Dear Reader,

I am so excited to be a part of Harlequin Flipside! I love reading—and writing!—romantic comedy. I’ve discovered that it helps keep the smile (truly, that’s a smile, not a grimace) on my face in the course of my day-to-day life. And I’m sure I’m not alone. We all work too hard and too much, so a good dose of humor is absolutely necessary. It helps us keep our perspective and maintain our attitude in the face of, well, all of it! How else would we be able to convince ourselves that high heels and thong underwear are comfortable? Really, they are! What are we thinking?

In the midst of one of those daily internal discussions about the comfort of my clothes, I started thinking about the price of beauty, about our busy lives…and Anna, the heroine of this story, was born. Her job takes all of her attention until, suddenly, she’s on sabbatical and staring some questionable beauty regimes in the face. Daunting for a woman who’s used to letting her hair down, eating what she wants and not sucking in her belly.

I hope you find this story funny and entertaining.

Happy reading,

Molly O’Keefe

“At no time today do I want to be naked.”

Too bad Anna lost that particular battle. Finally, the spa torture was over and—bowlegged and sore in places she didn’t even want to think about—she walked out the big red doors, vowing never to go back.

“Look at you, Anna,” Camilla cooed. “You look wonderful.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Anna hissed under her breath, trying to keep her clothes from rubbing up against the new hairless parts of her body.

“Anna? What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” she whispered furiously. “Hot wax is wrong. It’s wrong in a million ways.”

“I take it you didn’t like—”

“Yeah, no. I didn’t like.”

“That’s too bad because you look like a new woman.”

“There is no new woman, Camilla. It’s still me just chaffed.” If this was the price for beauty, Anna was content to forever window-shop.

Pencil Him In
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly O’Keefe grew up reading in a small farming town outside of Chicago. She went to Webster University in St. Louis where she graduated with a degree in journalism and English and met a Canadian who became her college editor and later her husband and tennis partner. She spent a year writing for regional publications and St. Louis newspapers, before she began moving around the country and writing romance novels. At age twenty-five, she sold her first book to Harlequin Duets, got married and settled down in Toronto, Canada. She and her husband share a cat and dreams of warmer climates.

Books by Molly O’Keefe

HARLEQUIN DUETS

62—TOO MANY COOKS

95—COOKING UP TROUBLE

KISS THE COOK

For Rye and McKenzie who have made our family a lot more fun!

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

1

“I’M GOING TO NEED those meeting notes by tomorrow,” Anna Simmons called over her shoulder to her assistant as they made their way out of the empty boardroom.

Anna could hear Jennifer behind her, shuffling papers and…yep, cursing under her breath. Jen had a mind like a tack, organizational skills not to be believed and a mouth, at times, like a trucker. Anna kind of liked that about her.

“We’ll want to send champagne to Aurora and…” Anna considered for a split second, the sound of her heels hitting the tiles echoing through the offices of Arsenal Advertising. Jen’s did the same right behind her. “Some daisies.” She turned left in the Creative department and headed toward the right corner of the Arsenal offices. Her corner office. Anna’s lip curled for a second. “You getting this, Jen?”

“Yes,” Jennifer answered, apparently not at all trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. Perhaps it was time for Anna to have a little talk with Jen about this attitude she was developing.

Anna cruised past Jennifer’s desk and threw open the door to her office. She continued across the hardwood floor toward her desk. “Creative’s going to need to be briefed and…” Anna paused. Jen’s footsteps were no longer behind her. And the grumble had stopped. Anna turned and Jen was not there. Anna walked back to the doorway.

Jennifer was sprawled out at her desk. Head back, her long blond hair falling down the back of her chair, her arms were out, her eyes shut, she looked like she was asleep or dead.

Her very chic and painful-looking stacked heels were kicked out into the hallway.

“Jen?” Anna asked, surprised. She had never seen the classy and together Jennifer look so…undone.

“Anna?” Jen mumbled, her eyes still shut, her lips barely moving. “Have you noticed that we are the only people here?”

“It does seem quiet.” Anna looked into the darkened offices with empty chairs and blank computer screens. “Where did everyone go?” she asked. There was still so much work to do. The meeting had only ended a few hours ago.

“It’s seven o’clock on a Wednesday night, Anna….”

“You’re right, we should order some dinner.” Anna leaned against the doorframe. It was so easy to forget, in the heat of the deal, to eat. And she suddenly realized she was starving.

“No, Anna.” Jen’s eyes opened, her head came up off the back of her chair. “I’m leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Yes, as in going home.” Jen pulled her body upright. “As in bed. And sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.” She opened a big drawer in her desk and pulled out her purse.

