Husband for a Weekend

“No, they haven’t exactly bonded with Betsy’s family.” He sighed lightly and gave a little shake of his head. “Can’t really blame them for that.”

Giving Tate a rueful little shrug, he reached into the car and pulled out the travel crib and a heavy bag. “My in-laws are…complicated. It’s no wonder my poor Betsy has to resort to rather extreme measures when dealing with them.”

“Like inventing a husband for her daughter, you mean?”

“Well, yes. I must say, you’re being a good sport about all of this.”

Tate shrugged. “Just helping out a friend.”

“Is that all you and Kim are? Friends? Because when you smiled at her, I thought maybe…”

Scooting around the older man, Tate grabbed a couple of bags and hefted them out of the car. “We should get these things inside. Kim might need something for the baby.”

Bob took the hint immediately. Hefting his own load a bit higher, he turned toward the house. “I’ll help you get the rest on the next trip.”

Rather relieved, Tate followed with his own armload. The one thing he did not want to do before spending a night in the same bedroom with Kim was to overanalyze his feelings about her.

* * *

“Well?” Betsy demanded of her sons almost the minute Bob and Tate left the room. “What do you think of your brother-in-law? Didn’t I tell you he was a great guy?”

Kim sighed and gave her mother a chiding look over Daryn’s head. She saw no need to keep lying to her half brothers about this fake marriage—not that there was really any need for Betsy to lie to anyone about it, but especially not her own sons. At least she seemed to have told Bob the truth.

Still reluctant to humiliate her mother publicly, Kim vowed to draw her aside at the first possible opportunity and request that they find a way to let Julian and Stuart in on the secret. Maybe they could just call it a big joke on the rest of the family.

“He seemed okay.” Stuart answered his mother’s question with a shrug, again without looking up from his screen. “Better than I expected, I guess.”

What was that supposed to mean?

Before Kim could ask for clarification, Julian spoke up. “Seems kind of cocky to me. Just because he’s an architect or whatever doesn’t mean he’s any better than the rest of us.”

“Tate isn’t an architect, he’s a landscape designer. A very talented one,” Kim correctly mildly, though she felt her defenses rise in response to the criticism.

Stuart shot a look at their mother. “You told me, too, that he was an architect.”

Was the game already over? Whatever else they might be, her brothers weren’t dumb, and they’d already been taken aback by the apparent name change. Kim figured there was no way her mother was going to be able to cover all the fa

brications she’d told them.

Betsy gave a sad sigh, and for a moment Kim thought her mother was actually going to come clean.

She should have known better.

“That was my mistake.” Looking somewhat mournfully toward Kim, Betsy explained, “When Kim mentioned that Trey—I mean, Tate—was a landscape designer, I thought she meant an architect. I can be so scatterbrained sometimes.”

When everyone merely nodded in response to that comment, she added, “I would have been corrected much sooner if my daughter ever found time to call—or better yet, to actually visit her mother occasionally.”

Both her brothers looked at her somewhat reproachfully, and Kim scowled. All of a sudden, it was all her fault? How did Betsy keep getting away with these antics?

“Look,” she said firmly, “there’s something you need to—”

“So you married a gardener, not an architect?” Julian nodded in satisfaction, as if that explained something that had puzzled him. “That makes more sense.”

Her frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Well, it just seemed odd that you’d be married to a successful architect and still be working all the time, rather than staying home with your daughter. I figured Mom had exaggerated some about your husband’s financial success, but now I get it.”

“You get what?” Kim asked, studying him through narrowed eyes.