Keeping Time: The Planning Read online

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  By the Author

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  Other Emily Smith Titles Available via Amazon

  Books Available From Bold Strokes Books

  Synopsis

  Time has never been an issue for Carter McKenna and

  Sadie Maron. It just took them both nearly fifteen years to

  realize it. Now Carter is tired of waiting, and the two have

  begun their newest chapter—planning a wedding. Carter, a

  talented musician, has always traveled the beaten path. But

  when she discovers the wedding Sadie is hoping for may be a

  little out of their price range, she realizes she needs to recruit

  the help of her wealthy father. Unfortunately, her father’s

  money comes with a price she may not be able to afford. But

  as Sadie continues to blissfully plan the wedding she’s always

  dreamed of, Carter proves to herself just how much she’s

  willing to give for the woman she loves.

  Keeping Time: The Planning

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or

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  work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  Keeping Time: The Planning

  © 2016 By Emily Smith. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-789-7

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: July 2016

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are

  used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or

  dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely

  coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any

  form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Shelley Thrasher

  Production Design: Bold Strokes Graphics

  Cover Design By Jeanine Henning

  By the Author

  Searching For Forever

  Same Time Next Week

  After the Fire

  Keeping Time: The Planning

  Dedication

  To Bernadette Smith and 14 Stories, for making sure everyone

  in the LGBT community can have the wedding of their dreams

  CHAPTER ONE

  Carter McKenna had always been sexy. Even in high

  school, when nearly everyone Sadie Maron knew, herself

  included, was going through what was surely the epitome of

  an awkward stage, Carter was cool. Nearly topping five foot

  ten, Carter had breezed through puberty at a young age,

  skipping the usual barrage of acne and weight gain, and

  landing directly into her slender, lean frame and smooth, pale

  skin. Sadie had been instantly enamored. Fifteen years later,

  nothing had changed. As she watched her now-fiancée pound

  at the strings on her guitar with an intensity Sadie saw in

  Carter only right before she kissed her, she thought Carter had

  only gotten better with age.

  “Hey, everyone. Thanks for coming out. We’re The

  Hedges, and I just want to make a quick announcement before

  our next set,” Carter said into the microphone, the handful of

  onlookers only mildly interested. “This amazing woman right

  here,” Carter straightened the lapel on her leather jacket and

  smiled at Sadie, who was front and center in the small crowd,

  “agreed to marry me last week.”

  Sadie felt the heat rise in her face and looked to the floor.

  She was hardly fond of being noticed. In fact, she’d spent

  much of her life trying to blend in. Of course, Carter wasn’t

  the only one who’d come into her looks. It took a little longer,

  but Sadie seemed to have woken up one morning only to find

  people did notice her. Men, women, it hardly seemed to

  matter. Luckily for her, Carter had been among them.

  “Come up here, Sadie.” Carter egged her on, reaching

  down from the stage and pulling Sadie up by the hand. The

  crowd, if you could call thirty drunken bar-goers there mostly

  for the three-dollar PBR a crowd, cheered wildly, and a cold

  sweat broke out around Sadie’s forehead.

  She was once again reminded just how different she and

  Carter were. While Sadie was content to remain cloaked in the

  shadows, hoping not to be seen, Carter sought the spotlight.

  She grabbed Sadie around the waist and expertly dipped her,

  kissing her with a hard, fierce passion that still made Sadie’s

  legs buckle.

  All buckling aside, Sadie’s first instinct was to be furious

  with Carter. In fact, it usually was. Carter often seemed to

  forget that although she lived to be onstage, Sadie preferred to

  stand in the back row.

  “I’m going to kill you for this later,” she muttered to Carter

  behind a coarse smile. Sadie still stood awkwardly next to

  Carter on the small stage in front of the rowdy crowd.

  “No, you aren’t.” Carter grinned at her the way she had

  fifteen years ago, when Sadie was her quiet, braces-clad

  sidekick with the Dawson’s Creek trapper-keeper, and any

  anger drifted away alongside the thick cigarette smoke in the

  air. It was almost inconceivable that Carter was still able to

  bring out that eager, love-stricken adolescent. She was thirty-

  two now, for Christ sake. They’d been living together for five

  years. Sadie brushed her teeth as she stood next to Carter

  every night. She saw her wake up every morning with bed

  head that would frighten small children. But when she smiled

  at her like that, Sadie was that same little girl, waiting for

  Carter at her locker to skip gym class. She loved that Carter

  still did that to her. She loved that she’d do that to her for the

  rest of her life.

