The Supermodel's Best Friend (A Romantic Comedy) (8 page)

For a short person, Lucy had a quick walk,
and he found it easy to match his stride to hers. He thought about
the impending reunion with his father and stepmother, the terrified
look in Huntley’s eyes, and made himself focus on how the air was
humid and fresh and felt good against his face. There were worse
places to be stuck for a week.

He looked over at his companion.

Less cute people to spend it with.

* * *

“She loves him,” he said after walking next
to her for a few minutes. “Your friend. Fawn.”

About time he figured that out
, she
thought. “You assumed she was a gold digger.”

“Most of them are.”

“Most of whom?”

“Relax. The women who chase after
Huntley.”

“If there was any chasing, it was the other
way around,” she said.

He sighed. “That doesn’t make me feel any
better.”

“Don’t worry about Fawn. She’s the real deal.
She’s beautiful, smart, funny… and strong. Independent.” She shot
him a glance. “Unlike her groom.”

“Not thrilled for them to get hitched?”

“I was okay with it until a few minutes ago.
Now I’m worried.”

“He’ll come through.”

“She deserves more.”

Miles smiled. “More than Huntley the
Third?”

“Kind of a mama’s boy, isn’t he? And they
haven’t even been together a year.”

“He owns most of New England.”

“His family does. Huntley is more of a lapdog
than a tycoon, from what I can see.”

Miles studied her, looking more amused than
offended. His gaze dropped down over her body, and she almost
wished she’d put on one of her new marry-me outfits instead of her
basic black. “What do you do for a living?” he asked.

“I’m a process analyst in the pharmaceutical
industry,” she said. “How about you?”

“What the heck is a process analyst?”

“Well, most days I analyze the process,” she
said. “Then, to shake things up a little bit, I process the
analysis.”

He smiled. “I see. Sounds exciting.”

“It is to me.”

“I’m glad.” He bowed his head. “I’m the
founder and director of a non-profit after-school facility. Though
Huntley will tell you I’m a gym teacher, and that’s about
right.”

“Now
that
sounds exciting,” she
said.

“It is. I love it.” He sucked in a deep
breath and let it out in a slow whoosh. “I wish I were there right
now.”

“Stop worrying. Fawn is no gold digger. She
made her first million before she was twenty.”

“Big difference between a million and a
billion.”

“She’s not—”

“Sorry, forget I said that. I believe you.
Maybe it’s not her devotion I’m worried about.”

Lucy looked down and kicked a pine cone with
her boot, sighing. “I’m going to have to tell her.”

“You really shouldn’t.”

“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?
She’s tough enough to handle the truth. She’ll have a better idea
of what she’s up against.”

He put his hands, warm and heavy, on her
upper arms. “It would be cruel to both of them. He was just laying
it on thick to get to me. You wouldn’t want to worry her for
nothing.”

“He’s that sneaky?”

He released her, shrugged his massive
shoulders. “Maybe. If he were desperate. He’s a bit immature
sometimes.”

“Jesus.” Lucy ran her hand through her hair
and looked back at Huntley’s cabin, relieved he wasn’t touching her
anymore. Too distracting. “I’m really going to have to tell her.
She’s back there thinking he’s dying. If he’s just putting on a big
show—”

“I think he’s in some pain, just exaggerating
it. Like how he insists he can’t stand up to his parents without my
help.”

“This is not the kind of man I’d choose for
my best friend.”

“He’s a good guy. Loyal to a fault. Children
and puppies love him.” Miles put his hand in the middle of her back
and guided her away. “He’s just a numbnuts sometimes.”

Maybe she could find Krista and Betty and ask
them what they thought. But if she did that, there was no chance it
wouldn’t get back to Fawn, and she might resent their gossiping
about her.

Realizing it wasn’t the right time, Lucy
continued walking with Miles toward the lodge, a throbbing pain
growing between her eyebrows. “If I don’t get my coffee I’m going
to kill somebody.”

The big man next to her grunted his
agreement, and they set off side by side, two of her fast steps to
one of his.

They arrived at the lodge just as Betty and
Krista were coming out, each holding a bagel and a white ceramic
coffee container, the kind that looked like paper but was
non-disposable. Krista was in a form-fitting cotton beige track
suit with Uggs, her hair tied up in a batik-patterned bandana.
Betty, looking hungover and pissed, wore a huge gray Cal sweatshirt
and baggy jeans.

