The Best for Last

  THE BEST FOR LAST

  A WHISPERING BAY ROMANCE

  BY MARIA GERACI

  Table of Contents

  THE BEST FOR LAST

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Check Out All the Whispering Bay Romances!

  Excerpt from THAT THING YOU DO

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kitty Burke’s sex life shouldn’t have been the topic of conversation at her weekly Bunco game. Not when there were so many other worthwhile subjects to talk about in Whispering Bay. Like how the small north Florida beach town had just gotten an ice cream shop over by the high school. Or the new stop sign Mayor Bruce Bailey had installed near his home to slow down traffic. Perhaps those topics might have been a bit on the boring side, but really, whatever happened to respecting a girl’s privacy?

  Kitty picked up her dice and tried for a bland smile. As the only single woman in the group, she should be used to her sex life being fodder for the other eleven women she’d played Bunco with for the past ten years. But she would never get used to discussing the lack (or in the case of the past eleven months, the abundance) of nookie in her life.

  “Speaking of your man, I see him almost every morning when he comes in for his coffee,” Frida Hampton announced loudly enough that the occupants at all three tables could hear. Frida owned Whispering Bay’s premier coffee shop, The Bistro by the Beach. “I swear he gets better looking every day. How do you stand it?”

  Eleven pairs of eyes turned to look at Kitty.

  Steve Pappas, the man in question, had been Kitty’s steady boyfriend for almost a year now. They’d met the night of her thirty-fifth birthday, when the women from her Bunco group, affectionately known around town as the Bunco Babes, had thrown her a surprise party. She’d initially mistaken Steve as a male stripper (exotic dancer, if you wanted to be politically correct), when in reality he’d come over to fix her clogged-up toilet as a favor to his uncle Gus, a local plumber.

  Steve had fixed her broken toilet, all right. He’d also ended up spending the night. Kitty still blushed whenever she thought about it. Katherine Burke did not have sex with men she barely knew. Except, in that one case…

  “Does your husband know you’re lusting after Kitty’s boyfriend?” Lorraine teased.

  “Ed is perfectly secure in the knowledge that I’m just admiring the scenery,” Frida said with a grin as she tucked an errant curl behind one ear. “But it’s not just me. The entire female staff goes gaga whenever Steve comes through the door. I’ve told them he’s taken, but, as long as there’s no ring on his finger…” She shrugged.

  As long as there’s no ring on his finger. Kitty didn’t miss the not-so-subtle implication in that statement.

  “It must be weird, huh? Having other women ogling your boyfriend,” Lorraine said.

  “It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.” Kitty hoped her flippant answer would make them smile and move on to another topic. She took a swig of her margarita and reached for a tortilla chip, smothering it in guacamole. Shea Masterson might make the best margaritas in town, but no one did chips and dip better than Mimi Grant, their hostess for tonight’s Bunco game.

  Mimi loudly cleared her throat. “How long have you two been living together now? A long time, right?” Mimi was sweet, but her blue eyes held a twinge of something that made Kitty sit straight up in her chair.

  A tiny niggle of suspicion slivered down her spine. Mimi’s question, while seemingly spontaneous, had a ring of conspiracy behind it. Add that to Frida’s sudden interest in Steve and… Wait. Had her Bunco group been discussing her love life outside of their weekly Thursday night game? Or was she being paranoid?

  Maybe Mimi’s question was perfectly legit. Mimi was married to her high school sweetheart, Zeke, Whispering Bay’s chief of police, and had the perfect marriage. She hadn’t dated since Tom Cruise was still considered normal. In Mimi’s eyes, living with a man was probably a precursor to that Institution That Shall Not Be Named.

  “Um, Steve and I have been living together for about ten months or so,” Kitty said. A fact the Bunco Babes were well aware of (since that had been last week’s main topic of conversation).

  The niggling suspicion of just a few seconds ago was now a full-blown alarm. She rolled her dice and tried once again to get the game moving.

