Teresa Hill - Countdown to the Perfect Wedding

She hadn’t thought that would be any kind of problem. Her first and only real experience with men had been such a downer. But seven years had gone by. More than seven, since she really had a man in her life, and here she was, newly graduated, working her first real, if short-term, job and…

Maybe she was more ready than she knew, because he…

He just looked so good.

She groaned just a bit at the sight of him, lean as could be, and yet…Well, she hadn’t seen such a perfect specimen of man outside of an advertisement for cologne or men’s jeans in ages—maybe even her whole life.

He wadded up the shirt and put it in his bag of clothing, looked down at his pants and then smiled back at her. “I think I’ll stop there.”

Max laughed from his perch on the stool. “You have eyebrows like Santa.”

The man looked from Max to Amy, puzzled.

“They’re white, too,” she told him.

He brushed at them, not really getting the job done, then looked to her questioningly.

“No. Not quite, I’m afraid,” she said. “Plus, it’s in your hair.”

He dipped his head toward her, standing perfectly still then, waiting. She had made the mess. She supposed she was responsible for cleaning it up, even the part that was on him.

Cautiously, she moved close enough to brush the sugar off him, catching a whiff of aftershave, something minty and yummy smelling, somehow coming through the overwhelming aroma of sugar and lemon that permeated the room. With the side of her thumb, she reached up and stroked her thumb across his eyebrows. Nothing too scary there. But then she had her hands in his hair, his truly gorgeous hair.

Lord, it had been a long, long time since she’d touched a man—an attractive man anywhere near her age—in any way at all.

Never thought it would happen in a borrowed kitchen with her son looking on and one of the biggest messes she’d ever made in her life all around them.

She finished with his hair, trying to ignore the softness of it, the thickness, the luxurious feeling of touching him.

Darn .

She dropped her gaze, clearly a mistake as her breath stirred some of the powder that now clung to the little springy curls of hair on his chest. Not gonna go anywhere near that, she promised herself, gazing at the pretty swell of tanned skin and taut muscles that made up Mr. Perfect’s absolutely perfect-looking chest.

Max laughed again. The man, who’d looked completely at ease only moments ago, looked a little taken aback now, a little surprised, a little uneasy.

She caught a whiff of champagne on his breath. She was that close.

So, he’d been drinking. The whole long weekend was a giant party, after all.

“I think I just made it worse,” she confessed.

“I’ll live. Promise. I’ve made messes of all kinds in this kitchen and survived them all.”

“Oh, no,” she groaned. “I just remembered the housekeeper, Mrs. Brown. She told me not to dare make a mess of any kind, that she’d spent weeks getting the house ready for this, and…well…she scares me.”

“Me, too,” Max piped up.

“Me, too,” the man said. “She scares everybody. Always has.”

“You better clean up your mess, Mom,” Max said.

“Yes, I’d better,” she said, looking around once more to assess the situation and figure out where to start.

That’s when she realized how far and wide a cloud of powdered sugar could travel. It had even gotten Max, his clothes, his hair, his adorable, grinning face.

“I’ve never made a mess this big,” he claimed, making it sound like he should be rewarded for that.

“Good for you, Max,” the man said. “But your mother’s right about Mrs. Brown. We don’t want to make her mad, especially on a weekend like this. So you and I need to help your mother clean this up.”

Max frowned. “I’m not good at cleaning up messes. Mom says I usually just make a bigger one while I’m trying to fix the first one.”

“He does,” Amy agreed.

“Well, then let’s think about how to do this.” The man looked around the room, then back to Max. “Are you and your mom staying back there in the bedroom off the pantry?”

Max nodded.

“How about I carry Mad Max to the bathroom, trying not to get powdered sugar on anything between here and there, and then Max gets in the shower.”

“I already got clean once today!” Max protested.

“We know, Max,” Amy said, “but the only way all that sugar is going to come off you is if you do it all again. So, let Mr…?”

“Tate, please,” he said. “Tate Darnley.”

“Hi. I’m Amy. I’m filling in at the last minute for the personal chef who was supposed to be here for the long weekend, to keep everyone staying in the house fed, and Max….”

“I just came to play,” Max said. “There’s gonna be another boy here, and we’re going to play.”

“It would be great if you’d haul him into the bathroom for me. Max, be still, and let’s try not to make a mess along the way, okay?”

Tate Darnley carried her son as if he weighed nothing at all, through the bedroom she and Max were sharing and into the attached bathroom, then stepped back out of the way for Amy to take over.

Max grumbled, but a few moments later, he was in the shower. Then there Amy was, standing in a tiny bathroom, still coated with sugar, Max on the other side of the shower curtain and Tate relaxing as he leaned against the doorway, grinning back at her.

“You have powdered sugar all over you, too. Worse than Max did. Maybe even worse than I did,” he told her.

She turned and looked in the bathroom mirror, wincing at the image reflected back at her. She was covered in powdered sugar, too.

“Are those suitcases on the bed yours and Max’s?” Mr. Perfect asked.

She nodded, and he grabbed them both, setting them just inside the bathroom door.

“Thank you.” Amy pulled out Max’s pajamas, ready to tuck him into bed. “Max, remember soap and shampoo. It doesn’t count if you don’t use those.”

“Awe, Mom!”

“I mean it, Max,” she said, raising her voice to talk over the sound of the shower, trying to put fantasyland firmly behind her.

“Great kid,” Tate said softly.

“Thank you.”

“I bet there’s never a dull moment with him around.”

“Never.”

“What is he? Five? Six?”

“Seven,” Amy told him, then could read exactly what he was thinking.

She’d started young with Max.

“I was sixteen when he was born, living on my own with him by the time I was seventeen.”

Tate nodded. “That must not have been easy.”

“No, but Max was worth every bit of it.”

“Then I’d say Max is a lucky boy,” the man said.

Okay, that was a comment right out of fantasyland.

Maybe she was dreaming after all.

Because most men were freaked out by the idea that she had a son she was raising on her own, and none of them seemed too concerned about whether she was a good mother to Max—one reason she’d stayed far away from men for the past seven years.

“Thank you,” she said, as she looked up at this man, Tate Darnley.

Where did you come from? she wanted to ask him. How could you be so perfect? Or at least, seem so perfect?

There had to be a major flaw in him somewhere, something she just hadn’t seen yet but would no doubt discover at any moment. Some crushing flaw. She told herself to focus, that there was work to do, a giant mess to clean up, and yes, she really had been a little afraid of Mrs. Brown and her spotlessly clean house, her admonishment to Amy not to dare mess up anything.

Amy started unbuttoning her white chef’s coat, wanting to leave it in the bathroom, because it really was coated with sugar and wearing it while trying to clean up the mess in the kitchen would only make more of a mess. Glancing up, she saw that Tate was still there, backing out of the doorway to the bathroom now, a little flare of something in his eyes, as she watched him watch her.