Page 30 of No More Bad Boys
Actually the opposite is true. As usual, Kenley looks stunning. She’s wearing a strapless royal blue jumpsuit with flowy wide legs, accented by oversized silver hoop earrings and silver arm bangles.
She looks like an updated Diane Von Furstenberg model, and any guy’s tongue would automatically loll out of his mouth when he saw her.
“But I don’t want you to be late,” I lie.
Larson’s parents are in town visiting from New York for a few days, and he’s hosting a group of their well-to-do friends from Atlanta’s highest social echelon for a cocktail party at his amazing high rise condo. As his fiancée, this is Kenley’s first opportunity to play hostess.
I turn the conversation to her evening. “Are you nervous?”
“A little,” she admits. “But, all I can do is be myself. If they don’t like me, that’s too bad. Larson loves me just as I am, and that’s all that matters.Youseem nervous, though.”
“I am. A little.”
Kenley steps past me into my closet and selects a pair of white jeans then hands them to me. “Well, that’s good. It means you actually care. You’ve always been so blasé about the guys you were going out with, I was starting to get worried.”
“Worried about what? That I was a lesbian?” I follow Kenley as she leaves my room and goes to her own closet.
She riffles through the top rack, searching her never-ending wardrobe. “No. That wouldn’t worry me. What did bother me was thinking that the messed-up stuff with Momma and Daddy and what happened with Tyler might have…”
She looks back over her shoulder at me. “…affected you. That you were never going to let yourself get attached to anyone because you were so turned off to relationships. But I guess you just hadn’t met anyone who gave you the flutters yet. And now you have. That’s how you know you’ve found a keeper.”
Turning around with a big smile, she hands me a lime green halter top. “Here. This will look great with your tan.”
I shake my head vigorously. “Blake’s not a keeper.”
“How do you know? That’s what I thought at first about Larson.”
“We’re not a very good match. I just want… we’re just going to hang out and have fun.”
She quirks an eyebrow at me. “I thought you didn’tdothat. You’ve always said if it doesn’t make sense and isn’t going anywhere, then you’re notwasting your timedating a guy.”
“I know. I just… I want to be around him… anyway,” I confess, rolling my eyes at my own irrational behavior.
Kenley gives me a satisfied grin and a pert nod. “Right. The flutters. Have fun.”
* * *
I meet Blake in the parking lot as planned. He’s waiting for me in a new-looking Ford F-150 and gets out when he sees me, coming around to the front of the truck and meeting me on the sidewalk.
“Hi. Wow. You look incredible. Man, the guy behind the seafood counter’s going to lose his mind.”
“Thank you. Are we going to a seafood restaurant then?” I ask, trying to decipher his strange compliment. “I thought you didn’t like it.”
He opens the passenger door, and I get in. “No, we’re going to the grocery store,” he says before closing my door and walking around the front of the truck to the driver’s side.
Grocery store?
When he gets behind the wheel, he explains. “I promised you no fun, so I thought we’d go grocery shopping. I’m out of everything, and I need to go anyway, so…”
“Grocery shopping. Okay.” I laugh. So he’s taking this no-fun thing seriously. “I guess I’m a bit overdressed then.”
“Are you kidding? I’m going to be the proudest man at Harry’s Market. You’re perfect.”
As it turns out, Harry’s is a blast. I’ve never seen such an incredible grocery store. The place is out near my parents’ former house in Alpharetta, and it is huge. The produce department alone is the size of a normal store.
“And what do you suppose this is?” Blake asks.
We’re playing a game called Guess the Exotic Fruit. He’s holding up a brown spiky thing.
