Page 1 of Detective for the Debutante (SAFE Haven Security #3)

LEIGH

I love weddings. I love my quaint hometown of Mistletoe Creek, Tennessee.

And I love how happy my sister is.

The final notes of Tracy Byrd’s “The Keeper of the Stars” fade off, and I can’t hold back the sigh that escapes as Mama and Daddy and Hannah Grace and Cole finish the dance along with half a dozen other couples occupying the makeshift dance floor.

It’s the same song Mama and Daddy danced to at their wedding.

And now my sister and her new husband are sharing a moment with them.

I’ve grown up with my parents talking about falling in love in high school, and I’ve watched Cole and Hannah Grace morph from childhood best friends to more. Sure, they may have broken up for about seven years, but their happily ever after is back on track.

And I want mine.

But it doesn’t necessarily involve a white dress and a gold band. At least not yet.

“That’s an awfully heavy sigh for a happy day.” My best friend, Sydney, plops down with a plate of cake and hands me one.

Or should I say another piece of cake?

“How many pieces does this make?” I ask her and slide a clean fork into the fluffy white confection.

She snorts, already on bite number two.

“Does it matter? I don’t count calories in wedding cake. But this is probably number three. No, wait, number four. I had a slice earlier when you were talking to the pink ladies over there.”

She thumbs in the direction of Fern, Fawn, and Merry who occupy another table as they whisper and point at the guests milling around the outside of the Mistletoe Creek Civic Building. Once the mansion of the town’s founder, it was converted years ago to hold functions like my sister’s wedding.

The three women Sydney is referring to are in their seventies or eighties—no one is brave enough to ask them and confirm—and are the most notorious set of matchmakers our side of the Mississippi.

Which is why I’ve tried to stay as far away from them as possible.

The fact the three of them are sporting pink hair? Not out of the ordinary.

“Merry said they were paying homage to Hannah Grace’s wedding colors,” I say.

“Aren’t pink and mauve the same color?” The question is muffled by the cake in her mouth.

“Not according to Mama and Hannah Grace.”

“Is it weird they dyed their hair to match the wedding? I mean, I’ve seen people with pink hair before—hello, I live in LA for Pete’s sake—but it’s not usually because someone is getting married.”

Sydney’s from California and is one of Cole’s coworkers at SAFE Haven Security. She and I became best friends over the last year through summer trips, texts, and FaceTime. And one of our favorite pastimes is to pick on my sister’s new husband and Sydney’s unofficial big brother.

“You better not let them hear you say that. In fact, you better not let them hear you at all. We’ll be next,” I whisper and slide another forkful of strawberry and cream cake into my mouth.

I like Sydney’s idea of not counting calories in wedding cake.

“Meh. I leave for California tomorrow.” She shrugs.

Lucky .

Sydney is going back to her independent life while I am all but living with Mama and Daddy like I am still a kid when I’m not at school.

“One, I’m here for a few more weeks. And I’d like to avoid their matchmaking efforts. Two, you say that like being over two thousand miles away is protection. Those women have a long reach.”

“My favorite color is black. You’re saying they’ll dye their hair black for my wedding?”

“Why? Getting married anytime soon?”

She barks out a laugh. “Fuck that.”

I shush her and glance around, making sure nobody else heard her. If they did, no one reacts.

“You’re going to get your mouth washed out with soap,” I warn her.

“That’s a thing?” She sits up and glances at the table closest to us like she’s expecting a bar of soap to suddenly appear.

Fortunately, the family of four is not Fern, Fawn, and Merry since they have hearing like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory . My lips twitch as I recall Leonard, Sheldon’s roommate, yelling, “Damn his Vulcan hearing.”

The three elderly women and the character from one of my favorite shows share one thing in common—always hearing something you don’t want them to.

“Ivory soap tastes the worst,” I tell her.

She shudders.

“I’ll take your word for it. Instead, I’ll enjoy this cake and head back to California without the taste of soap in my mouth.”

She lifts another bite, moaning as her lips close around the fork.

“That way you eat cake is obscene,” I tease her and roll my eyes.

She shrugs again, unperturbed.

“This cake is better than most of the sex I’ve had recently.”

“Syd! Lower your voice—you can’t say things like that here.” Where any one of my parents’ generation or older is close enough to overhear her.

The look she gives me is one of the “yeah, right” variety.

She’s given me a few of those while she’s been out here in Tennessee this week.

It’s been highly entertaining to watch city-girl Sydney handle our small town.

And her no-filter attitude is something I love about her.

As is her no-fear confidence. When I grow up, I want to be like Sydney.

Is that weird since we’re the same age?

“What? You’re saying you can’t say the word sex here either? Holy shit, are you a virgin? And, follow-up, if so, how did I not know?”

Thank God she’s lowered her voice. Instead her eyebrows are practically at her hairline as she studies me.

A flush spreads up my chest and settles in my cheeks as I squirm in my seat.

“No, I’m not. And it’s just never come up, I guess,” I mumble and focus on the few crumbs left on my plate.

“Phew. I was worried for a second. Might have had to stage an intervention,” she teases and pushes her empty plate away.

“Despite my parents’ best efforts, they weren’t able to control every aspect of my life,” I grumble.

Because if it was up to them, chastity belts would still be a thing.

“Glad to hear it.” She grins.

“And something tells me if you’re enjoying cake as much as you are, you’re not really the one to stage an intervention.”

