K
itty Burke's sex life shouldn't have been the topic of conversation at her weekly Bunco game. Not when there were so many other worthwhile subjects to talk about in Whispering Bay. Like how the small north Florida beach town had just gotten an ice cream shop over by the high school. Or the new stop sign Mayor Bruce Bailey had installed near his home to slow down traffic. Perhaps those topics might have been a
bit
on the boring side, but really, whatever happened to respecting a girl's privacy?

Kitty picked up her dice and tried for a bland smile. As the only single woman in the group, she should be used to her sex life being fodder for the other eleven women she'd played Bunco with for the past ten years. But she would never get used to discussing the lack (or in the case of the past eleven months, the
abundance
) of nookie in her life.

“Speaking of your man, I see him almost every morning when he comes in for his coffee,” Frida Hampton announced loudly enough that the occupants at all three tables could hear. Frida owned Whispering Bay's premier coffee shop, The Bistro by the Beach. “I swear he gets better looking every day. How do you
stand
it?”

Eleven pairs of eyes turned to look at Kitty.

Steve Pappas, the man in question, had been Kitty's steady boyfriend for almost a year now. They'd met the night of her thirty-fifth birthday, when the women from her Bunco group, affectionately known around town as the Bunco Babes, had thrown her a surprise party. She'd initially mistaken Steve as a male stripper (exotic dancer, if you wanted to be politically correct), when in reality he'd come over to fix her clogged-up toilet as a favor to his uncle Gus, a local plumber.

Steve had fixed her broken toilet, all right. He'd also ended up spending the night. Kitty still blushed whenever she thought about it. Katherine Burke did
not
have sex with men she barely knew. Except, in that one caseâ¦

“Does your husband know you're lusting after Kitty's boyfriend?” Lorraine teased.

“Ed is perfectly secure in the knowledge that I'm just admiring the scenery,” Frida said with a grin as she tucked an errant curl behind one ear. “But it's not just me. The entire female staff goes gaga whenever Steve comes through the door. I've told them he's taken, but, as long as there's no ring on his fingerâ¦” She shrugged.

As long as there's no ring on his finger
. Kitty didn't miss the not-so-subtle implication in that statement.

“It must be weird, huh? Having other women ogling your boyfriend,” Lorraine said.

“It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.” Kitty hoped her flippant answer would make them smile and move on to another topic. She took a swig of her margarita and reached for a tortilla chip, smothering it in guacamole. Shea Masterson might make the best margaritas in town, but no one did chips and dip better than Mimi Grant, their hostess for tonight's Bunco game.

Mimi loudly cleared her throat. “How long have you two been living together now? A long time, right?” Mimi was sweet, but her blue eyes held a twinge of something that made Kitty sit straight up in her chair.

A tiny niggle of suspicion slivered down her spine. Mimi's question, while seemingly spontaneous, had a ring of conspiracy behind it. Add that to Frida's sudden interest in Steve andâ¦
Wait
. Had her Bunco group been discussing her love life
outside
of their weekly Thursday night game? Or was she being paranoid?

Maybe Mimi's question was perfectly legit. Mimi was married to her high school sweetheart, Zeke, Whispering Bay's chief of police, and had the perfect marriage. She hadn't dated since Tom Cruise was still considered normal. In Mimi's eyes, living with a man was probably a precursor to that Institution That Shall Not Be Named.

“Um, Steve and I have been living together for about ten months or so,” Kitty said. A fact the Bunco Babes were
well
aware of (since that had been last week's main topic of conversation).

The niggling suspicion of just a few seconds ago was now a full-blown alarm. She rolled her dice and tried once again to get the game moving.

“Wow.” Pilar Diaz-Rothman, Kitty's best friend since fourth grade, shook her head. “Ten months is a
long time
.” Pilar served as the city's attorney. A politician, however, she was not. Pilar wouldn't know subtle if it bit her in the ass.

“Is it?” Kitty said. Maybe she should pretend to have a headache and go home early. But most likely, they'd see through that ruse. It was probably best just to ride this out and get it over with.

Shea Masterson, Kitty's other lifelong best friend, joined in. “Maybe ten months wouldn't have been a long time, sayâ¦at twenty-five, but you'll be thirty-six next week. Ten months in your thirties is exponentially longer than ten months was when we were in our twenties.”

“I thought time was supposed to move faster the older you got.”

“Not in relationship years,” Shea said. “It's kind of like dog years. After thirty, every month you're together is really like two.”

“You know,” Frida said. “Living together is all well and good. Ed and I shacked up for almost a year before we tied the knot, but eventually the cow gets tired of giving the milk away for free.”

Relationship years?

The cow got tired?

If Kitty wasn't so sure what all this was leading up to, she would have laughed.

“So, do you think the two of you will get married soon?” Pilar asked.

Bam!
There it was. The question they'd been leading up to all night.

Kitty felt the dice stick to the palm of her hand. “Umâ¦you know, Steve's been married and divorced three times now.”

“Exactly,” Shea said. “So it's not like he doesn't know
how
to propose.”

“You
have
discussed it, right?” Pilar asked.

Taken individually, she might have had a chance, but when her two best friends ganged up on her like this, there was really no recourse. Except to lie.

“Of course we've talked about marriage!”

