Needing Happily Ever After - Elena Aitken Page 0,9

and right on top of her textbook and took a step back to lean against the counter.

“Really? You’re bribing me with a baked good?”

Her mom shrugged in an effort to pull off innocence. “Whatever works, Katie. I’m not trying to distract you.”

Katie shot her mom a look as she reached for the muffin. Blueberry, her favorite. Her mom was no fool.

“Okay, maybe I am trying to distract you, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have questions, Katie. And it’s definitely not unreasonable for me to want to discuss those with you.”

Katie sighed and tried not to let guilt wash over her. It probably wasn’t unreasonable at all for her mom to want to talk about the whole engagement thing, which was how she’d started to think about it. But it wasn’t really a good time. She needed to do well on her statistics exam the next day. She was in the homestretch at getting her degree. So close, she could almost taste it, but she just needed to get through one last exam.

Taking a degree program via correspondence hadn’t been easy, but it would be totally worth it. Soon.

If she could study.

Still, her mother was clearly not going to let this go anytime soon. She leaned back in her chair and peeled the paper off the muffin. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

Katie took a slow bite and focused on the delicious taste filling her mouth as she waited for her mom to grill her. It wasn’t until she’d chewed, swallowed, and moved for another bite that she realized her mother hadn’t said anything yet. She put the muffin down slowly and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and turned to see her mom, her head dropped to her chest, silently crying.

Shit.

Katie abandoned her muffin, pushed back the old wooden chair with a scrape along the linoleum, and went to stand in front of her mother. Her hands danced around, unsure whether she should hug her or not. Finally she settled for putting her hand on her mother’s arm. “Mom? What is it?”

“You’re getting married.” She still wouldn’t look up, so she fortunately missed the wince that Katie was sure she hadn’t been able to hide. “And I didn’t know.”

“Yes you did,” Katie said quickly. “You did know, Mom. I told you.”

Debbie shook her head and finally looked up, her eyes full of tears. “But I didn’t know you were in love. I mean…I guess I always kind of knew. You and Damon were just…”

What. The. Hell.

Katie shook her head. “We were what?”

A small smile crossed her mother’s pretty face. “You two were always inseparable and there was just something about you when you were together.”

“We were best friends,” Katie insisted. “We were only ever best friends. Really. I had…” She trailed off, unsure as to why she was defending their relationship when her mother was basically saying exactly what she wanted her to.

Still, it felt weird.

Very weird.

Her mom shrugged. “I know you said that, but it always kind of seemed like more.”

The idea was boggling to her, but Katie made the decision not to push her mom on the issue. Instead, she played along. “Well, maybe it always was.”

That made her mom smile again, but only for a moment before she burst into tears again.

Katie had known that her family wouldn’t just blissfully accept her engagement announcement without any pushback, but she hadn’t been expecting so much emotion from her mother. Not really. Debbie Langdon had never been much of a crier. Katie could only remember a handful of times when she’d actually even seen her mother cry, and it was almost always when someone died. Not when someone got married.

She wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that her engagement brought out the same type of emotions in her mother that death did. Fake or not.

Katie waited a beat and contemplated going back to the table to finish her muffin, but in the end, she took a deep breath and asked, “So why are you crying? This is supposed to be a good thing.” Whether it was or not, she didn’t need to go there. Not yet. She already felt terrible about lying to her family; the truth was not going to be easy to tell when it was time. She could only hope that they understood that she would do anything for her best friend, including agreeing to a fake engagement.

“It is a good thing,” Debbie said after a moment. She