The Hot Flash Club Chills Out (35 page)

Faye patted Alice’s shoulder. “There. I’ve opened that dart. See if that helps.”

Alice slipped her arms back into the dress. Polly zipped the zipper. Alice sighed with relief. “Does it look okay?”

“You can’t tell a thing,” Faye promised. She turned to Marilyn. “Help me pin my corsage back on?”

“I’ll fix yours,” Shirley told Polly.

Shirley, buoyed up by the presence of all her friends, was brave enough to ask, “Alice, how do you like Harry?”

Alice was smoothing the dress over her front. “He seems like a good guy.”

“He’s really good-looking,” Polly added.

“Hey!” Faye said. “I just remembered! Marilyn, you forgot to throw your bouquet!”

“Oh, right. I’ll do it when we leave the restaurant.” She looked around at her friends. “Who wants to catch it?”

“Not I,” Alice said. “I’m quite happy in my present state.”

“Not I,” said Faye.

“Not I,” said Polly. Then she turned bright red. “Not yet, at least.”

“Why, Polly!” Alice pounced. “You’ve got a new man in your life!”

Everyone looked at Polly. “Oh, don’t be silly,” Polly protested, turning even more crimson. “This is only a hot sash.”

“Ha!” Alice laughed triumphantly. “You said ‘hot sash’! Why are you so muddled?”

All the women stared at Polly. In self-defense, she quickly deflected their attention by pointing to Shirley. “
She
should catch the bouquet!”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Shirley said with a great big smile.

“Shirley,” Alice noticed, “you’ve got lipstick on your teeth.”

“I do?” Shirley bent toward the mirror.

The other four women did the same, inspecting their teeth, rerouging their lips, smoothing their hair, powdering their noses.

“I know you just employed a deflective tactic,” Alice said, meeting Polly’s eyes in the mirror. “Trust me, we’re going to find out who this mystery man is. But first, we’ve got to plan how to get the bouquet to Shirley.”

Faye said, “When we get out to the parking lot, Shirley should stand on the side, so it doesn’t look too staged. Marilyn, how’s your aim?”

“Pretty good,” Marilyn said.

Someone knocked on the door. They opened it to see Gideon standing there.

“What in heaven’s name are all of you doing in here?” he demanded.

“It’s a Hot Flash Club Emergency Summit Meeting. We’ll be out in a minute,” Alice assured Gideon. “We have a few more things to settle to our satisfaction.” She shut the door and, with a conspiratorial smile, turned back to her friends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

N
ANCY
T
HAYER
is the author of many previous novels, including the Hot Flash series. Her work has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Her first novel,
Stepping,
was made into a thirteen-part series for BBC Radio, and her ghost novel
Spirit Lost
has been optioned and produced as a movie by United Image Entertainment. In 1981 she was a Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has lived on Nantucket Island year-round for twenty years with her husband, Charley Walters.

Visit the author’s website at
www.nancythayer.com.

ALSO BY NANCY THAYER

Hot Flash Holidays

The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

The Hot Flash Club

An Act of Love

Belonging

Between Husbands and Friends

Bodies and Souls

Custody

Everlasting

Family Secrets

My Dearest Friend

Nell

Spirit Lost

Stepping

Three Women at the Water's Edge

Morning

The Hot Flash Club Chills Out
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Nancy Thayer

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House

Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-49376-7

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