Mail-Order Matty. Emilie Richards

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       PROLOGUE

      Matty Stewart was well educated, mature and unfailingly responsible. She was also a wide-eyed adolescent when it came to resisting the siren call of champagne, particularly when her best friends were in charge of the bottle.

      “Come on, Matty. A swallow for every year of your life.” Liza Fitzsimmons crooked a finger sporting a fire-engine-red nail that was longer than the brown hair that spiked her elegant head. “I’ve been counting. That was sixteen. Only sixteen.”

      “Sweet sixteen and never been…” Felicity Brown wrinkled her forehead in concentration. “Never been…”

      “Never mind what I’ve never been.” Matty giggled, and the sound alarmed her. Matty was not a giggler. Not a giggler, not a whiner, not a woman of extremes. She was just Matty, plain, intelligent, dependable Matty, who had turned twenty-seven that morning and been turned down for promotion that afternoon.

      “Here goes…” Liza filled Matty’s glass again. “Seventeen and counting.”

      Matty had never developed a tolerance for alcohol. In high school her small circle of friends had been “good girls,” relentlessly dedicated to keeping their heads in the unlikely case any “good boys” lost theirs. By the time she was in college, she was too busy caring for her invalid father to frequent fraternity parties or to sit for hours over pizza and pitchers of beer. And afterward, his comfort and happiness during the final years of his life were far more important than sowing her wild oats. But tonight there was no longer any reason to be good.

      Which was why she was fast getting tipsy.

      “Drink up now,” Liza insisted. “You’re not nearly done.”

      The sensible part of Matty was off duty today or sleeping soundly. The champagne was cheap but effective. It had nearly silenced the memory of her supervisor’s voice regretfully explaining that once again a choice administrative position at Carrollton Community Hospital had gone to someone with less seniority but more guts. “Everyone likes you, Matty,” she had said, without quite meeting Matty’s eyes, “and that’s the problem. You get along too well. You compromise when you should СКАЧАТЬ