Free Baby, It's You by Jane Graves

Animal House to stay the night.”
    “Yeah. I heard that.” She smiled. “And other stuff, too.”
    “She couldn’t get out of her dress, somebody had to help her. That was all there was to it.”
    Nina gave him a sly smile. “I would have paid any amount of money to see the look on your face when she showed up at your door.”
    “She needed help. I helped her.”
    “Gus says she’s really pretty.”
    “She’s nuts. She ran away from her own wedding.”
    “He wasn’t commenting on her mental capabilities.”
    “Yeah? Well, being beautiful is worthless without a brain to go with it.”
    Nina laughed. “If any other man said that, I’d call him a liar. But not you.”
    “You know how I hate chaos, and that woman has it in spades.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Marc. You’re so damned uptight. You need a little chaos in your life. Angela is gone. You have that big ol’ house all to yourself. Live a little, will you?”
    “Daniel will be home soon.”
    “Like Daniel doesn’t approve of having a good time?”
    She was right. Unfortunately, everything that was wrong with his brother started with good times. He played things loose. Shot from the hip. That was Daniel, through and through, which was why his brother fit in really well with the dot-com crowd. They were a bunch of young, live-for-today people who never looked past the next deal. Daniel might be a millionaire right now, but it wouldn’t surprise Marc if he eventually blew every penny.
    He shoved more bottles onto the rack. “I intend to have plenty of good times. But not one of them is going to involve a crazy woman.”
    “She may have had a good reason for leaving her wedding. Did you ask her why she did it?”
    “She decided she didn’t want to get married.”
    “Besides the obvious.”
    “None of my business.”
    “Think about it, Marc. How many young, eligible women show up in this town? Might want to take notice when one does. You never know when the next one might happen along.”
    But Marc was leaving Rainbow Valley, which meant he had no intention of starting any kind of relationship with a woman, which meant Nina was barking up the wrong tree.
    Marc’s phone rang. He grabbed it, looked at the caller ID, then hit “answer.”
    “Hey, Rick. What’s up?”
    “I towed that Lexus in this morning, but the owner hasn’t been by. Any idea where she might be?”
    “No. She was supposed to come by your place first thing.”
    “Took me a while to get that thing out of the ditch. Ate most of my morning.”
    Marc sighed. “I’ll check on her. See where she is and get her over there. What’s the condition of the car?”
    “Not good. There’s body damage all along the right side. It’ll cost thousands to fix, but I can do it. What I can’t fix is the bent frame. She’ll have to get an insurance adjuster out here to make it official, but trust me, that car is totaled.”
    Marc winced. He had no idea what Kari was going to do when she found out her car was a total loss, but that was her problem.
    “I’ll get her over there soon,” he told Rick.
    “Thanks. Appreciate it.”
    Marc hung up, letting out a breath of frustration. Where the hell was she?
    He thought about just calling Animal House and talking to her, but Gus would have to put the call through, and the less he was in the middle of all this, the better. Instead, Marc decided he’d head over there just in case something was wrong. After all, he’d been the one to ask Rick to take the time and trouble to tow Kari’s car in to his shop, so if there was a problem with her getting over there to get his estimate of the damage and pay him for his time, he needed to find out what it was. They would carry on a one-minute conversation. It would be business, nothing more. And then he’d be on his way.
    “I have to go straighten this mess out,” Marc muttered.
    “So you are seeing her again?” Nina said.
    “I owe it to Rick to make sure this gets taken care of. That’s