Tallulah Nights (Tallulah Cove Book 2) Read online

  “I’m eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey and watching Dirty Dancing.”

  He tried to hold it back, but the laughter slipped from his lips anyway. “Is that a hard commitment?”

  She bobbed her head and puckered her lips. “Might be. I penciled it in on the calendar and everything.”

  “Well, there you go. You used a pencil…totally erasable. How about I pick you up, we grab dinner, and go dancing. Wear the dress. We’ll cross one off your list, and if it works out, maybe we’ll cross off a few more while I’m here.”

  “Are you asking me out?” she said with a laugh.

  “Oh, you’re damn straight I am.”

  “Before you commit to the asking, you should know something…I kill my husbands,” she said.

  He leaned away from her and turned his whole upper body in her direction, sure that he had heard her wrong. “What?”

  She gave him a slow head bob. “Yeah, it’s the darnedest thing. Each of them, within the first five years of marriage, got sick and eventually died.”

  She made it sound like she had a collection. “Each of them…how many are we talking about here?” he asked.

  “Two,” she chirped.

  Coincidence. He was almost sure of it. He turned back to the sea and watched the seagulls swooping in circles over the waves. “Well, they’ve left you free to wander the streets, so I would say you’ve been cleared of fault.”

  “I’m bad luck,” she said.

  “I’ll take my chances,” he replied.

  She sat up and crossed her legs. “Well, maybe since you’re coming in with an injury, you’ll be exempt from my mojo.”

  “Ah, a silver lining. Now, stop stalling and answer the question.” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait, what’s your name?”

  “Kate LeBlanc. L-E-B-L-A-N-C,” she spelled.

  “Kate… I like it. Now, why are you spelling it?”

  “In case you want to do a background check before you commit to your offer.”

  “Listen, I’m going to level with you. I like you. You’re hands-down the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met, and I can’t wait to see how those legs look in that dress you mentioned.”

  She bit her plump bottom lip. Wisps of dark, silken strands broke free from her hat to dance across her cheek. “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe I am, but what a way to go,” he said.

  She studied him with those olive eyes of hers. With a couple blinks her face softened, letting him know he’d won her over. “Fine, you’ve got your date. Meet me here, though.”

  “Afraid to give me your address?”

  She pushed up onto her feet and brushed the sand off her. “For the first date? Yes. Does six o’clock work for you?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go let Ben & Jerry down easy,” she said, picking up the canister next to her.

  “Hey, what’s in the container?” he called to her as she walked away.

  “My husband,” she said before turning away and heading for her car.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Make Sure He Gets Your Good Side

  “I’VE DONE SOMETHING ABSOLUTELY insane, and I need your help,” Kate said into the phone when her sister, Abby, answered.

  “Oh, this can’t be good. Do I need to get bail money?”

  “No, but we need to go shopping for a dress. Today. Now,” Kate said as she glanced at the clock. She had ten hours before she had to be ready.

  “A dress? You have the biggest wardrobe I’ve ever seen. You have tons of dresses.”

  Scrambling about the house, she pinned the phone between her ear and shoulder as she searched for everything she needed: nail kit, razor, mud mask, hair color… good God, she would be exhausted by lunch.

  The house had been in shambles since Abby and Blake had moved in with Ben. With the extra space, Kate had pulled her furnishings out of storage to go through them and decide what stayed and what went. She hadn’t finished.

  Not even close.

  “Yes, and those dresses were fine for dates with men two decades older than me. To them, I was young.”

  “Wait, you have a date?”

  Duh.

  Maybe she should just get a mani-pedi and stop at a spa for a wax and facial. She could have her full-blown panic attack in public and entertain the masses. Some snotty teenager popping gum, listening to Taylor Swift on her iPod, getting pointed-tip acrylics glued to her fingernails could whip out her iPhone and have Kate loaded on YouTube in minutes. By dinner, she’d have a million views, and she and Sebastian could debate who was more famous over dessert.

