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“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he growled. “But there’s
something you need to know.”

“Do I need to know it right now?” I asked,
giving in and unbuttoning his pants, then sliding the zipper down,
slowly, watching his chest as he did the sharp inhale. I bent down
and kissed his stomach and shoved the jeans towards the floor.

“Yeah. Right now.”

“Okay.” I straightened and slid my t-shirt
over my head and undid my bra. He still hadn’t changed position,
but his breathing was ragged and his eyes had turned dark and
liquid and were moving deliberately over my body. I dropped the bra
next to the shirt on the floor. He pulled his eyes away from my
chest.

“There are two things I wouldn’t be able to
forgive you for. Ever.”

I pulled the drawstring on my board shorts
and let them fall in a heap, then stepped out of them. I stretched
up, kissing his neck. “Mmmm-hmmm. Two things.”

“If you get yourself killed,” he whispered as
my tongue made its way to his earlobe.

“Right. No dying.” I let my hand wander down
his chest, flattening it against his fucking amazing abs, hovering
near the waistband of his blue and white boxers.

“And if you
ever
bring me
decaffeinated coffee again.” The beating of his heart was louder
than his voice. His eyes were dilated black and he clenched his
fist to keep from reaching for me as my hand meandered further
south, inside the boxers, hesitating at the last possible
moment.

“Right. No decaf,” I breathed into his
chest.

I lifted my eyes to his, and they locked and
held, and for a split second nobody moved, nobody breathed. Then he
caught my hand, shaking his head no. With his other hand, he tilted
my face up to his,
thisclose
to his mouth.
I licked my lips involuntarily, and he smiled a slow, wicked
smile.

“Remember the kissing booth?” he asked.

Like it was yesterday. “Vaguely,” I lied.

“You never told me what you thought would’ve
happened if your brother hadn’t walked up when he did.” He angled
his head closer, lips parted, and I reached to meet him, but he
pulled away again. Dammit.

“And we weren’t at school, surrounded by
people?”

He reached behind me and threw the deadbolt,
never taking his eyes off mine. “Yeah.” God, that voice.

I tilted my head up at him and flashed him
what I hoped was my most irresistible smile. “Maybe I should show
you.”

###

Once again, I’ll endeavor to thank only those
people who had something to do with the creation of this book,
rather than all the people who’ve had something to do with, you
know, keeping me sane or helping me drink wine when writing gets
tedious.

Thank you to my family – Sheila Elliott,
Steve Elliott and Diane Nelson, and Sara and Dave Vizcaino – for
encouraging me, reading countless drafts and encouraging me some
more. You guys are the best.

Thank you to Darren Held, Lisa Limm and Nate
Alexander for offering specific ideas and solutions to various
problems. And for making me laugh. All. The. Time.

And thank you to my husband, Scott Keller,
for thinking I can do anything I want. Sometimes that kind of
thinking is contagious.

I was born in Fremont, California, the oldest
of three children. I, of course, was mature and responsible. My
brother and sister were brats who purposely annoyed me by looking
at me and breathing too loud. 

When I was three, we moved to
Minter, a small central California town nobody’s ever heard of
unless they got a speeding ticket there on the way to, well,
anywhere else. I spent my time reading and making up stories. In my
stories, the heroine was always an only child.

I grew up thinking I'd be a writer someday. I
spent a lot of time not being a writer while I waited for someday
to arrive. Finally, on the plane ride home from New York after my
sister’s wedding, I decided it was time to start writing. I waited
till we landed, then went to work as a “real” writer.

Turns out, being a real writer comes with
petty annoyances like real writer’s block and a perpetual lack of
real financial security. So I started writing web content to deal
with the financial security issue. And I discovered improv comedy
in an effort to alleviate the writer’s block. Now it’s hard to say
which is more important to me, writing or improv, but it doesn’t
matter anymore because in my world one can’t exist without the
other.

I’ve been happily married to my husband,
Scott, forever. He’s got degrees in math and physics and
engineering and is a pretty swell guy. We live in Long Beach,
California with our Jindo, Koji, in a house that’s a perpetual
work-in-progress. The brats (and their spouses) are now some of my
best friends, in large part because they quit looking at me and
learned to breathe normally. My favorite food is sushi, my favorite
color is orange, my dream car is a ’63 Corvette. And if I could
have any job in the world, I would be a writer. Or an improv
performer.

