“I do,” I responded. “Everyone believes it.”
“Well, Lucas obviously doesn’t. What did you think of him?”
Oh god. I could smell him from here—the cigarettes, I mean. The man reeked. Lucas was an officer. An agent? I wasn’t entirely sure. He was very good-looking ... a shame he was also boring. He’d spent our entire date agreeing with everything I said, nodding his head as if he had no opinions of his own. I didn’t laugh with him. I didn’t eventhink. He was way too nice to match my attitude and far too predictable for my liking.
“He smelled bad,” I admitted, hoping that would be enough to dissuade Daisy from pursuing him as an option. I messed with the hem of my dress, pulling it down to cover more of my legs. It was a simple yellow dress made of thin, pure cotton. I’d picked it out when I was with my momma. It was gorgeous, and it had been onsale.
“And what about Jackson?” she asked, moving on to the next.
Jackson? Jackson ...Jackson ...I’d met so many men at this point that I wasn’t sure which one he was. Daisy was determined to find me a match no matter how useless I found her efforts.
“The guy with the little boy,” she reminded me. “The successful businessman ...”
Ah, right. Him. Tall, impeccably dressed, and intimidating. On paper he was the epitome of a good catch. Every other woman seemed to bat their lashes at him, but the thought of becoming a stepmom at the green age of twenty filled me with suffocating dread. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted kids. Yet a tiny,traitorous voice whispered in the back of my mind. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe having a ready-made family would help me bypass the whole awkward dating phase entirely.
“What happened to his wife, again?” I asked.
“Well, no one knows for certain,” she began, her voice strained. “Some say it was an accident. Others ...” She trailed off, her eyes darting past me.
My blood ran cold. “Others say what?” I pressed.
She got quiet. “Well, some people say ... some people say he did it himself.”
“And you’re trying to set me up with him?” I blurted. What was she thinking?
Her eyes widened with a look of defensiveness. “Well,” she stammered, “some people say you killed your last two fiancés too. I thought maybe it was something you had in common, a rumor no one took seriously.”
I stared at her, speechless for a moment. The absurdity of her words made my eye twitch. “Daisy, this is different. Those rumors are about a curse, not me murdering people.”
She shrugged. “Give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a dad—how scary can the guy really be?”
“You marry him then,” I shot back.
“Oh, no,” she said with a dramatic huff, fluttering her perfectly manicured nails dismissively.
“So you are scared of him.”
“It’s kind of hard not to be,” she mumbled, her gaze darting away from mine.
“So let me get this straight. You believe the rumors about Jackson, but you don’t believe the rumors about me.”
She shook her head. “No. Mobsters die all the time. Their wives? Not so much.”
Much as I didn’t want to admit it, Daisy was right. Made men died all the time in this world, another notch on a bloody tally,and hardly anyone blinked. But the death of a wife? That was a different story altogether. Wives rarely met violent ends. They were always collateral, not the target. The unspoken code, the twisted honor system, usually protected them.
Usually.
This whole situation felt hopeless.
“I’m doomed,” I said with defeat.
“No. There’s still Lucas,” Daisy chirped. “He and Jackson are the last ones left who aren’t over thirty-five.”
“So my options are boredom-induced death or meeting my potentially violent end with asupposedfamily man. How is that any choice at all?”
“It’s a terrible choice, I’ll give you that,” Daisy acknowledged, furrowing her brow. “But trust me, if you don’t pick one, you’ll end up like Aunt Valentina.”
Oh. Yikes.
