Countdown to the Perfect Wedding

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.

Chapter Two

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.

“Don’t worry,” she said, laughing a bit. “I’m not…I have something on under this.”

“Of course.” He nodded, still watching, still looking a bit puzzled and confused.

What she had on was a plain black tank top with spaghetti straps and a built-in bra—nothing fancy, nothing too revealing and exceedingly comfortable. It got hot in a kitchen in a chef’s coat.

So why did she feel as self-conscious as if she’d just peeled off her clothes down to the skin? What a weird night.

“So,” she said, looking up at him and trying to pretend a nonchalance she certainly didn’t feel. “I should get back to the kitchen.”

He nodded, still standing in the doorway, took a tentative step forward, watching her as he did, like she might want to run away and wanting to give her a chance. “You’ve still got powdered sugar in your hair.”

“Oh. Forgot.” She started swiping at it, sugar going this way and that as she brushed her hands through her hair and along the braid. It just wasn’t working, and she finally took her hair out of the braid.

“Bend forward,” he said. “I’ll get it.”