Hey. I’m already both of those things. How
friggin’ cool is that?

Check out more information about me, Destiny
and other cool stuff at
http://www.sonnjea.com

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Destiny DeGraff. DeGraff is Dutch.
Destiny is evidently the result of recreational marijuana use and
existential thought. It’s not a bad name, especially since my
parents once told me if I’d been a boy, they would have named me
Thor. Sometimes I still wonder what it would be like to be a male
porn star. Nevertheless, I’m not really a “Destiny” kind of girl. I
don’t buy into the idea of fate and all that crap. If I had to
define my philosophy about life, I’d say I’m one part free-will and
about six parts Murphy’s Law. If something can go wrong, it will,
often at the worst possible time. My younger sister’s name is
Avonleigh, no doubt the result of recreational marijuana use and
romance-novel-reading. Fortunately, I couldn’t pronounce Avonleigh
when I was little, and I shortened it to A.V. She didn’t like the
initials, so when she learned to write, she made it Avie. She calls
me Destiny unless she’s feeling bitchy. Then she calls me Thor.

“...happy birthday, dear Destiny, happy
birthday to you!” Avie sang into the phone, off-key and flat, at
seven a.m. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

I yawned and stretched as I walked down the
hall with the cordless, ignoring the pissed-off, thrashing lump in
the guestroom who was muttering assorted colorful swear words,
bitching about the phone ringing at the crack of dawn and
complaining about the daylight as if he were a vampire about to
burst into flames. Now that would be a birthday present.

“Nope,” I said. “But I think you interrupted
Dickhead’s beauty rest.” I wondered if the other metrosexuals would
kick him out of the club if he had puffy eyes from not getting the
requisite eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. Probably he’d have to
go for a manicure to draw attention away from the bags.

Avie snorted. “Dickhead’s beautiful enough.
He doesn’t need beauty rest. What he needs is personality rest.
Anyway, I’ll pick you up at two. We’ll have a late lunch.”

This would be her attempt to distract me
while the not-such-a-surprise-after-all party got underway. I
agreeably played along, then I hung up and shuffled into the
bathroom in my flannel Scooby-Doo pj’s, checking for wrinkles and
gray hairs while I waited for the water in the shower to heat up.
I’m not as vain as Dickhead, which is a good thing since I don’t
have as much to be vain about, but turning thirty had me in a bit
of a state. I was okay in the hair department, lots of long brown
curls with nary a gray in the bunch. But the black circles under my
brown eyes were a frightening development. I could’ve sworn I
didn’t have black circles when I was twenty-nine. I gave serious
thought to squeezing in a manicure.

“Goddammit, Destiny, hurry up!” Dickhead
hollered from the other side of the locked bathroom door twenty
minutes later. We lived in a 1920s two-bedroom Spanish-style, which
I realize isn’t that old if you’re from the East Coast, but for
California we’re talking ancient. The architectural details
included closets smaller than porta-potties, creaky floors, drafty
windows and a single bathroom nearly large enough for one adult.
But it also had beautiful arched windows, mahogany crown moulding
and real copper plumbing. And the dinky bathroom gave me an
opportunity to annoy Dickhead on a daily basis. It was a good
trade.

“I’m almost done,” I chirped, giving up on
Dickhead’s eye-bag-concealer and doing the hair thing instead. Then
I threw on clothes and dashed outside to trim the deadheads off the
rosebushes, rake the debris from under the lavender and fill the
birdfeeder hanging from the birch tree before heading to work.

Futzing around with the concealer had put me
behind schedule, and I sped into the parking lot of Diedrich’s
Coffeehouse, not because I cared about being late to the office,
but because if I didn’t get in line by eight-fourteen, all of the
cranberry muffins would be gone. I hate it when that happens. I
jumped out of my imported gray SUV, beeped it locked and
speed-walked inside with thirty-eight seconds to spare.

