Free One Good Friend Deserves Another by Lisa Verge Higgins

sixteen-thousand-dollar designer wedding gown on the grounds of the Briarcliff Country Club, taking Parker Pryce-Weston as her lawfully wedded husband. And right now, there was absolutely no harm in gorging herself on the glorious sight of Gabriel Teixeira—and his strangely haunting, beautiful puzzle of face.
    His lips curved as he read her mind. “My grandmother was Japanese. People always wonder.”
    Caught again.
    “I’m pardo. Mixed blood.” He shrugged. “In Brazil, it’s very common.”
    “You have most unusual features.”
    “And you,” he said, his gaze roaming, “have the most incredible skin. Almost translucent. I’d don’t think I could ever….”
    Paint it.
    In the trailing silence, she heard what he didn’t speak. Her heart did a little flutter. An image bloomed in her mind of Gabe behind an easel, and her reclining on a sun-drenched couch, naked.
    Then she felt a tingling between their palms. A strange sort of prickly static, concentrated, like the electric charge she’d gathered as a child shuffling in her socks across the Aubusson rug in the parlor. It grew in intensity until it was pinpoint-painful, until she felt the heat crackle between their skins.
    She pulled her hand away, like a little girl afraid of the spark.

chapter five
    M arta called the pity party, and Kelly was the first to arrive. The pint-size redhead wandered into the hip East Village bar like a lost soul. Catching sight of Marta alone at the far table, Kelly launched herself across the room as fast as her gladiator sandals could take her and dragged Marta off her chair to envelop her in a hug.
    Marta braced herself as her circulation was cut off at the waist. She was a good half foot taller than Kelly, but Kelly was squeezing for the kill. Marta tried very hard to blink back the tears that prickled behind her eyes. If she started crying now, it would be a hell of a watery night.
    Kelly pulled away long enough to take Marta’s face in her hands. “I’m so, so sorry.”
    Marta gave a casual shrug, the airy response she gave to anyone who asked her about the breakup with Carlos, because it was always easier to pretend it didn’t hurt so much than admit she was cut full through.
    “Drinks are on me tonight,” Marta said, as the waitress approached. “Are you having your usual sticky poison?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “A rum and coke,” Marta said to the waitress, and then she tilted her own pomegranate Cosmo. “And another one of these for me.”
    “This whole thing just doesn’t compute.” Kelly heaved her messenger bag over her head and slung it across the back of the chair. “The last time we talked, I thought you and Carlos were completely mind-melded.”
    “I know.”
    “When you called me with bad news, I thought you were going to tell me you were engaged. ”
    “I know. Your voice hit dolphin pitch. I had to tell you quick, before you woke up the neighborhood dogs.”
    “Listen, I can be dense about these things.” Kelly gathered the swirl of her floral skirt and hiked herself on the chair. “But you were talking in the cab when we left Dhara’s engagement party like all that was left to do was finalize the design of the rings.”
    Marta lifted the rim of the glass to her lips to hide an involuntary spasm. She knew Kelly meant well. Kelly was just being Kelly. The girl honestly didn’t understand that reiterating Marta’s own idiocy might not be the best way to soothe an already battered heart.
    “Apparently,” Marta said, “I can throw together a twenty-million-dollar IPO, but I’m not so good at reading men.”
    “I can’t believe he’s been living with you while he has a wife in Miami.”
    “With three kids.” Marta tapped her glass back down on the table. A boy and two girls. Their school photos, tucked in his wallet. “The oldest is maybe five. She just lost a front tooth.”
    “He’s one hell of a son of a bitch.”
    “To both women involved.”
    Then a purse landed with a clank on