When Betty saw Miles, she tilted her head
back and whistled. “Looky there—it’s Paul Bunyan.”

Miles hesitated only a second before saying,
“Damn. I didn’t think anyone would recognize me without the
ox.”

Krista, who had been studying him, smiled
suddenly and gave Lucy a questioning look.

“Betty and Krista, this is Miles, the best
man. Miles, Betty and Krista,” Lucy said.

“Paul Bunyan’s got nothing on you,” Krista
said. “Though if anyone could pull off flannel… ”

“Krista is straight, unlike me,” Betty said,
not even looking up from her coffee.

“My loss,” Miles said politely.

Lucy sighed. “Behold the blushing
bridesmaids.”

Through a mouthful of bagel, Betty said,
“I’ll be blushing because of that damn dress. Can you believe she
chose pink? Does she want to be a cliché? I suppose she’s wearing
white
, too.”

“At least you don’t have red hair. Poor Lucy
is going to look—” Krista saw Lucy’s raised eyebrow and bit her
lip. “Not that it matters. Nobody’s going to be looking at us.”

Betty snorted into her coffee. “Somebody will
be looking at Lucy. Somebody special. Somebody right back there.”
She rolled her eyes toward the lodge.

Lucy’s stomach clenched. “He’s in there?”

“Who?” Miles said.

The women froze and stared at each other in
silence. Lucy wanted to slap them. The whole thing was embarrassing
enough.

Krista cleared her throat. “Is that what
you’re wearing today?”

Lucy wasn’t going to discuss her private life
in front of Miles. “You know, I think I forgot something back in my
cabin.”

“Would you like me to help you look for it?”
Krista, an aspiring fashion designer, had given Lucy a hard time
about her “monochromatic palette” for years.

“Thanks, no. Finish your coffee and I’ll try
to see you at—what did Fawn say?—the Yoga Yurt at
eleven-thirty.”

Krista looked around. “Where is Fawn, anyway?
Or is that a silly question?”

Should she tell them about what she’d seen
and heard? Lucy could feel Miles’s gaze on her. “She’s in his
cabin.”

“Silly question,” Betty said, pulling a pair
of black Ray-Bans over her eyes. “Come on, Krista, let’s eat. I’m
freezing my ass off out here.”

Lucy nodded toward her own cabin in the other
direction. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“You know, I’ve changed my mind,” Krista
said. “I think I’ll stay here, maybe meet some new people. Miles,
are you going in?”

Holding Lucy’s gaze, he put his hand on the
door. “Yeah. If I don’t get my coffee I’m going to kill
somebody.”

“Great! See you gals at yoga!” Krista
said.

Lucy and Betty walked a few steps together
before the path to their cabins split in opposite directions. “I
wonder who Fawn picked out for
me,
” Betty said. “Should be
easy to pick out the lesbian in this crowd. I swear, I haven’t been
around so many aggressively straight people since high school.”

“Fawn didn’t pick out Miles for Krista. She
doesn’t even know the guy.”

“But he’s Huntley’s best friend, and look at
him—she could wear ten-inch heels and still look like a shrimp. She
loves that,” Betty said.

Lucy hesitated, not sure she wanted to leave
Miles and Krista alone together, then reminded herself what she was
doing. “So, the man I’m—”

Holding up her hands to her ears, Betty
pivoted away. “Sorry! I swore I wasn’t going to get involved.”

“But he’s there? In the lodge?”

“Not involved.” She waved and walked
away,

Lucy lingered, staring at the lodge. The two
of them had looked good together. Just walking side by side, Miles
and Lucy had to look ridiculous. A mismatched set.

With a shake of her head, she went back to
her cabin to change.

The woman—he didn’t know which she was, Betty
or Krista—walked ahead of him into the lodge. He recognized the
warm interest in her eyes, but he wasn’t in any mood to
reciprocate, no matter how attractive she was. Tall, athletic,
quick to smile.

“Have you known Huntley long?” she asked
him.

“Since we were teenagers.”

“Oh, you’re from back East, too?”

“Just when I was a kid. I’ve been in the Bay
Area for ages.”

