Miss Impractical Pants

Miss
Im
practical Pants

Copyright © 2012 by Katie Thayne

Cover art and design by Nellie
Lingwall

Developmental Editing: Clint Johnson

Copy
Edititng
: Melissa
Brandzel
, Media Chick

All rights reserved.

This book is a work
of fiction, the names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.

Acknowledgements

To everyone who helped and supported me through this endeavor, a big giant thank you. Especially to those of you who read the very first draft and are still around to pick up this final version—if that’s not true friendship I don’t know what is. Thanks to my family and Erik for your encouragement and support, and thanks to my Moab friends for not rolling your eyes (in front of me) during the past years when I talked incessantly about my book. I’m sure you thought this day would never come.  From now on, I’ll try to talk about something new—like maybe the sequel I’m working on.

Thanks to my little group in the Salt Lake City chapter of the League of Utah Writers, Marsha, Peggy, Mary,
Nolyn
, Gordon and Margie.  Thanks, Margie for becoming my writing buddy.  I know I never would have finished this book without your encouragement. 

Clint Johnson, the best thing I ever did was attend your workshop.  Thanks for teaching me the difference between
sucky
writing and quality writing. And thanks for believing I had the talent to do something with my manuscript. Thanks Melissa at Media Chick for the advice and mad editing skills, and Thanks Nellie for the amazing cover art, and Annie for your “tweaks” (P.S. That wasn’t meant to sound naughty).   

I know that’s a lot of thanks going around. I’m almost finished.  To anyone who is reading this, THANK YOU!

Chapter One

Katie Sutherland ached to slam her foot against the gas pedal and get this night over with. Instead, she was forced to inch along, captive in the endless procession of traffic, while the Colorado sky dumped a whole season’s worth of snow onto the freeway.

Her nerves were worsening by the moment. She was already dreading the torturous questions she would face at the wedding—the major downfall to being a guest and not the bride. Those same stupid questions... “Why aren’t you married yet?” and, of course, “How come you don’t have a boyfriend?” Katie felt certain these questions were meant to be malicious. After all, what would they expect her to say?
“My genital warts keep flaring up and I just can’t keep from scratching—until the swelling goes down, I’ve had to give up dating.”

That would give those biddies from the old neighborhood a nice, juicy piece of gossip to salivate over. At least the talk would be different from the usual
“Hasn’t Katie Sutherland turned out to be quite a beauty? I swear, with that gorgeous long hair and those green eyes, she is the spitting image of her mother. By the way, has anyone heard anything from Karen?”
Of course, no one would have heard from Katie’s mother, and since that subject had been exploited ad nauseam over the years, they would keep their focus on Katie.

“Can you believe she isn’t married yet? For goodness sake, even poor Penny Harwood, the hunchback—too bad her family was never able to get that fixed—was able to catch herself a nice husband—despite her underactive thyroid.”

“You don’t suppose she’s one of those lesbians, do you?”

“She’s too pretty to be a lesbian. I think she’s just irresponsible. Girls that close to thirty have no business being single…unless they have some kind of deformity.”

“Didn’t you just hear me about Penny Harwood?”

Katie shook her head, trying to clear out the phantom conversations. She’d be hearing them for real soon enough. There was no way to avoid the condescension of these Barbara Bush look-alikes. Two things she knew about gossiping old maids: 1) They thrived on weddings and funerals, and 2) they were the source of her longtime trepidation of both.
I hate blue hairs, I hate blue hairs, yes I do, I do, I do..
. Katie chanted the mantra to the tune of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” as she beat her thumbs in time against the steering wheel.

For Christopher Evans—aka Mom, her surrogate brother—she would endure. And for Heather, though she hadn’t met her yet, unless about a million phone conversations in preparation for this wedding counted. Why Heather had agreed to get married in Christopher’s hometown was beyond Katie, but it proved Heather’s affection for him was genuine. Not many women would abandon friends and family to move to their husband’s hometown. Her devotion to Christopher’s happiness automatically won Katie’s allegiance.

