LITMIR.BIZ

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      Dedication

      For my mother, Gail Davis, who always offers me an ear when I need to vent, a shoulder when I need to cry and a hug when I crave the comfort of her unconditional love.

      Acknowledgments

      This book wouldn’t be in print if it weren’t for the hard work and enthusiasm of my agent, Ashley Kraas. I also want to thank my editor, Margaret O’Neill Marbury, for all of her guidance and support.

      Kathy Vizas allowed me to pick her brain and benefit from her years of experience as a lawyer. Her insights proved to be indispensable for the plotting of this novel. The same could be said of the help I received from Lieutenant John Weiss who patiently answered my countless questions and actively assisted me with my research. Detective Sergeant Donna Lind was a fountain of information as well. I hope they will all forgive me for occasionally taking a bit of poetic license with the facts they so generously supplied me with.

      Last but absolutely not least I need to thank my stepbrother Chris Sullivan for watching my son while I struggled to meet my deadlines, and my mother for all the free childcare she provided and for her willingness to be my brutally honest and marvelously detail-oriented volunteer proofreader.

      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 12

      CHAPTER 13

      CHAPTER 14

      CHAPTER 15

      CHAPTER 16

      CHAPTER 17

      CHAPTER 18

      CHAPTER 19

      CHAPTER 20

      PROLOGUE

      I arranged some Pacificos in an ice bucket and slipped Sarah McLachlan into the CD player in anticipation of Leah’s visit. My sister and I love Sarah. She may be the only thing we agree on. At first glance people always assume our differences fall into the good girl-black sheep categories, with me playing the role of the rebellious farm animal, but in reality it’s much more complicated than that.

      First off, although in humid weather my shoulder-length hair can resemble a ball of fluffy fleece, thanks to the genes of our now deceased African-American father and our very much alive Latvian-Jewish mother, my skin tone is much more bronze than black and Leah’s is a bit on the olive side. Second, I’m not that rebellious and Leah’s not that good.

      The difference between us lies in our approach to life. My motto is: Always be true to yourself. It’s why I became a writer. Writing’s one of the few careers in which I can be paid for being a nonconformist.

      Leah, on the other hand, has made it her life’s ambition to be someone else, specifically Martha Stewart (without all that messy felonious stuff). She’s not very good at being Martha; her ethnicity makes that whole WASPy look hard to pull off (despite all the relaxers), she’s not all that creative and she’d rather die than see her name stamped across any item that would ever be carried at Kmart. Yet she keeps trying, and she’s certain that once she achieves her metamorphosis she’ll have found true inner peace. So it wasn’t a big surprise when she announced her engagement to Bob Miller. Bob’s as average as his name. He’s Caucasian of the mutt variety, of medium build, moderately intelligent and, when in social settings, reasonably polite if not out-and-out friendly…or personable…or enjoyable to be with in any way. But as far as Leah’s concerned Bob is Town and Country’s version of Prince Charming.

      So unless Martha had written a book about the heightened social status of imported beer, it was probably a safe bet that Leah would not be drinking a Pacifico. But Anatoly Darinsky might be.

      Lately Anatoly had been starring in a lot of my more memorable dreams. He’s tall, has dark brown hair that matches his penetrating eyes, a tight physique—you know, all the good stuff. But there’s more to it than that—something I can’t put my finger on but that makes me want to put my fingers on all sorts of other things. Not that Anatoly’s perfect. At times he can be cocky, egotistical, argumentative—and don’t even get me started about the defamatory statements he’s made regarding Frappuccinos. He also hates me.

      I suppose he has his reasons. I did frame him for assault and battery, and I kind of inadvertently got him shot in the process, but that was all due to a big misunderstanding. I thought he was a psychotic serial killer who wanted to murder me in some violent and horrifying way, and he thought I was the psychotic killer. Or maybe he just thought I was psychotic. That’s the problem with our relationship—not enough open communication. If we just talked more, we would spend a lot less time trying to send each other to death row.

      But now I had another chance with my non-murderous love interest, for Bob had given Leah reason to believe that he had been cheating on her, and as luck would have it Anatoly is a private investigator who has loads of experience proving and disproving those kinds of suspicions. I had to offer Anatoly an obscene amount of money, but I did get him to accept the case.

      I kneeled down to stroke my cat underneath his chin. “Okay, Mr. Katz, our guests should be arriving—”

      The buzzer echoed through my apartment.

      “—now.”

      CHAPTER 1

      “My divorce attorney gave me a list of everything we can take from Dan,” she said mildly. “I’m beginning to think it would be more humane to just kill him.”

      —Words To Die By

      Anatoly pushed past me into my apartment without bothering to so much as grunt in greeting. “Where’s your sister?”

      “Hello to you, too. Want a beer?” I popped the lid off one of the Pacificos.

      He stuck his thumbs through his belt loops. “Where’s your sister?”

      “You see, it’s like this—nobody ever told Leah about setting the clocks forward during daylight savings time, so she spends half the year running an hour behind.”

      He took the beer and threw his jacket over the armrest of the love seat before lowering himself onto the leather cushions. “I’m not waiting an hour.”

      “Oh, please, I was kidding.” I took a beer for myself and leaned against the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. “I’m sure she’ll be here in forty-five minutes, max.”

      “She has twenty.”

      “Okay, I know you’re pissed at me, Anatoly, but I’m paying you a lot of money to sit on your tuchas and drink my beer, so the least you can do is give her thirty.”

      “Twenty-five. Why don’t you give me the details of the case while we wait? Why does Leah suspect her husband of sleeping around?”

      “You know, the usual. After years of inattention he suddenly began to shower her with gifts while at the same time scheduling a lot of late-night meetings, and

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