Chapter One

When Emma Cartwright pulled into the parking lot of Shooter’s Bar on that Friday night, she was a woman with a mission. Like the best of missions, it was simple, clear, and had a defined and measurable aim: Emma was going to go in there and pick up a scorching hot man and go home with him.

Shooter’s was, she knew, hands-down the best damn place in Denver to embark on such a mission. According to Kat, the guys in this place were pretty much after nothing but a good time. And Emma needed a good time tonight.

She sat in her car for a minute, running over the game plan in her mind. OK, so a few deal breakers in terms of her choice for her very first one-night-stand:

First, Kat had said that Shooter’s attracted lots of soldiers passing through, and Emma wasn’t so interested in guys recently back from combat. Chances were they’d be traumatized, and she had more than enough trauma going on in her life right now. No, tonight was an escape for her, and as such, she wasn’t interested in damaged, possibly dangerous, guys. And she’d have to keep her wits about her here: no getting drunk and putting herself in a bad situation with the wrong guy.

Second, nobody too sweet. He had to be a nice guy, clearly, but not relationship material. She had a tendency to get attached to sweet guys, guys who held her hand and wanted to take her for dinner. But if this was just casual sex, then she didn’t want it to be with a guy that she’d really want to see again.

Third, she needed to lie about herself. Not her name; that was going a bit far. But she definitely didn’t want anyone knowing that she was a psychologist – that tended to freak people out even at the best of times – so tonight she was going to be Olivia Jameson’s personal assistant. She was sure that Liv wouldn’t mind the deception, though she was pretty certain that her actual assistant Nigel most definitely would.

As if she had conjured Olivia up just by thinking about her, Liv’s ring tone trilled from Emma’s purse. She pushed ‘reject’ and then turned the ringer to vibrate. She knew that Kat and Liv and Jenny were all anxious to hear the final diagnosis after almost a month of medical tests, but Emma didn’t want to talk about that right now. Tomorrow was fine for doom and gloom. Tonight was about grabbing on to life with both hands, as hard as she could, as many times as she could take it.

She knew that what she was doing was unhealthy and reactionary. If one of her patients had received the kind of bad news that she’d gotten that day, and they then had turned around and flung themselves full-on into a one-night-stand, Emma would have plenty to say about that. She’d say they were in some major denial, and desperately trying to avoid inevitable pain, and maybe even engaging in some complicated form of self-harm.

Shut it, Dr. Cartwright. Looking for affirmation of life is completely normal when you’ve been marked by death.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Her blue eyes had shadows under them and she looked pale. She slicked on a bit of concealer and blush and shook out her long, dark hair. She unbuttoned the top button of her white blouse, hesitated, then undid the second one. And there she was, a curvy, thirty-one-year-old woman looking good in her tight black skirt and high heels, a pretty young woman just looking for a good time.

In the mirror, Emma met her own eyes for a few seconds.

Here we go.