2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) (21 page)

Monday, January 24
^th

“I know you’re there, Cat. Pick up the phone,” Georgia
said, her voice broadcasting throughout the apartment.

Catherine sat on the couch, eyeing the answering
machine like Georgia herself might suddenly materialize in the room and catch
her avoiding her. Not that she didn’t have the right and reason to do so, what
with Georgia’s utter lack of remorse for sharing sensitive information with
Lacey Stemple. She’d spoken with her most recently departed friend exactly once
since finding out Lacey knew every nuance of her wedding by heart, and that was
to tell her to
Fuck off!
That was days ago. That was all that needed to
be said.

“I know you wouldn’t be anywhere else but in front of
the TV right now, so pick up or I’ll just keep talking.”

Like she knows me.
But Georgia did know her.
Monday night was her usual night to clean up her DVR by watching all the things
she’d missed the week before. Like clockwork.

“I let you have your mad. I left you alone all weekend
even…. Now pick up. I’m not beyond using Nell to get you to talk to me. Oh
wait, I think I hear her crying. Maybe I’ll just take the phone in with me to
comfort her—”

“What?” Catherine demanded into the phone, grabbing
and speaking in one forceful movement.    

“I
knew
it!” she squealed triumphantly.

“What do you want, Georgia?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“And why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, I know you got the invitations but I haven’t
gotten one in the mail yet, so either something terrible happened to you or I’m
off the guest list.”

“How do you even know about the invitations?”

“Cat—”

“Lacey,” she growled, realizing she’d been usurped yet
again.

“Yes Lacey. Big friggin’ deal.
Lacey
told me
she got your invitation.”

But it
was
a big deal. Just another reminder
that her best friend had a new best friend she gabbed with all the time, to
hell with her oldest one.

“So what else did she tell you?” Catherine challenged,
waiting for the rest of it—how she and Lacey both used reputable printers for
their wedding invitations and didn’t have a single misspelling let alone a body
part printed on theirs.

“Are you really going to hold a grudge over the fact
that your mother
overheard
a conversation Lacey had with you?”

“That’s not why I’m holding a grudge,” she said—
that
was only part of it. If Georgia didn’t understand that then maybe she
should find a new maid of honor—an actual
maid
this time.

“So you
are
holding a grudge then?”

“I just can’t believe that you talk about me with
Lacey
.
She’s my—”

“Archenemy?” Georgia snarfed. Literally, it was a
snarf—part snide laughter and part ridiculing disbelief. Very unbecoming and
rude.

Catherine was silent on the other end, protesting her
friend’s dismissal of her very real feelings. Lacey
was
her archenemy,
her nemesis… in fact, she was completely evil.

“So that’s it then? Friendship over? You want nothing
more to do with me?” Georgia asked; her tone downgraded to simple disbelief
now.

“You told her about the—she knows about the purple for
Josey,” Catherine said, her voice choked with emotion.

“I didn’t think it was a secret.”

“It’s not a secret,” Catherine admitted. It was just
that she kept her feelings and memories of Josey close to the vest. She trusted
Georgia with them, even Tara now, but she wanted to choose who or how to open
up.

“Then what is it?”

“I just—it feels like I’m being replaced… as a friend…
as a daughter. She’s weaseling her way into everything.”

“It’s not like she’s shaking me down for information
when we get together. You’re just a big part of both of our lives, and we like
to share stuff about our lives.”

“I have nothing to do with her life,” Catherine
retorted.

“She’s your sister-in-law. Like it or not, she’s in
your life—your family—for good.”

“They might get divorced someday.”

“Catherine Marie,” Georgia admonished, sounding just
like her mother.

“It’s possible. And just because she’s family doesn’t
mean I have to like her.”

“Well, just because you don’t like her doesn’t mean I can’t
like her,” Georgia pointed out. “We have a lot in common and—”

“So you wouldn’t break up with her for me?”

“My best friend wouldn’t ask me to do something like
that.”

“This isn’t Lacey asking. This is me asking,”
Catherine jabbed.

“Very funny.”

“I thought so,” Catherine agreed, relieved to feel the
tension dissipating between them.

“So where’s my invitation?” Georgia prodded.

“In the mail.” Thankfully her mother had left a
message earlier telling her as much.

Wednesday, January 26
^th

“I thought you were going to be grounded a lot longer
than this.”

