Not Quite A Mom. Kirsten Sawyer

      KENSINGTON BOOKS

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      To Eleanor

       for napping just enough to let me write this book.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 32

      Chapter 33

      Chapter 34

      Chapter 35

      Chapter 36

      Chapter 37

      Chapter 38

      Chapter 39

      Chapter 40

      Chapter 41

      Chapter 42

      Chapter 43

      Chapter 44

      Chapter 45

      Chapter 46

      Chapter 47

      Chapter 48

      Chapter 49

      Chapter 50

      Chapter 51

      Chapter 52

      Chapter 53

      Chapter 54

      Chapter 55

      Chapter 56

      Chapter 57

      1

      “He finally did it!” I squeal with excitement into my black cordless phone.

      “He” is my boyfriend of seven (and a half ) years, Daniel McCafferty. “It” is a proposal. I guess now he is technically my fiancé, since I am wearing a stunning 1-carat (.85 carat) engagement ring on my left ring finger. On the other end of the phone is my best friend (only friend), Courtney Cambridge.

      “Oh my God, Elizabeth, congratulations!” she screams back at me, sounding as excited as I feel.

      This is why I love Courtney. She is the kind of friend who really cares. She sounds as excited as I feel because she feels that excited. She’s been like that since the day we met, in our freshman year at UCLA. Courtney and I were both cursed with horrible first-year roommates and so we spent most of the year in the mildew-smelling lounge eating vending machine food and trying to top each other with bad-roommate anecdotes. It created a bond that has lasted until now.

      Now we are thirty-two. We have our own, roommateless apartments in Los Angeles and instead of spending our nights eating Kit-Kats in a dorm common room, we spend them eating Chinese take-out in our respective apartments on the phone.

      “Tell me everything,” Courtney demands.

      As I begin to tell her, in specific detail, every event of the evening, I gaze happily at my hand. The evening had begun like any other. It’s Saturday night, so of course Dan and I had plans to go out. Like almost every Saturday, he picked me up at 8 p.m. with a bouquet of roses in hand. We went to dinner at a new place on Beverly Drive and then decided to splurge on dessert. This is where the evening stopped being ordinary for a few minutes. When our crème brulée arrived, neatly wedged in the caramelized sugar was a ring. In utter shock, I looked from the ring to Daniel, still holding the spoon I had poised to dig in.

      “Will you marry me?” Daniel asked, leaning over the table.

      I looked once more from the bejeweled dessert into his eyes before responding, “Absolutely.” Then I took the ring out of the custard, licked it off and slipped it onto my finger. On cue, the waiter brought two glasses of champagne. We toasted and then ate the dessert.

      After we left the restaurant, the night pretty much returned to normal—except for my new accessory. We went back to my apartment, had sex, I faked an orgasm, and Dan smiled proudly. Then he got dressed, I wrapped myself in a pink silk robe and walked him to the door. Some nights Dan stays at my apartment, but if he has plans for early the next morning, like he did this night, he goes back to his own apartment to avoid disturbing me on a day when I can actually sleep in. The next morning, he was playing golf with a judge, so I kissed him at the door and watched through the window as he climbed into his navy blue Audi A4 with a glowing smile. As soon as he drove off, I lunged for the phone to dial Courtney.

      Just as I get to the part with the ring in the crème brulée, my call waiting beeps.

      “Ignore it,” Courtney instructs.

      “I can’t!” I argue, “What if it’s Dan?”

      “Okay, fine,” she concedes and I click over.

      “Elizabeth Castle?” the voice on the other end inquires. It’s obviously not Dan…it must be some stupid sales call.

      “Speaking?” I reply in a clearly annoyed tone.

      “Ms. Castle, I am calling in regards to your best friend.”

      I am distracted thinking about how soon I will be Mrs. McCafferty instead of Ms. Castle and so it takes me a second to process what the caller has said.

      “Courtney?” I ask after a lengthy pause.

      “Oh, um, no,” I can tell the caller feels awkward, and my feelings of irritation begin to return. “Charla Dearbourne Tatham,” he finally says.

      He pronounces the last name as it’s spelled, and instinctively I correct his pronunciation: “Dearburn.”

      It’s like I’m instantly transported to the fifth grade, when Charla Dearbourne actually was my best friend and I had to stand up to every moron who pronounced her name incorrectly. At eleven years old, we were positive it was the people who were idiots and not the fact that her name was not pronounced the way it was spelled that was the problem. I probably haven’t thought about Charla for a dozen years. All at once, I’m flooded with memories of my childhood friend, quickly followed by the disdain I feel whenever I think of my hometown.

      I grew up in a small (pathetically tiny) town in Central California called Victory. Of the town’s approximately seven hundred residents, 70 percent were