An aggravating testament to Christopher’s affable personality, the parking lot was already overflowing with vehicles by the time Katie maneuvered her charcoal Jeep Liberty—Rhett Butler, as she liked to call it—into one of the few remaining stalls. Placing a hand over her abdomen, she felt dread the size of a blue ribbon pomegranate settle in the pit of her stomach. She drew in one long, confidence-building breath before wrestling a cumbersome present out of the Jeep,
then
blazed a trail to the rear of the building.

The ornate door was much heavier than Katie imagined. When she pulled, it teased her by cracking open just a couple of inches. Shifting the present to her hip, she gave a hard, determined tug. At that exact moment, someone pushed it open from the inside. Propelled backward, Katie let out a surprised yelp and toppled over and down the bank built up from a winter’s worth of snow-blowing. The heavy gift landed with an excruciating thud on her abdomen before sliding off to the side.

Upside down and fighting to catch the wind that had been knocked out of her, she heard footsteps hustling through the snow toward her. Blinking to restore her vision, she felt something,
either snot
or blood, dribble from her nose.

“Katie, are you all right? I’m so sorry.” Sliding down to his knees beside her, mindless of his tuxedo, Christopher began digging her from her snow crater.

Minutes crept by before she could gather enough breath to respond.

“What the hell?” She dabbed the annoying drip under her nose with the back of her hand. She analyzed the smear—blood. She must have smacked herself in the face during her tumble. Not that she was in pain. Other than her throbbing gut, she just felt the nip of the zinging cold.

Christopher stifled a smile and offered her a hand, yanking her to her feet. As she brushed the snow from her body and pulled brown sugar-colored strands of hair from her eyes, she briefly noticed Christopher’s friend, hovering as if he would like to help but didn’t know how.

Christopher bent down to retrieve the mangled gift-wrapped package. “Criminy, Katie, what have you got in here?”

She tried not to show how pleased she was with herself. “Let’s just say, after this disaster, nobody is ever getting his-and-hers bowling balls from me again.”

“Really?”
He snatched her off her feet into a big bear hug. “You’re the best!”

Considering she was still trying to get him to take up the sport, she couldn’t have asked for a better reaction.

“Well, what are friends for?”

He didn’t answer, and Katie feared he might view the silence as an opportunity to get all wedding sentimental on her.

“There’s snow melting in my boots.” She cut through the snow back to her car.

“Sure there is.” Christopher grinned. “Kate, this is my buddy, Jared Stone.” He gestured to his companion as they followed in her tracks. “We were roommates in college one of the years you were playing abroad.”

“Studying,” she corrected.

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Jared’s my best man.”

“Duh.
I know that. Who helped you plan your part of the wedding? Um, pretty sure that was me.”

She stopped on the pavement and offered her hand to Jared. Then she took notice of him. The man was pure beefcake!

“It’s nice to have a face to put with your name. Chris has told me so many stories about you.” Jared held an almost too-tight grip on her hand as he flashed a perfect Colgate smile.

Certain that these “stories” couldn’t have been flattering
depictions,
she shot Christopher the evil eye. He shrugged, giving her a sheepish smile. Next to his vertically inferior friend, Christopher looked like a floppy-haired beanpole.

“Nice to meet you, too.”
She gave Jared another once-over. He might be attractive in a Vin Diesel sort of way, but his shaved head couldn’t camouflage the faint band of his receding hairline. And he might not have been as short as he seemed, but his ripped muscles created the optical illusion of being almost as wide as he was tall.

“Kate, I’m so glad you’re not late,” Christopher said. Before she could launch her defense, he added, “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean that my mom is being—”

“She’s being your
mother,
” Katie grimaced.

“Yes, and Heather doesn’t quite know how to deal with her.”

Does anybody?
“Got it.
I’ll
come
help as soon as I change my socks and get a tissue.” She wiped another smear of blood across the back of her finger.