The Kiss List Read online

  Suzie gathered the invitations, stowed them in her purse, and rose to help herself to coffee. “I couldn’t believe it when Aunt Linda told me you got arrested! You should have laid low after that video. Not that I was surprised when I saw it online. I’d already suspected the breakup was going to happen. You should never try to date above your hotness factor.”

  “‘Above my hotness factor’?”

  “Your boyfriend was richer, better looking, and more accomplished, and it ended up crippling your dating life. Who wants to jump on the dating train again feeling as low as you must?”

  “FYI, I’m on board because I believe there’s someone out there who’s perfect for me.”

  “Like who?” Suzie blew on the coffee and eyed her pityingly.

  “My soul mate,” Haley said.

  Suzie set the mug down and narrowed her eyes. “You have someone in mind?”

  “No. Not yet,” Haley admitted. “But I imagine it’ll be just like Mom and Dad’s love story. One kiss and my mystery man and I will know it was meant to be.” With a shrug, Haley fell silent.

  Suzie rolled her eyes. “Aunt Dee and Uncle Craig’s relationship was an anomaly. Most relationships aren’t as sweet as theirs. Don’t tell me you took to heart all that nonsense your mother told you. You can’t seriously believe love happens like in fairy tales?”

  It was on the tip of Haley’s tongue to lie and say of course she didn’t believe in fairy tales after her life had ended up in the toilet, but she didn’t. She tried never to lie. Mainly because she wasn’t good at it. Max, may he rot, had told her that when she’d attempted lying to save her bacon in the past.

  Suzie’s eyebrows went up. “I can see it on your face. You do believe in all that happily-ever-after junk.” She shook her head. “There’s no such thing as that or soul mates. You need to be practical like Eddie and me. Marry to suit mutual needs.”

  “That sounds so…”

  “Practical?”

  Haley nodded.

  “Eddie’s from a wealthy family, and they expect him to marry someone who can handle the kind of circles they move in. I can be someone they’re impressed with. It’s a win-win situation.” She sighed. “That’s the only way to live. There’s less disappointment when you face the facts.” Suzie’s face softened in a rare glimpse of kindness. “Sadly, you’ve always lived with your head in the clouds, and look where it’s gotten you.”

  Haley silently disagreed with that statement. She didn’t live with her head in the clouds. She was an optimist even though love had chewed her up and spit her out this last go-round. “I believe in romance…that breath-catching, swept-away, can’t-wait-to-see-each-other feeling.”

  “Uh-huh,” Suzie said, dripping disdain, softness evaporating. “I doubt you’ll find the one no matter how badly you want to.”

  “Before the year is out, I’ll be in a relationship.”

  Suzie shook her head more emphatically this time. “Bless your heart.”

  Haley would show her. She’d show everyone that one bad relationship hadn’t taken her down for the count. “Pencil me in for bringing a wedding date, because I’m sure I’ll be seeing someone by then.”

  Suzie quirked a brow. “Don’t set yourself up for failure.”

  “It’ll happen,” Haley said. She could feel it.

  “If you find your soul mate before the wedding, he can witness you walking down the aisle.”

  “M-me down the aisle?” Haley wondered what Suzie was up to. She did not want to be the center of attention at any event, least of all a wedding.

  “I want you to be one of my bridesmaids.”

  The thought pinged Haley’s heart. Maybe Suzie was trying to make up for being such a brat lately. She put a hand over her chest. “Suzie, I don’t know what to say.”

  “The friend I’d asked to be one of my bridesmaids had to drop out.” Her gaze swept over Haley. “Let’s hope you can squeeze into the dress.”

  “That is so…you are so…” Haley choked off her ugly comeback because she’d sworn to her late mom that she’d live a good and happy life, and getting arrested (again!), this time for smacking her cousin, would impede the happy part.

  “You’re welcome.” Suzie let out a sigh. “It’ll give you something to look forward to, especially when it sinks in that there’s no way you’ll find a wedding date, not with that video making the rounds. Face it: you’ve been tainted by the brush of viral-icity.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I will find my soul mate, and he will be my date to your wedding.”

