In Bed with the Wild One & In Bed with the Pirate by Julie Kistler

Author:Julie Kistler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

2

KATE STUMBLED INTO THE KITCHEN and squinted at the wall clock, a Captain Hook clock with the captain as the big hand being chased by the crocodile, the little hand. Together the hands showed six forty-five. “Show me the coffee,” she mumbled groggily, rubbing her eyes.

“My daughter hasn’t changed a bit,” Melanie told Verna, energetically stirring something in a bowl. “Rolls outta bed at the last minute ’cause she’s stayed up till the wee hours, watching those old movies on video.” In a surprised undertone, she murmured, “Or usually she’s bleary-eyed from watching those videos.” Raising her voice, Melanie continued, “Verna, darlin’, I hope you make my child eat a decent breakfast. Otherwise, she’d blast through the rest of the day, fueled only by large quantities of caffeine.”

Strands of Verna’s ash-blond hair glinted in morning light that streamed through the kitchen window. Busily spooning strawberry preserves from a kitchen jar into serving dishes, Verna started to respond when Kate interrupted.

“Child?” She swiped her finger along the edge of the jar. “I’m thirty-three, Melanie. A grown woman.” She sucked the jam off her finger, leaving a smudge of it on the corner of her mouth.

“Oh, I’ve noticed all right,” Melanie said softly, stopping her bowl-beating duties long enough to dab at the corner of Kate’s mouth with her apron before returning to her culinary task. “I also noticed you have a hankerin’ for cavorting in the midnight hours with naked men.”

Verna dropped her spoon. It clattered across the linoleum floor.

Ignoring the commotion, Kate ambled over to the coffeepot and sloshed some of the hot black liquid into her favorite mug—a ceramic cup decorated with fat, yellow cats. Verna, picking up the spoon, flashed Kate a what’s-this-about-naked-men? look. Kate rolled her eyes, which in girlfriend sign language meant, I’ll spill later.

At the tail end of the eye roll, Kate’s gaze landed on her mother. “What’re you making, Mel?”

“It’s bad enough you call me Melanie,” her mother answered peevishly. “But Mel? Please! You make me sound like a bartender at some seedy tavern.” Beat-beat-beat. “I’m making my brownies for this evening’s treats.”

Beaufort’s Best Brownies. A prize Melanie Corrigan had won three years in a row. As Kate stirred cream into her coffee, she took a moment to peruse Beaufort’s Best Brownies’ maker.

Melanie always looked as though she’d just stepped out of 1960, the year she married her high school sweetheart, Max. Kate often thought her mother had gotten trapped in a time warp back then, trapped in some kind of perfect homemaker time capsule.

Everything about her mother was perfect. Her makeup, her cooking, her cleaning, even the way she ironed her husband’s handkerchiefs and folded them into perfect triangles. Kate tugged on a strand of her tousled hair. Even her mother’s hair was perfect. A perennially curly, auburn bouffant with two matching curls at her temples that always reminded Kate of quotation marks, framing some unspoken thought in Melanie’s mind.

It had been hard growing up, competing with perfection. At an early age, Kate stopped competing.

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