Free Dying To Marry by Janelle Taylor

of Jake’s secretary.
    He immediately straightened, smoothing his tie and his hair as though he was a teenager about to see the girl he worshipped, instead of the woman who’d broken his heart. He leaned back in his chair, adopting a more carefree position, and forced himself to remember what she’d said that terrible night ten years before. He needed his heart and mind on red alert against her, or he could get himself into very big trouble.
    His intercom beeped again. “Jake? Shall I have her wait?”
    â€œYes, Sally,” he responded. “For just a moment. I’m just finishing up some paperwork.”
    Holly Morrow was here to see him.
    Surprise, surprise , he thought. She’d managed to shock him twice in one day. He hadn’t expected her to come seek him out.
    â€œSally, send Miss Morrow in, please,” he said, then took a deep breath.
    Holly’s perfume, a light, clean floral scent that she’d worn since she was fifteen, preceded her into the room. He breathed it in, and for a moment, he was his fifteen-year-old self again. His sixteen-year-old self. His seventeen-year-old self. A boy deeply in love. With a girl who had no interest in the likes of him. Only he hadn’t realized it was disdain that had kept Holly from him.
    His entire body jerked in response to seeing her. There was no hiding her curves, despite the conservative beige jacket and matching pants she wore. Tasteful was the second word that popped into Jake’s head. That was what Holly had always wanted to be. Tasteful. Her family had been too poor to afford stylish clothes, let alone new ones, so Holly had done her best at sales with her babysitting money and thrift shops and dressed as well but plainly as she could.
    As she sat down in the guest chair opposite his desk and looked everywhere but at him, Jake studied her. She’s still living in the past , he realized, his investigative instincts kicking in. He could see it in how guarded she was, how carefully dressed she was, how “proper” she looked. She was trying to overcome who she used to be.
    But who she used to be was absolutely wonderful. Until Jake realized he’d been wrong about her.
    â€œI heard from Lizzie that you’re a private investigator,” she said. “And I’m here about a case.”
    He nodded. “I assume it’s about Lizzie and what’s been happening to her and her friends lately.”
    Her eyes widened. “You know about that?”
    â€œI’ve been on the case since Dylan told me about the first of the anonymous notes in Lizzie’s mailbox,” Jake explained.
    She nodded again. “Did you find out anything?”
    He shook his head. “It was impossible to know if the so-called pranks were connected to the notes or just a coincidence. Felicia being locked in the back room of her shop, the stink bomb thrown into Lizzie’s bedroom window, Gayle’s car being keyed. I couldn’t ascertain whether those incidents were connected to the threatening notes in Lizzie’s mailbox.”
    â€œThere were two, right?” she asked.
    â€œYes. Computer typed and printed and impossible to trace.”
    â€œDo you think the incidents and the notes are linked?” she asked. “Do you think the same person is responsible?”
    â€œMy gut says yes,” Jake responded. “The timing gives it away. The first incident and the first note happened on the same day—Flea being locked in her shop and the note in Lizzie’s mailbox saying: Lay Me Lizzie will never marry Dylan. It’s possible it was coincidence—someone playing a mean trick on Felicia and someone being spiteful to Lizzie, but both happened the day the wedding invitations were received. The next day, Gayle’s car was keyed. The third day, there was the stink bomb and the second note.”
    â€œGayle and Flea are in Lizzie’s wedding—they’re going to be