Page 87 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
“Oh,” Kate said, her voice thick, her chest filled with too much emotion to contain. But she promised herself she would be brave. She would embrace the chaos. “Well, you can’t possibly leave the country now, not after that. Probably not ever, if I’m being honest. Unless you’re taking me with you.”
Jake lifted his head, his stormy ocean eyes fixing on hers. “Are you sure?”
Kate reached out, pulling him down for a kiss. And underneath everything—the easy smile, the tousled hair, the surfer-boy cool, Kate could taste the hesitancy. The insecurity. She’d never imagined Jake Hawkins worrying about a single thing, but now it was so obvious he was worried abouther. About her feelings for him, her interest in him. It was so preposterous it made her laugh, and he pulled back with a frown.
“It’s never a good thing when a girl laughs while kissing you.”
“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at… I don’t know. The situation. Jake, I’ve been… well, obsessed feels like a creepy word, so not obsessed. But I’ve wanted you for as long as I’ve known you.”
“And now that you’ve had me?” Jake said, raising his brows.
Kate shook her head. “No, not like that. Well, I mean, notjustthat. That’s obviously… that part is, well… that part is workinggreat. No, I meanyou. Jake Hawkins, former pro surfer, globetrotting adventurer, secret cat lover. Absolute weirdo about Alfredo sauce.”
“Because it’s disgusting,” he reasoned.
“Because your taste buds are broken,” Kate said, smiling.
“And if I’m not that globetrotting adventurer anymore?” Jake asked.
“Good,” Kate said, smiling blissfully. “More time for me to make it my personal mission to make you enjoy Alfredo sauce. I will cookso muchpasta, you’ll be forty pounds heavier and absolutely miserable.”
“You know, on second thought, the tech bros don’t sound so bad,” Jake said, stone-faced, and Kate laughed and punched him lightly in the ribs.
“I like you, Jake Hawkins,” she said. “I like you so, so much. A lot. All of the time.”
“I like you, too, Katey cakes,” Jake said, smiling. “So, so much. A lot. All of the time.”
And because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she kissed him again, until they both lost the power of speech for several more minutes. Or hours.
Our story begins, as these stories often do, with someone else’s end.
Loretta Starling, bartender by night and amateur sleuth by day, had seen her share of other people’s ends. She’d caught a murderer in the middle of a hurricane, solved a bride’s poisoning during a luxurious weekend wedding getaway, and found justice for a wealthy woman pushed overboard on a party boat. She had foiled all manner of murderers: clever schemers, desperate deceivers, and one particularly obnoxious overachiever. She’d gotten good at uncovering clues, sussing out secrets, breaking alibis, and eliciting confessions. She’d foiled as many murder attempts as the deaths she had solved, and rescued more than one falsely accused friend from a bad murder rap.
But Loretta would soon face an end that even she couldn’t see coming; a murder so cleverly plotted and so deviously deployed that it would strike closer to home than ever before. She wouldn’t know who to trust or which havens were safe. She would need all of her hard-earned investigation skills, her brilliant insights, and her street smarts to foil a murderer dead set on destruction.
Loretta Starling would have to solve the most important murder she’d ever faced: her own.
EXCERPT FROMAN OLD-FASHIONED MURDER: TO THE ANGOSTURA BITTERS END
LORETTA STARLING, BOOK 4 (COMING SOON) (FOR REAL THIS TIME) BY KATE VALENTINE
Sunday
Chapter Forty-Two
By the time dawn broke Sunday morning, Kate had finally managed a solid eight hours of sleep, unlike the rest of the wedding guests. They’d worked in shifts through most of the night, cleaning out the ballroom where they’d held the rehearsal dinner and salvaging what furniture they could from the sunroom to erect a makeshift altar and seating arrangements. There was at least a quiet sense of peace as Kate slipped downstairs to hunt down the last container of coffee. She boiled the coffee on the stove, stealthy as a CIA operative, and made two mugs before sneaking upstairs on her final mission before the ceremony.
“Is that coffee?” Spencer asked as she slipped into his room, his hair an absolute mess and his eyes so red they looked like a cartoon drawing. He sat in a wingback chair beside a crackling fireplace, providing some much-needed heat to the room. He looked at the mugs in her hand with big puppy-dog eyes. “I will never bother you about another Loretta novel again if you give me one of those right now.”
Kate smiled, holding out one of the mugs. “I have good news on the Loretta front. I mapped out the whole book this morning and knocked out the first five chapters. And I brought you your T-shirt. I figured thebride shouldn’t be the only one who gets something old and something new.”
Spencer took a grateful sip, not even bothering to scrunch up his nose at the terrible powdered creamer Kate had found in the pantry. “You finally did it, huh? After all these months, Loretta is back. Simon will be happy to have the series on track again.”
“About that,” Kate said, sinking down in the chair opposite him.
Spencer frowned as he flipped through the opening chapters, looking slightly less corpse-ish as he sipped his coffee. “You’re not killing off Loretta, are you?”
“Not exactly,” Kate said, tapping the outline. “Read the rest.”