Terror in Taffeta by Marla Cooper

approve.”
    â€œOf course I approve! Can I come with you?”
    â€œBrody!”
    â€œWhat? I want to make sure you two play nice. Then I’ll leave when it’s time for you to have sex.”
    â€œWe’re not having sex. We’re just having dinner.”
    â€œWhich is oftentimes a precursor to sex. I know you probably don’t remember how these things work…”
    â€œFine, come along with us. What do I care? I’m being held date-hostage anyway.”
    â€œI’m just kidding. You kids have fun.” He ducked behind a chair just in time to deflect the bottle of water I threw at him.

 
    CHAPTER 6
    Despite my protestations, there really weren’t any good, solid reasons not to go out with Evan. Well, okay, there was the fact that he lived in another country and there was absolutely zero chance of it going anywhere, but who says all dates have to end in a destination wedding?
    People always assume that when you’re a wedding planner you want to get married really badly, when actually, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s like if you worked at an ice cream shop. For the first month, you’d eat ice cream every day and think, Wow, I’m super lucky; I can have ice cream whenever I want. Then you’d start gaining weight and getting bored with the ice cream. You’d start to eat it less often, and after a few months, you’d find that you preferred salty snacks.
    It’s like that with weddings. You see enough of them, see what they do to people, and it dulls your appetite for weddings altogether. All those flowers and pretty dresses and lovey-dovey stuff? For me, it’s just business.
    I guess I’m a pretty terrible spokesman for my company.
    Anyway, I’d finally agreed to go out with Evan, expecting nothing more than an evening away from the villa and maybe a nice glass of wine. He picked me up at seven, and we strolled toward the center of town.
    â€œSo how are you liking it here?” I asked.
    â€œCan’t complain,” he said. “Everybody’s pretty laid back, food’s great … except now that San Miguel keeps making all those ‘Top Places to Travel’ lists, everyone wants to come visit me.”
    â€œHard to blame them. It really is beautiful down here,” I said as we walked through the town plaza, known to everybody as the jardín . On nights like tonight, with the weather mild and tourist season in full swing, as many as three or four mariachi bands strolled the jardín to field the constant stream of requests, like a chaotic battle of the bands where everyone plays at the same time.
    We paused for a moment to sit on one of the park benches facing La Parroquia, a three-hundred-year-old church whose spires could be seen from almost anywhere in town. Even if you couldn’t see the church, you could usually hear it: it marked the passage of time by chiming every fifteen minutes and clanging enthusiastically every hour on the hour.
    I knew we’d stopped so I could appreciate the imposing building’s Gothic architecture, but I took the opportunity to sneak a peek at my date. Mexico clearly agreed with him. He’d traded in his clean-shaven pilot look for a three-day scruff and grown his thick, brown hair out to his collar. Had it always been this wavy? It had never been long enough for me to tell.
    He caught me studying him and smiled. “I’m glad I was able to lure you away for the evening.”
    I nodded. “I’ll be honest: it’s good to get out for a while. Mrs. Abernathy’s in a total snit about not being able to leave, and everyone else is pretty stunned by Dana’s death. The mood over there is pretty intense.”
    â€œI’ll bet,” he said, taking my hand. “I’m sure they need some time to process everything that’s happened.”
    â€œYeah, that’s for sure. Anyway, the chef was cooking them something