Sneak Peek! ONCE UPON AN ISLAND by Sarah Ready

“I have news,” Kate says.

She flags down a waiter and we all grab a glass of champagne.

I shoo away a grackle, the little black birds that opportunistically try to grab food when you’re not looking. We don’t have any food except chocolate at our table. It hops away across the pink sand.

“What’s your news?” I ask, turning back to Kate.

She grins at us and spreads her arms wide. “There’s a billionaire on the island.” She says the word “billionaire” like you’d say “holy grail.”

We stare at her for a moment.

“What does that have to do with us?” asks Renee.

“He’s single,” Kate says with a great amount of relish.

“And?” I ask.

“And in his thirties.”

I sigh. “And?”

“And one of us is going to land him,” she ends with a flourish.

I shake my head. Why did I come today? Why didn’t I ignore the text and stay lounging in my undies eating buckets of ice cream?

“He probably clips his toenails at the dinner table,” Arya says.

We all stare at her, but she just shrugs. “I have a list of all the fatal flaws my boyfriends have had. The automatic breakup flaws. That one is the worst, but it comes up surprisingly often.”

“You’re too picky,” Kate says. “This guy is the white whale of dating and marriage. If he clipped his toenails at the dinner table and then sprinkled them on my food like parmesan cheese gratings I’d still marry him. I want one of us to catch him.”

“That’s disgusting,” I say. “Also, I’m leery of white whales. Didn’t Captain Ahab die trying to catch Moby Dick? He died…trying to catch a dick. Think about that.”

But Renee has a bigger issue with Kate’s statement. “Why do you assume he’s looking for a woman? And why do you assume any of us want to get married?”

She has a point. I grab the last truffle ball. These things are delicious.

Kate gives us all a frustrated look. “It is a well-known fact that any single man with millions or billions of dollars desperately wants to get married.”

“That’s not logical,” Arya says.

Kate disagrees. “It’s completely logical. Once a man has amassed a fortune, he’s bored. Therefore he’s driven to get married, so he can then divorce, lose half his money in the divorce settlement and then have the motivation to make more money. Once he’s back on top and rich again, he’ll look for another wife to give half his money to all over again. It’s a cycle. Men like doing this.”

I stare at Kate, completely aghast. She takes a long sip of her champagne and gives us all a superior look.