Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy)
Page 32
Twenty-six-year-old Rose Devlin may shop in the plus-size department, but she’s never had a problem attracting men—with disastrous consequences. Recovering from her latest mistake, Rose has sworn off casual flings and moved to California to grow up, help her best friend, and make something of herself.
When Rose asks the cute-but-geeky Mark to help her land a job in high tech, she never expects to unearth his quiet strength, stunning accomplishments—and hidden talents. With a secret in her own past, Rose tries to keep her distance, but she finds that nerdy Mark isn’t so nerdy when the lights go out. And that maybe, just maybe, she’s not too grown up to risk one more disaster…
Excerpt of THIS TIME NEXT DOOR
©2012 Gretchen Galway
CHAPTER 1
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME ROSE had ever been asked to take off her clothes for a job interview.
“You want me to strip?” Rose asked, surprised. “All the way?”
The woman in front of her wore a measuring tape around her neck and had hair like a snowball, white and round. Like me, Rose thought.
“What kind of bra are you wearing?” Snowball asked, looking her over.
Rose glanced down at her chest, unusually compressed for the occasion. “It’s a sports bra. Brand new. I thought, since you’re looking for a model for workout clothes, I should—”
“Panties?”
Rose paused. “What about them?”
“What kind of underpants?”
This is a very odd conversation. The receptionist had sent her up to the engineering floor for her appointment, and Snowball had ushered her down a hallway without any preamble, not even a quick exchange of names.
“They’re just… regular,” Rose replied. “Not a thong or anything.”
“Control-top?”
“No.”
The woman nodded. “Good. We’ll need to know your real numbers. We’ll add on a little for the bust. Just strip down to your underwear and let me know when you’re ready.” She nudged Rose deeper into the storage closet and pulled the door shut between them.
Rose looked around. She’d imagined something a little more glamorous than a dim closet overstuffed with clothes on racks and sagging shipping boxes. Maybe the fashion industry in San Francisco was as casual as everything else on the West Coast. And, of course, Fite Fitness was just a fitnesswear company, not couture or anything.
She unzipped her knee-high leather boots and pulled them off, unwound her favorite silk scarf, then stripped off her low-rise black pants and magenta wrap sweater and folded it all into a neat pile. Wearing only her underwear and jewelry—a trio of long silver necklaces and assorted bangles—she peered into the small mirror on the wall to check her lipstick.
Satisfied, she pulled open the door and strode out into the workroom.
It was drafty. She hoped she didn’t have to wait out here like this for very long. Snowball was nowhere in sight, so she walked down the hallway and past a row of long, flat tables covered with patterns, bolts of fabric, piles of clothes. “Hello?”
A bald man in his fifties with purple reading glasses glanced up from a table. With a start, he dropped his pencil and stared. Then he looked around.
“Where’d she go?” Snowball was saying behind her. Then, “Oh!”
“Plus-sized fit model on the loose,” the man said, propping his forehead on his hand and going back to his work.
Another head popped up from another table off to the side. The woman’s eyes went wide.
Rose turned to Snowball. “Sorry. Was I supposed to stay in the closet?”
There was a snort from the man at the table.
“Most girls prefer a little privacy,” Snowball said.
Shrugging, Rose walked back to the closet, head high. “I’ve never done this before.”
Snowball joined her in the closet and shut them inside. “Have you done any kind of modeling?”
Oh, sure. Whenever I’m not selling used paperbacks on Amazon to pay off my college loans. Keeping a straight face, Rose said, “It’s been a few years.”
“You’ve got the hair for it. And the skin.” Her gaze dropped down over Rose’s exposed, pale form.
“Thanks.” Rose was used to people complimenting her Barbie-like blond hair and peaches-and-cream complexion. Right before they suggested how lovely she could have been if she’d just stop eating. “By the way, what’s your name? I like to know the names of people I get naked with.”
The woman glanced up at her over her bifocals.
She peeled off one of the measuring tapes dangling around her neck and moved closer, her arms extended in front of her like a cartoon zombie. “Hands up. And don’t suck anything in, please.”
Rose did as she was told, feeling the brush of the Meryl’s fingers against the sensitive flesh of her waist, the small of her back, her abdomen. The tape met over her tummy in Meryl’s small hands.
Don’t suck it in. What did that mean? It was impossible not to tense a little bit under the circumstances. Taking a shallow breath, Rose looked over Meryl’s fluffy white head and focused on a very slim pair of black running pants hanging on the back of the door. “You’re just starting a plus-sized line?”
“Mmm,” Meryl said. “Waist, thirty-five and a quarter.” She let one end of the tape fall to the floor as she jotted a note in a yellow pad balanced on top of one of the lopsided boxes. “That might be a problem. We’re looking for thirty-six.”
