Buch lesen: «How To Be the Perfect Girlfriend»

1

THERE WAS NOTHING like a little humiliation to get the blood flowing on an ordinary Tuesday morning. Sara Lipton’s came in the form of rejection by e-mail. It was a new personal low.

Somehow, e-mail rejection was more humiliating than rejection by answering machine, and oh, yes, she’d had plenty of experience with that kind.

In this case, she’d sent a carefully casual, yet sensually perky—and don’t think that was easy to achieve—e-mail to the visiting business associate with whom she’d spent several enjoyable hours last Friday night.

And this was his response: I can’t seem to locate you in my client base—have we met? And then to hammer home the point, he’d signed it, Bradley Whit, Senior Software Consultant, Cynoware Industries.

Oh, they’d met. Their lips had met, too. Several times in a dark corner booth long after the rest of the gang from work had left. In fact, Sara thought Bradley had been kissing her in a we’ve-clicked-and-I-want-to-see-you-again way, when it apparently was an I’m-in-town-from-Boston-and-am-looking-for-temporary-fun-in-Houston way.

Yeah, and she’d given him a real Texas welcome. Or would that be a French welcome? Better not go there.

Have we met? This was fast becoming the story of her life. Okay, then. It was time to rewrite the story of her life.

And she intended to, just as soon as she finished photocopying the end-of-month employee evaluations. Clutching them to her as though they contained Avalli Digital Media’s most sacred company secrets—she was a little worried about the new privacy policy—Sara left her cubicle and headed down the hall.

She’d hoped to finish copying them by lunchtime because she’d called her friend and co-worker Hayden to meet her for a heart-to-heart chat about Life and Men. Mostly men—Hayden’s area of expertise. Sara didn’t want to be late because she’d also asked Missy, the cute little blond temp from Dallas who got on Hayden’s nerves because all she ever discussed was her upcoming wedding. Yeah, so sue her. Sara was fascinated by the details. Go figure.

Between them Sara figured these two women knew everything worth knowing about men. Hayden could give her tips on how to get a man, and Missy could tell her what to do with him once she got him. A perfect plan, if Sara did say so herself.

There was a line at the photocopier and Sara couldn’t wait until after lunch, which meant she was going to be late. Whipping out her cell phone, she called Hayden, hoping to catch her before she left for the café.

“Where are you?” was the way Hayden answered the phone. From the background noise, Sara could tell that she was already in the building’s atrium café.

“Can you grab us a table? I’m caught at the photocopier.”

“Can’t you just scan and print?”

“No. You know we don’t want confidential information on the network.”

“I swear. You people in payroll are paranoid. Hey—you just need black-and-whites, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then go on up to my floor. There’s an old machine that we keep next to the vending machines. It doesn’t collate or do anything fancy, but you’ll get your copies.”

“I’m on my way.” Sara pulled open the door to the stairs and started running up the two flights to the twenty-sixth floor, her steps echoing in the stairwell.

The running lasted half a flight. She really needed to start exercising.

Breathing heavily, Sara found the old machine in the deserted vending area of the marketing department. All the marketing people apparently ate lunch out. If Sara had an expense account, she’d eat out all the time, too. But payroll assistants didn’t have expense accounts. Sara brown-bagged her lunch at least two days a week and aimed for three. It was part of her long-range plan to become fiscally responsible. See? She was planning for the future. She was maturing.

She deserved a mature relationship. One with commitment at its core. A life-partner relationship.

Either that or a lot of really fun, hot, immature relationships. Relationshipettes, maybe. Memorable encounters, even. The kind that inspired women to write memoirs. Sara visualized herself with silver hair, gnarled hands weighed down with diamonds and a satisfied smile as she dictated her life story to a fascinated and envious young woman.

Right. At this point, both visions seemed extremely far-fetched. She was neither fabulously single nor contentedly married. She wasn’t even contentedly single and fabulously married. No, Sara was discontentedly unmarried.

There was a difference between being single and being unmarried. Single had a proactive sound and implied a life of fun dates and attractive men at one’s beck and call. There had never been a man at Sara’s beck and no one had called in far too long.

Lately, Sara had found the idea of being part of a committed couple increasingly appealing. She’d done the casual relationship thing—that is, all her relationships had been casual as far as the men were concerned—and now she wanted to experience the novelty of having a male completely devoted to her. Solely to her.

A love slave would be nice, or at least a man who put her first instead of bowling night with his friends, and who actually checked with her before accepting an invitation to the Astros game, which he went to without her instead of taking her to the art film he’d kinda sorta promised he would that night and then not even realizing why she was mad….

