That last part was true, even if the baby plasma part wasn’t.

“Seriously, though,” Karmel continued as she relaxed back into the real her and not the one people saw in entertainment interviews, “he is delicious. I could gobble him right up.”

“He’s a baby,” Chelle said, pushing back the very adult thoughts she’d had a minute ago. “A very hot, incredibly sexy, too young for me guy.”

Karmel scoffed. “He may be a mere bambino compared to me, but you’re what, a few years older than he is?”

“I’m eight years older.” She knew for sure because she’d peeked at his driver’s license when he’d shown it at the courthouse. That was an eon in years between an older woman and a younger man. An older guy with a younger woman? Barely a blink—even if he had a paunch and more gray hair than black.

Meanwhile, she had the kind of padding a woman got after spending more than four decades on this planet and not giving in to the people insisting on no carbs. Give up bagels when she lived in the city for the toasted delight? Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen, no matter how many times her former doctor gave her “the look” when he reviewed her weight at appointments for things like strep throat and a fractured ankle. That plushy insulation along with the lines in her forehead and droop to her formidable boobs meant to society she had entered crone territory.

Guys like Nash Beckett didn’t date old ladies who looked like her—unless they wanted to win a bet.

“Age is just a number,” her friend said with a wry chuckle.

“Yeah?” Chelle said. “Tell that to your agent.”

Karmel let out an exaggerated stage gasp and pressed her palm to her chest. “Stan knows I’m fifty-nine. He’s the one who came up with the idea to fudge my real age in the first place. Otherwise I would have been playing middle-aged aunties and moms at thirty instead of forty-five.”

“Fuck the bastards,” Chelle said, clinking her own water glass against Karmel’s. “But not literally, because they don’t deserve us.”

“Honey, so few do.” She lifted her glass. “To us.”

They drank to their age and fabulousness, but when Karmel put her wineglass of water down, her face had turned serious again.

“Not to go all mom friend on you, but what do you actually know about this guy? He could be a serial killer, and you’re about to marry him and let him live in your apartment. He could be a hobo-sexual and this whole thing is an elaborate grift.”