Countdown to the Perfect Wedding. Teresa Hill

like. There are ten bathrooms, at least. Surely I could find something to settle your stomach.”

      Victoria shook her head, more tears falling. “I wish there was something that would settle my stomach.”

      “What?” Amy didn’t get it.

      “I didn’t think anything about it in the last few weeks, with all the stress of the wedding and everything, but tonight, I checked over my to-do list? It was not my daily to-do list but my master to-do list for the wedding.”

      Amy nodded, as if it was perfectly normal to have daily to-do lists, master to-do lists and probably to-do lists in between.

      “That’s when I realized,” poor Victoria said. “That…well…I think what I really need is…a pregnancy test.”

      Amy waited, letting that fully sink in, managing to say nothing but a noncommittal “Oh.”

      Perfect.

      She was going to help Mr. Perfect’s fiancée find a pregnancy test? After fearing she might have broken up the wedding with the little sugar incident?

      “And I know this isn’t fair at all,” Victoria said, sounding quite human now. “And I don’t really know you, and I wasn’t that nice to you before, and I’m sorry. Honestly, I am. This wedding…this wedding is about to make me crazy.”

      “I hear they do that,” Amy said, trying to provide some comfort, wondering how Mr. Perfect felt about kids, hoping for Victoria’s sake and the kid’s sake that he liked them.

      “Yeah, well, the thing is…could you possibly not tell anyone anything about this? I know it’s a lot to ask, and I’m sorry, but…could I trust you not to do that?”

      “Of course.” Amy nodded. “You’ll want to tell people when the time is right, and I absolutely understand that it’s something you’ll want to tell your fiancé yourself, that it should be something private between the two of you. A beautiful moment for you.”

      But Victoria didn’t look like she was expecting a beautiful moment. She looked like she was going to throw up again.

      “Does he not want children? Because he seemed great with Max. Really comfortable and sweet with him.”

      Victoria shook her head. “No, it’s not that.”

      “Well, I know the timing might not be what you expected or planned, but still…You’re in love, and you’re going to have a baby.” Victoria looked even more grim. “Do you…not want children?”

      “Of course,” Victoria confided, then backtracked a bit. “I think so. Someday. I just…I never thought that day would be now—or a few months from now. I just…I really don’t know what I want right now.”

      “Well, okay. You need time.” Amy remembered well how that felt, from when she found out she was pregnant with Max. Adorable as he was, and as much as she loved him, he was the last thing she’d expected at that point in her life, and she had likely felt even less prepared than Victoria did now.

      Amy took Victoria by the arm, guided her over to one of the high stools at the breakfast bar and urged her to sit, which Victoria did. Nothing else to eat or drink, not with her stomach as touch and go as it was at the moment, but she could at least sit. The woman looked like she was about to fall down.

      “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Victoria cried.

      “Well, first you have to find out for sure if you are pregnant,” Amy said.

      That made sense. Amy doubted it would help, because she’d found that most women who were sobbing and saying they were afraid they were pregnant were well and truly pregnant. And they knew it. They’d just been too scared to have it confirmed. She knew that feeling well, from having tried to avoid for three solid months the knowledge that she was pregnant with Max.

      “You know, I’m sure I’ll have to go out anyway in the morning,” Amy offered. “One of the guests will get up and ask for something I don’t have in the kitchen, and I’ll end up going to the grocery store. And when I do, I’ll get you a pregnancy test, okay?”

      Victoria sniffled and stopped crying for a moment. “You’d do that for me?”

      “Sure,” Amy said.

      “Thank you. Thank you so much. I couldn’t stand to tell anybody I knew really well. I mean—”

      “I understand perfectly.”

      “They all think Tate’s perfect and that I’m perfect and that we’re perfect together. Which we are, actually. We’re just…perfect. We make perfect sense. We want the same things, have the same goals, have the same life plan and we even work in the same industry, so we understand all the pressures that go along with it and the sacrifices people make, and…it should be perfect. You know?”

      Amy nodded, although honestly, she’d never been close to perfect in any aspect of her life. But she could see that Victoria obviously felt like that was the standard she needed to meet. Victoria certainly gave the initial impression of a woman capable of being perfect. And now, she was faced with failing in the perfection department, which seemed to be every woman’s lot in life, as far as Amy had seen, but she wasn’t going to explain that one to Victoria right now.

      “One step at a time, okay?” Amy advised, because that did make sense. No sense looking two or three steps ahead. “I’ll get you the test in the morning, and I’ll bring it to you. Where did you say you’re staying?”

      “The guesthouse, just down the driveway, past the pool and the tennis courts. Me and my parents. Eleanor, Tate’s godmother, thought we’d like the privacy of not being in the main house. Although, honestly, she and my mother have never gotten along. Something about a man, ages ago. I’ve always been too scared to ask. But Eleanor put us in the guesthouse. Which is fine, except…I’m scared my mother’s going to hear me throwing up. Oh, God, if my mother hears that…You don’t know what my mother’s like.”

      “Perfect?” Amy guessed.

      “She thinks she is,” Victoria said wearily.

      And now, Amy really didn’t want to know Victoria’s mother.

      “Okay,” she said, trying to keep Victoria focused on what was at hand, on the plan. “I’ll look for you in the guesthouse and try to avoid your mother at all costs. I just have to make sure everyone gets a good breakfast first, and then I’ll go to the store and I’ll bring the test back to you.”

      Victoria nodded pitifully. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

      Tate woke up to a house that smelled even better than it had the night before, when the lemon bars were still warm and gooey and absolutely perfect.

      How could that be? How could the woman, Amy, make something even better than those perfect lemon bars?

      And he remembered the room he’d always occupied in his godmother’s house was almost directly above the kitchen. So whatever luscious things that happened to be cooking there he’d be smelling all weekend long.

      He considered bashing his head against the big wooden headboard of the bed, hoping if not to drive the smell out of his brain, to perhaps knock himself unconscious, so as not to be tempted by whatever was going on in the kitchen.

      Tempted by the smell, not tempted…the other way. The bad way. He was just hungry, he told himself. Hungry the regular way.

      What was he supposed to do? Tate reasoned. Starve all weekend? Staying out of the kitchen was one thing but actually staying completely out of the kitchen for three more days was not going to work.

      He’d just make Rick go into the kitchen and get Tate whatever he wanted. That was all. It made perfect sense. He could eat a woman’s food without wanting anything else from her, without getting into trouble or doing something stupid or making Victoria suspicious. Sure he could.

      It