“Okay, let’s do this.” She grabbed the leashes from the hook by the door. “You guys are great for helping me plot out my books. Let’s see how you do with fighting a real-life evil jerk.”

Twenty minutes and two poop bags later, she’d learned the answer to that question was that the dogs were not very helpful at all. She’d spent the whole walk through St. George’s Park going over every option she could think of that didn’t involve a wedding and coming up with absolutely nothing. Finally, she sat down at the bench so Mary could sniff every twig and Groucho could roll in the dead leaves with his fat tongue hanging out.

“There has to be a way out of this,” she grumbled while the dogs tugged at their leashes as if they had a chance of actually getting the squirrel dashing around just outside of their reach.

But there wasn’t—at least nothing she could think of—so she swallowed back the bile burning the back of her throat and started making a list of unmarried men who might be open to marrying a forty-two-year-old with two pugs and an almost feral cat, a second-floor walk-up near the park, four finished fantasy novels under her bed that would never see the light of day, and enough family-related baggage to fill the Grand Canyon.

The list added up to exactly zero point zero.

She dropped her chin to her chest in defeat. “I am so screwed.”

“Oh, darling,” a woman said, then made a sympathetic clucking sound.

Chelle looked up at the woman who’d stopped in front of the park bench. Dressed in a voluminous pure-white faux-fur winter coat that was left open despite the cold wind rattling the trees’ bare limbs, the woman smiled. Her purple lipstick matched her brightly colored floral muumuu and the colored tips of her wild gray curls that were escaping from the messy bun on top of her head.

“That does not sound like it’s the good kind of screwed at all,” the woman said.

Shocked into responding, Chelle nodded. “Not even close.” Then without meaning to, she tacked on, “I’ve got less than a month to come up with a way to defy my dad’s will or find someone to marry me for a charity.”

“Oh my.” The woman’s face softened with sympathy as she shook her head and said, “No one would think it a charity to marry you. You must think more of yourself, darling.”

Embarrassed heat flooding her cheeks, Chelle opened her mouth to explain the woman had misheard her, she literally had to marry for a charity, but the woman sat down next to Chelle on the bench.

“What you need,” she said with an excited gleam in her eye, “is a reading.”