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  Not Another Bad Date

  ( Sex, Lies, and Online Dating - 4 )

  Rachel Gibson

  What does a gal have to do to get a good date in this town?

  Adele Harris can't even begin to answer that question. She's had so many lousy dates that she's sure she's cursed. Why else would every man she goes out with suddenly act like he's lost his mind—and his manners? Adele thought life couldn't get any more confusing . . . until she learns the marriage of her seemingly Miss Perfect sister is on the rocks. So she goes back to their hometown to give her a shoulder to cry on, only to run smack into Zach Zemaitis . . . the one who got away.

  Texans love God, family, and football, though not always in that order Zach, a former pro star, knows all about football. As for the other two, well, he's doing his best. But when Adele comes charging back into his life—still all lush curves and beautiful, big blue eyes—he wonders if his best is good enough. After all, he did her wrong. Can a woman with her track record ever really believe that he's serious this time . . . or is he destined to be another bad date?

  Prologue

  Devon Hamilton-Zemaitis was a beautiful woman. Being dead didn’t change that.

  On a dreary Friday afternoon, beneath a steel gray sky, everyone inside the Grace Baptist Church on Thirty-first and Elm agreed that Devon made a fine-looking corpse. Even in death, she was everything her mother had raised her to be: gorgeous, stylish, and envied. She lay in perfect repose within the pale pink satin of her mahogany casket. The muted lights shone in her ash blond hair and caressed her smooth face, made flawless from years of strict skin-care regimes and Botox. Subtle tattooing lined her eyes and shaded her lips and Oscar Seinger, of Seinger and Sons Funeral Home, had done an excellent job concealing the gash on the left side of her forehead and the dent in her skull.

  As her friends and fellow members of the Junior League filed past her casket, they wept delicate tears into monogrammed handkerchiefs and secretly thanked the Lord that it had been Devon, and not one of them, who’d run the stop sign at Vine and Sixth and t-boned a Wilson Brothers garbage truck.

  A garbage truck, Meme Sanders thought as she stared down at her friend since first grade. That wasn’t a very dignified end to one’s life, but leave it to Devon to go out looking good in her Chanel bouclé tweed and Mikimoto pearls.

  A garbage truck. Genevieve Brooks dabbed at the corner of her eye and hid a slight smile behind her handkerchief. On the same day that Devon had voted to keep Lee Ann Wilson out of the Junior League, a Wilson Brothers garbage truck had taken out Devon. Genevieve wondered if anyone but her appreciated that particularly delicious twist of irony. Of course Devon looked beautiful, Genevieve acknowledged as she gazed down at the woman she’d known since her first Little Miss Sparkle Pageant. Devon would not have been caught dead looking—well, dead—and Genevieve wondered if Devon wore the matching two-toned Chanel pumps or if people really were buried without shoes.

  A garbage truck. Cecilia Blackworth Hamilton Taylor Marks-Davis wept into the lapels of her latest husband’s Brooks Brothers suit. Her baby girl had been killed by a garbage truck. How horrifying. Only thirty-two and now gone. What a waste of a beautiful woman and a beautiful life. At least that husband of hers had seen to it that she looked good, although really, the white bouclé was so last-season.

  Cecilia glanced over her shoulder at her son-in-law and granddaughter. The poor girl clung to her daddy and buried her face in his tailored black suit. Cecilia had never liked Zachary Zemaitis. Had never understood why Devon had been so set on having him. Lord knew he was handsome, but he was just so…male. With his big arms and shoulders and chest, and Cecilia had always been uncomfortable around men with hundred-proof testosterone flowing through their veins.

  A garbage truck. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. Zach Zemaitis sat in the front pew with his arm around his ten-year-old daughter. Devon would have hated that, and wherever she was, Zach was sure his wife was raising hell….

  “…A garbage truck,” Devon Hamilton-Zemaitis complained to the dead guy behind her in line. He was bad-mannered enough to roll his eyes.

