She Sins at Midnight

by Whitney Dineen

  She Sins at

  Midnight

  Whitney Dineen

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialogue and characters are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Copyright © 2014 Whitney Dineen

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Published in the United States by Kissing Frogs Publications an imprint of Thirty-Three Partners Publishing.

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-In-Publication Data

  Dineen, Whitney

  She Sins at Midnight : a novel / Whitney Dineen.

  First Edition

  Raves for She Sins at Midnight

  “This whirlwind comedy/drama…centers on Lila Montgomery and her high school crush, a hilarious cat fight with a Hollywood starlet and her award-winning romance novel nobody know about. This fun, quick read examines the envies and dissatisfactions in women’s lives, reassuring reader that no one's life is truly perfect.” —Kirkus Review

  A juicy read!—Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, Authors of Your Perfect Life (Voted one of the best books of October.)

  This was such a fun read! I couldn't wait to get back to it each time I put it down. Dineen does a great job of developing the characters and you really cared what happened to them, especially Lila. There are a lot of twists to keep it interesting. Dineen is skilled at pacing and story development. Looking forward to her next book! —Susie Schnall, author of On Grace

  She Sins at Midnight is a fantastic read – wonderfully entertaining!—So Many Reads…so little time.

  “Laugh-out-loud funny!” —Carole Clarke Blog

  This book is a riot!! I love the Hollywood dish—SO true what a scandalous business entertainment is. Lila is the perfect heroine! I just wish she was real so I could take her out to lunch. You HAVE to buy this book if you're looking for a great summer read!!!—Bookworm

  I thoroughly enjoyed She Sins at Midnight. Whitney Dineen made sure to include plenty of laughs in this book, along with romantic encounters written in pure romance-novel fashion. I can’t forget the cat fight scenes between Lila and Melinda, either. I think Dineen needs to write a follow up; a "Where Are They Now?" novel. Maybe for the twenty year reunion.—Chick Lit Central

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my wonderful husband for all his love, patience and support. Thanks to my parents, Reiner and Libby Bohlen for all their edits, suggestions and encouragement. I would like to send a big shout out to my Big Daddy, dear friend and attorney, Scott Schwimer. Scotty, you make me laugh in my darkest hours, kick me in the butt and stand by me always, thank you, thank you! A super big thank you to my dear friend Beth Boyer for the hours of proofreading, critiques and pep-talks. Seriously, you know what I’d be without you and it wouldn’t be pretty. I’d also like to thank all my dear friends who made my California years so much fun. You know who you are and you are my heart. Lois Ephraim-Nelson, Kristina Walker and Lisa Schmit, you are at the top of that list!

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my very own knight in shining armor, my husband, Jimmy. I wouldn’t want to be on this journey with anyone else!

  Chapter 1

  Lila Montgomery sat at her desk dreaming about the two things that always brought her thoughts into sharper focus. Namely, piping hot carbs and soft melting fat. She drooled at the thought of grilled cheese on white bread, so perfectly gooey that the first bite would immediately transport her back to the innocent days of childhood. Back to a time before she gave a fig if the button on her size 12 skinny white jeans gave way and inadvertently took someone’s eye out. Of course, she wasn’t currently in her white jeans, so there was no imminent risk of rendering an unsuspecting co-worker blind.

  Absently, Lila petted the sleeve of her ever-so-stylish and sleek Armani suit. She always paired the elegant ensemble with the same white silk blouse. The neckline plunged so low it looked like her girls were trying to escape. That particular outfit was worn when she was feeling “that time of the monthish,” or in a word, bloated. Even though the suit cost an entire paycheck, it was more than worth it as it covered a multitude of sins. And, as Lila knew only too well, sins should always be covered, kept in the closet, or safely locked in one’s attic.

  The day she bought the blouse, Lila eyed her cleavage and laughingly declared, “With everyone’s eyes trained on ‘Team Montgomery,’ my big butt and poochy tummy are the last things that this skinny crazed town will notice.”

  Her friend Cynthia laughed, “Lila Montgomery, you’re gorgeous! I say good for you that you’re not a carrot stick away from certain death.”

  Lila raised an eyebrow, “Says the size 2 woman in front of me.”

  Cynthia interrupted, “Who is nearly 9 inches shorter than you are.”

  Lila’s statuesque build of 5’9” and a size 12 would be coveted by the majority of women in the country. But in La La Land it was deemed overweight, especially if you worked in “The Industry.” They (those alien creatures in the film business who held American women’s self-esteem in their grubby little hands) considered anything above a size 4 an emergency candidate for gastric bypass. If one more metro-sexual Hollywood type told Lila what a pretty face she had, she was going to smile graciously and kick the back-handed compliment giver right in the balls. Why didn’t these men understand that “you have such a pretty face” isn’t a compliment? Just because they don’t speak the rest of the thought out loud, (too bad about the rest of you…) doesn’t mean that it goes unheard.

  Lila moved to Los Angeles right after college in hopes of becoming the next Scarlett Johansson. Getting the assistant’s job at The Amalgamated Artists Agency was her first step in accomplishing that dream. Amalgamated, or the Triple A, as it was referred to by Hollywood insiders, was THE talent agency in Tinseltown. Lila’s plan was to get her foot in the door of the posh establishment, casually announce that she graduated at the top of her class as a theater major, then POW, steal all of Scarlett’s work.

