When Size Matters

Dear Reader,

I’m a low-maintenance chick. The kind who’s happy with the way things turn out and not in need of a lot of extras to sustain me. So, naturally, Destiny thought it would be fun to dump me in Dallas, Texas—Planet Central for appearances and all things material.

Fortunately, I’m also a survivor and found myself a group of great girlfriends—beautiful women who spent massive chunks of their waking hours in manicures, highlights and cosmetic procedures. We got along great, those diamond-loving girls and I. They thought I was a breath of fresh air. Which, translated, meant I needed lots of help. And they were willing to give it. Sadly, it didn’t take.

But my experience got me thinking and another low-maintenance chick, Sky Dylan Stone, was born. Dylan’s friends think you can tell the depth of love by the weight of the diamond. All Dylan wants is a soul mate, someone to complete her, to set her on fire, capture her spirit, mind and heart. Not an easy find. Until Brad Davis comes along, the long-legged, boot-wearing guy of her dreams. If only he wasn’t so busy chasing his own!

Be you a low-maintenance gal or a diamond-girl supreme, we could all use a soul-scorching love. Drop me a line at carlylaine@comcast.net or visit my Web site at http://home.comcast.net/~carlylaine.

Happy reading!

Carly Laine

Like when you’re fifteen or seventeen or hell, even twenty.

I could think of a few other situations when it’s not only okay, it’s a damn good idea.

Like if you’re the heroine of a romance novel and you lost it on page eighty-six to the guy with the big pecs on the cover.

Or you’re super-religious and want to wait until you’re married.

But lots of times it was not okay. Like when life got messy early and things hadn’t worked out the way you planned. Your friends were settling down and you hadn’t even gotten started yet. Then it was just plain mortifying.

I wasn’t sure when things changed, when I quit fighting off the guys who pretended they wanted nothing more out of life than to sleep with me.

All I know is, by the time I was a senior in college, it had gone from being a prize to a problem and I couldn’t pay someone to do the deed.

When did sex become such a hassle?

When Size Matters

Carly Laine

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After residing in many places, including Texas and France, Carly Laine currently finds herself living in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, where she spends her days wearing a hard hat and her nights writing about slim-hipped guys with magical smiles. When Size Matters is Carly’s first novel for Harlequin.

To my family, where the living is easy.

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

Epilogue

1

DOES SIZE really matter? I mean, can how big it is actually tell you anything? Because my friends all think so. They’re convinced it shows how much he loves you. As if you can weigh love. That you measure it in carats. Mathematically, it looks like this: carats = love. And, despite appearances to the contrary, my diamond friends excel at math. Increase one side of an equation and they know the other side magically grows with it. More carats, more love. Therefore—and this is the most important part—a really big diamond = true love.

The only thing is, I don’t know if I buy it.

But if I did, then what I was witnessing on top of the hill that amber afternoon in October was the real thing. Capital T, capital L True Love. Because the bride’s ring was h-u-g-e, a diamond doorknob. And as I watched her turn from the makeshift altar they’d set up outside for the ceremony with her new diamond wedding band snuggled against the knob, I thought her left hand hung a little lower and that she had to kind of drag it back down the aisle. Think Quasimodo.

I can see my friends if they heard me think that. “D. E.,” they’d sing. Knowing for sure that mine was just another sad case of soul-devouring, stomach-cramping Diamond Envy. They could spot it anywhere. And often did. Even if it wasn’t. Or maybe it was, I don’t know. I do know I wanted some. TL. Real love. The kind you could always count on. Lifetime guarantee.

So maybe the real question was this: How do you find that? Or rather: How do you know you’ve found it?

I’d been to ten weddings in nine months. That made this one number eleven. Like the Diamond Girls, I, too, am good at math. It was October and—somebody shoot me—there was still another one to go. All things considered, it had been a fairly depressing year.

Number eleven was my fourth bridesmaid gig. The first time, back in April, I was excited. I got over it. My closest friends had trapped me into spending hundreds of dollars on dresses that made me look pale, fat and ugly. Unforgivable what those dresses do to a girl with a chest—think marshmallows, vacuum-packed.