  “Wow.” Pilar Diaz-Rothman, Kitty’s best friend since fourth grade, shook her head. “Ten months is a long time.” Pilar served as the city’s attorney. A politician, however, she was not. Pilar wouldn’t know subtle if it bit her in the ass.

  “Is it?” Kitty said. Maybe she should pretend to have a headache and go home early. But most likely, they’d see through that ruse. It was probably best just to ride this out and get it over with.

  Shea Masterson, Kitty’s other lifelong best friend, joined in. “Maybe ten months wouldn’t have been a long time, say…at twenty-five, but you’ll be thirty-six next week. Ten months in your thirties is exponentially longer than ten months was when we were in our twenties.”

  “I thought time was supposed to move faster the older you got.”

  “Not in relationship years,” Shea said. “It’s kind of like dog years. After thirty, every month you’re together is really like two.”

  “You know,” Frida said. “Living together is all well and good. Ed and I shacked up for almost a year before we tied the knot, but eventually the cow gets tired of giving the milk away for free.”

  Relationship years?

  The cow got tired?

  If Kitty wasn’t so sure what all this was leading up to, she would have laughed.

  “So, do you think the two of you will get married soon?” Pilar asked.

  Bam! There it was. The question they’d been leading up to all night.

  Kitty felt the dice stick to the palm of her hand. “Um…you know, Steve’s been married and divorced three times now.”

  “Exactly,” Shea said. “So it’s not like he doesn’t know how to propose.”

  “You have discussed it, right?” Pilar asked.

  Taken individually, she might have had a chance, but when her two best friends ganged up on her like this, there was really no recourse. Except to lie.

  “Of course we’ve talked about marriage!”

  Someone in the room coughed.

  Kitty was the world’s worst fibber. The Institution That Shall Not Be Named had never come up between them. To be honest, it wasn’t for lack of Kitty’s trying. But whenever she attempted to broach the subject, Steve would kiss her, or talk about taking a vacation, or buy her some outrageous piece of jewelry.

  It wasn’t as if things were bad between them. It was just the opposite. Things were ridiculously good. Steve was everything a boyfriend should be—attentive, caring, supportive. He cooked; he cleaned; he opened doors for her and never let her pay for anything. And the sex? Even after eleven months, it was better than ever. Her life was perfectly happy. For now.

  Kitty took another sip of her margarita. A really big one. “Is this an intervention?” she asked as calmly as possible.

  Shea, who was sitting directly across from her, frowned. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that—it’s more like a…group self-help session.”

  “We just want you to be happy,” Pilar said.

  “Thanks, girls, but no need to worry. I’m deliriously happy.”

  “That’s a relief!” said Mimi. “It’s obvious to anyone who’s seen you and Steve together that you’re crazy in love. The next step is obvious.”
>
  “Speaking of which, who said it first?” Shea asked. “You or him? You’ve never actually told us. And you know how we adore hearing all the juicy details.”

  Kitty drained the rest of her margarita. “Said what?”

  “You know,” Pilar said. “The L word.”

  “Oh, that… I can’t remember.” She tried for a casual laugh, but it sounded more like a donkey bray. It was her nervous tic. And the Bunco Babes knew it.

  Shea laid down her dice and gave her a hard stare. “You can’t remember when the man you’re with first told you he loved you? Moose and I have been together forever, but I still—”

  “Yes, yes,” Pilar said, waving her hand impatiently through the air. “We all know Moose said the big three after we won the state football championship back a thousand years ago. We’re not interested in you. We’re interested in Kitty.”

  Shea snorted. “I was just trying to make a point.”

  “Point taken.” Pilar turned her dark eyes back on Kitty. “So, how’d he say it, Kit? Did he take you to dinner? Or just blurt it out without warning? Or—”

  “He’s never said it at all. Okay? Is everyone happy now?”