“Three weeks isn’t long enough for you?” Her breath was
hot in his ear.

“Oh, it’s plenty long enough. Way too long,” he said
lowly, an effort to contain himself.

“That’s why I shanked the warden and escaped.”

“Did you now?” he asked, kissing and breathing and
making a general distraction of himself that was focused on that hollow place
on the side of her neck.

Actually, Warden Georgia had agreed to push off the
dress shopping they were supposed to do this coming weekend, probably hoping
Catherine would get laid and come back a nicer person after all the snippiness
between them.

Fynn’s tongue touched her collarbone, dissolving any and
all angst that had overwhelmed her the past few weeks and making her eyes roll
back in her head so she could better thank the Lord for her lot in life.

Regular phone calls had hardly sufficed to replace actual
physical contact, especially considering those conversations seemed to veer
into strained and tense territory more and more often these days as she
continued to be overcome with wedding preparations while he was footloose and
fancy-free on his end—not a care in the world. He even phoned in his tux order
rather than driving to Minneapolis for it, meanwhile she was driving all over
kingdom come to get their wedding ducks in a row. But she was here now and that
was what counted. And he smelled
grrrreat
, to quote Tony the Tiger. In
fact, now she couldn’t even remember what their last fight had been about
(okay, so that was a lie). Actually, she remembered very well that it was about
the gift registry that they still needed to sign up for even as the invitations
were jetting toward their guests at this very minute, directing them to Pottery
Barn and Macy’s and Kohl’s, all places where their name wasn’t even on file yet.
But that snit was days ago—two whole days
that felt like
ages
, which
was less than the amount of time since they’d last had sex. Who gave a crap
about a registry?
I know I don’t
.

“You realize that there’s no turning back now,” she
said breathlessly.

“I know.” His voice was muffled by her skin, his hands
wandering dangerously from the small of her back.

“I mean the invitations are in the mail,” she said
more clearly, trying to convey the full weight of the situation. In classic
Elizabeth-Hemmings-style efficiency, her mother had had them picked up and
addressed and stamped and mailed in one day’s time. “There’s nothing we can do
but get married now.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Fynn hummed against her neck, making her
feel the vibration in her nether regions like a tuning fork.

She knew he wasn’t really listening to what she was
saying, but her resolve to care was lost to his mouth, just like her resolve to
make it back to his house was quickly weakening to the next ten feet. Before
Fynn she’d gone weeks, months, even a year or more without sex and without much
trouble. But now three weeks was enough to make sex right here in the parking
deck of the airport seem like a suitable prospect.

“Are you trying to get me a ticket for indecency?” she
asked, her breath ragged with need, wanting him to rip her jacket and then her blouse
open and have his way with her.

“I can make it worth your while,” Fynn whispered into
that hollowed spot, following it up with the kind of kisses that melt ice…
steel… inhibitions….

“I don’t think I can even make it to the truck,” she
said thickly.

Suddenly alert, he said, “About the truck, actually—”

But she covered his mouth, filling it with her own,
swallowing his tongue and the words in one explosive move, pushing him up
against a car that protested with a shrieking alarm that broke them apart,
ripping her out of her haze of desire with a jolt of fear.

They looked at each other, both of them breathing like
they’d just been running for their lives. “Saved by the most annoying sound
ever created?” he asked.

“Not so much saved,” Catherine countered, a pout on
her lips. She hadn’t wanted to stop. A part of her could still imagine doing it
up against a concrete support that was only a few short feet away from them.
But the alarm was just so friggin’ loud; a thousand jackhammers would have been
more welcome. “Let’s just go back to your place,” she hollered.

“You mean our place,” he yelled back, the statement
huge
in the sudden quiet as the alarm between them cut off unexpectedly.

It was just so weird to hear that. Of course living in
his place made all the sense in the world—the only sense really—but it still
bothered her that he just assumed everything would be as he had built it. Her
joining his world; not them creating their world. But her discomfort dissolved
quickly as he kissed her so brilliantly that for a moment she forgot where she
was; it could have been anywhere as long as she was with him.

When he pulled away she was dazed and disoriented. “That
will have to do for now,” he said, looking proud of his accomplishment—turning
her to goo.

“We can pull over on the way and do it like a couple
of high school kids at lovers’ lane,” she offered.