Rose smiled. “I’m too small? That’s a first.”
“In the waist, anyway,” Meryl said, staring at her chest.
“I told Blair I didn’t know what my measurements were, but she said you guys wanted to meet me anyway.”
“Let’s see what else you’ve got.”
“Plenty, as it happens,” Rose said.
Meryl leaned in to measure her bust. “Arms up again, please.” She slid the tape back and forth, paused. “Forty-five and three-quarters. But I’ll have to add on an inch to allow for the bra.”
Rose stared at the ceiling as Meryl went back to her notebook, muttering, “Forty-six and three-quarters.”
This was unexpectedly awkward. When Rose’s roommate had told her about a job that paid seventy dollars an hour just to try on clothes, she’d been happy to hop on the first BART train to San Francisco. She hadn’t considered how being poked and prodded might make her feel like a twelve-year-old undressing in the school locker room for the first time.
Meryl wrapped the tape around her again. She wiggled it down to Rose’s hips, holding on with one hand as if she were lassoing a calf—
Don’t go there, girl, Rose told herself. Chin up. Big and beautiful.
“Forty-eight and a quarter,” Meryl said, draping the tape around her neck. “Well, that one’s a deal-breaker.”
“I really do wear an 18. Often,” she said. “Well, sometimes.”
Moving to the door, Meryl tucked her yellow pad into her pocket. “You can get dressed. I won’t need the rest of your numbers.”
Rose propped her hands on her hips. “Too big?”
“A little bit. Thanks for coming in… uh… ” She stared.
“Rose.”
“Right,” Meryl said. “Rose. Thanks for making the trip. You can bill us for the full hour.”
Rose let out the breath she’d been holding. So much for that. For a few days she’d enjoyed a little fantasy about making some easy money. It would’ve been fun to tell people she was a model.
Without lying.
“If you lose a few pounds,” Meryl said, “Call us. We could measure you again.”
Rose flashed a half-smile. “Don’t count on it.”
With a shrug, Meryl said, “Best of luck to you,” and closed the door.
While she got dressed, Rose faced the hard facts. She was unemployed and thousands of miles from home. Her monthly college loan payments were killing her. The glamorous world of plus-size fashion didn’t want her.
She draped her scarf around her neck, combed and fluff
ed her hair, looked around the dingy closet.
Just as well. She was twenty-six, long past time for her to find a real job.
Preferably one that didn’t involve taking her clothes off.
* * *
THE SUPERMODEL’S BEST FRIEND
©2011 Gretchen Galway
Happily-ever-after isn’t only for the rich and beautiful…
When her long-term fiancé dumps her, 34-year-old Lucy Hathcoat is determined to replace him as efficiently as possible. Her best friend the supermodel is getting married to a billionaire—what better place than their week-long wedding in a luxury eco-resort to find a new man? Lucy isn’t picky; she just wants a decent guy who’s eager to start a family. Someone as logical, responsible, and practical as she is.
Definitely not the six-foot-five, fun-loving Miles Girard. Being totally hot and charming is not important. She doesn’t need a man who makes her laugh. A man who makes her jump in his lap and kiss him. A man who is pathologically wary of marriage and thinks she needs him more than she needs a husband.
Then again, Lucy’s starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, she can’t live without him…
Excerpt of THE SUPERMODEL’S BEST FRIEND
©2011 Gretchen Galway
CHAPTER 1
THIS WAS NOT IN THE plan, Lucy thought, staring at the handsome face on her phone. Her fiancé was supposed to be standing by her side, pen in hand, not using video smartphone technology to dump her from another state. I don’t love you enough to let you ruin the plan.
“You must’ve known I had some doubts,” Dan said, his voice as small as he was.
Lucy looked around the empty living room of the spacious three-bedroom California bungalow with original plank hardwoods and walnut built-ins. “You said you’d kill to have this house,” she said, wondering if the real estate agent, laying out the pages for their revised offer on the granite breakfast counter in the kitchen, could hear them.
“It’s a great house,” he said, sighing. “A perfect house. But now I see that it would just tie us down, drag out the inevitable.”
She blinked, not sure what she was hearing. “We’ve been planning this for almost five years.”
He hesitated. “I met someone.”
“When? This morning?”
Licking his lips, he said, “Why don’t we talk later, after you’ve had a chance to calm down.”
She frowned. “I’m hardly hysterical, Dan.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“You’d like me to be hysterical?”
“Forget it. Of course not. It makes everything easier.”
She nodded, belatedly piecing together some clues he’d dropped over the past few months. “Your six-month assignment in Seattle wasn’t the opportunity of a lifetime, then.”
