Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand (Kitty Norville 5)

Chapter 1

This was embarrassing. I never thought I’d become such a victim of tradition. Yet here I was, looking at the gowns in a bridal magazine.

And liking them. Wanting them. All that satin, silk, taffeta, and chiffon. White, ivory, cream—there’s a difference between white, ivory, and cream, I learned. I could even wear rose or ice blue if I wanted to be daring. Then there were all the flowers and jewelry. Diamonds and silver. If only I could wear silver without breaking out in welts. Okay, gold, then. I could wear gold. I’d be a princess, a vision, absolutely stunning. And all I needed was a ten-thousand-dollar dress.

“I can’t believe it costs this much to take a couple of pictures,” Ben muttered, studying the brochure for a photographer, one of a dozen or so we’d collected. All the brochures—for caterers, reception halls, DJs, tuxedo rentals, and a dozen other services I hadn’t known we needed—lay piled on the table between us, along with magazines and notepads filled with lists, endless lists, of everything we were supposed to be making decisions about. We didn’t even have a date for the wedding yet. My mother had helpfully delivered all this information to me. She was very excited about it all.

We sat at a table for two in the back of New Moon, a new bar and grill near downtown. I had hoped we’d be out of the way of most of the diners and the noise at the bar, which was crowded with a group of after-work businesspeople. The place was busy, almost filled to capacity, and noisy even in back. Which was good, fantastic even, because Ben and I were the restaurant’s primary investors.

“Wedding photography’s big busine

ss,” I said, not looking up from the magazine full of gowns that cost more than I made in a year at my first job.

“It’s a racket. What if we got my friend Joe to do it? He’s pretty good with a camera.”

“Isn’t he the one who’s the crime-scene photographer for the Denver PD?”

“So?”

I shook my head. My wedding was not going to be a crime scene. Not if I could help it. “Do you think I should go sleeveless? Something like that?” I held up the magazine to show a perfectly airbrushed model in a white satin haute-couture gown. I wondered if my shoulders were too bony to pull off a dress like that.

“Whatever you want.”

“But do you like it?”

He sighed. “I like it just fine.”

“You’ve said that for all of them.”

“I’m not going to be looking at the dress. I’ll be looking at you.”

And that was one of the things that made Ben a keeper. I got a little misty-eyed. He was thirty-four years old, a lawyer in private practice, and rough around the edges, because most of the time he couldn’t be bothered with appearances. This gave him almost rebellious good looks. His shaggy brown hair was always in need of a trim, the collar of his shirt stayed open, and his suit jacket and tie could usually be found in the trunk of his car. He also had a smile to sigh over. He was smiling now.

He’d proposed only a month ago, and we were still in the first flush of it all. Once again, I was amazed at how readily I had fallen into the stereotype. I was supposed to be cool and cynical.

We might have sat there staring goofily at each other all night, but Shaun interrupted us, bopping over to our table. “Hey, you guys need anything? More soda? Water?”

Shaun, late twenties, brown skin and dark hair, simultaneously hip and unassuming, managed New Moon. He’d jumped in to make the place his own, doing everything from hiring staff to setting a menu. He was also a werewolf. In fact, I counted six other werewolves here tonight, all part of our—Ben’s and my—pack. This was going to be a werewolf wedding. It seemed like a formality, because our wolf halves had established us as the mated alpha pair. I wouldn’t say it was against our wills, but it all seemed to happen very quickly. Our human sides had taken a little while to catch up. But they did, and here we were, getting married. We were both still a little shell-shocked.

I had wanted New Moon to be a haven for people like us. Neutral territory, where lycanthropes of any description could gather peacefully. So far, so good. The place had an interesting smell—the alcohol, food, and people smells of any downtown restaurant, along with the smell of the pack. Fur, musk, wild. My pack, distinctive as a fingerprint, and because New Moon had a touch of that, it felt safe. Here, my human and wolf sides came together, and it felt like home.

“I’m fine. Actually, it’s getting late. We should probably roll out of here soon.” I started gathering up the mess on the table.

Crouching now, Shaun rested his elbows on the table and regarded the smiling faces of beautiful brides in the magazines. “You pick a date yet?”

“Not even close,” Ben said.

Shaun’s grin seemed amused. To me he said, “Are you changing your last name?”

“Please. That’s so last century,” I said.

“What’s wrong with O’Farrell?” Ben said.

I glared. “Kitty O’Farrell? That’s not a name, that’s a character in a bawdy Irish ballad.”

Fortunately, I didn’t have to defend myself any further, because they both laughed.

“I’ll catch you guys later,” Shaun said, departing for other chores.

“We’re not any closer to making any decisions than we were when we sat down.” Ben now regarded the brochures and paperwork with something like hatred.

“I can’t make any decisions,” I said. “I keep changing my mind, that’s the problem.”

“Then why are we even doing this?”

“Because you asked me to marry you, remember?”

“But do we need the big production? We could just go to city hall and fill out the paperwork.”

“If we did that my mother would kill us.”

Mom wanted a big wedding. These days it was really, really hard to say no to my mother, who was halfway through chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer. She hadn’t been crass enough to drop “I may die soon so you’d better get married now” hints. But then, she didn’t have to. She just had to look at me, and her thoughts bore into me like laser beams.

“She’d understand. She’s not unreasonable.”

“What does your mom say about it?”

“She’s ecstatic that I found someone willing to shack up with me at all.”

That left me giggling. When I thought about it, Ben was right. I didn’t want a big wedding. I didn’t want to have to pick a caterer, or decide on an open or cash bar, and I certainly didn’t want to hire a DJ who couldn’t possibly do as good a job as I could, having started my professional life as a late-night radio DJ. But I did want the dress. And I wanted to do something a little more interesting than wait in line at some government office so we could sign a piece of paper.

That got me thinking. I tapped my finger on a catering menu and chewed on my lip. What if there was a way to save all the time, avoid the organizational nightmare, and yet still have the spectacle? All the fun without the headaches? I had an idea.

“What are you thinking?” Ben said, wary. “You’ve got that look.”