Well, anyway, Sara wanted someone different from her usual sort of man. Maybe it was because she was staring thirty in the face, or maybe it was something as shallow as buying all those wedding shower gifts at Williams Sonoma when she couldn’t afford to buy anything for herself there, but Sara had experienced definite coupling urges. Unfortunately, there was no one to couple with.

The old machine was humming along nicely and Sara was manually collating as she went when there was an ominous whirring and everything stopped. The paper-jam light blinked. It figured. Unfortunately, Sara couldn’t see any scrunched-up paper. In frustration, she put down her papers and called Hayden.

“Does the stupid machine ever jam on you?”

“It jammed for real? Oh, you lucky girl.”

“What?”

Hayden’s voice turned husky. “You get to call Simon.”

“I don’t have time to wait for a repair guy.”

“No—Simon Northrup.”

“You mean Mr. Northrup?” Only Hayden could get away with bothering a company vice president with something like this. But then men treated Hayden differently than they treated the rest of the female population.

“Oh, yes.” Hayden sighed. “I’ve been known to use a rubber band and a staple to jam the copier just so I can watch him lean over the machine.”

“Hayden, you are a sick woman.”

“He wears European-cut slacks and he wears them very well.”

Hayden’s voice was so loud that Sara looked over her shoulder in case there was someone to overhear. “I can’t bother Mr. Northrup. Besides, he’s probably already gone to lunch.”

“He never goes to lunch this early.”

“I’ll just figure out how to unjam the thing myself. Oh, uh, I asked Missy to join us, so don’t wander off. Bye!” Sara hurriedly disconnected before Hayden could protest.

She opened the side door of the big old machine and peered at the copier’s guts. Yeah, there was the paper scrunched way back in there. Stretching her arm through and getting a black toner smear on her blouse, Sara found she couldn’t reach the paper. Great. She was either going to have to go in from the top, and it didn’t look as though she could reach the jam that way either, or pull the thing out from the wall. It was wedged between the Coke machine and the coffee bar.

Or she was going to have to—

“Ah. Another jam.” A tall man wearing cool techno glasses strode across the break room. “Sometimes I wonder why we keep this machine.” It was Simon Northrup.

Sara had seen him before, of course, but had never actually spoken to him. He’d always seemed a little remote and kind of intimidating, but the smile he gave her was friendly enough.

“Yeah, it, uh, jammed.” Brilliant, brilliant.

“Let’s take a look.” He set his coffee mug on the counter next to Sara and unbuttoned the cuffs of his blinding white shirt.

Custom, Sara thought, without ever having knowingly seen a custom-tailored shirt. Nice. More men should go custom. Maybe she should go custom.

“It’s a great old warhorse,” he nodded to the machine, “so I suppose we can allow it this one eccentricity.”

Eccentricity. Each letter sounded crisply. Sara could listen to him talk all day. Since she dealt with personnel records, she knew Simon Northrup was from Boston and had gone to boarding school in England. The resulting accent might not be as noticeable up North, but in Texas the clipped edges and slightly formal word choice contrasted with the good-ole-boy twang she heard all the time. Contrasted in a good way. A sexy way. She was beginning to see why he appealed to Hayden.

As he rolled up his sleeves, Simon asked, “Are you a new employee? A temp?”

Gritting her teeth, Sara sighed inwardly. Unmemorable. That’s what she was.

“Wait—I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” He studied her, his head tilted slightly in a way that emphasized his square jaw.

If Hayden hadn’t gone on about him, Sara would never have noticed the square jaw. “I’m Sara Lipton from payroll. I was trying to avoid the wait at our machine.”

“Well, we’ll see if we can’t get you back in business here.”

Sleeves rolled up to reveal arms more tanned than she’d expected, Simon closed the side door Sara had opened, raised the heavy top section and leaned over the machine.

From then on, Sara saw everything in slow motion…the way his shirt clung to him as he bent over the machine and reached inside; the way his flanks stretched; his hips flexed and the fabric of his dark slacks stretched, smoothed, outlined and emphasized his fabulous behind….

Oh, boy, did it emphasize. Sara inhaled deeply. Simon’s rear end was indeed a thing of beauty. She was an immediate European-cut convert. Who knew?

She swallowed, aware of a nearly irresistible urge to touch it. No, not touch…grab. Manhandle, as it were. It was a revelation. Was this the way men felt about women?

“The paper isn’t jammed in the normal spot,” Simon said from inside the copier.

Sara thought of Hayden’s deliberate jamming which she now not only understood, but applauded. “I really appreciate you taking the time to fix it.” Take all the time you want.