Someone in the room coughed.

Kitty was the world's worst fibber. The Institution That Shall Not Be Named had never come up between them. To be honest, it wasn't for lack of Kitty's trying. But whenever she attempted to broach the subject, Steve would kiss her, or talk about taking a vacation, or buy her some outrageous piece of jewelry.

It wasn't as if things were bad between them. It was just the opposite. Things were ridiculously good. Steve was everything a boyfriend should beâattentive, caring, supportive. He cooked; he cleaned; he opened doors for her and never let her pay for anything. And the sex? Even after eleven months, it was better than ever. Her life was perfectly happy.
For now
.

Kitty took another sip of her margarita. A really big one. “Is this an intervention?” she asked as calmly as possible.

Shea, who was sitting directly across from her, frowned. “I wouldn't exactly call it thatâit's more like aâ¦group self-help session.”

“We just want you to be happy,” Pilar said.

“Thanks, girls, but no need to worry. I'm deliriously happy.”

“That's a relief!” said Mimi. “It's obvious to anyone who's seen you and Steve together that you're crazy in love. The next step is obvious.”

“Speaking of which, who said it first?” Shea asked. “You or him? You've never actually told us. And you know how we
adore
hearing all the juicy details.”

Kitty drained the rest of her margarita. “Said what?”

“You know,” Pilar said. “The L word.”

“Oh, thatâ¦ I can't remember.” She tried for a casual laugh, but it sounded more like a donkey bray. It was her nervous tic. And the Bunco Babes knew it.

Shea laid down her dice and gave her a hard stare. “You can't remember when the man you're with first told you he loved you? Moose and I have been together forever, but I stillâ”

“Yes, yes,” Pilar said, waving her hand impatiently through the air. “We all know Moose said the big three after we won the state football championship back a thousand years ago. We're not interested in
you
. We're interested in Kitty.”

Shea snorted. “I was just trying to make a point.”

“Point taken.” Pilar turned her dark eyes back on Kitty. “So, how'd he say it, Kit? Did he take you to dinner? Or just blurt it out without warning? Orâ”

“He's never said it at all. Okay? Is everyone
happy
now?”

Oops
. She should
never
have had that second margarita. If she could take the words back, she would. But it was too late. The silence of the lambs was nothing compared to the sudden, death-splitting silence of the Bunco Babes. Where was Anthony Hopkins with a sick Chianti joke when you needed him?

“Oh,” Mimi finally managed to squeak out.

The rest of the group looked at her with sad eyes.

Kitty swallowed hard. “It's not like I've told him I loved him either,” she said, feeling way too defensive. She'd hinted at it. She'd said she
thought
she was falling in love with him. But that was back in the beginning of their relationship. Once they'd moved in together neither of them had come remotely close to saying it.

“Soâ¦you're
not
in love with him?” Pilar asked incredulously.

“Iâ¦ Like I said before, I'm perfectly happy with the way things are between Steve and me.”

Before anyone could respond to that, her cell phone pinged, signaling she'd just received a text message. Thank God. A reprieve from the Spanish Inquisition! Kitty kept her phone with her at all times in case one of her real estate clients needed her. Maybe this was good news on a listing. “Excuse me,” she said, getting up from the card table.

She went in the kitchen for some privacy. The text message wasn't from a client, however. It was from her father.

Hey, sweetheart! I'll be in town tomorrow night and would love to have dinner with you and Steve. I've got a big surprise.

Over the past twenty-five years, Kitty had been introduced to at least a dozen of Alan Burke's “surprises.” Her parents had divorced when Kitty was ten, resulting in a move to Whispering Bay so that Kitty and her mom could live with her grandmother. Eventually, her mother had remarried. And divorced again. She was now on her third husband, but happily married this time around.

Her father, on the other hand, had remained happily single. He'd recently retired from his job as an airline pilot and was living near Asheville, North Carolina. Kitty saw him three, maybe four times a year. They were as close as they could be under the circumstances. She loved her dad, but sometimes he seemed more like an immature older brother than a responsible father figure.

Please let this surprise be old enough to know who The Beatles are
.

She texted him back.
Sounds good, Dad. Looking forward to it!

She made her way back to the living room, then stopped cold. There was a quiet, sad sort of atmosphere that was more reminiscent of a funeral than their usual rowdy Thursday night game.

Ten years ago, she, Pilar and Shea had formed this group. They met every Thursday night to roll the dice, drink frozen margaritas and gossip. The Bunco Babes were practically a Whispering Bay institution. Women in town fought to be on their sub list and waited years for an opening into the group. They were more than just friends. This was her
family.

Kitty tried to view her relationship with Steve through their eyes.

Was she deluding herself? Ten months ago, when she and Steve had moved in together, she'd thought they were on the fast track to Happily Ever After. But tonight the Babes had forced her to take a hard look at her situation. If Steve loved her, then why hadn't he told her? After almost a year together, he should know by now if she was
the one
, right?

There was no doubt that his three previous marriages would make him reluctant to try again. But he
had
to have thought about it.

Oh God.
Of
course
he'd thought about it. How could he not have?

Her friends didn't have to say it out loud, but they were right.

Kitty was head over heels in love with a man who wasn't in love with her in return.

BOOK: The Best for Last

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