It wasn’t Meredith’s fault Cara was restless. That award went to the master of reading between the lines, dang it. Why did Keith have to be so delicious and so hard to walk away from?
She rolled from bed and wished she’d indulged in at least one glass of wine the night before to go with the hangover quality of this morning. Two cups of coffee and a shower did not improve her mood.
“Time to get up.” Cara yanked the covers off the still-sleeping lump in her sister’s bed.
Meredith stretched like a sated cat and blinked. “Mmm. Good morning to you, too. Any coffee left?”
“You’re entirely too perky for someone who’s had five hours of sleep.”
“You’d be perky too after the night I had.” Meredith waggled her brows. “Paolo worked at a resort in Phuket and let me tell you, Thailand must be the place to learn a few tricks, if you get my drift.”
“Your drift is as subtle as a nuclear bomb,” Cara said drily. “We have a lot of work to do today, and somehow I got roped into helping he-who-must-not-be-named with the mock wedding.”
“Yeah. Somehow.” Meredith grinned and flounced to the shower, buck naked and not at all ashamed. Of course, when you looked like a centerfold, what was there to hide?
Cara sighed and got to work on the alterations she hadn’t finished yesterday thanks to the side trip to the spa. Which had been very nice indeed and had totally worked the kinks out of her ankle. She had a feeling Keith had meant the spa session as some kind of treat, despite his insistence the “services” needed testing.
So maybe both were true. It didn’t matter. She needed to stop thinking about Keith and especially stop remembering the good parts of their relationship. There was no scenario in which that would end well.
She stuck the needle through the dress’s fabric and focused on how this creation would transform one of her models into a beautiful bride. Eventually, a real bride might want this same dress and Cara would gladly restitch it to fit its future owner. These dresses weren’t one-use-only, no matter what Keith tried to claim, and regardless, Cara filled a bride’s critical need by helping her have the most memorable day possible.
Cara Chandler-Harris Designs filled a need, too—it gave her the sense of belonging she craved. One day, marriage would give her that. Until then, she’d sew.
When Keith texted her an hour later, the sight of his name on her phone’s screen put a sharp thrill in her midsection. Quickly, she squelched it. What was wrong with her?
“I’m going to meet Keith at the beach,” Cara called to Meredith casually. “You can stay here and keep working on the dresses.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Meredith stood so fast, a box of thread crashed to the floor. “I’m not missing this.”
Cara strangled over a groan. “It’s not a show. We’re just going over the basic plan for the mock wedding. The expo starts tomorrow, and these dresses are not going to alter themselves.”
“Honey, whenever you and Keith are in the same room, it’s always a show.” Her sister carefully folded the dress in front of her. “And I never said I wasn’t going to do alterations while I was watching.”
Cara let it go, mostly because she wasn’t sure why she’d protested in the first place. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to be alone with Keith. The opposite was a much saner idea anyway. The buffer of Meredith would be a blessing in disguise.
When the two women reached the beach, it was teeming with people. Had she missed a memo? She could have sworn Keith had said he was short staffed and needed her help.
The wind picked up and blew Cara’s hair into her mouth as she zeroed in on the tallest man present. And she’d deny to her grave that she’d noticed him the moment she’d hit the edge of the beach.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“We need to run through the ceremony.” Keith waved at the crowd without glancing in Cara’s direction and barked out an order to a passing member of the catering staff. “These are all the participants.”
All righty then. She squared her shoulders.
“Let’s get to work. You.” Cara put a hand on the shoulder of a baby-faced guy walking by. “We need white wooden chairs set up in two parallel sections on each side of the walkway leading to the gazebo. Find them. Set them up in about ten rows. Come tell me when you’re done.”
That got Keith’s attention. His gaze swung around to zero in on her as the errand boy snapped off a “Yes, ma’am.”