“Actually, I tried to warn you back at baggage claim
when you leapt into my arms and sucked my face off. And again at the exit when
you were grinding up against me. And again just now before you—”

“Just what were you trying to tell me?” she cut in.

“I didn’t come alone.”

“Is Magnus in the truck? You think he wouldn’t approve
of us doing it there?” she chuckled.

“No. Not Magnus.
Everyone
is in the car… Drew’s
minivan.”

“Everyone?” she asked blankly.

“Drew, the boys, Klein… Cara.”

“But you never—”

“You called from the plane. I didn’t even know you
were coming, and you didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgewise.”

“But—” She really had nothing to say. She
had
to
stop dropping in on people. It had become a nasty habit in her life.

“Renée asked me to keep Cara through the week. She’s
having some particularly intense treatments….” He watched her face for signs of
what she was thinking. “It gives us all a chance to spend some more time
together.”

“It’s not that,” Catherine choked out, trying to hide
her selfish frustration of wanting a Fynn-ful, clothing-optional, long weekend.

“I know. I want to have you on the kitchen table and living
room floor and on the stairs and in the hallway and right the hell here up
against that concrete pillar, too.” That final one ricocheted off of all the
hard surfaces around them.

She felt the cockles of her heart warming considerably
as Fynn mentioned exactly four of the eight places she was thinking of having
him. But this was reality. Cara was indeed reality. And she hadn’t even seen
her since before the engagement. Before Christmas for that matter. It couldn’t
hurt to get a little family-of-three test-drive in before they actually got
married.

“They want to take us out to a nice dinner.” He pulled
her close and looked down into her eyes. “For some reason they really like
you.”

“Just so long as you keep your hands off me for the
duration.”

“Through the weekend? You do know it’s only Wednesday,
right?”

“I mean for the evening. I can’t take your hands right
now. I might do something untoward.”

“Hmmm, untoward?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“When we heard the alarm we figured it must be you
guys,” Klein chuckled, sticking his head out the minivan’s window as it came to
a stop just a few feet from them. “So, you done stealing that car?”

*****

“Drew, I was wondering how you feel about being a
bridesmaid,” Catherine fished, pushing the broccoli around on her plate,
wishing it was the french fries she’d decided not to order for the good of the
wedding.

“I absolutely dread it with every ounce of my being,”
she said plainly. “The dress and the showers and all that shrieking girl stuff—not
my scene. Why? Are you asking?”

“Kind of….” Catherine said carefully.

“I’d love to!” Drew exclaimed.

“But you—”

“I hate the scene, but I love you, Cat. You’re my
friend. My family. Of course I’ll be a bridesmaid for you. Although I’m glad
it’s going to be soon before I get—”

But Catherine suddenly squealed unbecomingly as Fynn’s
hand reached into her lap unfairly.
Very
unfairly.

“Glad you’re that excited,” Drew said, caught
off-guard.

“I just want my closest friends with me up there in
front of God and everybody.” She squirmed in her seat with the effort of fighting
Fynn’s covert advances, bending back his fingers just enough to warn—

“Cat?” Cara tugged on her sleeve. She’d insisted on
sitting next to her at the dinner table and wanted Garrett on her other side.
At ten, Garrett was her hero and she clung to his every word. She didn’t get on
quite as well with Lyle, who had never been an older anything to anyone so he
hadn’t had any practice and tended to pick on her.

“What is it, sweetie?”

“Can you cut up my chicken for me?” she asked.

“Of course.” Catherine grabbed her fork and knife and
went to work. “You know, my mom used to cut my chicken up for me when I was
your age.”

“My mommy does it at home when she can. She told me
that you’re good at cutting too.”

“She did?”

“Uh-huh. I guess all mommies are good at cutting. It’s
just something mommies are born with.”

Catherine felt a lump in her throat, remembering when
she was about Cara’s age and she made a Mother’s Day card for her aunt, and her
mom had to explain that not all grown-up women are mommies. She looked around
the table to see if anyone else was privy to the awkward conversation at hand,
but Fynn was chatting with the waiter, the boys were drawing tic-tac-toe games
on the back of paper placemats, and Drew and Klein were staring deep into each
other’s eyes like the answers were all right there inside.

“Klein and I have something we want to say,” Drew
announced suddenly, turning to the table. She had tears welled up in her eyes.
“We’re having a baby.”