  “You ready to go?” Carter must have caught Sadie

  yawning from her seat at the bar after The Hedges finished

  their last set of the night.

  “Does it make me the world’s oldest loser if I say yes?”

  “Not at all.” Carter put her arm around her waist and

  pulled her against her body. “I love your shows. You know

  that.”

  “I know you do. And I think it’s beyond sweet that you’ve

  come to every single one for the last, what, fifteen years or

  so?” Carter kissed her forehead. “Jesus. Now that makes us

  old.”

  “We’re not that old.” Sadie pulled away and he
ld up her

  left hand, with the pea-sized diamond that had once belonged

  to Carter’s grandmother. “In fact, I think we’re just getting

  started.”

  Carter smiled warmly. “Well, I, for one, can think of plenty

  of things I have left to do with you.” She once again gathered

  Sadie in her arms and kissed her teasingly slow.

  “Lucky for you, then, I’m going to let you take me home.”

  “Good! Get out of here and get a room! You’re ruining

  Carter’s fan-base of tween lesbians!” Mickey said.

  Mickey Donavan was the drummer for The Hedges and

  Carter’s best friend since the first grade. They’d come out

  together and shared pizzas and beers and even girls. Except for

  Sadie, that is. When Sadie came along, Mickey took her new

  place, begrudgingly at first, at Carter’s left hand. But within a

  few months, they’d become inseparable. In many ways, they

  still were.

  “You tell them they’re going to have to take a number,”

  Sadie said. “A very long number.”

  “Who needs some hot twenty-one-year-old in skinny jeans

  anyway?” Carter said with a wink in Mickey’s direction.

  “I do, actually. Now if you two are done being disgustingly

  cute and making me sort of sad that I’m officially in my

  thirties and still have no one to come home to but my dog, I’m

  getting out of here. Last call at Blitzed isn’t for another hour. I

  still have time to find me one of those hot things in skinny

  jeans. Later.” Mickey bumped her fist against Carter’s

  shoulder and left.

  “Do you ever miss it?” Sadie said, taking Carter’s arm as

  they left the bar.

  “Miss what?”

  “You know, that. That life. Going out to bars and picking

  up girls. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot. All that.”

  “I love Mickey. You know she’s my best friend. But she’s

  right about one thing. She is sad.” Carter lifted her hand and

  flagged a cab. “I wouldn’t trade one night in with takeout and

  movies with you for fifteen nights like that with Mickey.”

  Sadie smiled at her, suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude

  for the direction her life had taken her. “Good thing then, since

  you’re marrying me.”

  “Fifty-nine Hawthorne,” Carter told the driver. Sadie was

  asleep on her shoulder before they reached their front door.

  *

  Carter woke up the next morning, rolled over, and looked

  at the woman sleeping soundly beside her. Sadie might have

  felt old lately, but she hadn’t aged a day since she was sixteen.

  Maybe that was because, in Carter’s mind, she was still just as

  infatuated with her as she’d been back then. It was infuriating

  to think about all the time they’d wasted when they were

  younger. If Carter had just dared to even dream that someone

  like Sadie could want her…How could she have? Sadie was

  perfect. Unobtainable. In high school, Carter had watched in

  silence while football players and musicians and Harvard-

  bound guys alike tried to court her. Every now and then, one

  would catch on, and Carter would think not one of those losers

  was good enough to lick the dirt off the bottom of Sadie’s

  Keds. It wasn’t until college that Carter figured out Sadie

  wasn’t really all that interested in men anyway.

  “You watching me sleep?” Sadie smiled, but her eyes were

  still closed.

  “How do you do that?”

  “I just know you.”

  Carter stroked her cheek. “I was just thinking.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She opened her eyes groggily. “What about?”

  “You. How long we could have been doing this if I’d just

  had the guts to try.”

  “See, now that’s not quite how I remember it.” Sadie

  pulled Carter’s arm around her waist.

  “It’s not?”

  “No. What I remember is that you were this macho, cool

  guitarist with a gaggle of girls following you around the UF

  campus for four years. And I was your quiet buddy who made

  sure you finished your term paper on time.”

  “You were the best-looking thing at that school. I just

  didn’t think I’d ever stand a chance with you.” Carter grinned,

  still amazed that she got to take that same girl home every

  night.

  “Well, thank God we finally got our shit together, then.