Simon raised himself slightly to glance at her over his shoulder. Sara nearly whimpered when the movement shifted his hips, resulting in the perfect calendar shot. Man and machine.

Actually, just the man was plenty.

“My pleasure,” he said before turning back.

The pleasure is all mine. Sara had picked up her employee evaluations and gripped them closely to her chest. She hadn’t thought she was the type to appreciate a man’s physical attributes à la carte like this. Usually, she accepted or rejected the whole package, not that Simon’s total package was anything to reject. It was just that there were some spectacular, uh, aspects to consider. So she considered them carefully, even while acknowledging that this package was not for her. Undoubtedly, some other woman unwrapped it at night.

“Got it.” He straightened and tossed two scraps of paper into the wastebasket.

“Thanks.” Sara would retrieve them later. Her department now shredded all document-related trash to ensure privacy.

Simon washed his hands at the sink, then poured a mug of coffee. “Happy copying,” he said on his way out before she could say anything memorably brilliant.

Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh. How could this man have been working just two floors away from her for the past year?

Okay. Calm down. Realistically Simon Northrup was not her type. Or rather, she wasn’t his type. She didn’t have the…the something men who looked like that required in their women.

Hayden had it. In fact Hayden had too much of it.

Missy had a younger version of it.

And Sara was going to do her best to get it.

She retrieved the paper and hurriedly finished her copying. She was going to have to use this machine more often.

When Sara made it downstairs to the lobby of the Perkins building, she saw Hayden and Missy sitting at one of the glass-topped tables in the atrium near the fountain. They already had salads and there was a third one for her. Missy was showing Hayden a magazine. From Hayden’s bored expression, Sara knew it was a bridal magazine. At least they hadn’t strangled each other yet.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Hayden was saying as Sara got within earshot.

“The blue is the problem!” Missy reached into the tote bag she carried everywhere—the official Melissa and Peter Wedding Tote. It had once been a pristine white, but was now looking a little shopworn. Missy had been engaged for a year and a half while she planned the ultimate wedding.

She held up a wad of fabric swatches. “I have to make a decision soon and not one of these matches the Jordan almonds!”

“So have them custom dyed. I know a company that will dye them any color you want. They can even match your baby blue eyes.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Sara murmured under her breath as she slid into a chair.

Hayden had a dangerous sparkle in her eye. “In fact, they’ll even inscribe Melissa and Peter or the date on each individual almond.”

Missy’s eyes widened. “They will?”

“In gold or silver if you want.”

“Oh…” Missy stared off into the distance, her expression approaching rapture, as she added personalized almonds to her wedding vision.

They’d seen her zone out before and undoubtedly would again. Sara leveled a look at the unrepentant Hayden.

Moments later, Missy returned from wedding Valhalla. “Okay.” She clicked her pen. “What’s the name of the company?”

“Bridal Sweets,” Hayden told her. “I’ll have to look them up and get back to you.”

“Hayden, you’re a doll. Thanks!” Missy beamed at her. Hayden smiled back.

Sara was sure the world would stop spinning. “Okay, now that Missy’s almond problem is taken care of, I’d like you both to turn your attention to me.”

“That won’t be any fun,” Hayden muttered.

“Mr. Northrup fixed my paper jam,” Sara said to taunt her.

“Mmm.” Hayden closed her eyes. “And did you enjoy it?”

“Oh, yes. It took a while because the jam was way in the back.”

They both exhaled.

“What are you two talking about?” Missy asked.

“Never mind, you’re engaged,” Sara said. “Which is why you’re here. You’re on the Super Corporate Wife track and from watching you these past few months, I can see that it isn’t something that just happens.” Sara figured a little buttering up couldn’t hurt. “You’ve got to go after it, and the man who can make that kind of life happen. It takes work. And you have worked. Most efficiently.”

Missy dimpled, something Sara would never be able to do. “Why thank you, Sara. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I’m glad somebody appreciates everything I’ve done to achieve what I have,” she added with a glance at Hayden.

“Whatever floats your boat, honey,” Hayden said and crossed her legs as a TDH—tall, dark and handsome—walked past.

The movement caught the man’s attention and he checked out Hayden’s legs, then met her eyes, all while carrying on a conversation with the man next to him.

“And that would be why you’re here, Hayden.”

“You need my sophisticated style and wit?”

“I want to know how you can attract anything with a Y-chromosome.”

Hayden gave a smile that visually purred. “With the sophisticated style and wit I just mentioned.”

After a glance at Hayden’s climbing hemline, Missy raised her eyebrows. “We call that something else where I come from.”

“No doubt because you lack sophisticated style and wit,” Hayden drawled.

