Blame It on the Bachelor. Karen Kendall

it does!”

      Dev sighed. “Pete saw the tail end of our first encounter, okay? The one where you said I might do. And he saw you walk away from me and out the door, while I stared after you like a brain-damaged sheep.”

      Her lips twitched.

      “So he assumed that you blew me off, and he told the other guys, who thought it was hilarious that the one-time chick magnet crashed and burned.”

      “Chick magnet?”

      “Look, give me a break. I was the lead singer in a popular band. Women threw themselves at me.”

      She tossed him a look of distaste. “Maybe I should have sprayed your epic proportions with the Lysol in the closet.”

      Stung, Dev said, “I used a condom!”

      “Yeah. Maybe I should have made you use duct tape, too.”

      “Listen up, Miss Bee-yotch. As I recall, you were begging for it, and weren’t too particular about whether I had protection with me or not!”

      Her gasp of outrage was satisfying. “I went to the closet to cry, not to have sex with you.”

      “And I went to the closet to see if you were okay. Seems to me you’re on some kind of emotional roller coaster this weekend.”

      Kylie shrugged.

      “So what’s wrong?”

      “Nothing.”

      “C’mon, tell Father Dev all about it.”

      Kylie kept staring out the window.

      “Unless you’re just a garden variety psycho?”

      “That’s it. Stop the car and let me out.”

      “No.”

      “I’d rather walk to the reception than ride with you.”

      “The drama queen returns,” muttered Dev, without slowing down.

      “Stop the car!” she shrieked.

      He rolled his eyes, made a last turn into the grounds of Playa Bella, the luxury hotel, and squealed to a stop under the portico, where a valet immediately came toward them. “Feel stupid yet? Would you rather I’d left you at the stoplight a block away?”

      Kylie erupted from the passenger side of the Corvette like a blond hurricane, without waiting for the valet to hand her out. Dev was treated to the delectable view of her ass swinging furiously from side to side as she teetered up the carpeted steps and into the hotel without him.

      He shook his head at the valet and shrugged his shoulders. “She had to get to the ladies’ room, quick.”

      The valet’s eyebrows shot up in clear disbelief.

      “Okay, fine. She’s late for a homicide,” said Dev, scooping up the evening bag she’d left on the ‘Vette’s floorboard in her haste to get away from him. “And she really likes to be on time for her bloody murders. Pictures at eleven …”

       6

      KYLIE MUGGED A waiter the instant she was inside the grand ballroom. She snatched a glass of wine off his tray, almost unbalancing the poor man in the process. She drank it dry on the way to the buffet table, where she stabbed five Swedish meatballs, six mini-quiches, three triangles of spanakopita and an entire school of shrimp, which she drowned in cocktail sauce.

      She stalked with her plate to the darkest corner of the ballroom, which happened to be where the huge amplifiers for the band clustered. Kylie maneuvered herself behind one that was almost her height and attacked her food like a starving goat, in the subconscious hope of filling the awful hollow inside her. She was four meatballs into the meal when she realized that she’d left her purse in Dev’s ostentatious Corvette. Which meant she’d have to speak to him again. And worse, she’d have to do it politely.

      With this realization came the full volume of the speaker as the band broke into “Endless Love,” which presumably the bride and groom had chosen as the song for their first dance. She couldn’t help it; she rolled her eyes.

      Eardrums shattered, flushed from her hiding place, Kylie stumbled out from behind the monstrous black box only to run straight into Wilton Grubman, her older sister’s best friend’s son.

      The two women had once forced Kylie and Wilton out to an eighth grade dance together, with disastrous results. Disastrous because Wilton had had a crush on her ever since then, and had been caught in the junior high boys’ room doing unspeakable things with her class picture in hand.

      “Kylie!” he enthused, his oddly triangular but puffy face beaming.

      “Wilton,” she said, trying desperately to dredge up a smile. “Long time no see.”

      Poor Wilton still looked like a possum. He had a broad forehead, long sharp nose and narrow chin which sat directly over plump shoulders as if God had forgotten that he needed a neck. Those shoulders transitioned into a barrel of a torso set on tiny legs. Wilton had small, pink, plump hands, too, that were always clammy.

      “Care to dance?”

      She was insanely grateful for the plate of food she still held. “Oh, um, maybe later? Thanks, but I’m starved.”

      “Here, let me hold that. You two run along and have fun,” Dev said helpfully from behind her as he snatched the plate. She whirled to find him standing there with her purse tucked under his arm and an unholy smirk on his lips.

      “Oh, no,” she said sweetly. “I can’t expect you to—”

      “Of course you can! Listen—the band just struck up ‘Shout.’” He popped her last meatball into his mouth and slapped her on the butt. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

      She plotted Devon McKee’s murder as Wilton grasped her hand in his pudgy, sweaty one and towed her out onto the floor, looking as if he’d won the lottery.

      Kylie was taller than he was. At every repetition of the chorus, he threw his arms up and hopped, morphing from possum to seal trying to snatch fish from the air. And her breasts were the fish, since with every “Shout!” they popped up, despite her best efforts to harness them.

      That rat-bastard Devon laughed from the sidelines while consuming her shrimp.

      Shout! Kylie decided to dismember him alive with a hacksaw and feed his limbs to a shark while he watched.

      Shout! Better yet, she’d knock him unconscious, tie him up, smear canned tuna all over him and feed him to a herd of starving feral cats.

      Shout! Or maybe she’d toss him into a mosh pit of violently vengeful women whom he’d spurned over the course of his career.

      As the song got faster and sweatier and Wilton’s enthusiasm for her even more oppressive, she contemplated the virtues of alligators, pythons and piranha, any of which were readily available here in south Florida and would satisfy her bloodlust.

      Finally, the song was over. She dodged Wilton’s determined attempt to slide a sweaty paw from her waist down to her ass, and thanked him for the dance. Then, through a series of dodges and feints, she lost him in the sea of people now filling up the room and made her way to Dev the Devil and her purse.

      Her plate, she saw as she approached him, was a lost cause. It was littered with shrimp tails, quiche crumbs and flakes of spanakopita.

      He waggled his eyebrows at her—for all the world like Belushi in Animal House—then popped the last corner of the only remaining savory Greek pastry into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed and smirked at her again. “Enjoy the dance?”

      “I’d like my evening bag, please,” she said icily.

      “Are you going to hit me with it?”

      “I reserve the right.”