Chapter Seven Lucy #2
I flip open the lid to reveal the papers, printouts, and brochures I’ve accumulated since Ed and Katherine got engaged.
“Ideas for the bachelorette party. And I put together a spreadsheet to keep track of costs.” I hand him a copy.
“I printed out a hard copy for you, but I can send you the file in case you want to do a separate one for the guys. The way I see it, some of our costs will be separate—guys are going fishing, for instance, while we’re doing other stuff.
Other costs will be joint and split evenly. Like the house rental and stuff.”
“I’ve got the house covered,” Hunter says.
I go completely still, the box all but forgotten in my lap. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ll pay for the house. No need to put it on the spreadsheet.”
Is he serious? Katherine didn’t say anything about Hunter being rich. I’m sure she would have mentioned it if he was. “You can’t do that. We’ll split it between all of us.”
Hunter shakes his head. “Ed is my best friend. I want to do this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure.” He scans my face like he wants to ask me a question. Before he can say anything more, his cell goes off, interrupting the moment. He silences the call and turns back to me.
“What were you going to say?” I ask in challenge.
His phone goes off again, and he cancels the call without even looking at the screen this time.
Probably one of a roster of girls wanting his attention.
He ignores it and blinks, his long eyelashes sweeping his face.
“I know she’s your sister and everything.
” He eyes the Bankers Box. “But this is so important to you. I don’t get it. ”
I glance away, slightly irritated at the idea of a woman calling him at this time of night. Which is ridiculous. I have no claim over this guy. “She’s my sister. I love her. We’ve always been close. I just want to do as good a job as she would if it were my bachelorette.”
“Is that it? It feels like there’s more.” He glances between my eyes and lips, and suddenly I’m hot, self-conscious. I need some air. Hunter is poking away at my defenses. But why? And why on earth does he have to look so hot doing it?
“That’s it,” I say. “I just want everything to be perfect. Just like Katherine.”
“You think your sister’s perfect?” he asks.
“Of course she’s perfect. You’ve met her.”
Hunter shrugs. “Not my type, I guess.”
Everyone loves Katherine. There wasn’t a boy at our high school who wasn’t completely in love with her.
Everyone wanted to be her friend. The kind of popularity that Katherine had could have been abused.
She could have turned mean and nasty to kids not as blessed in the looks and popularity departments, but, of course, Katherine didn’t.
Katherine stayed sweet and kind throughout the turbulent teenage years and all through college.
She didn’t have an ugly-duckling phase, and she didn’t have a rebellious one either.
She’s always been fully herself, and herself is perfect.
I huff out a laugh. “Sure. Of course Katherine’s not your type,” I say sarcastically. “You’d pass up a Victoria’s Secret model, too, huh?”
“Depends,” he says. “Maybe.”
I roll my eyes, still curious about who called Hunter. Twice. “You don’t need to pretend on my account,” I say.
“I’m not pretending. I get that you love your sister, but she’s not perfect. No one is.”
“No one except Katherine,” I correct him.
Hunter tilts his head to the side, an Are you serious? expression on his face.
“What?” I ask.
“You really think your sister is perfect. She’s the one person on this planet who doesn’t have a single flaw?”
“I don’t know if she’s the only one,” I say. “But come on. You’ve met her.”
“Yeah, and every time I do, she picks a piece of lint off my jacket, and it irritates the hell out of me.”
I clasp my hand over my mouth like he’s just confessed to the assassination of JFK. Hunter starts to riffle through my box as if he’s just told me the weather forecast.
“You can’t find Katherine irritating,” I say when I’ve regained the power of speech.
“Wrong. I can find anyone irritating. You both irritated me at lunch when you couldn’t choose what to order, even though I bet you knew as soon as you opened the menu that you were going to order the chicken Caesar salad.”
“You get irritated if someone doesn’t order quickly? How many dates have you ditched because of that?”
He sighs. “I don’t have time to date.”
His phone goes off again, perfectly timed to call him a liar.
I raise my eyebrows, daring him to tell me again how he’s not dating.
Hunter’s in his early thirties, tall, gainfully employed, and surrounded by millions of beautiful, underserved women.
And . . . well, there’s no denying he’s hot. Not dating? I highly doubt that.
He holds the phone up to me so I can see the screen. “It’s my mom.”
I don’t say anything. He doesn’t need to pretend he’s not dating on my account. It’s not like I care if it’s his mom calling, or Veronica with the great ass.
“What’s this?” He pulls out an image I printed from the New England Home Magazine website. It’s a selection of woven throws in seasonal colors.
“Katherine wants to have a fire on the beach and wrap up in blankets and toast marshmallows.”
“Yeah, and what’s this?” he asks, waving the image like it’s a smoking gun.
“Throws I thought I might buy for the beach.”
“You’re going to buy specific blankets? You can’t use what’s at the house? Or maybe ask people to bring their own?”
“But then the colors might not go together.”
He doesn’t respond, but he looks at me like he’s examining an exhibit in a museum. “The colors of the blankets. You think Katherine wants them to match?”
“Not match, but blend. Otherwise, the pictures we take won’t . . . They won’t be . . .”
“Don’t say ‘perfect,’” Hunter says. “Because if you do, I’m picking you up, tucking you under my arm, and taking you to the nearest hospital for a psych evaluation.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re so dramatic.”
“Me?” he says, pulling more papers from the box and dumping them onto his coffee table. “I’m the dramatic one? How long have you been planning this party?”