“Hey!” Sara signaled a time-out. “Can we please focus on me? I need help with the man/woman thing. I’m not doing it right.”

“I didn’t think you were doing it at all.”

Sara gritted her teeth. “Well, that would be the problem, Hayden.” She inhaled, knowing she was going to have to tell them everything. “I’m not hooking up with the right kind of men and when I do, I’m Teflon woman—they don’t stick around.” She told them about Mr. Kiss-and-Run from Friday night.

“Well, it’s no wonder—you were making out with him in a public place!” Missy lowered her voice. “A bar. He thought you were one of those kind of women and didn’t take you seriously.”

“I’ve found that men take that sort of thing very seriously,” Hayden said.

“So why did he pretend not to know her? My mama always said, men won’t buy the cow if they can get the milk for free.”

Hayden rolled her eyes. “They’ll just get the milk from another cow.”

“I didn’t give him any milk,” Sara pointed out.

“Maybe that was the problem.”

Missy glared at Hayden. “Well, maybe if all the cows got together and agreed to stop giving milk—”

“They’d end up as hamburger.”

“Not if they chose their herd carefully,” Missy snapped.

“Who cares about the herd? Pay attention to the bull.”

“That is just so typical of you.”

Hayden blinked. “Moo.”

“This is not helping,” Sara said.

“What did you expect?” Missy speared a tomato wedge in her salad so hard she broke a tine on her plastic fork.

“I was hoping for help in attracting men from Hayden and figuring out which ones to attract and how to keep them from you.”

Missy got all huffy. “I can attract men! But I’m engaged, so I choose not to.”

“Right,” Hayden said.

“I can!” Missy glanced around, then peeled off her sweater revealing a tight black sleeveless shell. Then she turned her diamond engagement ring around to hide the stone.

Sara had no idea how big the diamond was, only that when the light caught the stone and it flashed, the reflection left a blue-green dot in her vision.

After fluffing her blond hair and throwing back her shoulders, Missy waited a couple of beats, then picked up the broken fork and gasped. “Oh, no! My fork broke!”

Oh, please. Sara rolled her eyes so hard she felt the muscles twinge.

And yet, there was an instant response. “Here, take mine,” said a man from the next table at the same moment another passing by handed her one from his tray.

“Here you go.” Then he just stood there.

Smiling widely, Missy took the fork. “Why, aren’t you both so sweet,” she gushed as only a Texas belle could.

“I need a fork, too,” Sara said. No one even blinked. But then, she hadn’t expected them to.

Missy held the attention of the men with her smile long enough to make her point, then released them by turning back to her salad. The man with the tray looked as if he wanted to linger, so Missy tucked her hair behind her ear, the flashing diamond visible once more.

Very neatly done. Disappointment crossed the man’s face and he left. Missy shrugged back into her sweater.

“Not bad,” admitted Hayden. “Just don’t try going one on one with me.”

“I doubt that’ll happen.” Missy’s voice was lethally sweet. “We don’t move in the same social circles.”

“I’m not moving in any social circles!” Sara dropped her head to the table. “I give up.”

“But you haven’t started yet,” Missy said.

“What’s the point? I’ll never be able to stop men in their tracks the way you and Hayden do.”

“But do you truly want to?” Hayden asked.

Sara raised her head just high enough to prop it on her fist. “Maybe not stop so much as slow them down.”

“And then what?” Missy asked.

“What do you mean ‘and then what’?”

“What are you going to do with them when you’ve got them?”

“Well, I don’t know. I was hoping we could talk about that after I found somebody.”

“I think that’s been your problem. We should be talking about afterward before.”

“Huh?”

Missy reached into her wedding tote, withdrew a Palm Pilot and unfolded a keyboard for it. “You need a goal and a plan to reach it.” She looked at Hayden. “Am I right?”

“Yes.” Hayden crossed her arms over her chest and watched the parade of men coming down the escalator. “Much as I hate to admit it.”

Missy’s fingers were poised over the keyboard. “So, what do you want, Sara?”

Well, this was it and she’d better pay attention. “I want a man who’s interested in making a life with me.”

Missy started typing. “Marriage.”

Hayden snorted.

“Or at least long-term devotion. Long-term enough for me to decide if I want it to lead to marriage,” Sara added because she didn’t want to completely alienate Hayden with marriage talk. “Certainly a better caliber of man.”

“What kind of man do you want?” Hayden asked, as though it were that simple.

“The perfect man, of course,” Sara said flippantly.

“Then you’ll have to become the perfect woman.” Missy was serious.

“Oh, sure. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll get right on it.” Sara slapped her hands on the table and looked around the atrium. “Anybody seen my fairy godmother?”

