CHAPTER ONE

      WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK BUZZED on Monday morning, Lucy Fitzhenry leaped out of bed. It was hell waiting for that alarm. She hated wasting time on sleep when her life was so brimming full. She wasn’t just jazzed to start the day; she was kite-high and dancing-ready.

      She made it three feet across the room before the nausea hit. One second she was fine, the next she was beyond miserable. Thankfully she made it into the bathroom before a major upchuck.

      Afterward, she knelt on the cold tile with her elbow crooked on the toilet seat, too weak to get up—at least for another couple seconds—feeling infuriated in general.

      She knew she was getting an ulcer. This was the third time in the last two weeks her stomach had done the revolt thing, and healthy twenty-eight-year-old women with cast-iron stomachs didn’t hurl for no reason, so that had to be it. An ulcer. An ulcer caused by stress.

      It was tough for a fussy perfectionist who’d always been big on responsibility and doing the right thing and making everyone happy to suddenly take on wickedness. She was trying. She was putting her whole heart into it. But it definitely wasn’t coming naturally, so she had to struggle at it, and changing one’s personality was unavoidably stressful.

      Her stomach rolled one more time, but the ghastly part of the nausea seemed to have passed. She hoped. Slowly she pushed to her feet, opened the glass doors to the shower, and flicked on the faucets.

      She’d had the clear glass shower doors put in last week. That, and her sleeping naked, were two visible signs that she was gaining on her wickedness goal. Another concrete measure of progress were the purple satin sheets on her bed. Temporarily she didn’t have a guy to vent all this new wildness on, but one thing at a time. Her stomach needed to recover from all these personality upheavals before she gave it any more stress.

      By the time she climbed out of the shower, she was not only feeling fine again, but picking up speed. She ran naked into the kitchen to pop a bagel in the toaster, then charged back to the bedroom to raid her closet. Since ninety percent of her wardrobe consisted of either designer Gap or designer Old Navy, the day’s clothes decision was hardly tricky. She opted for Gap today. T-shirt. Sweatshirt. Jeans—not her favorite pair; they bagged a little in the butt, but she should have known better than to buy a size seven without trying them on; they were always a little big.

      Back in the bathroom, she poked in her contacts, smacked on lip gloss, and ran a brush through her chin-length blond hair—her hair was so fine it was already nearly dry. Then she claimed the bagel and streaked for the front door…taking ecstatic, if hurried, pleasure in galloping over the white carpet. White. WHITE. White, thick, plush and totally impractical. The print over the fireplace of the eagle flying over silvery-green waters was another splurge—she fiercely, fiercely loved that picture. But both the print and the carpet were further proof that she was mastering the indulgent, impractical, wicked thing.

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