  Oops. She should never have had that second margarita. If she could take the words back, she would. But it was too late. The silence of the lambs was nothing compared to the sudden, death-splitting silence of the Bunco Babes. Where was Anthony Hopkins with a sick Chianti joke when you needed him?

  “Oh,” Mimi finally managed to squeak out.

  The rest of the group looked at her with sad eyes.

  Kitty swallowed hard. “It’s not like I’ve told him I loved him either,” she said, feeling way too defensive. She’d hinted at it. She’d said she thought she was falling in love with him. But that was back in the beginning of their relationship. Once they’d moved in together neither of them had come remotely close to saying it.

  “So…you’re not in love with him?” Pilar asked incredulously.

  “I… Like I said before, I’m perfectly happy with the way things are between Steve and me.”

  Before anyone could respond to that, her cell phone pinged, signaling she’d just received a text message. Thank God. A reprieve from the Spanish Inquisition! Kitty kept her phone with her at all times in case one of her real estate clients needed her. Maybe this was good news on a listing. “Excuse me,” she said, getting up from the card table.

  She went in the kitchen for some privacy. The text message wasn’t from a client, however. It was from her father.

  Hey, sweetheart! I’ll be in town tomorrow night and would love to have dinner with you and Steve. I’ve got a big surprise.

  Over the past twenty-five years, Kitty had been introduced to at least a dozen of Alan Burke’s “surprises.” Her parents had divorced when Kitty was ten, resulting in a move to Whispering Bay so that Kitty and her mom could live with her grandmother. Eventually, her mother had remarried. And divorced again. She was now on her third husband, but happily married this time around.

  Her father, on the other hand, had remained happily single. He’d recently retired from his job as an airline pilot and was living near Asheville, North Carolina. Kitty saw him three, maybe four times a year. They were as close as they could be under the circumstances. She loved her dad, but sometimes he seemed more like an immature older brother than a responsible father figure.

  Please let this surprise be old enough to know who The Beatles are.

  She texted him back. Sounds good, Dad. Looking forward to it!

  She made her way back to the living room, then stopped cold. There was a quiet, sad sort of atmosphere that was more reminiscent of a funeral than their usual rowdy Thursday night game.

  Ten years ago, she, Pilar and Shea had formed this group. They met every Thursday night to roll the dice, drink frozen margaritas and gossip. The Bunco Babes were practically a Whispering Bay institution. Women in town fought to be on their sub list and waited years for an opening into the group. They were more than just friends. This was her family.

  Kitty tried to view her relationship with Steve through their eyes.

  Was she deluding herself? Ten months ago, when she and Steve had moved in together, she’d thought they were on the fast track to Happily Ever After. But tonight the Babes had forced her to take a hard look at her situation. If Steve loved her, then why hadn’t he told her? After almost a year together, he should know by now if she was the one, right?

  There was no doubt that his three previous marriages would make him reluctant to try again. But he had to have thought about it.

  Oh God. Of course he’d thought about it. How could he not have?

  Her friends didn’t have to say it out loud, but they were right.

  Kitty was head over heels in love with a man who wasn’t in love with her in return.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Armand, her next door neighbor Viola’s old cat, was lying across Kitty’s driveway as she pulled up to her house. She flicked her brights on in an attempt to get the cat to move out of the way, but Armand just stared back at her and yawned.

  Great. First, it was her friends. Now even the local cat was giving her attitude.

  Kitty was pretty certain Viola wouldn’t take too kindly to her cat being run over, so she parked her BMW convertible (a luxury splurge after a particularly good real estate year) halfway down the driveway, a good three yards away from the slumbering feline.

  She’d just killed the car lights when Armand stretched out his hind legs, then slowly sauntered his way back to Viola’s.

  “Sure, yeah, now you get out of the way,” Kitty muttered, locking her car door. She glanced over at Viola’s house. It was almost eleven, but the living room lights were still on.

