Page 17 of Four Steps to the Perfect Fake Date

The financial records were a complete disaster. It took Daphne two full days to sort the boxes of receipts chronologically; then came time to start reconciling the expenses with the digital records. To anyone else, it would be tedious, mind-numbing work. To Daphne, it was meditative. She could forget about her bruised face, the sheriff in the office across the building, and all the failures that had led her to be sitting in an interview room at the Fernley County Sheriff’s Department.

All she had to do was take her time and tease out the mystery of where the department’s money had gone. Line by line. Invoice by invoice. Year by year.

She’d always been good at this kind of work. Details, numbers, spreadsheets. Where the rest of her family couldn’t sit still for longer than five minutes, Daphne could sink into a state of flow when presented with a thorny problem. It gave her an odd, quiet thrill to untangle all the threads of the past based on nothing more than a few faded records.

No wonder her family thought she was weird.

By Thursday, she had no insights about the department’s money yet, other than the fact that the former sheriff had been liberal in his definition of work expenses. So far, nothing stood out in terms of blatant crime, though. Just a few too many lunches on the department’s dime. She’d have to dig deeper.

Her stomach grumbled, and she realized she’d been hunched over her records for four hours straight. After stretching her back until it cracked, Daphne let out a sigh and stood. She shambled to the kitchen and warmed up her container of leftover lemon chicken and roast potatoes. After snagging her small side salad from the fridge, she ate while nodding to the deputies and staff who wandered in and out of the kitchen.

“How goes it?” Hank Packer asked, smelling of the outdoors as he crossed toward the coffee machine. “Haven’t heard a peep from that office of yours all week.”

Daphne speared a piece of potato and smiled at him. “It’s slow going, but I’m getting there,” she said, which was the kind of meaningless platitude that people accepted when faced with an accountant ready to speak about their work. “Anything exciting happening out there in the real world?”

Hank snorted. “The usual. You know how it is. Few kids spray-painted the side of the grocery store and bragged about it at school. You shoulda seen their faces when we pulled them out of class this morning.”

Daphne chuckled. “My sister got pulled out of class by the cops one time. She’d gone joyriding with one of her friends the night before, and they flipped a car. My mother was horrified.”

Hank smiled as he filled his travel mug with fresh coffee. “She was a wild one,” he agreed, then turned to smile at Daphne. “Your parents were lucky they had you to balance things out.”

The bite Daphne had just taken turned thick and gluey in her mouth. She tried to smile at the older man as he lifted his mug and said goodbye, but her expression dropped as soon as he’d walked out. People always said that kind of thing to her. Her parents were lucky. She was so well behaved. She’d been such a good girl.

Then they turned around and brightened when Ellie walked in, leaving Daphne to watch on, wondering why no one cared about anything she had to say. She became a preachy, holier-than-thou teenagerwho looked down on Ellie for all her troublemaking proclivities. She’d wanted nothing more than to be safe and successful.

And where had it gotten her?

The man she was supposed to marry had told her he’d fallen out of love with her. In that horrible, heart-wrenching conversation, he’d told her she was boring. He wanted more spontaneity. More passion. He hadn’t ever imagined marrying an accountant, and he didn’t think he could go through with it. He saw himself with someone who took more risks.

In other words, he thought he could do better. So no matter how hard Daphne had tried to craft a safe, stable life for herself, she’d still had the rug pulled out from under her and had landed on her ass.

What was the point? Why try to be good when life could decide to punch you in the face without provocation? Why try to control anything at all?

Maybe all these years, she’d had it wrong. She should’ve been out joyriding with her friends instead of working for the college scholarships she’d needed to get off this island. She should’ve taken risks, and maybe a few of them would have paid off by now.

Shaking her head, Daphne washed her lunch container, dried it, and tucked it under her arm. She was halfway across the main room when the station’s front doors opened, and a beautiful woman walked in.

She was tall, her hips swaying with every step. Her heels clacked on the hard flooring, her black dress hugging her curves to perfection. Her hair was bouncy and golden, curled in sleek, even waves, which had to be some kind of black magic considering the humidity outside. She slid off oversize sunglasses to reveal expertly applied makeup, her gaze scanning the room.

Jenna Deacon had gone from a pretty teenager to a drop-dead-gorgeous woman. They’d had very few interactions in school. Jenna hadn’t been mean to Daphne; the more popular girl had simply ignored her. Compared to the annoyance and torment Calvin Flint had inflicted upon her, Jenna’s treatment had been a welcome relief. Daphne didn’t mind being left alone.

“I’d like to report a crime,” she announced. “Is Sheriff Flint here?”

“ActingSheriff Flint,” Daphne muttered under her breath a moment before the man himself filled the doorway to his office.

The sheriff blinked at the woman, then arched his brows. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to report a crime,” she repeated, her voice slightly breathy.

Flint straightened and nodded, clearing his throat as he took in the gorgeous woman. “Sure thing,” he said, and gestured to his office.

Daphne’s gut gave an uncomfortable squeeze. It wasn’t jealousy. No. It would be truly pathetic to be jealous of a woman who hadn’t known Daphne existed in high school, especially when Daphne didn’t even like Calvin Flint and didn’t care who he shacked up with.

What made discomfort slither through Daphne was an old, familiar feeling of inadequacy.

She wasn’t impulsive and charming like her sister. She wasn’t beautiful like Jenna. She wasn’t spontaneous like her ex-fiancé Pete had wanted. She was only good enough to be the safe option that could be tossed aside when something better came along.

Jenna flicked her hair over her shoulder and planted a hand on her hip. “It’s a crime that you already have a date to your mother’s vow renewal, Sheriff,” she said, facing off with Flint. “I think someone should arrest you.”

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