For Better or Hearse

Chapter One

A sh Keller’s job is to ruin things.

Most especially this wedding.

Most especially Nathaniel Rhodes Whitford.

In her hands, Ash carries a file. The file. A document she uses to vet those she’s hired to break up. As a professional wedding objector, she requires proof. Concrete evidence, like the Roswell incident or the JFK assassination. Otherwise, she won’t touch the job with a ten-foot pole. Sure, she ruins lives, but she ruins lives with purpose.

As Ash steps up to the door of the church, she groans. Why does it have to be a church? A prim and proper two-hour Catholic affair is most definitely not up her alley. Why couldn’t he get married on top of a mountain or at least a place where she could parachute in? Each time she sets foot on sacred ground, she feels like she’ll spontaneously combust.

Inhaling a hard breath, she grips the handle. The door opens with a tired sigh. A crescendo of music echoes down the long corridor. She settles her stomach. Steels her spine.

And walks.

Or rather, stomps.

Clad in fishnets, she storms down the aisle. Her lovingly worn combat boots squeak loudly on the marble floor, echoing through the archaic space, as she storms for the altar. The aglets of her eternally untied laces snap and bounce. Her red lipstick is bright and as blaring as the music coming from the organ. The heart in her chest beats hard and fast. So hard and fast, in fact, that the guests can surely see it through the bodice of her dress .

Of course she dressed up. It’s a wedding. Although not for very much longer.

Halfway down the aisle, she hears it. The priest is at the “If anyone wants to oppose…” part of the vows.

It’s so very seventeenth century of him.

“Wait!” she shouts, lifting an arm like she’s volunteering as tribute. A thrill unfurls inside her. She’s timed it perfectly.

I object. The two most powerful words in the English language.

Because the person voicing them wields power. Vengeance. Not participating. It pisses everyone off.

As she nears the altar, confused murmurs erupt around her. Guests twist in the pews to glimpse her better. Groomsmen—LA’s top five blandest white guys—in dark jackets turn her way. Women in long beaded gowns sneer. The dresses and suits they’re wearing probably cost more than her monthly rent.

The long walk down the aisle feels like she’s walking the plank. Her great, furious boot stomps aren’t helping her either.

Through it all, Ash faces front and center. Zeroed in on the bride. By now, she’s a pro at this. Avoid eye contact with the family. Keep emotions out of it. Get in. Object. Get out.

Or run like hell. Depending.

She knows what she’s walking into. She’s been well debriefed by her client.

The Whitfords. A prominent wealthy LA family. Their accolades and accomplishments make her itch. Doctors. Owners of fancy businesses and expensive cars and straight Trident white teeth. They’re into snobby hobbies like skiing and golfing. No doubt they run a 5k on Thanksgiving and each of their children has a trust fund. It’s only a matter of time before one of them gets fingered for a white-collar crime.

Gripping the folder tight, Ash slows her stampede.

She surveys the bride. Camellia Barrister. So clean-girl aesthetic. Impossibly beautiful in a fresh and effortless way, unattainable to mere mortals. In addition to her placid expression, she wears a stunning mermaid tail organza with a sweetheart neckline that amplifies her busty cleavage. The diamond tiara nestled in her slicked-back bun reminds them all that she is and always will be a princess.

The groom, dressed impeccably in Ralph Lauren, angles in and murmurs to his bride. Then Nathaniel Whitford fixes his piercing gaze on Ash, one stern eyebrow raised. “Who the hell are you?” His voice is clipped, machine-gun style. The irritated intensity of his expression sends a burning sensation through her ever-tightening chest. It feels like he’s judging her, untied laces and all.

Her heart stutters to a stop along with her feet.

Why can’t he be ugly? Like Harlequin baby ugly?

He’s like Harlequin romance. GQ brooder with a jawline that could slice through glass. Golden-bronze skin. Wheat-colored hair like a swirl of butterscotch ice-cream. The cavalier no-big-deal flip in the front. An obscenely, unfairly tall asshole. One of LA Times’ most promising doctors of the year.

And a cheater.

“Hello?” Nathaniel’s no longer looking at her. Instead, he scans the crowd. “Can we get security here?”

“Seriously?” she hisses, shooting him a glare. “Security? What is this, the CIA?”

“At my wedding,” he replies, chin lifted and eyes hard, “yes.”

Ash hops to the side, moving closer to Camellia. “I’m here to show you something, Ms. Barrister.”

She opens the folder and holds it up, making sure Nathaniel can’t see its contents. Ash hands over the folder, even as Nathaniel’s glare burns a hole in her face. By the time this is over, she’ll look like one of those Victorian women who burned to death in flammable dresses.