“Snippy, snippy.” Melissa typed something.

“Calm down, Sara.” Hayden stopped casing the escalator for men and closed her plastic salad container. “Perfection is the way you define it. Missy has her idea of the perfect man, I have mine and you should have yours.”

“And then you have to become his match.” Missy eyed her, then typed some more.

Sara eyed Missy right back. “Now, wait a minute—I am not becoming one of those women who completely changes herself for a man.”

“All we’re saying is if you want a pilot, you hang out around airplanes. You don’t want a bowler, then stay out of bowling alleys.” Hayden leaned sideways trying to see what Missy was typing.

“Oh.” That made sense.

“Good Lord, she’s started a spreadsheet.” Hayden grinned at Sara. “You should see what’s in the ‘improvements’ column.”

“Sara said she wanted to upgrade her men.”

“I just thought you’d teach me a secret handshake and tell me to wear a padded bra,” Sara grumbled. Why had she thought this would be as simple as a few tips over lunch?

“Excuse me!” Missy gestured to her chest. “There is nothing padded here. That’s…that’s false advertising.”

“There is nothing false about my advertising, honey,” Hayden snapped.

“Hello?” Sara waved her hands. “Me? Focus on me!”

Hayden grabbed her hands. “Nails.”

“Oh, I know,” Missy tut-tutted. “Acrylic?”

“Hmm.” Both Hayden and Missy looked at Sara.

She pulled her hands away and resisted the urge to sit on them.

Hayden laughed. “Let’s just go for groomed right now.”

“Oh, thanks a lot.”

“What about her hair?” Missy tossed her mane of one hundred and fifty dollar highlights over her shoulder. “Except I really shouldn’t fill that in if she wants a low-maintenance man.”

Sara wasn’t sure, but she thought there was an insult in there.

“Sara, you’re going to have to give us specifics on the kind of man you want.” Missy waited expectantly.

“Well…he should be kind, honest and have a sense of humor—”

“Yeah, yeah, we all want those.” Hayden made a hurry-up gesture. “Add sexy.” She smiled at Sara. “My little gift to you.”

“I’m going to type all those in,” Missy said. “Later, you’ll have to rank the traits.”

“What is this?” Even though she’d asked for help, she hadn’t expected them to be quite this helpful. “Are you running a dating service?”

Missy ignored her. “Possible professions?”

“I don’t know—professional.”

Missy typed. “More.”

“Probably older than me. Mature. Never married—or at least no children. I don’t want to do the stepmother thing.”

“Completely understandable,” Hayden agreed. “Go on.”

“I—” Sara thought of Bradley from Friday night. Why had she thought he was attractive? “Classy. Someone who enjoys dining occasionally, rather than just hitting all the fast food places in town. A man who might like to cook, even, or at least take a class with me. Someone who knows how to use all the silverware and doesn’t make jokes about the spork being the perfect utensil.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Hayden said. “What else?”

“Cultured. Refined. Elegant.” Now she was thinking of Ryan, her last boyfriend, who had been none of those things. She was describing the anti-Ryan. Well? Wasn’t that the idea? “A man who’d appreciate seeing a play, or going to the symphony, or…an art gallery. And money. I don’t want to have to lend him money. And his car should be nice. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it just has to work. And he should be the type of man who’d walk me to the door and pull out my chair and buy my mother a corsage for Mother’s Day because he’s just so damn happy she had me.”

Missy had stopped typing. Sara was aware that she and Hayden were staring at her. “What?”

“Anything else?” Hayden asked.

“He should dress well. You know, somebody who actually owns a suit and doesn’t need help tying his tie and isn’t color-blind. Oh, and he shouldn’t freak out when he sees a wine list in a restaurant.”

“Is that all?” Hayden wore a funny smile.

“Yes—no. He should know how to dance.”

“The Cotton-Eyed Joe?”

“No, real dancing.”

Missy gasped. “Bite your tongue!”

“Okay, he would be willing to dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe if we were ever in a place where people were dancing it. But I was just thinking that it would be nice if he knew how to dance the kind of dances that get played at weddings when the bride and groom get the first dance and then the bridesmaids have to dance and it’s really awful if your partner can’t dance because everyone is staring at you and you trip over the stupid dress.”

“I ran out of room,” Missy said. “I should have brought my laptop.”

Hayden studied Sara. “And is that everything about your ideal man?”

Sara thought. “He should be well-spoken and use correct grammar.” Hey, it would make her mother happy.

“Maybe even with a slight accent?” Hayden asked.

“Accents can be cool.”

Hayden laughed. “I guess so because, Sara, sweetie, you have just described Simon Northrup.”