She glowed at him, leading him to a small
circular table near a back window overlooking the shadowy forest.
“Save this spot and I’ll get you something. How do you like your
coffee?”

He stayed on his feet. “No, please sit. I’ll
get my own. Yours is getting cold.”

She started to protest but he insisted and
strode off to the coffee service, gently touching the burn on his
hand from earlier that morning. He realized he was starving. After
he found a bagel and a glass bowl of cream cheese, balancing a hard
boiled egg in the middle of the bagel, he rejoined the friendly
bridesmaid.

“Forgive me, but I didn’t catch your name,”
he said.

She grinned and held out a hand. “Krista
Lang. I went to high school with the bride. And Lucy and Betty, of
course.”

“Miles Girard,” he said. “High school is good
at bringing people together.”

“Like battle.” She took a small bite of her
bagel. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

He looked around the lounge, wondering in
spite of himself what man the other woman had been talking about, a
man who would be looking at Lucy, but he only saw a few staffers
walking around tidying up, carrying towels, refilling the coffee
service. “I wonder how many of us are here this early in the week,”
he said. “I wasn’t really given a choice.”

Krista sipped her coffee. “I would love it if
it weren’t for—” Music suddenly blared from her midsection. She put
down her cup and fumbled with a zipper on her sweatshirt, pulled
out her phone, and the warmth drained out of her face. She twisted
around and hunched over it, facing the window. “Yes? No, it’s no
problem… ”

While she became engrossed in what was
obviously a call from work, Miles wished he’d escaped to his cabin.
He ate his bagel in three bites, gulped down his coffee, and
wondered if the hiking trails were any good. The Pacific was fewer
than three miles to the west, the rocky coast largely untouched up
here, wild and gorgeous. He wished he had a group of his kids up
here with him to show them the tide pools, make sandcastles, freeze
their asses off.

Just as he was working through ideas for
fundraising and chaperones to make a field trip possible, Krista
put her phone away. “I am so sorry, that was totally rude. It’s
just—she’s really difficult. My boss. Not that
she’s
my
boss. I report to somebody else, but I have to do whatever she
says, no matter how irrational, you know?”

Miles gave her a sympathetic nod.

“I’ve got to find a way to use the lodge
Internet without Fawn kicking my butt. Being totally out of the
loop for a whole week isn’t an option. I’m a designer for a new
knitwear company. Very original, groundbreaking designs. Well, I’m
an associate, which is why I can’t really disappear for a week. The
woman I work for is notorious.” She reached forward and rested her
slim fingers over his hand. “Anyway, I wanted to ask you about
Alex.”

“Alex? Oh, Alex Sargeant.” One of the guys
from their freshman dorm at Stanford, Huntley’s other groomsman. He
looked around the lodge again. “Has he arrived?”

“I met him right before I met you, inside the
little shop back there. He was really nice, joked about Huntley
having his own house in Atherton for whenever he got sick of living
in the dorm. His own house, all to himself, when he was just
eighteen.”

“Not all to himself,” Miles said, smiling
into his coffee. “He had to share it with the servants.” And then
with Miles when he’d split from his father, dropped out of school,
and didn’t have anywhere else to go.

She laughed. “I can’t imagine what it would
be like to be rich like that.”

“Nobody can unless they’re born that
way.”

“That’s exactly what Alex said.” She dropped
her gaze to the table. He could feel her hesitating over what she
said next. “He mentioned he was the only groomsman to grow up
without money.”

He knew what she was asking but didn’t bite.
If she wanted to know if he was as rich as Huntley she’d have to
ask outright, though she might leave him alone if she learned how
modest his income really was. “Did you hear about the fourth
‘groomsman’?” he asked.

She grinned. “That’s so cute—to ask his
sister! Isn’t that great? She’s threatening to wear a tuxedo, Alex
said. Something about pissing off their mother.” Wrapping her
uneaten bagel in a napkin, Krista shifted in her seat and pushed
out her chest a little bit, smiled more broadly. Flirting. “Alex
made it sound like your parents were similar. Would they have a
problem with a lesbian in a tuxedo at your wedding?”

Miles shook salt over his egg. “My mother
died when I was three, I haven’t spoken to my father in over
fifteen years, and I think people should be able to wear whatever
the hell they want to a wedding.” He popped the egg in his mouth.
“It’s not Broadway.”