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 our 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.