  That outcome didn’t occur for a variety of reasons, the first being that even at her skinniest, Lila was ordered to lose ten pounds, stat! In Hollywood’s rather miniscule attention span for young starlets (and as she was twenty-two at the time) she was clearly running out of time. After all, thousands of brand spanking new eighteen year olds got off the bus everyday with the same hopes and dreams of stardom.

  Sadly, the task of losing an unnecessary ten pounds was an impossibility as Lila’s love affair with the taboo carbs and seductive fats had already manifested in all its glory. Not to mention, she was told this back when a size 6 was deemed respectable. Now that the goal was to achieve a size 0 or 2, she realized she’d have to be dead for eighteen months before she had decomposed to the current standard of fashion. Letting out a depressed laugh, she imagined that her first movie review would read, “Freshly dug up for the role, Lila Montgomery wows them as the heroine of Night of the Living Dead XXII!”

  The second, more dominant reason that stardom wasn’t in her future, was that Lila had a deep-seated aversion of trading sexual favors for career advancement. She was aware that not all successful actresses got their start between the sheets (take Meryll Streep for instance) but from what she witnessed first hand at The Triple A, quite a lot did. The sad truth was that when you weighed the odds of being discovered by virtue of your talent against your willingness to put out, there really was no contest. Putting out was the way to go.

  Lila sat at her desk and contemplated the outcome of her almost thirty-three years on the planet. She t
hought about all the time she had spent tottering around her childhood home in high heels, swathed in feather boas pretending to be either Diana Spencer or Jessica Rabbit, sort of Princess-Pin-Up, if you will. When those dreams faded, her next ambition was to write the great American novel; an historical epoch along the lines of North and South. Yet every time she sat at her computer, some inner vixen took over and began creating volumes of racy fantasies instead of historical intrigue. The fantasies happily filled the gap in her social life, but did nothing for her dreams of becoming a celebrated novelist.

  Consequently, the serious historical events that she had set out to portray always turned into alarming bodice ripping incidents. The gallant young officer, who urgently set out to deliver a top secret message, was inevitably delayed by a lush bosomed young thing bent on seduction. What was a red-blooded young man to do?

  At first, Lila fought against her tendency to write trash. After all, she wanted to be nominated for a Pulitzer one day. She wanted respect. But after years of struggling to compose a serious narrative, she gave up and let her alter ego (alarmingly named Jasmine Sheath) have her way. Now, Lila, a.k.a. Jasmine, spent all of her free time at her computer orchestrating de-flowerings, seductions and all sorts of bawdy goings on.

  As her mind continued to wander, Lila’s eyes fixated on the two letters sitting on her desk. One filled her with a pure rush of pride and excitement. The other filled her with dread. She set aside the envelope full of happy tidings knowing full well that she could never share its contents with anyone. In fact, she thought the news was so private that she had best lock it in her desk drawer for safe keeping.

  Once that task was accomplished, she picked up the other envelope and let out an audible sigh. In her hands was that bit of correspondence, that depending on what you had accomplished in your life, you either anticipated like Christmas morning or dreaded like a bad case a poison ivy on your private parts. It was the invitation to her fifteen year high school class reunion. It cordially invited the graduate and his/her spouse to the gala affair that was being held at The North Hills Country Club, the very same establishment where half her classmates were already second or third generation members.

  Lila didn’t begrudge them their memberships to the club, having spent much of her early days treading those same hallowed grounds. In fact, had she never left Bentley, she would probably be teeing off with the Ladies Junior Golf League every Wednesday morning while her offspring learned to doggy paddle in the kiddie pool. What Lila did envy were their spouses and children. She longed for similar domestic bliss. After all, she had worked at least as hard as they had and what did she have to show for it? A twenty-two hundred dollar a month rent payment on an apartment that she didn’t own and a five year old Mitsubishi, no husband, no babies, not even a pet.

  Three decades had come and gone and Lila finally realized that what she really wanted was the life she grew up with. She didn’t need an academy award. She didn’t even need a Pulitzer. She just wanted to have someone to love and someone who would love her back. Was that too much to ask?

  Lila’s musings were interrupted by the ringing of her private line. “Josh Furber’s office. How may I help you?”

  A breathy voice responded, “Lila, its Jilly? Did you get it? Did you get the invitation?”

  Lila automatically smiled when she heard her childhood friend’s voice. The two girls had been inseparable ever since the fourth grade when Jilly accidentally broke Lila’s nose with her skateboard. That encounter was the beginning of a life-long bond.

  Jilly married her college sweetheart, Bill and had recently given birth to their third, perfect, blonde baby. Jilly was the epitome of everything that Lila wanted to be, wife, mother, homeowner. Yet during their weekly chats, her friend complained about those very things. Sometimes Lila wanted to scream, “Jilly, your life is perfect! You’re married to the man you love and your babies are on the outside. They aren’t still in egg form with no hope of imminent fertilization!” Of course she never said those things because Jilly had always been supportive and encouraging of the choices that Lila made in her life. It would have broken Jilly’s heart to find out what an envious bitch her friend had become.