This bride had chosen an anemic rainbow theme for her B-maids, vapid springtime pastels that made us look like little unfound Easter eggs. Faded lumps, lost and forgotten in the autumn leaves. I got stuck with the orange dress—the exact color of that milky, orange, public bathroom soap—because it does really awful things to tawny skin and because, in truth, brides know precisely what they’re doing. They know what will make their B-maids look their absolute, unforgettable, all-time worst.

Yeah, yeah, I know, brides say that’s not true anymore, that times have changed. But—and I say this with authority based on a great deal of recent experience—there are way too many sorry-looking bridesmaids out there for it to be coincidence.

Number eleven wedding was done up in the high style of the new millennium: overblown and overbudget. Six-figures if it was a dime. They staged it on the groom’s parents’ spread, a small kingdom chiseled into the Hill Country just outside of Austin, an estate on its own private hill.

When it was featured in the architectural magazine—the one that never does Texas houses if it can help it—they gushed, and I quote:

With its creamy blond fascia hewn from the chiseled limestone of the Austin hills, with its patchwork of rooftops quilted in the rusty blues of Texas slate, this magnificent home proudly straddles the hill’s rough summit. In the early evening sun, the meandering silhouette forms a miniature golden cityscape, a buttery skyline that peaks and dips in mimicry of the rise and fall of the rock beneath.

Rusty blue? Buttery skyline?

I knew the whole article by heart. It had been recited to me daily, breathlessly, for most of the past twenty-four months. It just so happened that this miniature golden cityscape, this monster mansion with its eye-bugging views of hill and river, lake and sky was more than mere backdrop. It was, in fact, the magic potion, the crucial catalyst that had brought the loving couple together. Love at first sight. My friend had seen the place on the cover of the magazine, had fallen in love first with the house and then, after a period of focused Diamond Girl determination, with its only son. Poor guy. Targeted, pursued and bagged before he knew what was chasing him. I guess if you had to marry a house, though, this one wasn’t bad. As houses go.

I know that sounds harsh but I was all weddinged out. It had been a long year.

There were two radiant white tents: one for the luncheon buffet and one for the obligatory, inoffensive, soft rock band and parquet dance floor. Each was perched in perfect symmetry on different strata of the hill, as though God had been in a good mood and had designed the terrain for just this occasion.

Music, food, a buttery skyline and champagne flowing like the Colorado River below us. It was getting late in the day. There’d been some serious toasting, especially by the father of the groom who was pulling triple duty as expansive host, father of the groom and best man. Actually, quadruple duty. Add financier to that list. Of the wedding and the doorknob diamond. I couldn’t look at the guy without thinking, prime rib. If you stuck a sweaty face—no neck—and some chunky limbs on those slabs of rare meat oozing under the heat lamps in the luncheon buffet, you’d have yourself a genuine replica of the groom’s dad. Should you want one. Which you wouldn’t.

He bellowed congratulations to his son, well-wishes for the bride and public introductions of his many, many attending business associates. And with each new toast, with each lifted glass, you could hear the subliminal scream, “This is all mine, I did all this. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”

Diamonds can be pricey—and I don’t mean for the groom or his family. I pictured the carnage of my poor friend’s life now, with Mr. Prime Rib in charge. Shudder.

Thank goodness he wasn’t my problem. Because, orange-soap dress notwithstanding, I was having an amazing time. I’d danced and laughed, and laughed and danced until finally, breathless, I’d had to sneak off to a deserted corner of the dance tent to have a quick gulp of autumn air and expensive champagne. I held myself perfectly still and let the swirl fall away. The light was magic. I even forgot to be cynical for a minute or two. The hill had granted this wedding a special aura, a fairy-tale touch. And as the sun began setting, the air took on that perfect glow, that golden glimmer of moments you think you’ll always remember.

