Page 72 of Now That It's You
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Thank you?”
“I’m serious, Meg.” Nancy gave her an approving look. “You were born for the camera.”
Heat filled her cheeks as she picked up her tea. “Thanks.”
Nancy let out a long, ragged breath. “We just need to get things settled first with the photography rights and Mr. Midland’s estate.”
Meg bit her lip and tried not to let the nervousness show on her face. “I’m working on it,” Meg said.
“You’re sure you don’t have any sort of signed contract that can clear this mess up once and for all?”
Meg shook her head. “Like I told you, we didn’t think we needed one.”
“You always need one,” Nancy told her. “Even when you’re collaborating with a loved one.” She gave a brittle laugh and waved her hand. “Especially when you’re collaborating with a loved one. God, if I had a nickel for every ruined romance that screwed up a perfectly good publishing deal, I’d buy a condo in Bali tomorrow.”
Meg gripped her mug a little tighter and stared into it, not wanting to meet Nancy’s eyes. “I wish I’d known. I wish like hell I could go back in time and do everything differently . . .” She trailed off, not sure she was still talking about the book.
“Well, lesson learned.” Nancy reached out and patted her hand, then took a big swig of her drink. “We’ll have you making smarter business decisions in no time. No more sentimental muck for you! In the meantime, let’s just hope we can get your ex’s family to back down.”
“Let’s hope,” Meg said softly, wishing she felt more confident.
Kyle rapped on the door of Meg’s commercial kitchen space right at five, hoping she hadn’t changed her mind about letting him help. He tried to remember the last time he’d been here, then realized he knew exactly when it was. The morning before her wedding.
Back then, she’d agreed to let someone else handle the catering for her reception, but Meg had insisted on doing dessert herself. She’d planned a huge display teeming with beautifully decorated cupcakes in exotic flavors like passionfruit and crème brulée. She’d spent the whole morning decorating hundreds of little paper-wrapped delicacies.
Kyle was still thinking about the cupcakes when Meg threw the door open. “Kyle,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Happy to help.”
Her expression was somewhere between shy and guarded. He’d expected bristly, so this seemed like an improvement. She wore jeans that looked like they’d been washed enough times to give them the texture of velvet, and he ached to run his hand over her thigh. Her hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and she wore a pink T-shirt that said eff cancer.
“I like the shirt,” he said, stepping over the threshold of the door. No sense giving her a chance to turn him away and insist she didn’t need help. “Lost an aunt to breast cancer a few years back.”
“I know,” Meg said, shutting the door behind him. “I was at the funeral, remember?”
“That’s right, I forgot.”
He hadn’t, actually, though he’d tucked the memory in the back of his mind with so many other recollections of Meg over the years. Had the tiny webs of laugh lines been there at the edges of her eyes back then, or were those new? He wasn’t sure, though he knew his own face had changed in the last decade.
“Thanks again for offering to help,” she said, handing him a long, white apron. “I wasn’t looking forward to working alone all night to get the prep work done.”
“Not a problem.” Kyle looped the apron around his neck and began to tie it in back. Meg was doing the same with hers, and he thought about offering to help her tie it, but held off. Putting his hands on her again seemed like the wrong thing to do, at least right now.
She smoothed her hands down the front of her apron and gave him a slightly sheepish look. “So, uh—I probably should have told you a bit more about what we’re making.”
“You said it’s a bachelorette party?”
Meg nodded and bit her lip. “Yes. And the bride has a rather risqué sense of humor.”
“How do you mean?”
She cleared her throat and looked down at the counter. “How do you feel about decorating cock pops?”
“Uh—”
“They’re kind of like cake pops, only they’re shaped like penises.”
She turned and bent down to retrieve something out of the cooler, and Kyle tried not to stare at her ass. When she stood up, she was holding a dick on a stick. She thrust it toward him, and Kyle took a step back without thinking about it.
