Page 57 of Serenity Harbor

“He said he would stop in briefly,” she finally answered, “but maybe he changed his mind. Maybe Milo wasn’t feeling well. Or maybe he was having a bad evening and Bo didn’t want to risk behavior issues in the middle of a crowd.”

Sam’s features fell. “Oh, I hope he makes it—for Wyn and Cade’s sake, I mean.”

“Of course you do,” Katrina murmured. “Oh, look. There’s my cousin Josh from Idaho Falls. You had such a crush on him in junior high, remember?”

Sam whirled around to where Kat’s tall, good-looking cousin on her mother’s side was talking to Marshall and Andie. “Is he still dating that dental hygienist?”

“Last I heard from my mom, they broke up. I think he was ready to settle down and she wasn’t. I know he didn’t bring a date to the wedding. Let’s go talk to him.”

It was a fairly obvious ploy, but Sam didn’t seem to notice. “How’s my breath?” her friend asked.

Katrina sniffed the air when Sam breathed in her face. “Fine.”

“I’d better pop a mint anyway.”

She opened the tiny jeweled purse that dangled from her wrist and pulled out a Tic Tac container, then shook out a couple of mints and handed one to Katrina.

When she reached in again to pull out a compact and started rubbing her tongue over her teeth to clear away any stray lipstick stains that might dare cling, Katrina had to roll her eyes. “You look beautiful, as usual. Let’s hurry before my mom matches him up with one of Barbara Serrano’s nieces who are in town to work the restaurant summer crowds.”

As she hoped, Sam let herself be distracted. They went over and struck up a conversation with Josh, who ran a fairly lucrative outdoor clothing store, and within a few moments, Josh was asking Sam to dance.

When he led her out to the dance floor set up on Cade’s large patio, Katrina sighed with relief—and maybe a little sadness. Sam could be exhausting. She adored her friend, but it was becoming painfully clear that their paths in life had begun to diverge.

With Samantha busy for now, Katrina grabbed a little cheesecake bite from a passing waiter and a flute of champagne from another and made her way under the globe lights strung across the backyard. As maid of honor, she should probably check to see if the bride needed her for anything.

Her sister stood beside a gloriously gorgeous Cade, dressed more formally than Katrina had ever seen him in a black tux he wore with polished cowboy boots.

Wyn looked radiant as the two of them talked and laughed with guests, and the happy glow surrounding them made Katrina feel almost weepy.

Wynnie didn’t need her. Why would she? Her sister had Cade at her side now.

Oh, that sounded pitiful. She was a terrible person, Kat decided. Bad enough that she was being dishonest with her best friend by withholding the fairly pertinent information that she had kissed the guy Sam had a crush on—twice—and desperately ached to do it again.

Now she was feeling sorry for herself that her sister had found love with her onetime boss and best friend.

Needing to distractherselfnow, she spotted McKenzie talking to her sister Devin and Dev’s family—her husband, Cole, and his two children.

On impulse, Katrina set her half-empty flute on a tray and hurried over to their group. “You have completely outdone yourself, my dear,” she said, hugging the mayor hard. “I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but you and the Helping Hands have taken a lovely but average backyard and made it spectacular. Magical. I want to kiss every last one of you.”

McKenzie puckered her lips up and made a smacking noise that made Cole—an ex-con former rodeo star—give that slow, sexy cowboy smile that once had the power to make Katrina’s knees wobble.

“It’s beautiful out here, that’s for sure,” he said.

Yes, Katrina once had a crush on Devin’s husband. And she’d had a crush on Eliza Caine’s husband, Aidan.Andshe’d once had a crush on Ben Kilpatrick, McKenzie’s husband.

Probably about the only male not related to her in town shehadn’thad a crush on was Cade, but that was because unlike Wynona, Kat had considered him in the same category as their brothers.

“You look like a princess, Miss Bailey,” Cole’s daughter, Jazmyn, exclaimed. She had been in Katrina’s class when she first came to Haven Point a few years earlier, after her father obtained custody of his two children, Jazmyn and her brother, Ty.

“Why thank you, Jaz. I could say the exact same thing to you.”

The girl twirled around, showing off an adorable sleeveless pink dress embroidered with white daisies. “My grandma Anita sewed me this dress. She’s teaching me how to sew pillowcases, too.”

Anita, Cole and Devin’s onetime housekeeper and nanny, had married Cole’s father the previous year and lived in a lovely house they had built just down the road from Evergreen Springs, Cole’s ranch.

“Sewing is an excellent skill that will definitely come in handy, trust me. Just ask my friend Samantha. She sewed Wynona’s beautiful wedding dressandthe bridesmaids’ dresses, too.”

“She’s really good,” Jaz said, eyes wide as she looked more closely at Wyn’s elegant dress.

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