Chapter 1
“Absolutely not!” I glared at my mom, Marla Cruthers, in total disbelief. “Why would you think I’d ever agree to this?”
Mimi Stiles, one of mom’s sidekicks at the senior center, laid her hand over my arm. “Now, Monica, just hear your mother out.”
“No,” I said. “My love life if not up for debate. End of story.”
“Honey, it’s been five years since Travis died,” Mom said gently. “You need to move on.”
Anger and sorrow engulfed me. Travis Swanson had beenmyhusband. If anyone knew when it was time to move on…it was me. And I wasn’t ready. At least I didn’t think I was. And even if I were…it wasn’t any of their business.
Travis had been a fireman with the Trinity Falls Fire Department when he was killed on the job. A beam had fallen on him during an abandoned building fire. At the time, we’d been about to celebrate our seventeenth wedding anniversary…instead, I buried my husband three days before our happy day.
“I’ll know when I’m ready to move on,” I said flatly. “I’m not ready.”
“I think your mom’s just worried,” Gilda Rossi said. “You’re a vibrant, beautiful forty-two-year-old woman living like a sixty-year-old nun.”
“I have a son to raise,” I said.
“Monica,” Mom said, “Brody is finishing his second year of college. He’s a well-adjusted kid any mother could be proud of. You did a great job raising him on your own after Travis died. But he’s a grown man now. He’s attending the same college you and Travis attended, and he’s the same age as you and Travis were when you two got married.”
I knew she was right. Brodywasa great kid. I rarely saw him anymore except for his twice-a-month visits when he’d bring home laundry and stock up on frozen dinners I cooked him. It just hurt to think about moving on with my life without Travis or Brody being a part of it.
Mimi slid a deck of cards out from her purse and began shuffling. “Let’s wager. One card decides your fate. If you lose, you go on our dates.”
I held up a hand. “Just so I have this straight, you’re saying you and I draw a card from that deck, and if my number is lower than yours, I have to go on three dates with three different men that you all have chosen for me?”
Mimi nodded. “That’s about it.”
I scanned the cards. I knew Mimi Stiles. She was underhanded and sneaky. I wouldn’t put it past her to cheat.
“I have stipulations. The deck is spread out on the table,” I said. “You don’t deal the card. I don’t trust you to not deal from the bottom.”
Mimi feigned shock and hurt, but she wasn’t fooling anyone else sitting around the table at the senior center. We all knew her too well.
I’d originally stopped by to say hi to Mom. Saturday evenings she liked to play games at the senior center, and sometimes I’d stop by to visit and play, too. I should have stayed home tonight.
“Fine,” Mimi said. “Just so you feel like you haven’t been swindled, I’ll spread the cards out on the table when we choose.”
I bit my lip. “And what if I win? What do I get?”
“You don’t have to go on the dates,” Ingrid Gonnor said.
I snorted. “Nice try. But I have towinsomething.”
“Fine,” Mimi said. “We will be nude models for the art painting classes you give on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
I genuinely laughed for the first time since they proposed the ridiculous bet. “I don’t do that kind of art.”
And I’m not sure my customers want to see seventy-year-old women naked!
“Maybe you should,” Gilda said. “You might rake in a ton of money.”
“Yeah,” Ingrid said. “I’m sure many men would want to paint me naked holding nothing but my Saxe knife.”
The seventy-year-old Viking stood nearly six foot tall, wore her silver blonde hair in a braid down each side of her face, and always looked like she was about to let loose a bloodbath on someone.
“Be that as it may,” I insisted, “it’s not the kind of painting I do in my classes.”
