Teresa Hill - Countdown to the Perfect Wedding

“Well, okay. You need time.” Amy remembered well how that felt, from when she found out she was pregnant with Max. Adorable as he was, and as much as she loved him, he was the last thing she’d expected at that point in her life, and she had likely felt even less prepared than Victoria did now.

Amy took Victoria by the arm, guided her over to one of the high stools at the breakfast bar and urged her to sit, which Victoria did. Nothing else to eat or drink, not with her stomach as touch and go as it was at the moment, but she could at least sit. The woman looked like she was about to fall down.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Victoria cried.

“Well, first you have to find out for sure if you are pregnant,” Amy said.

That made sense. Amy doubted it would help, because she’d found that most women who were sobbing and saying they were afraid they were pregnant were well and truly pregnant. And they knew it. They’d just been too scared to have it confirmed. She knew that feeling well, from having tried to avoid for three solid months the knowledge that she was pregnant with Max.

“You know, I’m sure I’ll have to go out anyway in the morning,” Amy offered. “One of the guests will get up and ask for something I don’t have in the kitchen, and I’ll end up going to the grocery store. And when I do, I’ll get you a pregnancy test, okay?”

Victoria sniffled and stopped crying for a moment. “You’d do that for me?”

“Sure,” Amy said.

“Thank you. Thank you so much. I couldn’t stand to tell anybody I knew really well. I mean—”

“I understand perfectly.”

“They all think Tate’s perfect and that I’m perfect and that we’re perfect together. Which we are, actually. We’re just…perfect. We make perfect sense. We want the same things, have the same goals, have the same life plan and we even work in the same industry, so we understand all the pressures that go along with it and the sacrifices people make, and…it should be perfect. You know?”

Amy nodded, although honestly, she’d never been close to perfect in any aspect of her life. But she could see that Victoria obviously felt like that was the standard she needed to meet. Victoria certainly gave the initial impression of a woman capable of being perfect. And now, she was faced with failing in the perfection department, which seemed to be every woman’s lot in life, as far as Amy had seen, but she wasn’t going to explain that one to Victoria right now.

“One step at a time, okay?” Amy advised, because that did make sense. No sense looking two or three steps ahead. “I’ll get you the test in the morning, and I’ll bring it to you. Where did you say you’re staying?”

“The guesthouse, just down the driveway, past the pool and the tennis courts. Me and my parents. Eleanor, Tate’s godmother, thought we’d like the privacy of not being in the main house. Although, honestly, she and my mother have never gotten along. Something about a man, ages ago. I’ve always been too scared to ask. But Eleanor put us in the guesthouse. Which is fine, except…I’m scared my mother’s going to hear me throwing up. Oh, God, if my mother hears that…You don’t know what my mother’s like.”

“Perfect?” Amy guessed.

“She thinks she is,” Victoria said wearily.

And now, Amy really didn’t want to know Victoria’s mother.

“Okay,” she said, trying to keep Victoria focused on what was at hand, on the plan. “I’ll look for you in the guesthouse and try to avoid your mother at all costs. I just have to make sure everyone gets a good breakfast first, and then I’ll go to the store and I’ll bring the test back to you.”

Victoria nodded pitifully. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Tate woke up to a house that smelled even better than it had the night before, when the lemon bars were still warm and gooey and absolutely perfect.

How could that be? How could the woman, Amy, make something even better than those perfect lemon bars?

And he remembered the room he’d always occupied in his godmother’s house was almost directly above the kitchen. So whatever luscious things that happened to be cooking there he’d be smelling all weekend long.

He considered bashing his head against the big wooden headboard of the bed, hoping if not to drive the smell out of his brain, to perhaps knock himself unconscious, so as not to be tempted by whatever was going on in the kitchen.

Tempted by the smell, not tempted…the other way. The bad way. He was just hungry, he told himself. Hungry the regular way.

What was he supposed to do? Tate reasoned. Starve all weekend? Staying out of the kitchen was one thing but actually staying completely out of the kitchen for three more days was not going to work.

He’d just make Rick go into the kitchen and get Tate whatever he wanted. That was all. It made perfect sense. He could eat a woman’s food without wanting anything else from her, without getting into trouble or doing something stupid or making Victoria suspicious. Sure he could.

It was just food.

He got up and put on his sweats, because the grounds of Eleanor’s house were gorgeous, especially in the spring, and he loved to run here. He’d run far away from the kitchen, all the guests, Victoria and everything else. And then he’d have a perfectly reasonable breakfast without ever setting foot inside the kitchen.

It was a good plan, Tate decided. He ran until he was about to fall down, he was so tired, and without even thinking, he headed for the back door to the house to go inside and get cleaned up.

That’s when he saw Amy leaning over the trunk of a car, unloading groceries to carry inside.

Tate had already slowed to a walk, and now he slowed even more, to a pace more akin to a crawl. A gentleman would certainly help her carry in those bags, but a gentleman would also not have upset his fiancée mere days before their wedding and would certainly not break the promise he’d made to himself just last night by heading into the forbidden kitchen again.

He hesitated there, trying to decide what to do, and that’s when she looked up and saw him, looking not just uneasy at seeing him but downright guilty, he feared.

Ah, hell, he owed her an apology, too. Surely a gentleman would do that, at least. Apologize and then stay away. Maybe after getting a huge plateful of whatever she’d been serving for breakfast as he woke up, some luscious bacon thing. There was nothing like the smell of bacon to make a man ravenous in the morning.

Tate gave her a wary smile, a not-too-interested-but-not-too-guilty one, he hoped, then walked over to the open trunk of the car and said, “Let me help you with these.”

“No, it’s fine. I didn’t get much. Just a few special requests for some of the guests.” She hung on stubbornly to the bag he’d planned to take from her.

“Really, I insist. Eleanor would scold me if I let a lady haul these things in when I was right here to do it for her.”

She now had the one bag clutched to her chest like she’d fight him to the death for it, if it came down to that. “Okay,” she said. “But I’ve got this one. You can get the rest, if you really want to.”

Tate gave her a smile that he hoped didn’t look completely forced, took the rest of the bags from her trunk and followed her inside to the scene of his downfall the night before.

It was spotlessly clean, he noted, no traces of powdered sugar anywhere, and yet it smelled divine. Fresh bread, most certainly. A hint of bacon remaining. Eggs, he thought.

His stomach rumbled as he set the bags down on the countertop by the huge refrigerator. Amy shot him a look that said he had to be kidding to be back here, right now, at the scene of the almost-crime, just the two of them alone, and him wanting breakfast.