“Oh, of course.” Lynette looked at Kim guiltily. “Sorry, Kim, I wasn’t thinking.”
Daryn saved her from having to respond by tossing a handful of puffed baby treats into the air with a squeal that sounded much like, “Whee!”
Everyone laughed, which pleased Daryn so much that she performed a bit more while Kim and Tate scooped up puffed treats from the floor.
Kim didn’t linger long after dinner. “I need to get Daryn back on to her usual schedule,” she explained to her hostess. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow, okay?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, I almost forgot.” She dug into an outer pocket of the diaper bag for the carefully wrapped wedding band. “Here you go. Thanks, Lynette.”
“You’re welcome. I enjoyed watching my brother squirm.” Lynette glanced across the room to where Tate and Evan were absorbed in conversation about business. “So, Kim…you and Tate—you got along well this weekend?”
“Oh, no. Don’t even think about it,” Kim warned her friend with a fierce frown.
Lynette blinked at her innocently. “What do you mean?”
“Do not try to fix me up with Tate,” Kim warned, making sure he couldn’t hear from across the room. “I mean it.”
“Geez, Kim, it was just a question. Sure seemed to push one of your buttons, though, huh?”
“Just don’t, okay, Lynn? You’d only be causing tension in our lunches. None of us want that.”
“Well, no,” Lynette admitted. “You’re just so darned cute together.”
“So are you and Evan. Should I start pushing you at each other?”
“Evan and me? That’s crazy. Besides, I think Emma’s more his type if he were particularly interested in any of us—which he isn’t.”
“Hey, Kim, you need any help getting out to the car?” Tate called from across the room.
“No, I’ve got it, thanks,” she replied lightly. “I’ll see you guys Wednesday.”
Tate turned back to Evan, returning to whatever serious discussion they’d been engaged in before.
Nodding to Lynette to reinforce her earlier point, Kim shifted Daryn on her hip, threw the diaper bag over her other shoulder and moved to the door with her car keys in hand. She was making it clear that she needed no assistance in this or any other area of her life. She was getting along just fine on her own.
Starting right now, it was time to get back to the perfectly comfortable way things had been prior to this bizarre weekend.
She drove straight home, muttering her displeasure with Lynette beneath her breath. They’d all been so careful to avoid any potential drama during these past months of pleasant, undemanding lunches. She didn’t want Lynette rocking that boat with any ill-advised attempts at matchmaking.
Come to think of it, Lynette had been one of the driving forces behind that trip to Springfield. She’d pushed and prodded and challenged until it had all somehow seemed almost logical. Kim had thought at the time that Lynette saw it all as a lark, but had there been an ulterior motive behind her seemingly innocuous manipulations?
She really hoped not. It was bad enough that there would always be a slight undertone of tension between Kim and Tate now, even after they put this weekend long behind them. She’d hate to think any wedge would form between herself and Lynette. Lynette and Emma had become her closest friends, and she wanted nothing to change in that respect, even if the guys eventually grew tired of the weekly lunches and drifted away—a possibility that made her rather sad to even consider, despite her best efforts not to let herself get that attached to the ritual.
She did not recognize the older model used car parked at her curb when she pulled into her driveway. But she immediately identified the young man sitting on the edge of her low porch. Moving slowly in shock, she climbed from behind the wheel of the car and stared at his glum, wary face.
“Stuart? What on earth are you doing here?”
Chapter Nine
Stuart stood when Kim spoke to him, his hair falling into his face, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his baggy jeans. “Hey, Kim.”
“You didn’t—wait, let me get the baby out of the car and then you can come inside and tell me why you’re here.”
Her head was spinning as she opened the back door and unstrapped her daughter from the car seat. Th
is weekend just kept getting stranger. Carrying the baby and the diaper bag, she walked past her brother to unlock the front door. “How did you even find me? Did you drive here by yourself?”