Oh, what the hell, I said to myself. What if all my best friends were wives and mothers and I was left alone and abandoned, the last singleton in Single Town? Who cares? Sure, I was destined to be childless, struggling to eke out a meager joy from other people’s kids. Smile now, smile for Auntie Dylan. So what? Dancing on top of God’s hill, bathed in that silken light, I was content. And as the band launched into a respectable imitation of a salsa beat, I closed my eyes and tilted my head as far back as it would go to let the last, slow drip of champagne bubbles tickle down my throat.

Then I got one of my feelings. One of those feelings, where the little hairs on the back of my neck prickle out with the creeps. In my head, I saw one of Spielberg’s flesh-eating dinosaurs sneaking up, slobbering, behind me. An arm grabbed me around my waist. The champagne glass banged against my teeth. Hard.

“Dance wi’ me,” it snarled, its mouth pressed into my hair, reptile lips on the back of my ear, swamp breath on my scalp. I knew that slur, had heard it all afternoon. And as he hoisted me onto the dance floor, I knew that the groom’s dad had now become my problem, too.

I am not a tiny girl, not readily hoisted, but I was weightless, fragile in those beefy arms. Centaurs came to mind. Exactly what was it they’d done with maidens they’d snatched?

The thought was pre-empted. With a scowl of fierce concentration, he pressed my arm out to full extension—totally ignoring the crystal flute I still had clutched by its stem—and stuck a dripping jowl to my cheek. We swayed backward to gain momentum and then lunged theatrically forward into a full-body tango. I had to take several quick, ridiculous-looking, little running steps to keep from losing my balance, from being swept, literally, off my feet with my little dyed-to-match orange satin shoes dragging behind me, heels up, across the floor.

“Please don’t do this,” I managed to gasp when I finally quit trying to swallow my tongue in surprise and actually took a breath.

The band, knowing for sure upon which side their bread was buttered—and by whom—gamely switched to a tango. The dance floor cleared in a flurry of self-preservation. People crowded around the perimeter, unable to spare themselves the discomfort of witnessing my humiliation. And as we raced by their faces, I caught the looks of distaste and nervous glances. Groom Daddy was rich, old and male. Somehow this would all be my fault.

When we reached the far edge of the portable dance floor, I saw the guy I’d come with—finally—rushing to my aid, angling in on us for a cut-in rescue. Sing Hallelujah! I didn’t think he had it in him.

But Groom Daddy wasn’t having any of that. Switching arms without loosening his grip even a notch, he angrily executed that one-eighty tango turn, slammed his pot roast body back into mine and sped with long, bent-kneed strides toward the center of the floor.

“I need to…Please stop,” I squeaked out in a pathetic little wheeze. Like a gnat to a rhino, I was ignored.

Okay, okay, think! As my body tried to find some rhythm, some little bit of grace, my mind started whirling with the adrenaline rush. Options, I thought, you have to do something. Scenarios formed in my head. In one, I’d scream, he’d freeze, the band would shut down. As the echoes of my shrieks vibrated in the silence, the sobbing bride would stumble up the granite steps to the looming stone fortress, dragging her ring hand behind…Nope, no good. The bride was my friend, or at least she was before I got stuck with the orange dress. How could I mess up Her Day?

I could swoon and faint, slump against my tormentor in total dead-weight collapse. That might stop him. Oh, great, Dylan! Then they’d all think you’re drunk. You have no choice, I reasoned with myself. You have got to pull this off.

Bracing for further indignities, I composed my face into the amused and tolerant countenance of a good sport. I smoothed the stress from my forehead, brightened my eyes and just as I was working on a sparkly, little laugh, Groom Daddy stopped dead, leaned precariously and flung me backward over his knee in a back-snapping dip. Our arms were stretched overhead, the crystal flute inverted. One perfect drop of champagne splashed on the tip of my nose and slowly seeped inside. All good-sported sentiments drained away as I hung upside down and tears of frustration began trickling up, or rather down, my forehead, the rush of blood and humiliation burning my cheeks.

