Page 4

“ I t’s all so sudden!” I keep saying the phrase in a breathless, cheery voice.

The level of breathiness indicates how close I am to passing out.

Whenever I get too close, Kim Argyle, goddess of an Interpol agent and answer to all my prayers, squeezes my hand calmly and gushes, “You’re doing the right thing!

You don’t get a second chance at true love! ”

Or some other total bullshit that I no longer believe.

I had a whirlwind romance. When I met Matteo Delgado, I was at a destination bachelorette party in Miami. It was my best friend’s bachelorette weekend, and it was the first time I’d ever left my home state—even though I was almost twenty-five.

That’s right. At twenty-five, I had reached the height of small-town country girl cliches.

I had been a cheerleader. I competed in the Miss Bayou Pageant.

My college diploma came from Louisiana Agricultural and Career College, where every other degree conferred was in animal science or agriculture.

I was one of thirteen people in a class of three thousand who graduated with a computer science degree.

I was bored, horny as hell, and tired of turning down boys pretending to be men. You know the kind, the ones with belt buckles bigger than what’s under the zipper, tobacco-stained teeth, and deer musk on their work boots.

My mother called me “uppity” and warned me that perky boobs and short-skirt thighs weren’t going to last. In her opinion, I needed to marry a steady local guy who would help me pop out some grandbabies for her before I hit thirty.

Even my besties told me I should give the local guys another look and stop drooling over the polished, devastatingly tall, dark, and handsome men on the covers of my Billionaire Bad Boy romance series.

As I sit staring out the tiny airplane window, my mind spins in circles, focusing on my marital mistakes.

My mother was right. (I hate that so much.) I should have stuck to the local guys.

Most of them were decent-looking and nice enough.

Most of them were superstitious and a little bit sexist. If they’d ever found out that my Grandmere knew about magic and could hex or bless people, they would have crossed to the other side of the street whenever they saw me coming.

Still, I wouldn’t have had to tell anyone my family’s secrets. Heck, I barely knew them until all of this hit the fan. I thought my grandparents were just superstitious.

I could have lived like that and been perfectly safe—and perfectly bored.

But no. I wanted more. Who knew more would come with more terror, more regret, and more grief than you could imagine? (My grandmother, but don’t tell her I said that.)

Matteo Delgado was so much more. He was incredibly hot and sophisticated.

When I met him at the bar of that Miami hotel, he went out of his way to make sure his attentions were known.

Over that weekend, I was wined, dined, and ushered into a world of naughty sex and orgasms that I’d previously thought were fictional.

I couldn’t believe it when he said he wanted to see me again and promised that he would make it happen.

“He kept his promises,” I whisper. Kim pats my hand.

Matteo promised he would prove that he wanted me. Maybe it was just looks or sexual chemistry. I didn’t care. Sex and excitement with a man who promised to love me, who steamed into my small town in a limo to whisk me away to propose in Paris? Yeah. I said yes.

Grandmere Marie always told me, “Marry in haste, repent in leisure.” She wasn’t there in Miami or when he rolled up in a limo.

Maybe if she’d been there to look me in the eyes and ask me how much I really knew about Matteo, what kind of future we had talked about, I would have put on the brakes before marrying him.

My heart curls up in a ball. I can see how foolish I was now. He wanted me because I looked the part—a pretty, naive, innocent country girl who would look good on his arm and provide a perfect cover. No one would believe that Little Miss Innocent would knowingly marry a murderer—and worse.

I would certainly never marry a man who could— I squeeze Kim’s hand hard this time.

I can’t shake the image of what Matteo is capable of out of my head.

When I close my eyes, I see him there, in the bushes outside the little private beach cottage we rented.

I wasn’t supposed to be watching. I wasn’t supposed to be awake.

But I was, and I heard the angry, hushed argument, I heard the threats, and then I saw the knife flash in the dark.

I heard the muffled, gurgling yell as the older man Matteo was speaking to was pushed backward, under the waves.

The tide took out the body—and brought it back again, according to the Italian newspapers.

It wasn’t all a dream.

The marriage was a dream—the kind you wake up from.

The pilot tells us that we’re going to circle once because of a delay occurring with the plane ahead of us. Passengers all around us groan. “Is that going to mess us up?” I whisper.

“Don’t worry, sweetie! We’ll still get to Reggie on time!” Kim’s mask never wavers. I guess that’s why she’s the agent. “You’re doing great,” she murmurs. “Soon you can text Mr. Minegold and tell him we’re on the way. That’s the name of the family friend, isn’t it?”

Reginald Gray and Jakob Minegold. A clay monster and a vampire. A golem and a creature of the night. Yet Grandmere Marie remembers meeting them both when she was a little girl—not that she’s ancient now. She’s in her seventies.

“That’s right, isn’t it? Reggie Gray and Jakob Minegold?” Kim hisses.

I snap out of the conversations I wish I could have again. The ones where she tells me to wait, and instead of saying that I’m an “old maid” at twenty-five when all of my friends are married, I actually listen to her.

“Hm? Oh, yes! Yes, Reginald Gray.” I picture a slender block of English concrete with no soul and no smile. Well, that’s what I need. A wall between me and Matteo’s men when he finds out what I’ve done.

Kim’s voice turns encouraging. “It’s a good, solid, dependable name. Reggie Gray.”

I decide that I like the name. It’s not exciting or exotic.

Matteo had me wrapped around his finger the first time he said his name, all flourishes with his tongue darting around his mouth, making my three-martini brain imagine what his tongue could do to me.

I try to imagine a golem’s tongue moving, speaking, and I end up picturing zombie-like groans.

Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. I specifically told Matteo I didn’t care about the lavish trappings anymore—I wanted someone to build a real life with. Solid, stolid, and true. Looks optional.

Tears escape my eyes without warning. I’ll never get married now.

I mean, I can pretend to be married to the golem bodyguard for a few weeks before going into the Witness Relocation Program, but once I’m out on my own—I’ll always be on my own.

I can’t live a lie with someone. I already spent a year living a lie with Matteo.

“Honey, save the happy tears for Reggie!” Kim giggles and pushes my complimentary champagne into my hand. “Drink that,” she whispers.

I gulp the champagne and blink away the tears.

No time for them. It won’t matter if I never get married again if I die in the next week, anyway.

I have to focus on staying alive, which means playing my part.

“Kim! You’re going to get me tipsy before we land!

” I give a shrill giggle, the kind that will attract the attention of anyone who is eavesdropping.

“You don’t need to give Reggie any extra help. ”

I put the champagne down and watch the plane banking back towards New York.

Kim’s voice and mine drone on mindlessly about the cute little town, sweet, steady Reggie, and how my parents will just love him.

I keep smiling and sipping my bottle of water while I’m thinking about the fact that I won’t see my family for years, maybe never again.

That if I had been smarter and waited for longer, maybe I would have actually met a sweet, down-to-earth guy who could have given me the same thrills and chills Matteo had.

Guess we’ll never know.

I sigh, trying to make it sound like a happy one. You know who should win awards for acting? The people who live their lives undercover—not the overpriced actors who get to slip back into their real lives when the cameras stop rolling.