  “Sure.” Suzie pulled out her phone and made a notation. “I’ll let you know when you need to meet the seamstress.” She waved a hand. “Now, please do something with your hair and let’s go. And for Pete’s sake, don’t tell any of my friends at the bachelorette party that you were arrested. I don’t want word getting back to my fiancé until I can explain.”

  Haley reluctantly threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt proclaiming her a Jedi in training, then left a note on the table for her father before following Suzie out to her car. If she didn’t find her soul mate in time, her cousin would elevate gloating to a world record.

  The hunt was so on.

  …

  Max parked on the street in front of his sister, Wynne’s, ranch house. She’d put out her fall decorations, and the front porch was filled with orange and yellow mums along with a scarecrow and grinning pumpkin.

  At least something felt like grinning. He definitely didn’t.

  The news that his brother Hugh was moving home to work in the family’s coffee shop had left nothing to smile about. It was bad enough that his brother had betrayed him by cheating with Max’s girlfriend, but now the two of them were returning to the town together. That just gutted him. There was no way he could work with his brother. He had to get out of the family business, and he had to do it fast.

  Pushing aside the turmoil churning in his mind, he reached into the back seat and picked up the grocery bag containing his five-year-old niece, Lonnie’s, favorite hot chocolate. He’d had to stop at three different stores until he’d found it. He stepped from the warmth of his car and walked to the front door, noticing that he needed to fix the gutter. Between working her job, physical therapy with her daughter, and trying to get her nursing degree, his sister didn’t have a lot of time for things like home repair.

  Wynne opened on the first knock and welcomed him in. Wearing her usual jeans and sweater, with her face makeup free, she looked younger than her soon-to-be twenty-eight. To Max, she was still the kid who tagged along after her big brother, the kid he’d always be so proud of. He wanted to protect her now as much as he had then. Maybe more, given what she’d been through.

  Minutes later, the slow movement of Lonnie’s walker caught his peripheral vision.

  The little girl’s face lit up with a smile, and her dark eyes beamed her delight. “Unca!” she cried out.

  It took a second for Max to get through the heart punch that left him choked up. Lonnie had experienced a brain bleed before birth and came into the world almost eight weeks prematurely. With her cerebral palsy, she wasn’t as severely affected as some kids with the condition were, but she still struggled with her movements, with keeping her balance, and with some communication skills.

  He knelt beside her and pulled out the box of hot chocolate. “Are you going to share this time?”

  “Uh-uh.” She giggled.

  “I feel bad switching cars with you,” Wynne said, smiling tenderly at her daughter.

  “You can’t drive around in this weather without a working heater. You’ll turn into a snowman.” He tapped the end of Lonnie’s nose, making her laugh. Rising, he put the hot chocolate on the table.

  “You do so much for us.” His sister’s voice broke, and Max wondered if she was remembering the chaos of her husband leaving a year ago and the recent final
ization of the divorce.

  “We’re family,” Max said firmly. “You’re stuck with me.”

  She cleared her throat. “Between helping run the coffee shop until Dad recovers and working at the Bowman’s Christmas business, you don’t have any time to enjoy yourself. You’re stuck in a work-and-more-work cycle.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not true. Besides, once Hugh returns, I’m out of the coffee shop. I can’t stay there. I’ll be back solely at Bowman’s, and someday maybe I’ll be a partner there.”

  “I still can’t believe Hugh did that to you.” Wynne lifted her daughter up and sat her on a chair to help Lonnie put on her shoes. She gave her brother a teasing grin. “You might make partner faster if you date Mr. Bowman’s daughter.” She laughed out loud. “You should see your face.”

  “Why would my own flesh and blood wish something that awful on me?”

  “Not awful,” Wynne chided. “I like Haley. I always have. She’s sweet.” Wynne stretched out her arm to reach Lonnie’s barrettes from the coffee table.

