Four Weddings and a Fiasco: The Wedding Caper by Patricia McLinn Page A

one place where trust and honor and faith could be relied on.”
    K.D. blinked away the sting in her eyes.
    “That’s why this place breaking up marriages —”
    The front door opened. K.D. twisted in her chair to see Eric, his skin sheened with sweat and his chest rising and falling rapidly, stop in the entry way, hands on hips, head dropped down.
    “You sprinted up the stairs again, didn’t you,” Myrna accused.
    “It’s good for the —”
    He stopped when his gaze came to her.
    She knew her pretend-silk robe covered her from throat to calves, and it wasn’t the least bit see-through. So, why did she feel half-naked?
    “You okay?”
    “She’s fine,” Myrna said. “She remembered something you should have — you haven’t told her about your law career. As I was saying, he started prosecuting in Chicago, then went to corporate law. And now he’s had the grand idea of setting up a practice where he knows no one in what he’s calling general practitioner law. As if gp were a thriving occupation these days for doctors, much less lawyers.”
    “Won’t know until I try it.” Eric needed only a couple extra breaths to say it.
    “Ken Yount would get you a position prosecuting at the drop of a hat,” Myrna said.
    “California criminals scare me.”
    “Right. Because they’re so much worse than the Chicago criminals you dealt with. You know, the criminals out here deserve to get convicted as much as Chicago criminals.”
    “People in this neighborhood deserve help with their legal issues, too,” he said mildly.
    “Wills, deeds, small-business stuff.” Myrna dismissed them all with a sniff.
    “Exactly. That’s what I do now,” he said to K.D. “So that could be another bone of contention we raise with Marriage-Save.”
    “Only as a last resort.” His eyebrows rose in apparent surprise. At least at some level, he’d expected her to be dismissive of the kind of law he practiced now. Because as a cop he expected her to favor prosecutors? Or because as the same gender as Hilary he expected her to be mercenary? “But we should go over your history in more detail after we’re both— After breakfast.”
    “Yeah,” Myrna said. “You both better get upstairs, get showered, and get dressed.”
    “The dictator has spoken,” Eric said to K.D. He gestured up the stairs. “After you.”
    She hesitated. But that was silly. She was perfectly decent. Perfectly.
    Still, she was very aware of him behind her on the stairs.
    As she reached the second-floor hallway at last, she let out a breath of relief. Just before she closed her bedroom door, she thought she heard Myrna’s laugh reach her from the office.
    ****
    D amn Myrna.
    As if he’d needed any prodding to think of K.D. standing naked under a shower.
    She wasn’t Napoleon. She was the Marquis de Sade.
    And K.D. was . . .
    He didn’t know. He’d thought he had her figured out at the beginning of that meeting in Ken’s office. And each day, each hour had made him know her better and have her figured out less.
    There were issues with her mother, and she hadn’t had the easiest time growing up. She had a wariness about her.
    Some of that was the cop vigilance stuff he recognized from working with law enforcement.
    Some of it wasn’t.
    The question was if he was fooling himself that some of it was because she was drawn to him.

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    A nne looked up at her with damp eyes, and K.D. braced herself.
    “What’s wrong? Is there a problem with the dress?” She tried to twist around to see it.
    “No, no you can’t see it.” Anne’s small hands pushed her back around so she wouldn’t catch more than the glimpse she’d had in the mirror. All that had shown was a tall woman in a white dress. “I love making the dresses a bride has dreamed about having, but this is so much fun to have a bride I can dress exactly the way
I
think she should be dressed. So you don’t get to see it. Not until it’s all done.”
    “Well, if it’s not