The Marriage Conspiracy

After the oyster bar owner from Tulsa, she danced with Dekker. Thank God for Dekker. Now there was a man that a woman could trust. She was so very fortunate to have a friend like him, who came straight to her aid anytime things got tough.

Of course, she would never take the money he insisted he would give her. But it meant the world, that he would offer—and that he always came through for her and her mama and her sisters, too.

Anytime any one of them needed him, he was there.

And did she ever need him now. She needed his clear mind and his steely nerves—not to mention all he knew from being first a cop and now a private investigator. Dekker saw all the angles. Yes, he was way too cynical—but right now she needed someone who looked at the world through wide-open eyes. Someone to show her how to fight Bobby’s father at his own game.

Joleen closed her eyes and laid her head on Dekker’s broad shoulder.

“It’s going to be all right, Jo,” he whispered against her hair.

Something in his tone alerted her. She lifted her head and looked up at him. “You’ve thought of what to do. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Could be.”

She couldn’t read his expression. “What are you thinking?”

“Later.” He guided her head back to rest on his shoulder. “After everyone’s gone home. We’ll talk about it then. About all of it….”

At eleven DeDe and Wayne took off for Wayne’s house. They’d spend their wedding night there and then leave in the morning for a twelve-day honeymoon at a two-hundred-year-old inn on the Mississippi shore.

Wayne’s new peacock-green SUV had been properly adorned for the occasion, with Just Married scrawled in shaving cream across the rear window, Here Comes the Bride on the windshield and tin cans hooked to the rear bumper by lengths of thick string.

Joleen had the bird seed ready, wrapped in little rose-colored satin squares and tied with white bows. She passed it around and DeDe and Wayne ducked through a rain of it as they raced for the car. Then everyone stood on the sidewalk beneath the Victorian-style lamps that lined all the streets of Mesta Park, waving and calling out last-minute advice.

“Good luck!”

“Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!”

“But if you do, take pictures!”

Wayne revved the engine and pulled away from the curb. The handsome SUV rolled off into the night, tin cans rattling behind.