Page 107 of First Date: Divorce
Eric figured another ten minutes and he could leave without drawing attention.
He watched Kiernan and Bexley, across the room, turn toward the porch door to greet another arrival.
K.D.
Not a dream.Not his imagination.Not a hallucination.
Katherine Denver Hamilton.
Ellyn said, “Hi, Eric.I see you’ve spotted K.D.”
He heard Ellyn’s voice clearly, which meant she had to be close by, when she hadn’t been a second ago.But he didn’t look around to check.
All his attention was on K.D., standing there, chatting with Kiernan and Bexley, without a care in the world.
“You look surprised, Eric,” Ellyn said.
Which had to be one of the understatements of the decade.Because if he looked at all like he felt, he looked pole-axed.He’d never known exactly what that meant, but he sure as hell knew how it felt now.
“Didn’t you think she’d be here?”Ellyn asked.
“You invited her…?”
“Of course I invited her.”
And K.D.said yes.
“Eric looks surprised, doesn’t he?”Ellyn said to someone.
Jessa’s voice sounded from his other side.“He does.I don’t know why he would be.K.D.’s part of the community now.I invited her, and to my delight, she said yes.”
Cully ambled up, crossing in front of his line of sight, before moving a bit to the side.
“Nice to have K.D.here, isn’t it, Larkin.I invited her.”
“I just told him I invited her,” his wife said.
“I did, too,” Ellyn said.
Cullyhuh’d.“Guess she’ll know we really wanted her here.”
Eric was aware of the group near K.D.shifting, someone leaving it.But she remained there, so his brain relegated everything else to peripheral vision.
“Why are you standing here?”Pauline demanded, joining the circle forming around him.“Can’t you see K.D.’s over there?Came at my invitation.Called her up and said she should come, since I couldn’t rely on you doing the right thing — the sane thing.”
Okay, okay, he got it.They all thought she belonged here.
But that still left the other part.
K.D.said yes.
“Eric,” came Kiernan’s distinctive voice.His leaving K.D.and coming here had to be the movement Eric’s peripheral vision caught, but wasn’t judged important enough to push aside his view of K.D.“I invited K.D.to come to celebrate with us today and you can see she has.I saw the way of it with you when we met in Billings and … Well, I told you I owed you.”
*
K.D.never remembered how she moved away from near the door, where she’d stalled in the instant she spotted Eric across the room.
Bexley and Kiernan, the engaged couple being celebrated whom she’d never met, rescued her.They greeted her warmly by name, congratulating her on her part in the successful investigation and telling her how they’d met Eric during a snowbound and non-traditional Christmas.
