Page 6 of The Wedding Party

Raunchy.

There is that word again. Is it that commonly associated with bachelor parties?

Maybe it is.

“Let me get back to work,” Oliver says. “That way you don’t have to wake up alone tomorrow. Or save me when I fall asleep at the wheel and crash my car.”

“Don’t say things like that,” I chide.

“Just a joke,” he says. “Thank you for dinner. It was a nice break, but go home. I’ll see you soon.”

And so I do. I go home.

Alone.

I settle onto a barstool with a glass of wine again and pop another handful of pills. I have a momentary flashback to a time in my life when I’d thought everyone was more blessed than me. My mother had said, “You only live the fairy-tale life when you decide you deserve it. You get what you give. If you expel negative energy, it comes back to you.”

Those words had changed my perspective, which changed my life.

Oliver didn’t cheat on me. He’s not cheating on me. And the box meant nothing.

I choose my fairy-tale life. I choose to marry my Prince Charming.

Chapter Six

ANDREA “ANDI” CASTLE

Drinks with a friend, with not a murder in sight. It’s a novel idea, at least for me, when murder is my job and my job rules my life.

It’s Saturday night, and I’m sitting at a corner table in a dimly lit, hip martini bar in downtown Denver with Lana, an old friend from college who I haven’t seen in years, not since she got married and moved away. “You look great,” I say, and it’s the truth. She’s just as blonde, petite, and pretty as I remember, with loads of personality.

“I look divorced,” she complains. “I mean, thanks. I do appreciate the compliment, but Lord help me, I’m thirty-two and a divorcée. How screwed up is that?” She presses her hands to her face. “And I’m sunburned. I had winter skin in Boston. Now I’m back to getting sun all the time. My skin is angry.” She eyes me. “You look beautiful, Andi. Or should I say, FBI Agent Andrea Castle, badass profiler? Kind of like Jaclyn Smith from the original Charlie’s Angels. Murder does a girl right, eh?”

I laugh. “I don’t think any of Charlie’s Angels were profilers, and how do you even know that version of the Angels? I think they’re your mother’s age now, but thank you for the compliment. Aside from the divorce, how was Boston?”

“Cold, but pretty. And they have ticks.”

“We have ticks. This is Colorado.”

“I’ve never seen a tick here in my life. And no matter what, they’re worse there. Those bastards will suck your blood almost as quickly as my ex-husband did my bank account.”

A remark that reminds me that Lana comes from a family retail empire and lots of money, but she rarely shows it or talks about it, mostly because her father is hard on her. She’s helping save lives, but from what she told me, he doesn’t approve of her career choices one little bit.

Lana waves at the waiter and points to her nearly empty glass. “Another chocolate martini,” she calls out, and immediately turns her attention back to me. “He dipped his stick, and now I have to pay him. It’s ridiculous.” She holds up a hand. “I need to talk about something else. This is still raw.”

“I can tell. I get it,” I add. “I have a few of those topics. So, let’s try this. Are you still a nurse?”

“Yes. I love nursing, but I’ve spent six long months in the ER right now, which is not my favorite. I’m hoping to get back to pediatrics.”

“I’ve heard the ER is brutal.”

“That’s an understatement. It’s a bloody, violent nightmare. And the doctors are assholes and you can’t even blame them. They’re under pressure. They are the life or death of everyone who walks through the door. But the death is just too much for me. I don’t know how you do it. Murder is what you do. It’s your zone.”

“It’s necessary,” I say. “Just as the ER is to saving lives.”

She sips her martini and studies me. “You just caught some big serial killer, right? That creep who killed people with spider poison?”

I down most of my martini and now I’m the one flagging the waiter for another. “And here we are, riding this conversation right into my taboo topic,” I say. “But yes. The Spider Man, the press called him. And after weeks now, they’re still obsessed with me and him. He might as well be the ex-husband who just won’t go away.”