Excerpt of A Fabulous Wedding by Dianne Castell

Dixie twisted her fingers in the white sheet as she lay perfectly still on the examining table and tried to remember to breathe. Fear settled in her belly like sour milk. She was scared! Bone-numbing, jelly-legged, full- blown-migraine petrified. It wasn't every day that her left breast got turned into a giant pincushion.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the ultrasound machine or think about the biopsy needle or anything else in the overly bright sterile room that would determine if the lump was really bad news.

She clenched her teeth so they wouldn't chatter, then prayed for herself and all women who had ever, or would ever, go through this. Waiting to find out was more terrifying than her divorce and wrapping her Camaro around a tree rolled into one.

God, let me out of this and I'll change. I swear it. No more pity parties over Danny's dumping her for that Victoria's Secret model, no more finding comfort in junk food, no more telling people how to live their lives and not really living her own. And if that meant leaving Whistlers Bend, she'd suck it up and do it and quit making excuses.

"We're taking out the fluid now," the surgeon said.

"It's..."

Dixie's eyes shot wide open. "It's clear."

Dixie swallowed, and finally got out, "Meaning?" The surgeon's eyes stayed focused on what she was doing but they smiled, Dixie could tell. She'd developed the ability to read people from having waited tables at the Purple Sage Restaurant for three years and dealing with happy, sad and everything in between customers.

The surgeon continued. "Meaning the lump in your breast is a cyst. I'll send the fluid off to the pathologist to be certain, but the lump appears to be no more than a nuisance."

A nuisance! A nuisance was a telemarketer, a traffic ticket, gaining five pounds! Still, the important thing was — she'd escaped. She said another prayer for the women who wouldn't escape. She dressed, left the hospital and resisted the urge to turn hand-springs all the way to her car. Or maybe she did turn handsprings — she wasn't sure.

She was on her way home. In one hour she'd be back in Whistlers Bend. Her life still belonged to her, and not to doctors and hospitals and pills and procedures. She fired up her Camaro and sat for a moment, appreciating the familiar idle of her favorite car as she stared out at the flat landscape of Billings, Montana. This was one of those definitive moments when life smacked her upside the head and said, Dixie, old girl, get your ass in gear. You've wanted action, adventure, hair-raising experiences for as long as you can remember.

Now's the time to make them happen!

"NICK ROMERO." He stood on the piece-of-junk ladder he'd found in the back room of the Curly Cactus and unscrewed the curtain rod with the electric-pink curtains that gave him an upset stomach just looking at them. The bracket let go, swung free, and the material slid off the rod onto the floor with the green rug straight from someone's garage sale.

Not that he understood the inner workings of garage sales. Twenty years in the FBI didn't lend itself to that unless the garage contained something stolen, smuggled, dead or held hostage, and the sale was guns, drugs, cars or even people.

But all that would soon be over. He was quitting the bureau and getting lost in some little town where no one would know he was ex-FBI. Anonymity would increase his chances for old age. He'd open a restaurant that really was his and not a front for an investigation like this one.

He'd had enough action to fill two lifetimes. It was the main reason he'd had a girlfriend, not a wife, who'd left him for a high-school history teacher. The FBI had been his life, till he'd woken up one morning and couldn't remember if he was in his apartment or on assignment because both places looked the same, and he was alone.

He wanted permanence in his life for a change. He wanted his primary concern to be perfecting an Alfredo sauce, the only thing fired his way compliments on his linguini, the biggest danger an overbaked casserole of Nonna Celest's ziti.

He dragged the ladder to the other side of the window and was undoing the other bracket when he heard "I'm too sexy for this town" coming from the back entrance. A woman in a denim skirt, scoop-necked green blouse and a cowboy hat in hand pranced into the room, oblivious to him on his ladder.

He jumped down, noticing great brown eyes, soft skin, a woman in her early forties, who smelled like heaven on earth, and had the most sensual mouth he'd ever seen.