  “Lady, we all have problems,” he said. From what Devon could see, the man’s biggest problem was that his family had buried him in a cheap suit. Probably JC Penney.

  Devon shuddered delicately. At least Zach had sent her to heaven in her Chanel and her best pearls. Although the bouclé was so last-season, and she was missing her matching two-toned pumps. She looked down at her bare feet, covered by white wispy clouds. She hoped to God Zach didn’t donate her things to the Junior League auction, or it was likely Genevieve Brooks would end up with the Chanel pumps. Genevieve had been jealous of Devon since their first Little Miss Sparkle Pageant, and Devon hated the thought of Genevieve forcing her big bony feet inside those beautiful shoes.

  Without taking a step, Devon moved forward in line. It was an odd sensation, moving about as if she stood on some invisible conveyor belt. But then, being dead was odd. One moment she’d been speeding home to have it out with Zach, and the next she’d been sucked up by a white light and landed in a place without walls or substance. She thought maybe she’d been in line for an hour, maybe two, but that couldn’t be right. On a subconscious level, she knew there’d been a funeral, and she had been buried in her white suit. Four or five days must have passed since the accident, but how was that possible?

  She thought of her little girl and got a weird feeling in her chest. It wasn’t really an ache, like when she’d been alive. It was more like a nice warm tingle that was filled with love and longing. What would become of her poor little Tiffany? Zach was a good father, when he was home. Which wasn’t often, and a girl needed her mother.

  She moved once more and stood before a towering white desk in front of a pair of massive golden gates. “Finally,” she said through a sigh.

  “Devon Zemaitis,” the man behind the desk spoke without opening his mouth or looking up from the scroll before him.

  “Devon Hamilton-Zemaitis,” she corrected him.

  He finally glanced up, and the white wispy clouds reflected in his blue eyes. Without expression he waved a hand, and an older woman appeared. She wore a severe bun and a lavender suit with gold buttons.

  “Mrs. Highbanger?”

  “Highbarger,” her sixth-grade teacher corrected.

  “When did you die?”

  “Five years ago in man’s time, but one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

  Devon felt like she was in school again listening to Mrs. Highbarger rattle on about fractions. “Huh?”

  “God does not mark the days as man on Earth.”

  “Oh.” She guessed that explained why it felt like she’d been dead about an hour. “So are you here to take me to heaven?” she asked, all prepared for her meeting with God. She had a few things she wanted to ask him. Important things, like why he’d allowed catastrophes like cellulite, bunions, and bad hair to exist. Then she’d want God to answer some of life’s biggest mysteries, like who shot J.F.K. and—

  “Not quite,” Mrs. Highbarger interrupted Devon’s running list of God Q and A.

  “What?” She was sure she hadn’t heard right. “I’m going to heaven now. Right?”

  “While on Earth, you did not earn your place in heaven.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  Instead of answering, Mrs. Highbarger moved without moving, and Devon was pulled along behind her.

  “I earned plenty! I raised more money than anyone else in the Junior League. My benefits were always the most fabulous.”

  “You only helped others to help yourself, to get your picture on the society page and to lord it over your friends.”

>   Who cares, Devon thought.

  “God cares,” her old teacher answered.

  “You can read my thoughts?”

  “Yes.”

  Crap.

  Exactly.

  They moved downward as if on an invisible escalator, and Devon felt her first hint of panic. “I’m not going to hell? Like with Satan and a burning pit of fire?”

  “No.” Mrs. Highbarger shuddered. “You’re going someplace in between, where everyone’s version of hell is different.”

  Devon thought of Genevieve Brooks reading the minutes of Junior League meetings and felt a stab to her brain. Listening to Genevieve for eternity would be hell.

  “Because God is a loving God, you will be given a chance to earn your way up.”

  That was a relief, and Devon began to feel a bit optimistic. She’d earned a place on the University of Texas cheerleading squad. Compared to that, this was going to be a breeze. “How?”