  Viola Pantini had been Kitty’s late grandmother’s best friend. The two of them had founded the Gray Flamingos, a local senior citizen activist watch group. The Flamingos liked to go around town wearing matching T-shirts and protesting anything they thought infringed on their rights. Like the time The Harbor House, Whispering Bay’s fanciest restaurant, had done away with their early bird senior special. The restaurant’s owner had been forced to bring it back after the Flamingos had staged a (somewhat) peaceful sit-in blocking the restaurant’s parking lot.

  Kitty briefly thought about knocking on Viola’s door and asking for her advice. Viola hadn’t just been her grandmother’s friend, she was now Kitty’s friend, as well. She was dating Steve’s uncle Gus, so she knew a little about the Pappas family dynamics.

  Did Viola think Steve was a lost cause, too? Kitty wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to that. Plus, despite the fact that the lights were on, it was too late to intrude on Viola. At least, that’s what Kitty told herself as she opened the front door to the house she shared with Steve.

  She stepped inside the living room and was immediately hit with the aroma of fresh paint and seasoned wood. Kitty loved this old house. She and Steve had spent the past ten months renovating it. Built back in the 1920s, it was a one-story Spanish Colonial Revival that had belonged to her grandmother. After her death, Gram had left the house to her only daughter, Kitty’s mother, but in a rare generous gesture, Mom had turned around and given Kitty the house.

  She made her way to the end of the hallway down to the master bedroom where Steve sat up in bed, surrounded by a pile of papers. He wore a pair of black silk pajama bottoms and his reading glasses. The light from the bedside table cast an attractive glow over the muscles of his bare chest and his dark cropped hair sported a slight hint of gray at the temples. Frida was right. Steve was six foot three and two hundred pounds of pure male gorgeousness. The whole scene looked like something out of a GQ cover shoot. How was it that men seemed to peak physically in their late thirties? Life was so unfair.

  He glanced over at her. “Hey. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Thanks to my super ninja skills.”

  He grinned, then took off the reading glasses and tossed them on the bedside table. Seeing him now,
completely at home in her bed, looking at her as if he’d been waiting all his life for her to come walking through the door, it seemed impossible to believe he didn’t love her. She was a lovable person, wasn’t she?

  “How was Bunco?”

  “Bunco was…good. We spent most of the night talking about you.”

  “Of course you did,” he said, still smiling. Then his smile faded. “Really?”

  Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have said that. She tried to make light of her slip up. “What do you think, silly?”

  “I don’t think your friends like me much. Well, except maybe Frida, but that’s because I buy coffee at her place every day.”

  “My friends like you.” Sort of.

  He made a sexy, grumpy sound.

  Kitty slipped off her shoes and pointed to the paper in his hands. “What do you have there?”

  “A resume.” Steve was part owner of Pappas-Hernandez Construction, a company he and an old army buddy, Dave Hernandez, had founded. Steve was in charge of the north Florida office, while Dave ran the Tampa branch of the operation.

  A high school dropout with nothing more than a GED under his belt, Steve had worked his way up the construction ladder to own his own company, eventually teaming up with his third ex-wife, Terrie, to make a fortune in the Florida real estate construction boom. Kitty was proud of him and his accomplishments. She was also extremely happy that he’d severed all professional ties to Terrie, a real estate attorney. Kitty cringed whenever she thought of the woman. Terrie was beautiful (not that Kitty was jealous or anything), but she was also pushy as hell. Kitty would rather wrestle a gator than cross paths with Terrie Hargrove.

  “I’m interviewing this guy tomorrow for a supervisory position,” Steve continued. “Tom Donalan. Ever heard of him? He’s living in Atlanta right now, but he’s a local.”

  “Sure, I know Tom. He’s Reverend Donalan’s son. He was a few years behind me in school. His ex-wife moved back to town last year. She owns that new retro boutique next to The Bistro.” When Steve didn’t say anything, Kitty added, “Are you going to hire him?” She hoped the answer was yes. Tom’s ex, Lauren, was a sweetheart. At Kitty’s urging, she’d recently been added to the Bunco Babes’ sub list.