AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nikki Landis is a romance enthusiast, tea addict, and book hoarder. She's the USA Today Bestselling Author of over fifty novels, including her widely popular Tonopah, NV RBMC series. She writes wickedly fierce, spicy romances featuring dirty talkin' bikers, deadly, possessive reapers, wild bad boys, and the feisty, independent women they love. She's a mom to six sons, two of them Marines. Books are her favorite escape.
To learn about Nikki's next release, check out her website: https://nikkilandiswriter.com/
SINGLE GIRL’S GUIDE TO LOVE
BY CHELLE SLOAN
CHAPTER ONE
ANDI
~~ RULE #1: When you find yourself single, make sure you win the breakup ~~
“Stella? Why do you still have your phone out?”
“Because! I have to see what else I can find.”
“Why are you still looking? I told you I don’t want to know.”
“Those are the words you said, but I know that’s not what you truly meant. Plus, as a card-carrying member of the White Girl FBI, it’s my job to figure out who the hell your fuckwad of an ex is engaged to.”
I grab my martini and sit back into my barstool as my best friend and coworker does what she does. We work at a law firm with some of the most advanced deep background technology available. Yet somehow Stella Banks is always able to find out more than any software we pay for.
And admittedly, part of me wants to know everything about her. I mean, that’s normal, right? She’s engaged to the man that, up until just three months ago, I had been with for five years. I don’t feel like that makes me a crazy ex. I just want to know who I was replaced by and what’s so great about her so I can fixate on it for weeks before needing multiple sessions with my therapist to get over everything.
We know her name is Cheyenne, and she works at the gym that my ex-boyfriend, James, goes to. She celebrated her twenty-second birthday two months ago and has never missed a lip injection appointment. She’s apparently vegan—good for her, I’ll eat the meat she doesn’t want—is a fan of selfies in front of the mirrors at the gym, and is very, and I mean very, blonde. Like was already blonde and decided to add more blonde because apparently you can’t have too much blonde.
Basically he said, “let me find the opposite of Andi and I’ll marry her.”
Mission accomplished, asshole.
“She’s not even pretty,” Stella says.
“I appreciate your loyalty, but you don’t have to lie,” I say.
“I’m not!” Stella says. “She has a weird earlobe.”
I tilt my head to Stella. “Earlobe? That’s where you found the flaw?”
Stella reaches out and takes my hand. “She’s engaged to James. That makes her not pretty by default. And it’s not just the earlobe. I could go on for hours about her unblended extensions, but if she doesn’t care about them, neither do I.”
I laugh, which also serves as a way for me to push back the tears. I thought I was done crying over him. Then came today. Who knew a seemingly innocent trip to the bathroom would trigger something I never saw coming?
I was in the ladies’ room, scrolling on my phone—as one does—when a picture caught me so off guard I stopped peeing. It was James, which was what made me stop on it in the first place. He was never a big social media guy, so just showing up on my feed was enough to catch my eye.
But wait—there’s more!
My ex-boyfriend, the man who told me that he didn’t believe in marriage, was down on one knee, proposing to a woman I’ve never seen before.
“Okay, enough about her,” Stella says, turning on her barstool to fully face me. “We’ve done our initial recon. It’s time to figure out the plan.”
I shoot her a befuddled look. “Plan for what?”
“How you’re going to handle the wedding next weekend? And even more important, who you’re going to bring with you to make the fuckwad jealous as hell.”
Realization hits me like a semi of cinder blocks. My heart stops for a solid two seconds then makes up for it by going into doubletime. The edges of my vision get a little misty.
Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck…
