Sometimes it’s safer to stay dead—it’s easier to dig for the truth. I’ve got a man handcuffed to my bed. I’m Harper Finn, legit business owner. But I picked up a ringing phone that wasn’t mine and…well, I’m now involved. Sure, Grey Walker, six feet of blue-eyed hotness, will gripe about me kidnapping him when he wakes up. But I couldn’t just let the ex-cop fall prey to a hit someone took out on him. Trust me, with people setting him up to take the fall for an infamous murder, he’s better off pretending to be dead for a while. In south Florida, it’s easier than you might think. And as we dig for the truth, we have to be careful not to wind up at the bottom of Biscayne Bay.

I’ve got a dinner date. Too bad I had to get arrested for murder to agree to it. If I needed a reminder that life can change on a dime, getting my Miranda rights read on a sunny south Florida afternoon would be it. It’s also a good time to sternly remind myself that I, Avery English, detail-oriented investment advisor and cheap eyewear fashionista, am not a crier. My last glimpse of freedom includes smoking-hot ex-cop Seven Donnelly, security consultant, who’s already speed-dialing his hotshot lawyer. He promises that he has my back—and he’s got a table reserved for when I make bail. What a flirt. The victim was a client of mine, and someone swears they saw me fleeing the scene. Joke’s on them. Numbers are my life, and I know to the minute when and what I was doing.

Of the three of us—me and my besties, Harper Finn and Avery English—I’ve always been the responsible one. But an open bar at a wedding is hard to resist. So is the gossip that flies after the bride is a no-show at the altar. Still, I never planned on leaving for the Bahamas as Rella Cabot and coming home to South Beach as Rella Cabot Thornton. New wife of the jilted groom. My to-do list now includes annulling blue-eyed, mind-numbingly handsome Pryce Thornton right out of my hair. As soon as I disabuse him of the notion that we should give this marriage thing a shot. And get my dog, Bruno, off his lap. And get my besties to stop swooning all over the place about impossible things like fated love. And, of course, call a lawyer. Except the only lawyer we’re calling right now is Cruz Campion, because Pryce’s ex-fiancée has turned up dead. And he’s the prime suspect.