“Well… ”
“Ah. A personal opportunity, you meant.”
“I wanted to be sure. For both—for all of us.”
“Very considerate of you,” she said.
“Damn it, you don’t have to be sarcastic.”
“You’re hardly in a position to tell me what to do. I’m the wounded party here, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I think we’ll both need some healing.”
Lucy dropped the phone to her side and noticed that Robin, the real estate agent, had come up behind her. Her face was pale.
This was really going to screw over the older lady, the two of them walking away from the deal now. Robin needed a sale badly. Typical of Dan to think the world revolved around him.
Lucy lifted the phone. “We’ll have to call the mortgage broker.”
He jutted out his chin. “I already have.”
“You told Inez the mortgage broker before you told me?”
“She kept after me to sign the latest thing. It didn’t feel right to string her along anymore—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Look, you’re getting digitized. I think the connection is breaking up… ”
“It didn’t feel right to string her along?”
He sighed. “So much of our lives together is what you wanted. Not me. I felt… superfluous a lot of the time.” He tilted the screen of his laptop so she was staring out the window of his suite at the Extended Stay America. It wasn’t supposed to be sunny in Seattle. It looked sunny. She wondered if the new girlfriend was there, listening off-camera. Dan came back into view with a coffee cup at his lips.
In Berkeley, outside the house she wasn’t going to have, the sky was as gray as lint. “Our relationship was always shaped by what you wanted. We talked about marriage years ago. I hoped to have my first child before I turned thirty. But you wanted to save up for the house first, so we did, even though that was third on my list.”
“You and your lists. That’s one thing I’ve learned from Brittany—how to trust my heart.”
“Ah, so she’s one of those.” She took a deep breath and peered into the phone for a glimpse of her. “What else did the little ho say?”
Dan’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“You wanted hysterical. This is my version.”
He looked away, then back at the screen, his lips popping up and down like a broken garage door. “Brittany is not—” He shook his head and stared off to the side, made an apologetic face, then jerked his head.
So she had been there. “Thanks for making this such a private moment.”
“I can’t believe Brittany had to hear you call her a—a—I can’t even say it.”
“What? She’s been sleeping with my boyfriend. For months, apparently.”
“Brittany has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Of course. She knows everything.”
Lucy snorted. Her college advisor would’ve broken out in a rash to hear her insult a woman for exercising her sexual liberties, but to hell with it. She was under a lot of stress. “Ho.”
Dan’s eyes went wide as he leaned into his laptop camera. “She is completely innocent. Brittany’s not in such a hurry to take her clothes off. Unlike you.”
Lucy felt an odd snapping inside her, her last grip on reality disengaging from Dan’s voice. “We lived together for five years. You think we should have waited until we were, what, forty?”
“It’s not how long we waited, it’s how often you wanted it. And how much you wanted to do it. I’m a man, Lucy, and I didn’t need half as much sex as you did.” Then he ran his hand over his eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I never intended to talk to you about this.”
Her throat suddenly felt tight. She realized Robin the real estate agent was hanging on every word. “Did you talk to her about this? Brittany?”
His sheepish look grew sheepier; he leaned away from the camera. Faintly, she heard him say, “That’s how we… how we knew we were perfect for each other. She was avoiding her boyfriend, and I… I was taking a break, too.”
“And where was this? Her convent?”
“Lucy,” Dan said, shaking his head, looking so disappointed in her.
Humiliation didn’t feel right, so she tapped into the rage, breathed it like oxygen. “I’m just trying to get the full picture here. I deserve to know the details.”
“Information isn’t knowledge, Lucy,” Dan said. “Knowing everything doesn’t make you wise.”
“And having a penis doesn’t make you a man,” Lucy said.
Robin snorted and patted her hard on the back. Lucy closed her eyes. He didn’t like having sex with me, she thought. It’s not like she had a he-harem of previous boyfriends to call up for rebuttals. She was thirty-four, but she’d started late.
Damn. It took him five years to propose. She didn’t have another eight to work on someone new. There were houses to buy, retirement accounts to fund, ovaries to harvest.
She frowned at him. “You’ve really messed up my plans.”
“Sometimes I think that’s all I was to you, Lucy. Just part of your plans.” He leaned back and put his hand over his heart. “I’ve learned that I need a part
ner who acts without analyzing everything to death. Someone more flexible.”
Lucy glanced at Robin, but it was far too late for any privacy. Holding the phone up to her mouth, she said, enunciating each word, “One of my plans was for decent sex. I was flexible about giving up on that.”
She drew back to see his reaction, but the window had gone black.
The Supermodel’s Best Friend (©2011 Gretchen Galway) is available now in ebook.
Table of 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
Epilogue
About the Author
Also By Gretchen Galway