In another flash, I was restored to vertical and hauled off flailing in a different direction. Okay, that’s it. Rag-doll helpless was not my style and I…had…had…enough. A cold, clear fury crackled down my still throbbing spine. I hesitated just a moment, debating whether to turn and bite the hair-filled ear attached to the side of my head—blech!—or to stick out my dainty orange shoe and trip him violently, mid-stride. But before I could maneuver my foot into position, Groom Daddy tangoed us—wham!—into a guy who’d materialized on the dance floor directly in our flight path.

The impact jostled us around and we bounced off each other a few times until this guy steadied me with a firm grasp on my elbow and eased me off to one side. I shot a quick glance at Groom Daddy and then couldn’t look away as he burst into a snarling rage. Thwarted? his look said. You think you can stop me? You. Stop me? N-e-v-e-r. Apparently you don’t get a house on your very own hill by letting things slide.

Oh, God, this was gonna be ugly. I just had the time to wonder, as I slammed my eyes shut, how my high-strung friend—the “everything has to be perfect” bride—was going to handle this little digression from the program. I turned away, held my breath and braced for the blast.

And then…nothing.

Risking a quick one-eyed peek, I saw Groom Daddy’s scowl had been arrested midsquint and amazement was washing back over his face. The guy bowed to him, low from the waist. And then I, along with everyone else under that tent, watched as he straightened into an elegant long-necked pose, miming a tango embrace with his arms. His voice was low but it rang out in the silence as he politely inquired of Groom Daddy, “Shall we dance?”

No one breathed. But he was too perfect—serious, gracious and so very ballroom proper. In one giant gust, the crowd exhaled a collective breath of relief and puffs of delighted laughter floated through the saffron dusk.

Even Groom Daddy, sniffing the odds, half chuckled with them. “Aww, let’s get a drink,” he barked, grabbing the guy’s neck with one arm. He raised his other arm to the bartender, hollering for a glass, and dragged the guy with him toward the bar. As he was towed off the floor, taking my place in the prison grip of Groom Daddy’s soggy embrace, my rescuer turned to look at me and winked.

Whoa. Just like a movie! I pictured a gorgeous actress lifting her chin, flashing the spectators her dazzling smile and then turning to float imperiously away. I pictured her, however, wearing a stunningly simple column of a dress and not the offensive orange pouf. I reapplied my good-sport face, thrust out my vacuum-packed marshmallows and glided off the floor, daintily twirling the delicate and apparently indestructible stem of the crystal flute.

As I cleared the dispersing crowd, my date rushed to my side. Except he wasn’t really a date. Matt was the discarded ex-fiancé of my best friend, Eva. Wounded and hurting, he’d started working on me, trying to convince me that he and I could be more than friends. I didn’t buy it. But I did—at the risk of sounding somewhat mercenary—need a date for the wedding. So there we were, not buddies, not dates. Matt took my arm and leaned to whisper in my ear. Solicitous murmurings? Embarrassed apologies?

“Dylan,” he said, “you could see everything!” I cut my eyes at him and gave him my look.

“Your thong!” he groaned and peered anxiously around him to see who was watching us. Everybody.

Thong? My little peach lace thong? A hollow spot began to grow in my stomach. Oh, God! It must have been when I was hanging upside down and my leg flew up in the air. What did a thong look like from that angle? I winced. No wonder everyone was staring. The hollow place turned into a knot. I widened my eyes, trying to blink away the sting of tears. Because I never cried anymore. Ever.

I took a big breath, and…There was the guy, looking right at me, all the way across the dance floor, held captive at the bar, paying too steep a price for his gallantry. A humid hug. Another toast. And Groom Daddy roared, “To the tango, to beautiful girls, to cham-pagne!”

I looked at my rescuer. Who was this guy? He seemed fairly standard-issue. Maybe late-twenties or thirty. Hard to tell. Really tall but otherwise pretty ordinary. Definitely not a hunk, but not bad, either. Right then he had hug-rumpled brown hair. It’s too long. Or maybe not…Yeah, no, it’s too long. And long legs. Not too long, though, just long. And a dark tan. In October? Probably looks better wearing jeans and a T-shirt than that dark suit. Then I looked at his eyes, his midnight-black eyes and it was as if he was standing a foot away. I felt a zap, a physical jolt. The skin all over my body shrank up and I could feel him, feel the change in the ions between us. I stood there gawking. I just hoped my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

Then he grinned.

