Page 2 of With Any Luck

“You know, we can turn the car around and escape if you’d like,” I kinda sorta joked, kinda not. “Just say the safe word, and we’re out. I’m pretty sure I have hose in my purse; we can kidnap the driver and—”

He laughed, turning his crooked-toothed smile to me. “I love her, Audie.”

He was the only person allowed to call me Audie, and whenever he did, I knew he was being serious. A strange, squirming feeling tightened in my chest. “Then what is it?”

“Everything else, I think.”

It would’ve beeneasierif Carmilla was the problem, but I’d met her in New Orleans a few months ago for Rhett’sthirty-first birthday. She was pretty, and down-to-earth for an actress. She always asked you how you’re doing, and she sent postcards from wherever she went abroad, and ... honestly? Trying to hate Carmilla was like trying to hate cotton candy. Youcould, but you’d be one of those people who, like, totally didn’t like thepopularchoice. (Besides, why hate on nepo baby Carmilla Marion when youcouldhate on that princess who wanted to be an actress for, like, a hot second?)

She came from a family that had fuck-you money, the kind of rich that own a house on the coast of Connecticut and look like they could play extras in the background of Taylor Swift music videos. Which is exactly where we’d flown to—a small airport in Connecticut that took us to an evensmallertown on the coast. Periodical, Connecticut, was a peculiar name for a beach town, but, as I quickly realized, it was barely that as we turned onto Main Street. Accomplishing a memorable bachelor partyherewas going to take a miracle, and it wasalreadygoing to be hard since it was the day before Valentine’s Day and winter in a beach town. We hit every green light to the bed-and-breakfast where we’d be staying—I always hit green lights. Then again, there was onlyonein Periodical anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a feat.

I frowned. “Like ... everything, as in her career? The fame? Does she want kids? Or is it”—and I said this quieter—“herfamily?”

“No, no, I love her family. Mostly,” he amended. “I mean, like thewedding. OnValentine’sDay? How cliché can you get? Everything is themed, Audie.Themed!The parents are going all out. They even ordered little cakes for the rehearsal dinner from Millie’s favorite bakery in the Bay Area. As in, they paid someone to fly out to San Francisco yesterday, order the cakes, and then flybackwith them.”

“You know, Frank Sinatra used to do that with his favorite pizza.”

Rhett went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “And not to mention the ... the guest list is a mile long! I haven’t met half the guests on the list. We even invited that princess—you know the one, right? Princess Ilaria of ... um ...”

“Monterra?”

“That’s the one!”

“Huh.” That surprised me. I didn’t expect Carmilla to invite a wild child like Princess Ilaria, especially after all the bad press she got. “Is she coming?”

“No. Had an engagement in Rome or something.” He pulled his fingers through his hair. “And all the thank-you cards. The speech I have to rehearse. The ... theeverything. You know me. I just want to—”

“You can’t elope, idiot,” I chastised. “Not after she put on this whole to-do. Besides, I spent way too long looking at Google Maps and scouring Yelp reviews for your bachelor party to quit now. So we’re both going to grin and bear it, capisce?”

“Capisce,” he echoed. “You’re gonna love Carmilla’s maid of honor, though.”

“Yeah? Is she nice?”

“Actually—”

“We’re here,” the driver announced, pulling up to a beautiful white bed-and-breakfast, complete with rosebushes and a seaside view and Rhett’s beaming fiancée on the porch. She didn’t even wait for us to unload the car before she swooped down upon us. Carmilla Marion was as buoyant as Rhett was moody, with bright blonde hair and wide brown eyes. She had a smile that dulled even my sharpest edges the second she fixed her attention on me.

“Audrey!” she cried, clasping my hands. “I’m so happy you’re here. Rhett says you’re the most excited of all of us!”

“He did?” I asked, glancing over to Rhett, and he gave an apologetic smile as she grabbed him by the hand and began to pull him away. Apparently his dad had arrived just a few minutes before us, and her parents were justdyingto meet him. Like a hurricane, she came and swept my best friend up with her as she left, and I was alone on the curb of the bed-and-breakfast.

“It was hard for us to believe it, too,” a man said behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder. He reached for my suitcase from the trunk of the town car, and I meant to get it myself, but he pulled it out in one swift motion and set it down on the curb. Which felt insulting, since my suitcase had almost killed me when I tried to put it in the overhead bin just a few hours ago. He was good looking in pressed black trousers and a simple white T-shirt, his ginger hair floppy and boyish, like one of those nineties heartthrob action heroes, and his shoulders were broad enough to give Brendan Fraser in hisMummydays a run for his money. He appraised me with soft green eyes. There was a freckle just below his left one—the only one on his otherwise insultingly flawless face.

The funny feeling in my chest turned slithery and horrid. “Oh. You.”

The last person I wanted to see. I spun around and tried to find Rhett for an explanation, but he had already been pulled away by his dad.Shit.Because when I met Carmilla in New Orleans, I’d also met her best friend, and I couldn’t think of a worse person to see today. He hadn’t changed at all since that night on Bourbon Street.

He said in that deep, soft rumble of his, “Still superstitious, Audrey?”

“Still an asshole?” I quipped back. And that mouth of his twisted into a grin. That same mouth that I remembered on every inch of my body in that hotel room on Bourbon Street. Every inchexceptmy mouth. I wish I could say that it had been a drunken night of bad decisions, but I’d been the cat herder that night, so I couldn’t even use that as an excuse. No, I was just a sucker for good-looking men with sinful mouths who refused to kiss me on my lips because he’d rather tease me about my curse.

“Just in case it’s real, I’d rather not find my person,” he had said, instead using his mouth to explore my breasts. “It’d be such a pain.”

“You said you weren’t superstitious.”

“I’m not, but you are.” He had flashed a catty grin up at me. “And I can tell you want me to kiss you.”

I had. So, so badly. So badly, I kept thinking about what that mouth of his tasted like ... Did it taste like the drinks he had, or the spearmint gum in his back pocket? Were his lips as soft as they looked? Did he bite?

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