PROLOGUE

      Matty Stewart was well educated, mature and unfailingly responsible. She was also a wide-eyed adolescent when it came to resisting the siren call of champagne, particularly when her best friends were in charge of the bottle.

      “Come on, Matty. A swallow for every year of your life.” Liza Fitzsimmons crooked a finger sporting a fire-engine-red nail that was longer than the brown hair that spiked her elegant head. “I’ve been counting. That was sixteen. Only sixteen.”

      “Sweet sixteen and never been…” Felicity Brown wrinkled her forehead in concentration. “Never been…”

      “Never mind what I’ve never been.” Matty giggled, and the sound alarmed her. Matty was not a giggler. Not a giggler, not a whiner, not a woman of extremes. She was just Matty, plain, intelligent, dependable Matty, who had turned twenty-seven that morning and been turned down for promotion that afternoon.

      “Here goes…” Liza filled Matty’s glass again. “Seventeen and counting.”

      Matty had never developed a tolerance for alcohol. In high school her small circle of friends had been “good girls,” relentlessly dedicated to keeping their heads in the unlikely case any “good boys” lost theirs. By the time she was in college, she was too busy caring for her invalid father to frequent fraternity parties or to sit for hours over pizza and pitchers of beer. And afterward, his comfort and happiness during the final years of his life were far more important than sowing her wild oats. But tonight there was no longer any reason to be good.

      Which was why she was fast getting tipsy.

      “Drink up now,” Liza insisted. “You’re not nearly done.”

      The sensible part of Matty was off duty today or sleeping soundly. The champagne was cheap but effective. It had nearly silenced the memory of her supervisor’s voice regretfully explaining that once again a choice administrative position at Carrollton Community Hospital had gone to someone with less seniority but more guts. “Everyone likes you, Matty,” she had said, without quite meeting Matty’s eyes, “and that’s the problem. You get along too well. You compromise when you should confront. You give too much of yourself and don’t ask enough in return.”

      Now Matty wrapped her fingers around the glass, sturdy, capable fingers with blunt trimmed nails and skin scrubbed so clean she sometimes wondered if her fingerprints would survive into middle age. She lifted the glass to swallow the contents, then thrust it out again. “More…”

      “Thata girl…”

      “You ever been sloshed, Matts?” Felicity, who worked in the hospital’s public relations department, was two years younger than Matty and Liza, with a yard of golden blond hair and eyes as blue as an Oklahoma sky. Coming to Minnesota as a teenager had softened the edges of her Tulsa accent, but the champagne was honing them again.

      “To firsts…” Matty shook her head and thrust out her glass at the same time. The simultaneous movements almost un-did her.

      “I like the sound