I forgot all about the upside-down thong, turned and handed my champagne flute to my erstwhile date, gave him a tiny smile and walked straight back into Groom Daddy hell to meet the guy.

2

WHAT WAS IT about an honest-to-God rescue? I swear I would have swooned if I’d been the type. I saw myself—in the movie star’s sleek column of a dress—weaving my way across the crowded floor. In my head, no one leered. People smiled and moved aside.

It wasn’t just me. We all wanted that perfect someone to waltz—or, even better, tango!—in and deliver us from our dreary, boring, ordinary lives. Someone to save us from ourselves. We’ve watched Pretty Woman, seen the tender young thing being saved by a handsome, rich, charming, intelligent man—in a limo, no less—and we’ve said, “Right there! That’s exactly what we want.”

I don’t think we were brainwashed by the perfect Hollywood story, though. I think we inherited the want from the cave ladies, as with our good eye for color and great gathering skills. I figure the only cave women who survived long enough to produce offspring were the ones who got rescued on a regular basis, it being tricky to run from a saber-tooth while pregnant. We’ve got a genetically patterned appreciation of the whole rescue business.

If you thought about it, though, it wasn’t enough to be rescued. There was that part about the rescuer being handsome, rich, charming and intelligent. We wanted that, too, please. Liberation be damned, we’d like the whole hunky package.

Actually, that’s not quite right, not for all of us. Not for the Diamond Girls. Their definition of happiness had that overriding mathematical bias: perfect someone = rich guy. It seemed the rich part of the fantasy was an adequate substitution for the handsome, charming and intelligent parts. Or maybe more accurately: rich = handsome, charming and intelligent. Automatically.

Not me. I was looking for someone to capture my imagination, to ignite me, to complete me in every way. Mind. Body. Soul. For me perfect guy = soul mate. Tragically, the soul mate had proven to be a lot tougher to find than a diamond.

But now I’d been rescued. In real life. My heart lurched up in my throat and I could feel a silky dampness in my thong. Dylan! Do not think about the thong!

The guy met me halfway across the dance floor, having taken advantage of the momentary distraction of a passing hors d’oeuvre tray to deliver a good-old-boy whack to Groom Daddy’s back, bark a fond farewell and then half sprint away. It had worked. I could see Groom Daddy leaving the bar, storming up the hill toward the luncheon tent, hunting for less agile prey.

The guy walked me through the dancers to an empty corner at the dance floor’s edge.

“Thanks doesn’t quite cover it,” I purred as I tried to arrange myself back into bridesmaid propriety. I made a swipe at my forehead, repositioning wanton curls, brushing sweat salt from my hairline—probably Groom Daddy’s…Yuck—and wiping away any mascara tracks running up my forehead. All with—I hoped—one casually elegant stroke.

“Yeah, you looked like you could use a break out there,” he said, turning to face me, still grinning out of the corner of his mouth, a mouth just bold-ass begging for kisses. “You’re Dylan, right? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Brad. Brad Davis.”

I’d like to say that I believed in love at first sight. It kind of went with the whole soul mate thing: when you meet him, you will know. I was sure that’s the way it would be. But if I’m truthful with myself, I don’t think I was thinking right then about love or sight or souls or anything else. I wasn’t thinking; I was on fire. Consumed. That was not an everyday occurrence for me. I was usually quite calm. Other girls could go on and on about a guy’s this or that—his lips or abs or some damn thing. Blah, blah. I never got it. To me, a mouth was a mouth, like a knee was a knee. I was an eye chick. I didn’t have a color preference as long as they were deep, soulful and carried thoughts without words. Eyes spoke to me.

But here was this crooked smile. Lips you could take a nap on, lips that could undo buttons…And then his name wormed its way into my thinking brain. “No!” It was a yelp.

“‘Scuse me?” he asked at the damsel’s ungrateful response.

“The Brad Davis? Brad Davis of Dallas?”