Free Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1) by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

from plastic cups with leaping blue dolphins on the side. I took a sip and the bubbles tickled my nose. I giggled again. I never drank this stuff. I never giggled. “Salud,” I said, raising my glass. Ava and I bounced our cups off each other’s, splashing champagne on our arms. More giggles.
    “Is this chair taken?” a deep voice asked. One of our fans, maybe? His broad shoulders blocked out the sun, yowza. Except there was no sun in the casino. It blocked out the light from the cheesy light fixtures. The backlighting around the voice’s head hid his face.
    Ava recognized the voice, though. “Jacoby, sit down, meh son.” She patted the padded Naugahyde seat next to her. Small island.
    Darren Jacoby, still in his police uniform, sat down facing Ava, and the two locals traded cheek kisses. He had looked pretty good for a moment, in the dark.
    “Hi, Ms. Connell,” he said over his shoulder.
    He really didn’t seem to want to call me Katie. Oh, well. “Hello, Officer Jacoby.”
    “I can’t stay long,” he said to Ava. “I’m on duty. My shift end at ten. Just making the rounds when I see you. What you doing?”
    “We went to the private investigator you recommended,” I said to his profile.
    He looked back at me, expressionless. “Well, I hope that turn out well for you. When you go back to the states?”
    He was so not subtle. “Five days,” I said.
    “Be careful, then.” He turned all his attention back to Ava. “Do you want to hang out later? I got
Love and Basketball
on DVD.”
    Oh, jeez, even less subtle. He might as well rent a billboard.
    “Oh, Jacoby, I can’t. I have a date.”
    His jaw bulged and anger flashed in his eyes so fast I almost didn’t catch it. “Always somebody, ain’t it, Ava?” The jaw relaxed. The big shoulders shrank. “Well, another time.”
    “Of course,” she said.
    “I’ll just be going, then.”
    He and Ava cheek-kissed again, he turned and bowed his head at me, and he ambled away, a double for a grizzly bear from the back. He didn’t like me much, but I still hurt for him.
    Ava made a sad face. “He that way forever. He don’t give up easy.” She pulled out her phone and said, “I better check on my date.” A few clicks later, she said, “Guy booked into a room here, up on the hill. A suite. Ooo la la.”
    “Will I get to meet him?” I asked.
    “No. He very private about us.” She pointed to the third finger of her left hand and mouthed the word “married.” “He not even contact me himself. It like I having a thing with his assistant, Eduardo.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. It sounded pretty smarmy and awful to me.
    “Oh, it’s no problem,” Ava said, and shooed the imaginary problem away with her hand. “He’s a senator. People know him. It’s a small island.”
    So I’d noticed.
    I thought of how I felt when Nick ignored me in public. And I wasn’t even “having a thing” with him. Jacoby wasn’t with Ava, either, but that didn’t seem to keep him from having big emotions about her date. “But doesn’t it hurt your feelings?”
    Ava pursed her lips. “I don’t love him, Katie. He nice, and he trying to get a pilot here for a TV show, starring yours truly. We get what we want from each other. I like rich better than powerful, anyway, and he not rich.” She took another sip of champagne.
    I tucked my hair behind my ear. Pilot for a TV show? Her senator Guy had to be my drinking buddy from my flight in. I decided not to mention it, since he’d hit on me relentlessly. Hey, if their arrangement didn’t bother Ava, I wasn’t going to let it bother me. Maybe I’d be happier if I was as dispassionate as she was. Maybe. But probably not.
    “So, who’s the wrong guy, anyway?” she said.
    “What?” I asked, thinking for a moment we were still talking about Guy with a capital G.
    “The one you not supposed to pine for.”
    Ah, him. I signaled the waitress for more champagne. Then,