  So she simply replied, “Yep, I’m staring right at it.”

  Jilly pleaded, “Promise you’re coming back for it.” Then she hurried to add, “You did swear that you’d come to the fifteenth when you missed the tenth, remember? So you’re coming, right?”

  Lila thought her friend sounded positively desperate. “Jilly, is something wrong?”

  After a beat too long, Jilly answered, “Of course not. I’m just dying to introduce you to Titty.” Titty was her five month old daughter, whose real name was Betina. But her son Jackson, who was three, couldn’t say Betina, so he called her Titty. Then they all did.

  Lila admonished, “Jilly, you have got to stop calling your baby Titty. She’s going to grow up to be a stripper.”

  Jilly laughed, “I know, I know. But Jack sounded so cute when he said it that it just sort of stuck.”

  “Yes, well, remember when Jack couldn’t say fire truck and would just yell out FUCK every time he heard one? That was cute too but you didn’t let him keep doing it.”

  “I know, you’re right. We’ve been trying out other nicknames. It’s just that Betty sounds like a fifty-five year old church lady and Tina sounds like a bimbo.”

  “So,” Lila ventured, “Why not just call her Betina? You know, with it being her actual name and all?”

  As always, Jilly was delighted by her friend’s wit and begged, “Oh, Lila, I miss you so much, please come home.”

  Without anymore encouragement than that, Lila agreed. She secretly wanted to go anyway. She had amassed at least fifty vacation days that she never took because Josh swore the agency would crumble without her. Translation: “My wife might discover what a philandering pig I am if you aren’t here to run interference for me.” This was the reason that Lila only went on vacation when Josh did and Josh had no plans to vacate any time soon. But after talking to her best friend in the whole world, Lila realized that she could use a couple weeks in the bosom of her friends and family. She desperately needed a normal Midwestern perspective on life. Too much time in La La Land was starting to seriously mess with her equilibrium.

  The buzzing intercom interrupted her conversation and Lila told Jilly that she would call her later. Hitting the button on the other line, she inquired, “What’s up Josh?”

  “Did you send Tibber’s script to DreamWorks yet?”

  “About twenty minutes ago. They should have it in another ten.”

  “Good, good. What about my reservation at the Ivy? Is everything all set?”

  Lila nodded her head, “Yep, 2 o’clock, table on the patio so the paparazzi can get great shots of Melinda.” Melinda Forrester was one of Josh’s hot young clients. At twenty-six she had just received an Oscar nomination for her depiction of a drug addicted hooker/college student, who beats the habit and becomes an Olympic track star, only to discover that she’s contracted AIDS from her hooking days.

  It never ceased to amaze Lila that scripts like that got made into feature films. What didn’t amaze her though was how Melinda acquired the starring role. She assumed that the actress got the lead in the same way that she snagged Josh as her agent. The Hollywood rumor mill had it that Melinda spent copious amounts of time on her knees and this just in, she wasn’t the religious type.

  Lila held Melinda in such low regard that the star had become the prototype for many of the scheming sluts in her stories. Melinda had morphed into such characters as Wanda Toolmaker, street walker extraordinaire turned blackmailer; Lucy Gosling, scheming housemaid and most recently Isabelle, Countess of Trent, whorish actress who was desperately trying to sleep her way into the upper echelon of society.

  Lila was always solicitous and pleasant to Melinda in person. She truly didn’t set out to dislike her. But Melinda, being Melinda, simply made it impossible for Lila to do a
nything but despise her. Melinda was by far the most viscious, calculating celebrity Lila ever had the misfortune of dealing with. That was a pretty damning statement when you considered the magnitude of the egos that paraded through Amalgamated’s doors every day.

  Lila picked up her reunion invitation and absentmindedly tapped it on her desk. She wished she could show up and share her real accomplishments with her old friends. Yet that wasn’t possible. Jilly would die of shock if she knew what was in the letter safely locked in her desk. And if Jilly would be shocked, her mother and father would probably disown her! No, Lila was raised to be a lady. She was from good stock and she wouldn’t risk everyone’s disappointment by telling them the truth. She would simply show up single and childless and face the pity of her peers, her success safely hidden away from discovery.

  In the midst of her reverie, Lila heard a buzzing noise. She tried to block it, but it just kept getting more insistent. When she finally realized that it was the intercom, she picked up the phone and none too gently demanded, “What!”

  In a screechy voice, Josh demanded, “What do you mean, what?! I’ve been buzzing for five minutes. Is that anyway to talk to me?”

  Lila rolled her eyes as she had always been professional and a tad subservient to Josh. After all, he was her boss and it was her job to orbit around him like a faithful satellite. But at that moment she had enough. So she informed him, “Look Josh, I’m having a period from hell, I haven’t had lunch yet and I’m sitting here with an invitation to my fifteen year high school class reunion. If you want something from me, you had better just tell me because I don’t have the stamina to pry it out of you today, okay?” There was silence on the other end so she demanded, “What do you want?”