If the Suit Fits (Save The Date #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

MELANIE

“You can’t seriously think this is a good idea, Mel!” Stressed, Anna paces my living room in torn jeans, ankle socks, and an over-full glass of red wine threatening my rug. “This is how women die!”

“You’re being dramatic.” I flick through the applicants from my Help Wanted ad and scour names, ages, heights, and careers. “Seventeen responses so far. Fourteen asked for feet pics instead of payment.”

“Great! I volunteer to write your obituary.” She releases a long growl of frustration. “I’ll even decide what goes on your headstone. Here lies the body of a stupid woman. Great tits, enviable hair, stupid ideas.”

“Of the three who didn’t ask for pictures, two enquired whether this could be a long-term arrangement. They swear they’ll take care of me. Financially. Emotionally.” I stop and smirk. “Sexually.”

“Melanie!”

“But the last one…” I nibble on my pinky finger and scour the dark, intense eyes of Nicolas Ramos’ photograph staring back at me.

There’s something there, way back in the recesses of my mind, that makes it impossible for me to set him aside.

“Thirty-two years old. Male. He’s a builder by trade and owns his own company—”

“Not a very successful one, considering his need to answer the classifieds and accept money in exchange for being an escort.”

I roll my eyes. “Only in the literal sense, since he will, literally, escort me to Drew and Karla’s wedding.

But it’s not like…” I drop my hand and go back to studying his profile.

“It’s not a sex thing, Anna, so calm the hell down.

It’s a ‘come to my ex’s wedding, pretend to be my date, act like you’re obsessed with me, then go away when it’s all done’ thing. ”

“No. It’s a ‘standing on a busy freeway and hoping not to get slammed by a truck’ thing,” she counters with a snarl.

“He’s the truck. Men are the trucks. And I don’t mean that in a cute, euphemistic way that actually stands for wild sex with a lumberjack.

We’re not in a Hallmark movie, Mel! This is True Crime statistics, where eighty-seven percent of all blind dates end up with a woman’s corpse being stuffed in the walls. ”

“You made that up.”

“He’s a builder! He already has the tools to get the job done.”

“You’re gonna give yourself an ulcer.” I bring my focus back to my laptop screen.

“Nicolas is six feet, two inches tall. Former football athlete, but bowed out soon after his eighteenth birthday when he tore his shoulder up in a car accident. Aw.” My lips fold into an empathetic pout.

“That’s pretty sad. Imagine expecting to go pro, only to lose it all to an injury not even related to the sport. ”

“Imagine going on a date,” Anna growls, “and your dismembered limbs end up buried in his garden.”

Snickering, I shake my head and lean toward the small table beside the couch to pick up my wine. White. Way better than dirty, dry red. “Nicolas has two sisters. No brothers. Single mother.”

“You realize he could’ve written anything he wanted, right? You’re not the FBI. You have no way of proving him a liar until he already has the hammer out. And hammer isn’t a euphemism for—”

“Yeah.” I sip and enjoy the fruity tingle against my tongue. “A dick. I know.”

“You’re being na?ve, Melanie! You’re stressing me out.

And for what?” She spins, her wine sloshing to the lip of her glass, and glares at me with warm, chocolate eyes.

“So you don’t have to go to your ex’s wedding, single?

Who gives a shit? It’s a wedding—decline!

It’s Drew—knee him in the nuts! You know it would feel good, and we know he always sucked, anyway. ”

“I give a shit.” I tip my glass back and take a long swallow that hits the base of my stomach with a tingling chill.

Then I set it back down again. “I have to go because I’m a freakin’ bridesmaid, and no matter how much that makes me want to put a corkscrew in my ear, it is what it is.

Pulling out ten days before the event is a little mean, even for you.

I can’t go stag because I’d feel stupid.

I’m not bringing you because you can’t be trusted not to shove a crowbar through Drew’s eye socket.

Plus, you’re explicitly not invited. And I don’t have a boyfriend, so I can’t call this non-existent person up and ask him to buy a suit. ”

“He cheated on you, Mel!” Frustrated, she crosses my living room and sets her wine down and her hands on the coffee table so we’re on the same level.

“He cheated on you with Karla. He cheated on you with Karla on the eve of your wedding!” She shoves up again.

“Why aren’t they blocked on your phone yet? Why even entertain them?”

“I’m not! I’m—”

“A pushover?” she offers. “An idiot? Oh, I know.” She hits me with a mean sneer. “A people-pleaser more concerned with everyone else’s happiness than your own.”