  Not that she was eating dessert because, well, the aforementioned Chunky Monkey. “Unfortunately, yes. A date.”

  “It’s about time! Who’s the lucky guy?”

  “A baseball player for the San Jose Cobras,” Kate said, abandoning the supplies she had gathered. Hell, half of them were probably expired anyway. The last thing she needed to do was bleach her upper lip with jenkety shit and give herself a chemical burn.

  Abby laughed hysterically on the other end. Her high-pitched squeal pierced Kate’s eardrum, followed by a snort and a shuddering sigh as she caught her breath.

  “Are you done?” Kate asked.

  “Be serious. Who is he?”

  “Sebastian fucking Macina, shortstop for the San Jose Cobras.”

  Abby gasped. “You’re serious?”

  “Yeeesssss. Do I sound this panicked when I’m dating one of my usual guys? Think about it. When I pick them two decades older, I’m the youngest dish they’ve been with. Sebastian is still in his twenties… I’m in crisis mode here. I have ten hours to find a dress that will knock my almost-forty-year-old body back at least a decade. If I’m really lucky, two. I need to shave, moisturize, tweeze, get my roots done, buy sexy underwear, and find a bra that will raise the girls back into the northern hemisphere after the last few years of southern drift,” Kate rambled before sucking in a panicked breath.

  “Okay, hang on a minute. One thing at a time,” Abby said.

  Oh, and she could use some liposuction in her ass. She could totally fit that in, right? Because that date with Ben & Jerry’s was more like a monogamous relationship for the last ten or so months, and she was pretty sure the chunky—maybe even the monkey—had drifted straight to her ass.

  “Oh, God, I can’t do this. I’ll just cancel.”

  “Oh, no… oh, noooo, you don’t. Don’t you dare! You’ve had yourself in this damn funk for almost two years. This isn’t how I saw you coming out of it, but you know what? It might actually be better. You stay right where you are. I’m coming to get you, and we’re going to find you that dress.”

  With her nephew, Blake, safely tucked away for the day in school, Kate grasped at her last hope to get out of Abby taking her shopping. To get out of the date altogether. “What about Amelia?”

  “She has a father who would love nothing more than to have an excuse to take her to the office for the day, and his assistant, Roseanne, will be all too willing to spoil her rotten,” Abby pointed out.

  “Are you sure? I really can just cancel.” Because even if she did everything to look drop-dead gorgeous, what happened if she took her clothes off?

  Jesus, was she planning to take her clothes off?

  It had been two years. Two years since William had the heart attack that killed him, right in the middle of rigorous foreplay. Specifically, a blow job with a new technique courtesy of sexplanations on YouTube.

  Maybe it was best to keep her clothes on.

  And her mouth to herself.

  “If you cancel, I’m telling Mom,” Abby said in that same sing-song tone she had said it in when they were kids. The turd.

  There was no getting out of it, because she sure as hell had no intention of sitting with her mother at their next bimonthly brunch getting the stink eye about missed opportunities, wasted chances, and expiring ovaries. Not that Kate wanted kids. Well, she had at one time, but hello… forty looming in the future and all. “Shit. I’ll be here waiting, but hurry, dammit!”

  She thought back to the conversation with Sebastian on the beach. What was it he said?

  Long, smooth legs… that was it.

  Okay, she needed to look up dresses that accented the legs. She logged on to her computer while she waited for Abby. She typed in ‘classy sexy dress’ and hit enter.

  She selected an image search and immediately ruled out at least half of what popped up. Who the hell designed these things, anyway? A good portion of the dresses were see-through lace, and from the looks of it some of the models were wearing dresses a couple sizes too small for their bodies.

  She had enough problems without that nonsense.

  Maybe a checklist was better. She poured a cup of coffee, turned off the pot, and sat at the round table tucked into the sunny little nook in the kitchen that let in the bright California sunshine each morning. She tapped her pen on the yellow legal pad she had left there to make lists of what furnishings to sell, which to refinish, and the ones that were good to go to a new place as is.

