“You won’t be the object of pity. Mrs. Carl won’t start a vendetta against you for not doing what she wants and—”

Quickly, Kelly stood up. “Wait a minute! Mrs. Carl! My mother! Forey! I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t do this. If they think I’m engaged, they’ll start preparing the wedding. Thanks to Robbie’s big mouth, the cake is probably already in the oven. They’ll nag me to choose a dress. Then what? In September, I call off the wedding? Waste all that time and money?” She sat back down. “I think I better wait until Pauly returns and we can talk about the future.”

Adam gave a big sigh. “Okay. Time for some truth. Your dream isn’t going to happen. Paul won’t live with your family and what he calls your ‘crap-producing critters’ and—” He cut himself off. “Sorry.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “Pauly forbid me to even have a dog around his trees. But this is bad. Mrs. Carl will throw me out of the practice. And Vera won’t leave, so I’ll take away more of her life.” She looked at him. “The wedding to be planned should be yours and Vera’s. She’ll wear a long white dress and you’ll be married in a church with lots of flowers. Then you two will jet off to Bali or wherever.”

“Do you even know your sister? If she marries me, she’ll wear whatever she’s traveling in and tell the minister to hurry up because we’re going to miss the plane. There won’t be any cake cutting or champagne drinking. There’ll be no sharing with people we’ve known all our lives. None of that.”

She was looking at him. “But what about you?”

“There are photos of my parents’ wedding, and I’ve always assumed I’d have a ceremony like theirs.”

“Me, too. I know what my dress will look like and the cake and the flowers. All of it.”

“How many legs does your ring bearer have?”

“At least four.”

Adam gave her a hard, serious look. “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I want a legal marriage. If I did get Vera to agree to a wedding, she’d turn it over to you and your mother to plan. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“So you work it all out for you and Paul. Then you break up, and...” He raised his eyebrows at her.

“You and Vera take over the wedding.”

Adam nodded. “With a few lies, we might both get what we want.”

“I don’t know if I can pull this off,” she said. “But if Mom gets one of her daughters married, she’ll be happy.”

He could tell that she was leaning toward the idea. “You’d get to pick out cake and flowers and—”