  Now go make me some coffee.” Sadie pulled her close by the

  neck of her T-shirt and kissed her.

  “I have to get going.” Carter looked at her apologetically

  and slid out of the bed.

  “Where?”

  “I’m meeting my father.” Her stomach knotted and turned

  the way it did every time she thought about sitting across the

  giant oak desk from the man she could hardly say raised her.

  Carter McKenna Senior, president and founder of McKenna

  Worldwide, was a ballbuster. No. That was being too gentle on

  him. Carter the First was a cold, soulless man with dollar signs

  for pupils who wished his only daughter were his only son and

  heir to the family business.

  “Oh, baby.” Sadie jumped to her side and put her arms

  around her waist, holding her tight, and Carter allowed herself,

  if just for the moment, to be comforted in the way only Sadie

  could. “Why?”

  “He wants to talk about my ‘future.’” She mimicked a gag

  and broke away from Sadie’s embrace, heading toward her

  tiny closet in the corner of the bedroom.

  “You mean about working for the business.”

  “That’s what it sounds like, yes.” Carter thumbed through

  her skimpy collection of collared shirts, settling on one of the

  few things in her wardrobe that didn’t come from the

  merchandise counter of a rock concert. If she was going to

  intern for her father, she’d need to find some new clothes.

  “Don’t be crazy. That’ll never happen.”

  “I can’t work at the store forever. I’m about to be thirty-

  two. It’s pathetic.” Carter had been employed at the sleepy

  record store outside of Miami since college. She loved it. But

  she was right. It was pathetic. What kind of life could she give

  Sadie making thirteen dollars an hour selling old Sex Pistols

  vinyl?

  “You won’t.” Sadie once again moved to her side and put

  her hand on her back. “You’re going to work there until The

  Hedges takes off. Or until you figure out what else you want to

  do. Until you decide what’s going to make you happy.”

  Carter fastened the buttons on her shirt and stepped into a

  pair of black pants that were only mildly wrinkled. “Music

  makes me happy.”

  “I know it does. And that’s why you’re going to keep

  doing it.”

  “I love you. You have the patience of a saint.” She kissed

  Sadie’s cheek. “Wish me luck with Carter Senior.”

  “You don’t need it. You have me, you have your music.

  You don’t need your father or his money.”

  No, but I’d sure as hell like it. Carter brushed some fuzz

  off her shoulder and walked out the door of the
ir cozy two-

  bedroom apartment near the Florida everglades.

  Carter unlocked the BMW her father had given her as a

  college-graduation gift. But a gift from Carter Senior never

  came without its share of strings. As he’d handed her the keys,

  he’d said, “This will do a fine job getting you into the office

  every day, Junior.” No matter how many times Carter had told

  him that her business degree from the University of Florida

  was nothing more than a formality, he didn’t hear her. Carter

  Senior only heard what he wanted to. As she drove into

  Miami, she worried she was about to find herself in the same

  position.

  *

  “I’m here to see my father.” Carter knew her father’s

  secretary, Randi, well. Better than she’d like, actually, since

  finding Carter Senior with his head under her skirt one

  afternoon in his office. They’d buried Carter’s mother a month

  earlier. Her body wasn’t even cold yet. Carter hadn’t cared to

  think how long, exactly, he’d had his head up there. She just

  knew she wasn’t particularly fond of Randi, or her short skirts.

  “Junior! Your daddy told me you might be coming in

  today.” Randi’s cheap Southern drawl contrasted wildly with

  her Chanel earrings. No one called Carter “Junior” except her

  father. And she didn’t even like when he did it.

  “Yes, well, lucky for all of us then.”

  Randi smiled and picked up the phone. How could anyone

  get through life being so transparently phony? “Carter Junior

  is here to see you, sir.” Randi waved her in, and a tsunami of

  nausea washed over Carter. Why was she doing this? She was

  an adult now. She didn’t have to answer to him anymore. But

  as she opened the door to Carter Senior’s office, Sadie’s face

  materialized in front of her.

  “Sir,” Carter said quietly. She hadn’t seen her father in

  ages. He was still excruciatingly handsome, not unlike his

  namesake. The white undertones to his thick hair were now a

  vibrant gray, and his face had absorbed a few more wrinkles.

  He looked tired. But his eyes were the same sharp, cunning

  blue they’d always been.

  “Junior. Have a seat.” Carter Senior gestured for her to sit

  in the oversized leather chair across from him, and she did as

  she was told. Everyone did when it came to her father. “How