“It’s not that it’s not available, but I’d rather spend time with my vibrator than another round of sex where I have to give an anatomy lesson and draw a road map to explain to the man what to do. Although maybe I need to rethink that. With him. Holy shit,” she says, biting her lip.

I crane my head around to find out who she’s talking about, and my breath catches in my lungs.

Ink teases out of the open collar of a white dress shirt ready to bust at the seams thanks to the broad shoulders it’s wrapped around. The scruff I remember accompanying the well-groomed goatee is gone, leaving a chiseled jawline I want to trace with my fingers.

Or my tongue .

My thighs clench together and my core throbs at the site of the Nashville detective who helped Cole with Hannah Grace’s stalker almost a year and a half ago.

“Murphy?” I try to say his name with more nonchalance than is coursing through my body.

“That’s Murphy? How did I not know he looks like that?”

I shrug, the move stiff and awkward. I’d like to turn back around, but I don’t have that much willpower.

Murphy O’Connell is a beautiful specimen of a man.

“Look like what?”

“Like he just stepped out of every woman’s favorite fantasy—Mr. Buttoned-Up Suit in the boardroom, inked god in the bedroom.”

“I don’t remember him looking like that.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire .

“You better not. I’d have to hold it against you for keeping that secret.”

The memories from the only other night I’ve spent in his company are fuzzy as I try to focus on them. Confusion, anger, sadness at what my sister’s best friend had done to her. Had almost done to me. Humiliation because I had been all about Zach Nolan until that night.

“I was still recovering from the Ambien Zach put in my drink. I just remember thinking Cole’s police friend was nice. He had a soothing voice.”

I’d been shaking as he started questioning me about Zach and what I remembered, but I’d focused on his voice, letting it relax me enough that the shaking subsided.

When my sister’s best friend turned out to be her stalker and kidnapped me as bait to get Hannah Grace to come to him, Murphy had helped Cole solve the case.

He’d been Cole’s backup when they both got to the house where Zach was keeping me.

Murphy hadn’t pressed for answers when he took my statement, but waited patiently for what I could remember—which wasn’t much.

I’d had a crush on Zach Nolan. I had flirted like crazy. We’d talked and drank wine and then I didn’t know anything else until Hannah Grace woke me up.

Unlike me, Hannah Grace hadn’t been drugged. She was able to provide enough of a statement and then formal testimony to help put Zach away for a long time. She had saved me.

There was no way I could ever repay her for what she had done. For being my hero.

“I can’t believe I thought he was cute. Zach,” I clarify.

Sydney reaches over and squeezes my arm, well aware of everything that had happened since she works with Cole and helped with the case.

“You had no idea he was a creep. Nobody did.”

“I should have known. I liked him. Ergo, he was not a nice guy. None of the guys I’ve dated have been great.”

“You’ve been surrounded by frat boys for far too long, Laura Leigh.”

“Leigh,” I correct.

Maybe it should have been harder changing my name from something everyone called me for the first twenty-two years of my life. But it wasn’t. It was refreshing. A new start for a new stage of my life.

Laura Leigh was the Mistletoe Creek version of me, the University of Tennessee version of me, the debutante Mama hoped would give up the notion of finishing my law degree and move home.

Leigh is the more sophisticated version.

The Nashville version. The independent college graduate who has just finished her first year of law school in Knoxville.

“And that’s who is in Knoxville. Frat boys all over that college campus. My options are pretty limited.”

“You need to get out more.”

“That’s my plan. So long as Mama and Daddy uphold their end of the bargain.”

A summer to live on my own in Nashville in Hannah Grace’s old house. Without their almost constant hovering.

“Really?”

“Yes. I’ve had more than my fill of a bunch of gym bros masquerading as Greek-pledging, pre-med boys.”

“Nashville is going to be so good for you,” she says, her smile turning mischievous.

“I hope so.”

“We need a hot girl summer. You in Nashville. Me in LA. Then we’ll compare notes.”

The idea holds a lot of merit. I really, really want a hot girl summer.

“Think about it as your reward for successfully finishing your first year at law school. You and I both know that you need this summer—in more ways than one.”

She gives me a pointed look because she knows everything at stake.

At the end of the summer, a decision will be made on which law students will be invited to help on Project Justice.

The project helps wrongfully convicted individuals to fight their convictions.

If I don’t get invited, I have agreed I will take a job working at the corporate law firm of one of Daddy’s golfing buddies.

I may have gotten into law school with the intent to put guys like Zach away, but the more I read about men and women who were acquitted after twenty or thirty years, individuals who had missed out on their lives because of their inability to fight, I knew where I wanted to focus.

Too bad my parents aren’t on board.

Since everything happened with Zach, they are more worried than ever before. To the point where Daddy has arranged a nice, boring, corporate law job after I finish law school. One that exists in our small hometown.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do our hot girl summer.”

“We’re starting right now. I?—”

“It’s not summer yet,” I hiss.

Although it is close enough—the official start of summer is only a couple of weeks away.

“Consider this your practice session. I dare you to walk over to the sexy Hemsworth cousin and offer to buy him a drink. And see where it leads.”

“It’s an open bar,” I remind her.

“Who cares? That’s just your opening line. Now go. I’m going for another piece of cake.” She stands and picks up the back of my chair until I stand too.

“Enjoy your cake, Syd.” I smooth the mauve satin skirt against my hips.

“Your boobs look amazing in that dress,” Sydney says with a wink.

A giggle escapes and I roll my eyes.

Only Sydney.

“Thanks.”

“Now go get him, tiger.” She blows me a kiss and heads toward the cake table.

Ready or not, here I go.