"Who are you?" she asked. "What have you done with Jan?" She gazed around. "And what in the almighty world have you done to the Curly Cactus? It's...ruined."

Her eyes turned to slits and her lips thinned. "Is this one of those makeover shows? I hate makeover shows. The Curly Cactus doesn't need a makeover. It's perfect the way it is...was."

He folded his arms and gazed down at her. "Sorry you feel like that. I bought the place and —"

"You're going to run the Curly Cactus?" She wiggled her brows and gave him a critical once-over as she sashayed around him. "Well, you're handsome enough — I'll give you that. You'd probably get business on your looks alone. But I sure hope you're good at running a salon, or you won't last in this town. Women here take their hair real serious."

She faced the bank of mirrors and went on without taking a breath. "So, how about starting with me. I need a dye job. Make the red a little brighter. Mine is sort of drab auburn. I'm thinking Lucille Ball red. Some pizzazz."

Who the hell was this ball of fire? What had happened to laid-back, aw-shucks and moseyingand-meandering western? He'd been warned he'd have to change his big-city ways to fit in. But this woman wore him out just listening to her.

His cell phone rang, and he snatched it from the counter, checking the number. Mother, which translated into Wes Cutter, his contact and partner for the past ten years. "Hey, Mom," he greeted Wes, who just loved being called that. "I got company right now. Call you back." Nick disconnected and said to the gal with the delicious lips, "I'm not running the Curly Cactus."

"That wasn't a very nice way to talk to your mother. She raised you, you know. Cared for you when you were sick. You should call her back and apologize."

Okay, so this was the west. Small-town values, neighbors and where mother really did refer to the woman who'd given you life and wasn't a derogatory term men used with one another. He pointed at the swivel chairs, wash basins and dryers and tried for a good-old-boy stance. "I'm running a family restaurant. Moving all this stuff into the shed out back. Going to sell it on eBay."

The woman's brown eyes shot wide open. "No!"

"EBay's the best." Except maybe in ruralAmerica? "Or I'll sell it at a garage sale." See, he was getting the hang of this. That sounded more hometown, right?

"This is awful. Why would Jan sell?" The gal walked around. "I don't get it. She was happy here. Everybody was happy here — at least, the females. No matter how bad your day was you could come to Jan for a manicure and feel better, leave all your problems behind. This place is — make that was — great." She stared back at him, none too happy. "And now you've killed it."

How could anyone flip out over a salon? "Jan was tired of Montana winters and wanted sun. You can understand that." And the FBI had paid her a potful of money and thrown in a new car so they could move in ASAP to try to find some smugglers. "You're really not opening a salon?" He pointed to his chest. "I do calamari, not curls, lady."

"Lady? Maybe I should just call you man." The woman grabbed a handful of her hair. "What am I supposed to do with this? I need color." She wiggled her fingers at him. "I need my nails done. I need pampering. I've had a rough three days."

"Give me some time and I'll rustle you up some grub."

What she gave him was a you-have-lost-your-mind look. Guess he'd carried the John Wayne attitude a little to far. He didn't get small-town western for crap — until she held out her arms, pulling her silk blouse tight over voluptuous curves and he suddenly got western just fine. Oh, boy!

"I'm a size fourteen. Do I look like I need grub? I need new hair to go with my new Stetson. I want Jan back. Jan's the hair diva."

"Well, she's going to be the diva in Sun City, Arizona. Nick's should be open soon.You'll have to deal."

"Are you always such a smart aleck?"

"Sorry. I've been working my —" ass off, he almost said, then settled on " — working really hard since I took over the place."

At least that part was true. Sheriff Jack Dawson had contacted the FBI two weeks ago, and since then Nick had been on fast-forward to get his cover together, learn more than he ever wanted to know about illegal designer stuff and move to Whistlers Bend, Montana, before the smugglers relocated to another town. This was the best lead the FBI had on these guys yet.