  “She’s a pain in the—” He choked the word off at his sister’s warning nod toward Lonnie.

  “Marry her,” Lonnie said, only it came out like “mawwy heh.”

  Max put a hand over his stomach and pretended to be sick.

  Lonnie laughed, and Wynne sighed as she finished pinning her daughter’s hair back. “Honestly, Max, you could do worse than Haley Bowman.”

  “Not much so.” He kept a steadying hand on Lonnie’s shoulder while Wynne went to get their coats. “Running through a zombie-infested field has more appeal.” He took the jacket from her and helped Lonnie into it. “Want me to go with you?”

  She shook her head. “No, today is physical therapy right after we see her doctor. We’ll be a while, and I know you have a busy day.” Picking up her purse, she held her hand out. “Keys?”

  Max pulled them from the pocket of his jeans and handed them to her.

  “Oh shoot. I forgot to brush my hair.” She rolled her eyes at herself and hurried down the hall. Back again minutes later, she stooped, lifted Lonnie, and settled her on her hip.

  “I got the walker.” Max strode to his car and stowed it in the back while his sister locked the house, then placed Lonnie in a car seat.

  She closed the door and looked at Max before her gaze slid away. “Have you heard from him?”

  Once, before her ex-husband had crushed Wynne, Drew and Max had been friends. He hated the occasional hope he saw in his sister’s eyes.

  “No,” Max said, his insult for the man who could walk away from his family left unspoken.

  “I was asking for her sake.” Wynne glanced to where her daughter was sitting. “She doesn’t understand how he could…”

  “Neither do I,” Max bit out before catching himself. Now wasn’t the time to get into that. “You’d better go before you’re late.”

  “Thanks, Max.” She gave him the keys to her car before she got into his and waved as she drove away.

  Date Mr. Bowman’s daughter… His sister’s words ran through his mind. That run-in with Haley at the bar had nearly done him in. For a split second, he hadn’t recognized her, and his brain had registered her attractiveness. But once he’d realized who she was, he’d dismissed the thought. Date…huh… He couldn’t picture the two of them together romantically. He’d sooner have a week of back-to-back proctology exams than date her.

  Chapter Two

  The bad thing about being out of the house was Suzie stopping for gas and asking Haley to run in and pay. The gas station hadn’t changed much since it was first built in the mid-40s. When the owner had replaced the pumps, he’d put the same old-fashioned red ones in.

  Andy, the barely-old-enough-to-shave teen working behind the counter with his older brother, bobbed his head and grinned the moment he saw Haley. Andy used to mow grass around Cherry Creek every summer, until he’d used the town’s mower to create crop circles on the high school lawn in the middle of the night and then fallen asleep on the grass beside his creation when he was done.

  “Video girl. It was cool the way you slammed on your man and his side girl.”

  Great. Now rumor has it that not only did I hit the cheater’s new girlfriend but the cheater as well.

  “I did not punch, smack, shove, or otherwise harm my ex or his girlfriend,” Haley said, wishing there was a way to stop all the misinformation floating around. “I fell into her, and it was an accident. Someone pushed me.”

  “Riiight.” More head bobbing followed by a wink, like Andy was keeping a secret. One Haley didn’t even have. She sighed, giving up trying to explain.

  A car horn blared, and she looked to see Suzie making a wrap it up motion. Haley swiped her card, collected the receipt, and left.

  It wasn’t so much that the video had made her famous, she surmised, but it was the way her ex-boyfriend’s camp had taken to social media to share and comment on it. The jury of public opinion had decided she was the guilty party. Never mind that she was completely innocent. She was fresh gossip, and that was always tasty.

  Suzie talked about the decorations for her wedding and the different font sizes for the place cards, and then she dropped the brand name of the expensive champagne she’d chosen. Haley thought it was sad that Suzie was more in love with the idea of a wedding rather than with her fiancé.

