A worry line marred her brow. “I couldn’t afford to pay you much.”

“Oh, don’t worry about the money. I won’t charge you.”

Inwardly, I kicked myself. What was wrong with me? Why was I always giving away my services? If I started charging people, maybe I wouldn’t have to shop at joints like the Bargain Barn. Oh, well. Pam seemed awfully nice, and it wasn’t as if I had a lot of assignments that she’d be interfering with. In fact, my work schedule was scarily light.

“That’s so sweet of you,” Pam said. “How about I fix you dinner as payment?”

“Sounds great. When do you want to get together?”

“As soon as you can.”

“How about tomorrow night?”

“Oh, I can’t tomorrow,” she said. “That’s PMS night.”

“PMS night?”

“A group of friends get together once a week to bitch and moan over guacamole and margaritas. We call ourselves the PMS Club.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Hey, wait. I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you come with me? We’re short on members right now and I think you’d be a great addition to the club. We could have dinner first at my place while we work on my resume and then head over to the club afterward. What do you say?”

“Are you sure the others won’t mind?”

“No. They’re going to love you; I’m sure of it.

And it’s really worthwhile. You get to share your innermost thoughts with like-minded women in a warm, supportive environment.

“Plus,” she added, with a grin, “you get great guacamole and free margaritas.”

“Sure,” I said, never one to pass up a free margarita. “Why not?”

I was soon to find out exactly why not, but that’s a whole other story. Stick around, and I’ll tell it to you.

Chapter 2

I guess you could say the whole PMS mess was Kandi’s fault. If she hadn’t gone and gotten herself engaged, I never would’ve joined the PMS Club in the first place.

Yes, after years of dating some of the wartiest frogs on the planet, my best friend and constant dinner companion, Kandi Tobolowski, had done the unthinkable and finally met a prince. Of all places, in traffic school. They locked eyeballs over a lecture on Illegal U-turns and by the time they got to Lane Changing, Kandi knew she’d found the man of her dreams.

In the past, Kandi’s dream men have invariably turned out to be nightmares. Last year, for example, she was madly in love with a performance artist, a guy whose act consisted of lying on stage in a vat of hot fudge sauce and spraying himself with Reddi-Wip. Everything was rosy until she showed up at his loft one night and caught him in bed with another woman, a vibrator, and a jar of maraschino cherries.