How to Keep a Husband for Ten Days

HOW TO KEEP A HUSBAND FOR TEN DAYS A TOTALLY HILARIOUS AND HEART-WARMING ROMANTIC COMEDY JESSICA HATCH BOOKS BY JESSICA HATCH How to Keep a Husband for Ten Days My Big Fake Wedding AVAILABLE IN AUDIO My Big Fake Wedding (Available in the UK and the US) CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Epilogue My Big Fake Wedding Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Hear More from Jessica Books by Jessica Hatch A Letter from Jessica Acknowledgments * To my own PDP gang—L.E., P.C., H.F., S.F., M.W., C.D., S.D., and C.E. And especially to Paul, who’s stuck with me from here on out. CHAPTER 1 AUGUST 7, 2020 Two years ago “I can’t believe this is your last PDP!” Though her friend Sophie kept saying it—screeching it, really, over the Flaming Lips record Brown had put on when they entered the apartment—Lina Thompson-Mitchell refused to believe it was true. This was not her last Progressive Dinner Party. She and her husband, Brown, were only moving out of the building. It wasn’t like they were leaving Jacksonville. After all, they and their friends had been throwing Progressive Dinner Parties, monthly get-togethers where they hopped from one apartment to the next for each course, for several years now. It was a time-honored tradition. There was no way it would end just because they were moving. Brown offered Lina one of his signature looks—a clipped smile and raised brow that seemed to say, Hey, surrender; arguing with her is hopeless—before he turned his attention to serving up dessert. Though ‘a multi-course get-together’ was its working definition, the Progressive Dinner Party was an amorphous concept. Sometimes, it was more elaborate, like the 1970s theme night where they’d all boiled dishes in aspic, or the time their friend Mara had written a murder mystery for them to play as they moved from soup to nuts. At the height of its popularity, they’d had to invent apartment stops such as Amuse-Bouche, Appetizers 1 and 2, and Nightcap to accommodate all the attendees, but whenever turnout dwindled, it returned without fail to the core group of Lina, Brown, and their friends. At present, there were five participants and four courses: Cocktails and Apps, the Main, Dessert, and Wild Card, a fun activity that gave everyone time to digest before the next dish. The point was, PDP was an important, guaranteed time for Lina to check in with her friends and, because it only happened once a month, she would absolutely be able to slot it into her schedule, no matter where she lived. But Sophie’s insistence was spoiling the party. PDP desserts typically provided a golden glow to the evening, like the pleasant sheen of grease left on an indulgent plate of food. Tonight, they’d had a tiki fountain and Spam musubi for cocktail hour at Freddie’s, followed by incredibly poppable mushroom caps and an aged beef roast at Mara’s. Sophie had surprised them with a game of Drunken Twister for the Wild Card round. (If your right foot landed on red, blue, or whatever and there was a shot glass on it, you had to take the shot. Some had allegedly had water in them, but, distracted by the way her husband’s arms enticingly tangled around her legs, Lina had left-hand-greened her way into three half shots of vodka.) They were meant to be following it all up with pie and ice cream at Lina and Brown’s, but the way Sophie kept claiming this was their very last dinner party was turning the golden grease of the evening rancid. “Oh, don’t call it the last one,” Lina said, snuggling against Brown’s sturdy height. “That sounds so final.” He had finished dishing up the pie by now, and gently squeezed her waist to emphasize his support. By way of counterargument, Sophie waved a perfectly manicured hand at the moving boxes all around them. Lina frowned and focused instead on sticking her fork into the last bite of gooey apple crumble she’d baked in between packing up the apartment so they could move tomorrow morning. Brown had made his own vanilla-cinnamon ice cream—it tasted like the milk left behind after a bowl of cereal—and a homemade, Kahlua-based affogato. There were times being married to a bartender was more than worth it, and since Lina was a junior associate at a law firm, whose culinary talents extended to following the recipe on the box, this was one of those times. “I’m sure we’ll have PDPs after we move,” she offered, walking a handful of coffee cups over to the sink. She brushed her long, dark hair off her shoulders and straightened her T-shirt’s hem before she began soaping them. “Of course we will!” Lina’s best friend, Mara, cried. Sophie could certainly dominate a conversation, but it was Mara’s opinions that mattered most to Lina. “We could do ones where we have a designated driver and hop from one person’s house to the next. Right, guys?” “Right,” Brown said to Mara, though his blue-eyed smile was for Lina. Lina returned his grin. She and Brown, as Millennials in their late twenties, had beaten the odds and told all those avocado toast memes where to shove it. They had worked hard, pinching pennies here and pulling long hours there. Now, together, they were going to be homeowners. Brown’s smile turned to a smarmy, silly eyebrow waggle, and Lina knew he was thinking of his vow that they’d be ‘christening’ every room in the house, starting the instant their movers left. She giggled at his expression, her tongue caught between her teeth, and turned back to the dishes. “Fess up—you’re moving out because I’m managing the building now,” said Freddie. They had been hanging off to the