“You’re not pleasing me right now.” Scowling, I look back down at Nicolas’ profile picture and try to imagine him being the man I enter that wedding with.

Handsome. Strong. If he’s a good actor, he could make me feel like the most desired woman on the planet.

If he’s a man of his word, I could have my moment back.

The one Karla stole from me. The one Drew so willingly gave away.

“I have to go,” I mumble, so quietly the sound barely even touches my own ears.

“He was the love of my life, Anna. We were Hallmark. He was the boy next door, and I was the girl he adored. His mother and mine were best friends their whole lives. They still are! He was the football captain, and I was cheer.”

“He was a benchwarmer,” she growls, “and you were on the debate team.”

“That’s practically the same thing!” I brush the computer off my lap and push up to face my best friend.

I swear to Christ if I have a daughter someday, and Anna has a son, and eventually, they grow up to fall in love, I will watch that little punk with the beadiest of all beady eyes.

“I have to go. It’s too late to flake now.

My parents are expecting me there. His parents are expecting me there. ”

“Your parents are shit,” she grumbles, her lips and nose wrinkled in anger. “Where’s the loyalty, huh? That asswipe fucked your second-best-friend the day before your own wedding, but your parents still do Sunday brunch with them? Who does that?”

Social climbers do that.

People who care more about their fake reputation than they do about their own daughter.

“I should’ve bailed when the invitations first went out.

” Dread is a living, breathing, aching ball in the base of my stomach that grows heavier the closer we come to April twenty-fifth.

Because I’m the millennial, people-pleasing, boundary-lacking nerd raised by parents who, as already established, value societal expectations over literally anything else.

“But it’s too late now, Anna. The bridal party is set, and the dresses have been ordered.

Karla has already planned the dances and the walking down the aisle order.

The speeches and wedding favors and all that stuff…

it’s done! It’s too late for me to bow out.

And despite how hard you’ve tried over the last six months, I’m yet to meet a man the traditional way.

The best we’ve landed is a new friend in the ladies’ bathroom inside Club Slate that one time. ”

“We’ve met men,” she moans. “You just weren’t interested.”

“I blame 90s Rom-Coms for how unprepared I was for dating in this day and age. We were being groomed to expect perpetual man-sluts. The ‘tap it and run’ and the ‘never gonna call her again’ player. But in the real world, in today’s world,” I emphasize.

“They all want to marry up! Commitment. Let’s go on vacation together. Let’s talk allllll the time.”

“God forbid a man not be a total whore with commitment issues. Oh wait,” she sneers, “that’s you.”

“I actually like not sharing my home with someone who creates more work and stress than he does peace. And now that I know what it’s like to be an adult and not in a relationship, I’ve decided I prefer this. I won’t apologize for that.”

“No.” She cocks her hip and casts a judgmental look toward my laptop. “But you’ll put a Help Wanted ad in the newspaper and flit around for a week with your fake boyfriend. All for the tidy sum of two thousand bucks and zero ‘next weeks’. That’s where we’re at now, Mel? Seriously?”

“It’s where we’re at.” Resolute, I lift my chin and stare into my best friend’s eyes.

“Because then it’s a business transaction.

No sex. No feelings. No drama. I get a handsome date, I survive this stupid wedding with some of my dignity intact, and in the end, Nicolas takes his money and never bothers me again. ”

“Nicolas.” She firms her lips into unforgiving lines. “You’ve decided?”

“Well, I’m not calling Reginald the Foot Fetish guy.” I sweep my laptop up once more. “Nicolas seems nice, and he could do with the cash, I guess. It’s business.” I nibble on the corner of my lip and glance up. “It’s win-win.”

“Until you end up on the seven o’clock news. Your headstone will read: Here lies Melanie Hamilton. Twenty-nine-year-old architect. Friend, sister, daughter, and wannabe slut. She held onto her naivety with the strength of a thousand overweight toddlers screaming to keep their Halloween candy.”

“Colorful.” I drop back onto my couch, the cushions harrumphing from my shifting weight, and set my feet on the coffee table so my legs can become a laptop platform.

I ignore Reginald, and Kyle, and Cord, and a man who looks horrifyingly like if Elvis Presley and Hugh Grant had a child.

Instead, I focus on Nicolas, his dark eyes that somehow bounce off the screen and stare straight into my soul.

His heavy brow and long lashes. He was genetically gifted with lips millions would pay for and cheekbones others wish they had.

He’ll do. He has to, because the others seem far more likely to chop me up and put me in a stew.

Please, God. Don’t let him kill me. Anna’s ego is already big enough.