The Bad Boy Next Door

PROLOGUE

Hallie Fortune felt a sense of expectancy, a surrealistic, intangible urgency, as if something magical were in the air.

She shook her head. What a fanciful nonsense. If there was one thing Hallie wasn't, it was fanciful. Down to earth, levelheaded, practical. That was her. Good, sweet, Hallie Fortune.

Damned near thirty-year-old Hallie Fortune.

She groaned and needlessly straighthened the photographs on the fireplace mantel. It was probably the phone call from her cousin, Maggie that had her feeling this way.

Destiny, Maggie had said. Grab it with both hands and run with it.

A germ of an idea had formed while talking to her cousin. The more Hallie thought about it, the more she liked the idea. A scorecard to rate a man's suitability for her purpose.

The purpose of choosing a husband. The right husband. A pro and con sort of thing. If Maggie could rely on a wish list, why not adopt a similar principle?

As she waited for Tim Levine to pick her up for the Labor Day barbecue, Hallie ran her finger over the oak-framd picture of herself and Maggie and Clarissa standing in front of a fortune-teller's tent at the Summerfest. The photo had been taken when they were twelve. Eighteen years ago today.

The urge to drop everything and make the half-hour drive to Brideport SummerFest was both powerful and confusing. But she couldn't leave Tim in the lurch. It wasn't the good-girl thing to do.

She smile at the image of Maggie holding the green lizard she'd won at the shooting booth. A beauty, even at twelve, Maggie was a tomboy at heart. Lord how she'd begged about her deadeye aim that had won the stuffed animal. Now the high-fashion model had quit her job was off for a new life in Texas, back to where her roots were.

Destiny.

Hallie's gaze shifted from her cousin to her childhood bestfriend. She was worried about Clarissa. Neither she nor Maggie had heard from her in way too long. But Clarissa did that sometimes--pulled back when her emotions were on edge.

"Oh, Clarissa, what happened to your millionaire? Our childhood dreams? Mine and yours and Maggie's?"

Destiny.

But nothing stayed the same. Like the shifting of the ocean tides, life too, altered. There came a time when you had to look life square in the face and take stock.

Clarissa and Maggie had recently turned thirty and Hallie would reach that milestone age in just a few weeks. Time to stop subconsciously relying on fate and take destiny in their hands.

Her thumb smoothed over the glass covering the photograph. Clarissa with flame red hair in her too small dress with the too short hem, Maggie with the impish, double-dog dare me attitude and expression, and herself, somewhat reserved, feeling free at the carnival, free from the turmoil of her parents' bickering.

She remembered the giggling, the camaraderie. And it had been all Maggie's idea...

"Hey, look at that tent! It's Clarissa's fortune teller," Maggie had exclaimed. Maggie was the boisterous one, the leader of the threesome. She nudged Hallie. "Your last name's Fortune, Hallie. You should go in."

Hallie rolled her eyes. "You don't really believe in that stuff, do you?"

"Come on, cuz', don't be a chicken. It's like an omen, or something. Don't you think so Clarissa?"

Clarissa shrugged, her cinnamon eyes hopeful yet reserved. "I didn't bring a lot of money with me."

Hallie's innate compassion rose. She'd always been able to come up with a good excuse to slip her friend lunch money without it seeming like charity. She did something similar now, responding to that spark of hope in Clarissa's eyes.