  “You start by righting those you have wronged.”

  Devon thought hard. She was a good person. Practically perfect. “I’ve never wronged anyone.”

  Mrs. Highbarger looked over her shoulder at Devon and a memory floated in front of her face. A memory of blond curly hair, turquoise-colored eyes, and unicorns. “Oh.” With a swipe of her hand she waved away the memory. “She was all wrong for him. He didn’t love her. Not really. He loved me. I did both of them a favor. She’s probably married with a bunch of weird kids.”

  “She never found love again.”

  Devon figured God wanted her to feel bad about that, but she didn’t. That girl had almost stolen Zach, and everyone knew that Zach belonged to Devon. The girl had been out of her league and gotten exactly what she deserved.

  They continued downward, and Devon’s optimism popped like a soap bubble. “What do I have to do?”

  “Make it right.”

  “Like give her three wishes?” They reached the bottom of wherever they were going and stood in the middle of slightly darker clouds.

  “More like a gift.” Mrs. Highbarger held up one finger. “You get one chance to make it right. If you don’t mess it up, you move to the next level closer to heaven, where you will receive one more chance and so forth.”

  So she had to make things right with what’s her-name with the curly hair. The girl she’d hated since grade school. That really did bite. Hard.

  “You don’t have an eternity,” the old teacher warned. “If she finds someone to love before you’ve fixed the past, your chance of moving up is over.”

  Devon smiled and thought of the perfect gift. “There,” she said, as Mrs. Highbarger shook her head.

  “You just don’t learn.” The teacher took a step back through sliding glass doors that suddenly appeared. The doors whooshed closed, and the gray mist formed solid walls, and for one terrifying moment, Devon thought she might be in some sort of prison. Her skin tingled, and she looked down at herself as her beautiful Chanel suit wafted and shimmered and turned into a horrible gray sweat suit with Tweety on the front. “Where am I?” she called out, as Mrs. Highbarger was swallowed up by the mist.

  She turned and gazed at rows of shopping carts and endless sales signs. A little old lady in a pink housecoat and a blue smock with a yellow smiley face stood before her.

  “Welcome to Walmart.”

  Chapter 1

  “Kiss me, babe.”

  “No, really.” Beneath the light of a sixty-watt bulb on her porch, Adele Harris placed a hand on the chest of her latest date. “I’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

  Investment banker and former nerd turned world-class jerk, Sam King mistook the hand on his chest for a caress and took a step forward, backing Adele against the front door. Cool October air slipped across her cheeks and between the lapels of her coat, and she watched horrified as Sam lowered his face to her. “Baby, you don’t know excitement until I fire you up with a kiss.”

  “I’ll pass. I don’t thi—urggg—” Sam smashed his lips against Adele’s and silenced her protest. He shoved his tongue into her mouth and did some sort of weird swirly thing. Three quick circles to the left. Three to the right. Repeat. She hadn’t been kissed like that since Carl Wilson in the sixth grade.

  She forced her free hand between them and shoved. “Stop!” she gasped as she reached into the small purse hanging from her shoulder and pulled out her keys. “Good night, Sam.”

  His jaw dropped and his brows lowered. “You’re not inviting me in?”

  “No.” She turned and unlocked her front door.

  “What the hell? I just spent a hundred and twenty bucks on dinner and I don’t get laid?”

  She pushed the door open and looked over her shoulder at the moron standing on her porch. The evening had started out okay, but had began a downward descent with the salad course. “I’m not a prostitute. If you’d wanted a sure thing, you should have called an escort service.”

  “Women love me! I don’t have to pay a prostitute,” he protested a bit too much. “Women are dying to get some Sammy.”

  By the time the dinner plates had been cleared, the date had nosedived into the third level of hell, and for the past hour Adele had tried to be nice.

  “Of course they are,” she said, but failed to keep a bite of sarcasm from her voice. She stepped into her house and turned to face him.

  “No wonder you’re thirty-five and alone,” he sneered. “You need to learn how to treat a man.”