“What?” I say defensively. “Not long.”
He stares, daring me to confess.
“Just a few weeks,” I say in a small voice. If no one can hear me, it’s not technically lying.
“Liar,” he says.
“What? It’s just a few weeks.”
“Which brand of marshmallows have you selected for toasting?” he asks. But he doesn’t wait for a response. “Don’t deny you’ve researched it.”
“I have plausible deniability,” I say. “Why would I pick out the brand when I don’t know what will be available at the store?”
“You’d never source them locally,” he says. I feel like he’s reached inside my brain and seen every thought. He’s right. I’d never leave such a critical detail to chance.
I don’t say anything, because what’s the point?
He’ll only tell me I’m a liar. And he’d be right.
But it’s weird. I’ve never been called out on my attention to detail before.
Certainly never been teased about it. Quite the opposite.
Growing up in Katherine’s shadow, I was always seen as the messy one.
Never prepared, never right, next to Katherine’s always-prepared, always-perfect self.
“Are you only like this because it’s Katherine’s bachelorette, or is this you all the time?
” He starts to chuckle. “Don’t answer that.
I know that answer. I bet you were the reason the line at Stranger than Fiction came to a standstill the other day.
First of all, you had to decide on your order, and then I bet they had to make it specially. ”
I sigh. I didn’t come here to be picked apart. I can do that to myself easily enough. We’ve got the house. The rest I can do by myself. Katherine didn’t say anything about having to travel together.
“Why don’t you plan the meal the night we arrive?
I’ll do Saturday,” I say. “You can arrange the guys’ transport.
I’ll do it for us girls. Then we don’t need to plan together.
You can be free of me.” I pull my mouth into a forced smile and stand, shunting the papers on the coffee table back into the box.
“You’re mad. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole.”
“You don’t need to try,” I say, sliding the lid onto the box. There’s no fight left in my tone. I can’t even be bothered to take offense.
“I’m sorry,” he says, picking up the box for me. “It wasn’t a criticism.”
“Sure.” I’ve had a barrage of insults and criticism from Hunter since we met. And I’m done. He’s cutting a little too close to the bone. The exhaustion I felt when I first arrived washes back over me in a wave. “Thanks for organizing the house. It really looks wonderful,” I say.
“Are you sure you want to leave? We can plan meals and transportation together. It doesn’t have to be separated by gender, especially since a lot of the guests are couples traveling together.”
“We can email to coordinate.”
Something flashes up on the TV, and we both turn to look.
It’s a FaceTime call coming through. Somehow his cell has connected with the TV.
Hunter pulls out his phone, but we’ve both seen that it isn’t his mom calling.
It’s someone called Debbie, who has red lips and cleavage the size and depth of the Grand Canyon.
Just as I thought: Hunter’s a player. And a liar.
And he’s happy for me to do all the grunt work while he gets kudos for snagging the house.
In fairness, it is a really nice house. In the end, that’s all I needed from him.
I can do the rest myself, while Hunter can do whatever it is he’s doing with Debbie.
“You should get that.” I nod toward the screen. “Looks like Mom really wants to chat.”
“That’s not my mom, silly. That’s my great-aunt Deborah,” he says on a laugh. Not even he thinks I’m falling for that one.
I have the urge to take a shower. God knows what I’ve picked up being in his apartment for as long as I have.
I head toward the door, and Hunter follows, carrying my box.
“I’ll bring it down and put it in the cab for you.
” He’s trying to be nice, but despite finding the Vineyard house, I’ve seen who he is.
“I’m good,” I say, reaching to take it from him. But before I can take it, my cell rings. I pull it out of my pocket. It’s Katherine.
“Hi, Katherine,” I answer. “I’m just with Hunter, making arrangements for the party weekend.”
She squeals. I smile at my sister’s excitement. “And you’re getting along okay?” she asks.
“Absolutely. We’re best buds,” I say. Hunter raises his eyebrows in silent accusation.
“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” Katherine says. “When Ed and I have babies, you’re going to be the best auntie and uncle of all time.” I wonder what Katherine would think if she knew that sometimes Hunter found her irritating.
“Okay, well, call me later. We can catch up when you’re back home.”
“Totally,” I say. “And don’t worry. It’s all going to be perfect.”
Hunter shakes his head ominously. I hang up with Katherine and reach for my box again.
“Let’s just call a truce, okay?” I ask. “At least in front of my sister and Ed. Let’s agree that to make the most important people in our lives happy, we can pretend to get along.”
“Sure, Lucy,” he says, and I can’t quite read his tone.
Maybe he’s being genuine. Whether he’s faking doesn’t really matter.
I don’t want Katherine stressed that Hunter and I are at each other’s throats.
She wants us to get along, so that’s what she’ll get.
Even if we have to force it every step of the way.
He releases the box and opens his front door for me.
I head back toward the elevator. I glance back at Hunter’s apartment.
He’s got his arms crossed in front of him, leaning on the doorjamb, watching me.
The T-shirt he’s wearing shows off his muscled arms, and I didn’t realize his jeans hung from his hips like that.
It’s almost obscene. He looks different from how he did in Massachusetts.
Not Colin Firth had a baby with Matthew Macfadyen hot, but not bad.
“Thank you for getting me into a cab at the engagement party,” he calls out. “I could have really embarrassed myself there.”
“No problem,” I half shout. It’s a little too late to start thanking me for that. He’s only done it because he knows this time he’s pushed too far. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to try my best to fake it with him. It’s obviously important to Katherine.