The Bride Wore Size 12

Chapter 1

** The Bride Wore Size 12 will be in stores and on e-readers on Sept 24, 2013. Here is a sneek peek of the first 3 chapters. **

“Everything’s going to work out.” That’s what I’ve been saying all month to my fiancé, Cooper. “Everything’s going to be great. Wait and see.”

Each time I say it, Cooper looks at me in that adorable way he has, one dark eyebrow lifted slightly higher than the other one. He knows exactly what I’m talking about, and it has nothing to do with our upcoming wedding ceremony at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

“You do know that statistically, more young adults end up in hospital emergency rooms than any other age group?” he points out. “At least for accident-related injuries. And more of them die of those injuries than any other age group as well.”

When you live with a licensed private detective, you can count on many things. One of them is that sometimes he’s going to keep odd hours. Another is that there will be fire- arms in your home.

A third is that occasionally he will trot out random facts you probably never cared to know, like how many registered sex offenders live within a five-mile radius of your home, or that more young people end up in hospital emergency rooms than any other age group.

I glare at him. “So?”

“So it makes sense that in a student population the size of the one at New York College,” Cooper says, “you’re going to have at least one or two deaths a year.”

“Not this year,” I say, shaking my head vehemently over our Chinese takeout. Everything we’ve been eating lately has been delivered in a carton, because with freshman check-in looming, my hours are so long. I’m coming home from work later and later every evening, bone tired from sorting keys and supervising room cleanings. Cooper has a case as well, so his hours haven’t been very regular either, although out of respect to his client’s privacy, he won’t tell me exactly what his duties entail. “This year, everything is going to be differ- ent. No one in Fischer Hall is going to die this year. Not even accidentally.”

“How are you going to manage that?” Coop asks, gnawing on a Chinese spare rib. “Bubble wrap all your residents?”

I picture the undergraduate students who live in the resi- dence hall in which I work attempting to navigate the streets of New York City while encased in plastic shipping material. It’s a strangely pleasing thought. “Not really feasible. I think they’d object on human rights grounds. Good idea, though.” Now both of Cooper’s eyebrows have gone up, and he’s looking faintly amused. “Maybe it’s better if we can’t have kids after all if you think bubble wrapping them is a good idea.”

I ignore his sarcasm. “Okay, how about this?” I say. “So long as none of them gets murdered, I’ll be happy.”

Cooper reaches across the moo shu pork to give my hand a squeeze. “That’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with you, Heather. You’ve never been afraid to dream big.”

Yes, this year was going to be different, all right. Totally different from last year, when I first started my job as as- sistant director of Fischer Residence Hall, and I thought Cooper wasn’t attracted to me, and we lost our first student a few weeks into the semester.

This year, Cooper and I were getting married, and we lost our first student before classes even started.

I should have gone with the bubble wrap after all.