A tall guy in a khaki policeman’s uniform was
in line ahead of me. Definitely not a regular. He had a really nice
ass and great biceps and he smelled good, like the woods or
something, and I didn’t mind waiting behind him. I usually ended up
behind a fat bald guy who always ordered the exact same thing and
never had a clue how much it was going to cost. Officer Biceps was
a nice change of pace, and I was thinking turning thirty didn’t
seem so bad after all.

The cop paid and stepped aside with his
little white Diedrich’s bag to wait for his drink while I placed my
usual order, a large mocha and a cranberry muffin.

“Sorry, Destiny, that dude just got, like,
the last cranberry muffin,” Tobey the order-taker told me.

“Well, crap,” I muttered. “I really wanted
that stupid muffin. It’s my birthday, for crying out loud.”

“You always throw a hissy fit when you don’t
get a cranberry muffin,” he pointed out with a lopsided grin. “If
it wasn’t your birthday, you’d be like, ‘I really wanted that
muffin. It’s, like, Flag Day, for crying out loud.’” He said it
real nasally and whiny, not like me at all. Really. I sneered.
“Hey, dude!” Tobey hollered over the hiss of the milk steamer.
“Officer!”

The cop looked over. He was gorgeous from the
front as well. I tried to make myself disappear before Tobey could
embarrass us all.

“Shut up,” I snarled at Tobey, who cheerfully
ignored me.

“It’s her birthday, bro, and she was really
jonesing for a cranberry muffin, and you got, like, the last one.
I’ll give you a refund and any pastry you want if you give her the
muffin so I don’t have to listen to her bitch about it every day
for, like, the next month.”

The cop looked at me and smiled, which made
him even more attractive, and I focused on willing the ground to
swallow me up. “What if it’s my birthday, and I really want the
muffin?” the cop asked Tobey.

Oh, please, I thought. But Tobey seemed to
buy it. Good thing he wasn’t a girl. He’d probably fall for the of
course that outfit doesn’t make your ass look fat line.

“Wow, that’s some wild coincidence, dude!
Maybe you should split the muffin.” He thought a moment. “You
ordered the same coffee drinks, too. Triple-shot mochas. Yeah, you
should definitely split the muffin.”

The cop shrugged. “Works for me,” he said,
still smiling.

“Can I get my half to go?” I grumbled.

“No way, dude,” Tobey chimed in, bringing our
drinks to a table and pulling out two chairs. “It’s, like,
fate.”

Half a cranberry muffin was definitely better
than no cranberry muffin, so I sighed and sat down across from
Officer Biceps, who was carefully splitting the muffin.

“Happy birthday,” he said, casually glancing
at my hands. I looked down, too, realizing I’d left my damn wedding
ring somewhere again. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen
the stupid thing, but I drew a blank. Maybe the silverware drawer?
Oh well. He wasn’t wearing a ring either, though obviously that
didn’t mean much.

“Thanks,” I said, inhaling half of my half of
the muffin and washing it down with a less than dainty gulp of
mocha. “Happy birthday to you, too,” I added politely, although I
seriously doubted it was his birthday.

“Thanks. I’m thirty-two. Something else we
have in common, I guess.” He smirked.

Jackass, I thought, mentally making a note to
stop at the mall for some heavy-duty concealer after the manicure.
“I’m not thirty-two,” I snarled.

This got me a genuine smile, and as much as I
didn’t want to, I smiled back. Jeez, he was smokin’. His uniform
was crisp and neatly pressed, but he was attractive in an easy,
completely casual way, not in the trying-too-hard way that Dickhead
favored. His espresso-colored hair was in need of a trim and fell
in careless waves, framing a square-jawed face. His eyes were a
cool gray, but warm when the sexy smile reached them. Then there
were the biceps. He was wearing a badge, and there was some sort of
insignia on his sleeve, but the blood had left my brain and I
couldn’t make out the words. I focused on my muffin and tried not
to drool.

“I’m Jake. I’m here on business.” He was
dunking his muffin in his coffee, which seemed like an extra step
to me. I popped in a bite of muffin, then added some coffee and
smushed it all together in my mouth. This way, I wouldn’t drop
soggy muffin in my lap along the way.

“I’m Destiny,” I mumbled. “I work over
there.” I gestured in the general direction of the office, flinging
some crumbs in the process. At least they weren’t soggy.