Free Blame It on the Bachelor by Karen Kendall Page B

plump body into her arms, giving her a big hug. “A lot of people do, honey.” She felt compelled to defend her older sister, though. “She’s all right, deep down. Just a little anal. She means well.”
    Mel emitted something close to a growl. “How does she mean well when she says horrible things to me?”
    “First things first. Coffee? Tea? Wine? Chainsaw?”
    Mel brightened at the last item.
    “Kidding on the chainsaw,” Kylie said hastily.
    “Coffee, please.” Mel followed Kylie into the kitchen. “Oh, God, what is that horrible smell?”
    “Kitty food. I warned you. Potsy gets wet food for Sunday breakfast. He’s spoiled.”
    “Ugh. Where is the little monster?”
    “Sleeping it off somewhere—probably under my bed.” Kylie poured them both coffee, doctoring the brew with milk and sugar.
    They curled up on the rattan sofa in Kylie’s living room, which was done in soft creams and beiges, with seashell accents everywhere.
    Mel gulped half her coffee before saying another word.
    “So what did Jocelyn say to you?” Kylie prompted.
    “Basically that if I don’t lose weight I’ll never ‘get’ a man. And that I’m rude, ungrateful, horrible, et cetera.”
    Kylie sighed. “Start at the beginning.”
    “Okay…” Mel’s cheeks pinkened. “Look, I had a really rough week. This jerk with a major account of mine, Franco Gutierrez, put the moves on me. Then when I declined his generous offer of sex in my bakery, he threatened me, called me a gorda, and said that I should be grateful he’d even think about doing me.”
    Men. Disgusting pigs. “Unbelievable.” Kylie closed her eyes for a moment.
    “So that’s how my week started. I then got stressed about having to be around Mom at the wedding yesterday—you know how she drops her little comments.”
    “Mel, honey, they come from a place of love.”
    “Right,” her niece said bitterly. “And Mark? He also thinks that if I lose twenty pounds my life will be perfect.”
    Kylie sighed. Sometimes she wanted to smack both her sister and her nephew.
    “Anyway,” Mel continued. “I drank a whole bottle of champagne by myself on the beach.”
    “Okay…”
    “Then I kind of hooked up with Pete Dale,” Mel mumbled.
    “At the wedding?”
    “Yeah.” Mel’s cheeks were flaming, now. “It just…happened.”
    Kylie thought about Dev and felt her own face heat. “Yeah. Sometimes it does.”
    “I’m not embarrassed about it,” Mel insisted, though she clearly was.
    “Why should you be? You’re a consenting adult.” Kylie reminded herself that she was, too. A now borderline-homicidal consenting adult. And she wasn’t embarrassed, either. Nope. She sure wasn’t.
    Mel took an aggressive gulp of her coffee then set the cup forcefully on the table in front of them. “But Mom started needling me, and reminding me that Pete is an ‘eligible bachelor,’ and wanting me to throw myself at him. So I finally lost my temper with her and told her I’d already slept with him, thank you very much.”
    “Ah. And I’m sure that went over well.”
    “She basically called me a pathetic slut.”
    Kylie winced. “Oh, honey.”
    “And I was so mad I said some things, too. So now I’m an ungrateful brat. And worst of all—”
    “Dear God, there’s more?”
    “Worst of all, Pete is trying to pretend it wasn’t a booty call, probably because of Mark. He can’t use then blow off his good friend’s sister.”
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s another possibility, you know, Melinda. He likes you and wants to go out with you.”
    “Right,” Mel said. “I don’t think so.”
    “Why not?”
    “He’s just being Pete. Mr. Nice Guy.”
    “Nice guys are few and far between,” Kylie said fervently. “I should know. My last hook-up actually told me that my tits made up for my personality.”
    Mel’s jaw hung open in outrage for a good few seconds before she snapped her mouth closed again. “What a—a…”
    “Loser? Asshole?”
    “Um, yeah. Both.