  For the past hour she’d pretended interest in his narcissistic ramblings. His nonstop bragging and his presumption that he was quite the catch and she was very lucky. She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t his fault. That lately she’d begun to suspect there was something about her that made men insane, but he’d just crossed the line. Poked at a very sore spot. “And you need to learn to kiss like a man,” she said, and slammed the front door in his stunned face.

  “What the hell is going on in my life?” She pushed one side of her thick curly hair behind her ear and leaned her back against the door. This was getting ridiculous. Every man she’d dated for the past…what?…two or three years had been a jerk. If they hadn’t started out as jerks, they’d quickly turned into jerks. At first she’d thought she was just a jerk magnet. That she attracted idiots, but lately she’d begun to wonder if there was something else going one. That there was something about her that turned otherwise-okay men into morons. Because really, how many jerks and idiots were there in this world? And how likely was it that she just happened to date every last one of them? Repeatedly? Without a break?

  Not likely. Adele flipped the dead bolt and pushed away from the door. For the past few months, she’d begun to think that she was cursed. Cursed with perpetually bad dates.

  She hung her coat in the front closet and moved into the living room. She tossed her purse onto the green sofa and reached for the remote control on the glass-and-iron coffee table. A couple of months ago, she’d mentioned to her friend Maddie that she thought she might be cursed, but Maddie had laughed it off and Adele hadn’t brought it up again.

  There were some people who thought she was a little different—maybe a lot different. Growing up she’d believed in magic; in fairy dust and unicorns and pots of gold. As a child, she’d believed in cracks in time and life on distant planets. Ghosts and alternative realities. In endless possibilities. As an adult, though she never ruled out anything completely, she no longer believed in endless anything anymore.

  She turned on the television and sat on the arm of the couch. These days, she might not believe in endless anything, but she did make a good living off her imagination and the possibilities she’d believed in as a child. To date, she’d published ten science-fiction and fantasy novels. Researching those books had taken her to some truly bizarre places, and she’d personally witnessed too many instances of paranormal phenomena that could not be explained away by science to casually dismiss anything out of hand.

  She flipped through the TV channels and paused on the
ten o’clock news. Out of the many books she’d written, she’d never researched curses, and she didn’t know a lot about them. She didn’t know how curses worked, if they had to be cast by means of witchcraft or black magic. If just anyone could curse anyone else, or if there had to be a certain knowledge of curses, spells, and hexes?

  I’m crazy. Adele felt her brain squeeze, and she dropped the remote onto the sofa. As crazy as people sometimes thought she was. She rose and moved through her living room to her bathroom. Because really, what kind of person thought she was cursed?

  A crazy person, that’s who.

  She pushed her long sleeves up her arms, turned on the water above the sink, and reached for the soap. A crazy woman who hadn’t had a good date or decent sex in years. A perpetual bridesmaid but never a bride. In the past two years, she’d been in the weddings of two of her close friends, while a third friend, Maddie, had just announced that she was getting married in the spring. Maddie, who thought all men were potential serial killers. Maddie, who was so paranoid she carried an arsenal of pepper spray, brass knuckles, and stun guns, had found someone to love her. Crazy Maddie had found someone who wanted to spend his life with her, and Adele couldn’t find someone who wanted a relationship past midnight.

  The soap slipped out of her hands as she worked up a good lather. She looked up into the mirror and washed her face with her fingertips. It was really depressing. A couple of years ago, the four friends had all been single and meeting for lunch and going on vacations to the Bahamas together. They were all writers and shared a lot in common. Then one by one they’d all gotten married, or were getting married, and Adele was the only one left single and alone. She could no longer pick up the telephone anytime she felt like it and discuss book plots, man problems, or the latest episode of CSI. After years of having an active social life, she now felt alone and lonely. She felt cut off and sorry for herself. She hated feeling sorry for herself almost as much as she hated all the time she spent wondering what was wrong with her.