  Her cousin slowed the car and pulled up outside the community center, where a display of scarecrows lined the front of the building.

  “Wait,” she said when Haley started to get out. “Eddie and I talked last night and decided before we leave the country, we’ll visit his relatives in Colorado who can’t attend the wedding. We won’t be back until the day before Thanksgiving.”

  “But isn’t there still so much to do before the wedding?”

  Suzie rubbed her forehead. “Of course, and I have, like, a zillion things to do before Eddie and I head overseas, but his great-grandmother isn’t in the best of health and can’t make the trip.” She sent Haley a stressed-out glance. “Everything is happening so fast. That’s why my bachelorette party has to be held in the community center. I couldn’t rent anything else on such short notice.”

  “Okay,” Haley said. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Handle any problems concerning the wedding that might crop up. You might have to deal with vendors, that sort of thing.”

  Haley frowned. “Isn’t that something you’d like your maid of honor to do?” She didn’t want to be entrusted with something that, if she screwed up, would cause Suzie to go into orbit with anger.

  “You’re a more detail-oriented person. I trust you can handle it.”

  “If you trust me that much, then sure.” She was honored that her cousin trusted her so implicitly. It touched her heart and—“Hang on a second. I’m the only one who agreed to do it, aren’t I?”

  Suzie looked guilty. “Well, with it being the holidays, everyone else is busy or going out of town, too. You’re the only one left.”

  “Right.” Haley got out of the car. At least the good thing about attending the bachelorette party was getting to spend time with her friends. Both Piper and Roxy had been hired by Suzie to help with some of the prewedding tasks.

  “I see you’re alive,” Roxy said with a laugh as Haley walked into the community center. Today, her friend wore a white minidress with a black-lace overlay. Clunky black boots with silver studs running up the sides completed the outfit. Her eyes were heavily lined, and her lips sported the darkest red lipstick Haley had ever seen.

  “So far,” Haley agreed as she jumped right in to help them finish setting up while Suzie rushed to find where the fortune-teller’s room was. “No thanks to Max. I could have been shipped off to the big house.”

  “Can’t believe you were arrested for trying to maim him.” Piper snickered. “You and Max, at it again.”

>   Haley frowned as she opened a package of forks. “What do you mean by that?”

  “She means you and Max have been doing this dance since the day you first laid eyes on each other.” Roxy’s lips quirked into a smile.

  “‘This dance’?” Haley said questioningly, not liking the sound of that.

  “The attraction-denial dance.” Piper climbed onto a chair to hang a large wedding-bell decoration.

  “Serious attraction,” Roxy added. “The barbed-but-teeming-with-meaning quips you lob at each other, the breathless staring into his eyes and he into yours—”

  “The quivering longing,” Piper added as she stepped down.

  “Nothing of mine quivers for Max Gallagher.”

  “Oh yes, the quivering.” Roxy winked.

  Haley’s jaw dropped. “Have the two of you been drinking the spiked punch? I spent enough time growing up around Max to know there are no quivers, no longing, zero interest on either of our parts.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Roxy said.

  “Sure is a lot of heat there for zero interest,” Piper said.

  Hands on hips, Haley stared at her friends, trying to decide if they were playing with her. “Are you up to something?”

  “Innocents like us?” Piper exchanged glances with Roxy before asking, “What would we be trying to do?”

  “Trying to push me toward Max because you think the video messed up my dating mojo so badly that I can’t get a decent guy. That’s what Suzie thinks.”

  Ever the peacemaker, Piper said tactfully, “I don’t think your dating mojo is messed up, and the video wasn’t that bad.”

  Roxy’s lips thinned into a straight line as she met Haley’s gaze, then nodded in silent communication: it was that bad.

  Haley could count on Roxy to be up-front with her even when she didn’t say a word. “There’s nothing on the video that won’t blow over, right?” She hoped.

  “Eventually,” Roxy agreed.

  “Moving forward, leaving the past behind, that’s what I need to concentrate on. I have to believe good things are going to happen for me.”