Undead and Undermined - By MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,11
Tell me you got married in the spring. Tell me I got to break out the Christian Louboutin Dahlia pointy toe ankle boots. It’s almost too much to hope for!”
“It’s awful that you’re talking about the shoes, and everybody at this table knows you’re talking about the shoes.”
“It’s not such a high heel, is the thing. I could have walked around in them no matter how long the ceremony was, without ever praying for anesthetic.” I turned to Sinclair. “I can recover from bullet wounds but my feet still hurt after a couple of hours in pumps? The hell!”
Jessica frowned. “Wait. Who—?”
“We aren’t married.” Dick-Nick said. “Yet. But nice work making our non-marriage all about you, Bets.”
Well, it is. I decided not to explain that out loud. It really is! A little, anyway. My Christian Louboutin ankle boots were the real victim here.
Jessica tried, and failed, to fold her arms over her titanic gut. “Don’t even start with that ‘not yet’ crap.”
“Yes,” Sinclair hastily put in. “Don’t.”
“Oh, come on.” Marc grinned. “Don’t deprive me of drama. I need it! Like Jenna says, drama is my Gatorade; it replenishes my electrolytes.”
Ah! Something else consistent in this universe: Marc was as devoted to Jenna Maroney’s character from 30 Rock as he was when I left. Weird, the things that made me feel better.
“And the reason the answer is ‘not yet’ instead of ‘six months and going strong’ is because your best friend,” D-Nick was telling me, “has it in her head that because her mom and dad’s marriage was a disaster, she, too, would be bad at it.”
I could feel my eyes widen but didn’t say anything. I thought Jess would make N/Dick a great wife. Hmm, gorgeous and smart and open-minded and cool and rich? Jessica should sink her claws into his hide and grip like an IRS agent looking for a promotion.
But her concerns were real. And I didn’t think they should be brushed aside.
“Come on, don’t be like that,” Marc coaxed in an encouraging tone. “Look at the facts. If Betsy can be good at marriage, anyone can.”
“Die screaming,” I told him. Then snapped my jaw shut so quickly I almost bit off my tongue. I had the awful feeling that he did just that. Or would someday do just that. Goddamned time travel.
“I’m not having this discussion during smoothie time,” Jessica told N/Dick.
“Indeed,” Sinclair tried again, “there are other things we should—”
“That’s it.” D/Nick threw his arms in the air like a football referee (“And . . . it’s gooooood!”). “I’m going to get Marc to dose you with tranqs, then haul you in front of a judge. By the time you—”
“Remember you’ve never been a fan of felony kidnapping or drug abuse,” Marc prompted.
“—realize what’s happened, it’ll be too late. You’ll be Mrs. Detective Nicholas J. Berry.” He’d said all that with a scowl, but it couldn’t hold up to Jessica’s amused exasperation, and when he grinned back, I was again reminded how greatlooking he was.
I had always liked that Nickie/Dickie looked like what he was: a clean-cut, corn-fed midwestern boy. A smokin’ hot midwestern boy, if I may be so uncouth.
Once upon a time his name was Nick, and I’d hoped we’d get naked and make careless reproductive choices together. But when we first met, he saw me as a victim of the crime he hoped to solve (it was a long story involving feral vampires, Kahn’s Mongolian BBQ, and my love of garlic). And after he met Jessica, he’d never thought of me at all.
Hmmm. I wasn’t sure I liked the way my memories bent. Memo to me: you have everything. And you’re still irked that Nick-Dick never ever saw you in the way you were accustomed. Get over it, you greedy cow.
Speaking of greedy, was he super-rich in this timeline or struggling on a cop’s salary? Which was just pitiful, by the way . . . A good executive assistant made more than the average homicide detective, and admin staff were rarely shot at.
I had it in my head that N-Dick was the heir to the John Deere tractor fortune, but he didn’t talk about it much in my old timeline, and frankly, what with my husband being rich and my best friend being rich, I wasn’t all that curious about other people’s money. In any timeline.
I can hear it now: you’re not curious about money because you’ve always had some! Well. Yeah. I mean, my folks weren’t rich or anything—my mom was a