  That is, if she ever got around to buying a place. She had the money. Because, well, two dead husbands. Husbands who’d had lucrative careers. She couldn’t buy a mansion on the edge of the ocean, but with careful investing, she could support herself in a modest home for the rest of her days. Only, she hadn’t decided where to buy or build that modest home. She waffled between close to Abby or maybe leaving the mid-coast Cali altogether. She thought she would have come up with something to do with the rest of her life before she made her final choice. Maybe start an event-planning business or find a cause to volunteer her time to. Something to anchor her to a place.

  Anyplace.

  But she hadn’t.

  Depressing. So, instead of examining her floundering life too closely, after all, that’s what her mother was for, she’d go back to the dress.

  She spotted something intriguing on the computer screen before she could start scrawling on the paper. A twist on a high-low dress. Only, the high and low parts were on the sides. This dress had a high neckline, which worked to hide any trouble areas of her cleavage, because, let’s face it, after thirty-five, they start to look a bit like someone let some air out. It took a bra to create the illusion of fullness on the tops. The dress was also sleeveless, which she loved, since she easily got overheated, and one thing she loved about herself was her arms.

  Whether it was genetics or all of those months taking care of Blake and then helping with Amelia, she had a Michelle Obama thing going on. Not quite as phenomenal, but she’d take it.

  But the best part of the dress was the skirt. One side was cut mid-thigh, and as it crossed to the other side, the material did a sharp dive, coming to a point a few inches past the knee.

  It was unlike any dress she had seen, and an intriguing mix of bold and modest.

  Abby knocked and pushed her way through the front doorway, stopped, and put her hands on her hips with a big shit-eating grin on her face. “I’m so proud of you,” she said before snatching Kate out of her chair and hugging her tight.

  “You act like I’m losing my virginity tonight.”

  “Close enough. You’re boldly going where you’ve never gone before. I expect to hear every detail.”

  “Aren’t you experiencing enough of your own skin sliding between the sheets that you don’t have to tap into mine?” Kate asked as she dumped the last of her coffee into the sink. It didn’t seem too fair to drink the caffeine in front of her sister, who had been evicted from the caffeine train… again.

  She glanced up at Abby and spotted that disgustingly dreamy smile on her face, reminding herself that her sister got it whenever she wanted, and with a hot silver fox on a motorcycle no less, and decided to take the rest of the coffee in a travel mug to go. Abby deserved to watch Kate enjoy the brew.

  “Before we head out, what do you think of this?” Kate asked, turning the laptop to her sister.

  “Oooh, I love that. Very chic.”

  “I found it at Chloe’s. I want to try it on before we bother looking at anything else.”

  “I’ll put it in Waze, and we’ll go straight there. Now, let’s load up. I want to hear all about this hot meeting with Sebastian Macina.”

  They hopped into Abby’s SUV and headed into downtown Tallulah Cove where they could easily park and walk to Chloe’s and four or five other boutiques in the area if the dress turned out to be a bust. Kate told Abby about sitting at the beach and the way Sebastian joined her. Now that she was reflecting on the event instead of living it, she marveled at the unconventional nature of how they’d linked up.

  Especially how she’d left it.

  “Oh. My. God. You had William with you? And you told Sebastian?”

  “When he asked me what was in the container, what was I supposed to say?”

  “I don’t know, but I know one thing: props to Sebastian if he shows up tonight after that.”

  They found a front space at Chloe’s, a small boutique in the center of Tallulah Cove known for higher-end women’s clothing. More specifically, cocktail dresses.

  The tantalizing light scent of ginger and lemon combined greeted them as they stepped through the doorway. Clusters of clothing organized by level of dress had been dispersed throughout the bright store, nestled in various corners, leaving the center wide open, padded benches surrounding a center column. A coffee table sat before the benches, with an array of finger foods and gourmet candies.

  A petite blond ducked her head out of a doorway in the back. “I’ll be right with you ladies. Please, help yourselves.”

