Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
He flicked his gaze at her. “You thought I’d be doing the chicken dance?”
“That’s the Macarena. You can tell, because Matt’s right in the middle of it.” She pointed to where Matt was dancing his heart out, standing in between a laughing Ian and Lara, as they all did some ridiculous dance with their hands that Kennedy had maybe learned at one time but couldn’t be bothered at the moment to remember.
“What is going on?” Sabrina said, leaning closer to him. “Did you and Kate get in a fight?”
“A fight? No.” He lifted his champagne. “We’d actually have to speak to have a fight.”
“Yeah, I noticed you’re getting the cold shoulder. Who is that guy?”
“That one? Not sure. There’ve been so damn many,” Kennedy said, forcing himself to glance in Kate’s direction.
Sure enough, she was chatting it up with some beefcake of a guy. And actually, Kennedy did know this one. He’d met Lara’s cousin at the rehearsal dinner the night before. Sort of a douchebag, but Kate didn’t seem to notice. Or care.
Just like she didn’t seem to care that his assistant, Christian, was gay when she’d flirted with him. Or with Jarod Lanham when she’d laughed hysterically at everything the man said. Or that kid who looked all of twenty-three.
She wasn’t making a spectacle of herself. She wouldn’t have done that to Lara and Ian. But anyone who knew her well, as Kennedy and Sabrina did, knew that this wasn’t normal Kate. Her eyes were too bright, her laugh a little bit brittle.
Kennedy glanced at Sabrina and expected to see her watching Kate as well. Instead, Sabrina was watching him, her gray-blue eyes concerned. “You’re worried about her.”
He thought about denying it. Telling her to mind her own business. But Sabrina was important to him. They didn’t go back as far as she and Ian, and there’d never been any chemistry between them, but they’d clicked on a friendship level from the very beginning.
And right now, he needed a friend.
He nodded. “Yeah. I’m worried about her.”
“You care about her.”
He nodded again. Shrugged.
“No, I mean, you care about her, Kennedy.”
Kennedy looked at her. “Of course I care about her. I care about you. And Lara. And the guys, when they’re not being annoying.”
“And because I care about you, I’m going to call bullshit. Your feelings for Kate are nothing like your feelings for Lara and me. And I know you, Kennedy. I know that beneath that gruff exterior of yours, you feel deeply.”
“No psychobabble, please,” he said with a wince.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“What do you want me to say?” he snapped. “She knows I’m here, but she’s gone out of her way not to talk to me or even acknowledge my presence.”
“Why?”
He took another sip of champagne. He may be annoyed as hell with Kate right now, but he wasn’t about to expose her vulnerabilities to others, even a friend like Sabrina.
But Sabrina knew her friend well. “It was Lara’s father walking her down the aisle, wasn’t it?” Sabrina asked. “I could tell she was upset. Poor thing.”
Kennedy didn’t bother to argue. Of course she was upset. Anyone who’d lost her father a month and a half earlier would be, but it was extra brutal for someone like Kate. Sabrina thought he felt deeply? He had nothing on Kate. Despite her efforts over the past few weeks to keep everyone—most of all him—at a distance, it wasn’t who she was. Kate didn’t do anything in half measures. She threw herself one hundred percent into everything. Her work. Her friendships.
Love.
Hadn’t she told him as much? That she was holding out for the head-over-heels sort of love that he’d always thought was fictional?
He knew better now.
The trouble was, Kate loved with all she had. And she grieved that way, too. Just as the old Kate had once believed with her whole heart that true love was out there waiting for her, the new Kate was just as determined to shut herself off from the pain.
“It’s not like I’ve asked her to marry me,” he muttered.
Sabrina blinked slowly and stared at him. “Sorry. What?”
Shit. “Nothing. I just . . . I couldn’t possibly have moved any slower with her. I’ve been trying to give her time and space, and the whole thing blew up in my face.”
“I thought that’s what might be happening,” Sabrina said with a sigh. “I have to take a little responsibility for it, too. I more or less told her to bone you to get you out of her system.”
He gave her a look. “Thanks for that.”
“Well, at the time, I didn’t know you were in love with her.”
Kennedy didn’t bother to deny it. “I didn’t know it, either.”
Sabrina sighed again and scooted closer, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Kennedy.”
He pecked a brotherly kiss on the top of her head but didn’t say anything.