CHAPTER 1

Daylight had barely pierced the predawn sky when I jumped out of bedto prepare for the day. Excitement didn't even begin to describe how Iwas feeling this morning. Dale and I were going to be living together.We'd married a little more than three years ago, but this was the firsttime we were going to be living in the same house—or even the samezip code for that matter. Granted, when people marry, they normallymove in together immediately, but nothing about our relationship fallsinto the category of normal.

I had always viewed online dating sites as places for horny guyslooking for desperate women willing to do anything to find what they'dbelieve was the love of a lifetime or for stalkers looking for victims.My friends, Kay and Spencer, had thought they had my best interestat heart when they'd secretly signed me up for one of those services,and luckily for them, their ploy had actually worked out. Fate hadwrapped its hands around the whole situation and guided every actionand reaction to the very end. The cliché had come true. I had met thelove of my life, Dale Boudreaux. Kay and Spencer never let us forgettheir involvement, but we let them have their fun.

We had delayed moving in together for the sake of my stepdaughter,who couldn't be more like my own child if I'd given birth to her myself.She had three years of high school left, and uprooting her life wasn't anoption. Having been a teenage girl once, I knew taking her away fromthe friends she'd always known and plopping her into an unknownworld would be devastating. She's such a good kid, and I'd have beenheartbroken to have any part in upsetting her world. So for the timebeing, Dale and I sacrificed being a "normal" married couple for her.

Working three consecutive nights as a sleep tech allowed me totravel to visit Dale and Bailey in Opelika to spend the rest of the weekwith them while Bailey was in school and Dale was working. Duringthe summer, she would come spend time with me in Montgomerywhile her dad was working. Kay would join us, and the three of uswere like our own little sorority. We'd fill our days shopping, takingday-trips down to the coast in Pensacola, or just lounging around thehouse gabbing all day. Bailey was as much Kay's stepdaughter as shewas mine. Her mother had never been much of a mother, but at leastshe had me and Kay to take up the slack. I know in my heart we weren'tbad surrogates.

But for all the sacrifices that had been made, today was the momentwe'd been working toward, being together under one roof. After gettingBailey off to college at Birmingham Southern, Dale turned in his noticeon his apartment, and we'd spent countless hours deciding how tocombine everything into one household. He was willing to only bringhis clothes and trash everything else if that's what it took. It may havebeen easier if we'd done it that way, but it was important my familyfelt my house was now our home. I wanted them to look around andsee pieces of all of us under one roof.

Charlie, my African gray parrot, seemed more excited this morningthan usual. Unable to have children of my own, I'd considered him theclosest thing to a child I'd ever get, at least before Bailey. Charlie hadbeen with me for five years when I'd met Dale, and he didn't thinkanything about me feeling like Charlie was my child, not just a bird.Until we decided to close in a porch to make it Charlie's room, he andBailey shared the guest bedroom in my house. Charlie loved Dale andBailey as much as, if not more, than he loved me.

I heard a "Who, who, honey" from Charlie's room.

I set the cup of coffee on the counter and went to join him. He wason his swing. "That's right, baby. Love you, honey." Charlie had pickedthis up from me saying it to Dale, but his vocabulary wasn't readilyclear. His speech was like that of a small child, even though he couldmimic voice tone to a tee. When he repeats something Dale says, histone is lower, and it's higher when mimicking me.

He rocked back and forth on each foot like he was dancing."Whatcha doin'?"

"Coming to see you. What are you doing?" I reached for a treaton top of his cage.

He rocked faster. "Shugas."

I handed him the treat. "Sugars to you too, you sweet thing."

He stopped rocking to take the treat. Normally, the talking wouldstop, but today he held the treat in his talons without going in for abite. "Honey."

"Charlie, I think you are as thrilled as I am about Dale moving inwith us today."

He let out a long, loud whistle and then took a bite of his treat."I know Kay and Spencer get most of the credit, but you needkudos too."

It didn't take long for his beak to grind the bite of bird biscuit."What bird?"

I pulled the tray from the bottom of his cage and removed the firstlayer of newspaper. "Kudos. A pat on the back ... well, wing. If youhadn't taken to Dale the first day y'all met, I may have put him in thestreet."

"Hush."

I knew Charlie was picking words from his vocabulary randomly,but the laughter rolled out of me. "I know, right? Shut your mouth." Hefinished his treat and watched as I placed the paper in the can next tohis cage. In a serious tone, I said, "Thanks, baby, for letting me knowhe was a keeper."

"Honey."

"He'll be here soon, baby. I promise."

He turned his head to the side and said, "Let," and then whistledas if he were calling the dog.

Let was Charlie's word for Chocolate. Dale's chocolate lab hadbeen up in years when we'd started dating, and last winter, he'd passedquietly in his sleep. Chocolate's death had broken our hearts, but wewere glad he hadn't suffered. Now Charlie still called for him withoutknowing Chocolate would never come. Once he learned something, thememory was indelible, so trying to correct him was useless.

I heard the key in the front door. "Auntie Kay's here."

"Loco."

"That's right, baby. She's loco, isn't she?" I handed him anothertreat from the bag.

Kay and I had been friends for years after we'd met at the hospitalI still worked for. She too had made herself a profile on mylovelife.comand had met her husband, Marcus, there. The success of Markayzee's,a restaurant they'd opened shortly after they married, had allowed Kayto quit work and become a kept woman. To this day, you'd think theywere still on their honeymoon. They were still just as loving toward eachother as they'd been when they first started dating.

I liked how good Marcus was with Kay. Lord knows, she'd datedher fair share of losers who were just out for a bed buddy or a free mealthrough the years. Marcus was a lot like Dale in his gentlemanly ways,and yet, sometimes, I wanted to strangle my friend's husband. In thebeginning of his and Kay's relationship, he occasionally would be veryarrogant, and at all cost, he had to be right, especially with me. Hisneed to be right and make me wrong was a character flaw I was willingto overlook, but with time it had gotten progressively worse.

He would haughtily correct me over the simplest of things. If Iwas describing something as red, he had to follow up by saying it waselectric crimson. As these little challenges had increased, I'd let themget under my skin, sometimes seeing electric crimson flash before myeyes. But because it was so insignificant, I'd learned to chalk it up tofriendly sparring. However, I couldn't help but notice that he generallydid this when we were one-on-one. Rarely did he challenge me in frontof Dale or Kay. I'd never told either of them because it...