Heat blooms in Camellia’s cheeks as she scans the incriminating photo, but she keeps her expression neutral. A minimalist tactic of the rich and famous, Ash supposes .

“Oh, come on,” Nathaniel snaps, a vein in his forehead pulsing. “This is ridiculous.”

Camellia looks at Ash, her brown eyes burning with relief.

Ash closes the folder and pulls it tightly against her chest.

“Nathaniel,” Camellia says in a silvery tone, tipping back. Away from her groom. “We should…talk.”

“Right.” His voice is strained. His ice-blue eyes darken. “Talk.”

That’s when his broad shoulders and golden head swivel Ash’s way. As he studies her, something greasy and wormy turns over in Ash’s stomach. The bite of pain on his face has her taking a step back.

Fuck. She wasn’t expecting that.

Suddenly, she begins to sweat.

From the shadows, a man in a suit emerges, earpiece in place and attention set on her.

Shit .

Ash turns. Every person in attendance is whispering now, hands to their mouths in quiet, delighted shock. There’s the flash of a photo. Camellia tugs on Nathaniel’s hand, urging him to a back room. An older man with a shock of white hair has rocketed up, phone to his ear. If his furious, blustering expression is anything to go by, it’s time for Ash to move her boots. There are nearly five hundred people here. She scans the first five pews, the immediate family there, then, almost desperately, shifts her focus to the exit.

And then she fucking runs.

Door. Exit. Now.

Before the entire Whitford family riots.

The slaps of her boots and laces echo down the aisle, metronome along with her heartbeat.

When the massive wood door slams shut behind her, she slumps back against it. Ash sucks in great gulping breaths. The air tastes like smog, the May sunlight so bright she can barely see. She is glad for the distraction, even as she tries to convince herself that what she’s just done is not the lowest level of low. The Whitfords will thank her for it later. They will. Thank her for all the hymns, blessings, verse readings and divorces she saved them from.

The thought hums in Ash’s ears, fizzles out before she can believe it.

Fuck. What’s wrong with her?

Most times, guilt is not a factor. Today is an anomaly.

It’s the church. The eyes of God. Making her quake. Objecting to weddings in backyards, beaches, bars is so much easier. Here, where her soul is up for judgment, even if she doesn’t believe in the big guy up in the sky? It makes her insides twist and her airway tighten.

You’re messy, Ash.

Sweaty and hounded, she squeezes her eyes shut. Her blood is on fire. Fumbling around in her purse, she grabs a granola bar. Crushes it in her fist.

It’s just a job .

It’s what she wishes someone would have done for her. She’s saving them. She’ll never let another person go through it. That almost-walk.

With Jakob, she learned the rules of love.

She learned that less of herself was more.

She learned on a moonless night who else was sleeping in her bed.

Hot guilt pumps through her, so loud she can hear it in her ears.

“Fuck.” Ash doubles over, gasping at the gray sidewalk cracks of LA. “Fuck.”

Later that night, flopped in bed after devouring a carton of chicken lo mein and wrapped in a soft southwestern-pattern cardigan, she picks up her phone to respond to a text from her cousin.

Tessie: Well? How’d it go? Did you burn up upon entry ?

She feels like she did.

With a sigh, Ash rereads the message, then tosses her phone on the nightstand beside her gory true crime novel.

Suddenly, she isn’t so eager to reply to Tessie. Today was nothing to laugh or brag about. Not like the time she interrupted a serial-cheater’s wedding. The job where the drunk uncle in the back of the pew shot up, threw the keys to his Thunderbird into the aisle and screamed Take the money and run, son! thereby cementing her all-around good faith in her career choice.

It’s haunted her all night.

The sight of Nathaniel Whitford’s face as she bolted for the door of the church.

It wasn’t what she expected at all. Not from a man who’d been brazenly caught on camera in a strip club. It was the complete opposite of guilt.

It was pain.

Staring at the ceiling, Ash chews her lip, her nervous tic. A hot shower feels necessary. Along with a Brillo pad to scrub the slime from her skin. Today, she was a bad person. And not just in the oops-I-fucked-up-and-accidentally-dropped-a-baby kind of way. Bad in the I’m-taking-a-magnifying-glass-to-a-jar-full-of-bugs-and-I-fucking-love-it kind of way.

Is she really helping?

Or is she the girl who breaks hearts to make her own feel better?

Who knows? Right now, Ash doesn’t feel anything.

Least of all good.