She was back at her apartment, marriage license hanging up on the SubZero fridge with a magnet from her vet’s office. Her bestie, Karmel Kane, had been about to walk into her apartment across the hall—which was actually three apartments renovated into one massive place—when she’d spotted Chelle and Nash coming down the hall. It took the other woman all of fifteen seconds to find out they had just gotten their marriage license. After that, Karmel had relocked her door and all but shoved Chelle into her own apartment, through the living room (where she’d told Nash to cool his heels in the way only a person who was definitely a dowager duchess in a past life could), and into the kitchen to get the full story.

Now Karmel was accusing her of hiding?

“You are so full of shit,” Karmel said, pouring water into a crystal wineglass and adding a thin slice of lemon and another of lime. “You are most assuredly hiding from your soon-to-be temporary husband, honey.”

“I am not.” Chelle made a face at her nosy neighbor turned book buddy turned closest friend and flipped her off. “I’m in here talking to you at your insistence.”

Unfazed, Karmel peeked around the arched doorway leading to the living room, where Nash was, and made an appreciative mmmmm-hmmmm sound before turning her attention back to Chelle. “Yeah, and if I’d had that man in my living room right after we’d gotten our wedding license, I wouldn’t have even slowed down on the way to my front door let alone allowed anyone in and then walked them into my kitchen for a little girl talk.”

That was not at all how she and Karmel had ended up in her tiny Harbor City apartment kitchen, but it was no use arguing once Karmel had made up her mind.

Chelle peeked around the corner and sucked in a quick breath. Nash was down on the floor, playing with the dogs, while Sir Hiss watched from his favorite perch on the bookshelf. That was sweet, but it wasn’t the three-way game of tug that had her pulse kicking up. The man had Captain America’s ass, and it was temptation in its full, squeezable, smackable form.

Ignoring Karmel’s knowing chuckle, Chelle turned back to her friend and asked, “Do you even know where your kitchen is?”

“Of course.” She shrugged in that grand dame of stage and screen way she had and modulated her voice from Harbor City native to the vaguely somewhere in Europe accent she used for work. “It’s where I store my serums and the infant blood I bathe in to keep my youthful appearance so my roles don’t dry up completely.” Karmel pressed the back of her hand to the underside of her chin and lifted just enough to tilt her face upward. “No one hates a woman of a certain age like Hollywood.”