  “How sadistic is that?” Kate said, pointing to the rich foods ripe for the taking.

  Abby shrugged. “I don’t know—I could eat.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re eating for two so it’s easy for you to say,” Kate muttered as she followed Abby to the bench.

  “Three,” Abby said around the truffle she had popped into her mouth.

  “Three what?” Kat asked, glancing around the place for the dress she had seen online.

  “I’m eating for three,” Abby said, and then burst into tears.

  Kate whipped around and dropped her purse on the floor next to her. “Twins?”

  “Yes,” Abby said, wiping tears off her cheeks with the palm of her hand.

  “Well, go Ben,” Kate said with a smile. She knew that look on Abby’s face. She’d seen it when Abby’s first husband, Ken, had died and she was faced with the prospect of raising Blake on her own.

  Terror. Sheer terror.

  But she also knew that if anyone could handle twins, it was Abby.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  Abby dropped onto the bench and ran her hands over her jean-clad thighs. “It’s two babies. Twice the diapers, twice the feedings, twice the chances of colic. Amelia will be two. Ben works full time. How am I going to do this?” she asked, glancing up at Kate with watery eyes.

  Abby would be thirty-three with four kids. Kate would be forty, one dead husband with a proper headstone and her latest dead husband still sitting on her mantel.

  “You’re going to hire some help,” Kate said with one arm around Abby as she picked up a slice of cucumber with smoked salmon and dill. She popped it into her mouth and told herself it was chocolate cake.

  It was not chocolate cake.

  “We’ll be down to one income,” Abby whispered.

  “Yes, Ben’s. He owns the company. I’m sure you can afford to at least hire someone part-time.”

  “Maybe. Dammit. I’m sorry,” Abby said sniffling. “This was supposed to be about you, and I went and blurted the news. I haven’t even told Ben yet.”

  Kate reached over with a tissue she’d snatched from the depths of her purse, took Abby’s chin in her hand, and mopped the tears off her cheeks. “Yeah, about that. Don’t tell him I was the first person you told. You had a weak moment, but I’m sure your intention was to tell him first. What he doesn’t know and all that.”

  “You’re the best sister in the world,” Abby said, giving Kate a watery smile.

  “Yes, I am. And you owe me. So, you’re going to be one hundred percent honest when I try on this dress,” Kate said, taking her sister’s hand.

  “Thank you for your patience, ladies. My name is Angelica. What can I help you with today?”

  Kate brought up the dress she’d seen on her phone. “Do you have this here in the store? It said so online, but—”

  “Yes, we do.” She looked Kate up and down. “A size eight?”

  “Yes, if I’m lucky,” Kate said with a gulp.

  “Why don’t you head on in to the changing room over there, and I’ll bring it to you,” Angelica said with a reassuring smile.

  “Thanks.”

  Kate waited in the dressing room, nerves gnawing away at her gut. Either that or the smoked salmon had just been resurrected and was trying to eat its way out.

  “Please let the eight fit,” Kate whispered. She turned to the mirror and studied her face. She’d certainly seen women her age who looked older, but those lines crept on over the years.

  One or two here and there, a few more during each of her husbands’ illnesses and subsequent deaths until, one day, she no longer saw the girl she had been in high school staring back at her.

  “Here you go. Let me know if you need any help,” Angelica said, draping the dress over the top of the door.

  Kate took a deep breath and stripped down to her bikini underwear. She’d try it without a bra for now, since the dress was fitted.

  She unzipped the back and stepped in. Closing her eyes she took hold of the shoulders, and for better or worse, gave the dress a hard tug. Much to her surprise the soft, yet thick, fabric had a bit of give and slid cleanly up over her hips. She slid her arms through the holes and smiled at what she could see in the mirror.

  “Angelica? Would you mind zipping me up?”

  “Not at all. It’s what I’m here for.”

  Kate opened the dressing room door, and Angelica did the honors. She peeked over Kate’s shoulder to Kate’s reflection in the mirror. “Just lovely.”

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