, no,” I can tell the caller feels awkward, and my feelings of irritation begin to return. “Charla Dearbourne Tatham,” he finally says.
He pronounces the last name as it’s spelled, and instinctively I correct his pronunciation: “Dearburn.”
It’s like I’m instantly transported to the fifth grade, when Charla Dearbourne actually was my best friend and I had to stand up to every moron who pronounced her name incorrectly. At eleven years old, we were positive it was the people who were idiots and not the fact that her name was not pronounced the way it was spelled that was the problem. I probably haven’t thought about Charla for a dozen years. All at once, I’m flooded with memories of my childhood friend, quickly followed by the disdain I feel whenever I think of my hometown.
I grew up in a small (pathetically tiny) town in Central California called Victory. Of the town’s approximately seven hundred residents, 70 percent were