“But, Jen, there’s still so much work to do. We have—”

“I spent the night here, Anna.” Jen’s brown eyes snapped and Anna took a step back. “I was here all last week until midnight.”

Anna was well aware of the schedule they had been keeping. She rubbed her neck which she was beginning to think had permanent damage from sleeping on the couch in her office.

“You can fire me, Anna, but I am going home.”

“Fire you?” Anna asked, shocked. “Jen, I’d never fire you.” Jennifer and her hard work and fanatic attention to detail had been a huge part of the success they had achieved in the boardroom today, finalizing a deal that had been months in the making.

“I wish you would,” Jennifer mumbled as she went about shutting down her computer. “Swear to God, I’d finally get some sleep.”

Anna quickly realized she had worked the very hardworking Jen too hard. “Go home. Take the rest of the week off.”

Jen suddenly looked at Anna as though she had grown two heads. “Really, Jen. You did an amazing job today. I could not have done this without you.” Jen’s mouth fell open and Anna was embarrassed. Was she such a bad boss that a little recognition was shocking?

Jennifer sat back in her seat, her brown eyes looked tired but still sharp. “It’s about time you noticed that,” she said. “You can fire me—”

“Jen, I am not going to fire you.”

“But, I have got to say, you have the worst case of tunnel vision I have ever seen.”

Anna smiled—nothing wrong with a little tunnel vision. “Well, it certainly paid off today didn’t it?”

Jen grinned back, albeit a little weakly and Anna felt a serious tug of appreciation for her. “Let’s go get some drinks,” she said, surprising herself. “Celebration drinks.” They could have those Cosmopolitans everyone loved. Anna would bet Jen loved Cosmopolitans. The two of them had never done that, gone to happy hour together after work. Well, Anna had never done that, perhaps Jennifer did.

“Drinks?” Jen asked.

“Sure.” Anna nodded her head definitively. Though as soon as the words had come out of her mouth she began thinking of the amount of work she needed to do. But if Jen wanted drinks; drinks it would be.

“You…ah…you and me?” Anna read horror all over the girl’s face and remembered why she never went to happy hour. Anna wasn’t the most popular person around Arsenal. “Uh…”

“Never mind.” Anna saved Jennifer the trouble of coming up with some lie to avoid socializing with her. “Go home and I’ll see you Monday.”

“You should go home, Anna,” Jennifer said softly.

Anna nodded, having no intention of doing that, and shut her office door behind her. She leaned back against it. She wasn’t bothered by Jennifer not wanting to go to a bar with her, but Anna deserved some drinks.

After what happened in that boardroom I deserve a parade, she thought.

She closed her eyes and for a moment just felt blank. Empty. And very, very tired. But then, from deep in the pit of her gut there was something cheering. She pushed away her mental to-do list and let herself savor the delicious sensation of victory.

“Anna Simmons,” she murmured through her smile. “Top of the world.”

Part of her wanted to dance around and cheer. She wanted to kick off her heels and leap around on the dark leather furniture. She had done it. She had pulled it together. Again. Goddess Sportswear had just agreed to pay Arsenal Advertising a fortune for the fall campaign.

But she was exhausted. Dancing and cheering would have to wait until she had had six straight hours of sleep. She did, however, manage a little jump and a little wiggle on her way over to her mahogany desk. Humming ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” under her breath she sat down at her desk. The chair rolled around a little on the hardwood floor and she turned it into a spin as she opened the bottom drawer and took out the family size bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups she kept stashed there for just these sorts of occasions.

She swivelled in her chair and faced her floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over San Francisco Bay. She kicked off her shoes and put her feet up on the printer table to survey her kingdom. Lights were beginning to illuminate the fading day. The houses on the hills of Sausalito were glowing with their pastel colors like Easter eggs and the Golden Gate Bridge was bloody red in the last bright rays of the sun.

A chuckle of contentment bubbled up from her chest.

Anna liked the birds the best. They looked like hundreds of bright white handkerchiefs blowing in the breeze. She watched them, ate her chocolate and knew that nothing could ruin her tremendous good mood.

There was a knock on her door and she turned toward it as Camilla Lockhart, her boss, mentor and friend, poked her head in.

“Camilla,” Anna said expansively. “Come in.” Thrilled that Camilla had stopped by to congratulate her, she held out her bag of chocolate. “Can I interest you in a peanut butter cup? In celebration?” The idea of drinks, those Cosmopolitans came back to her. “Wait!” She stood up. “Let’s go get a drink. It’s Wednesday but, Lord knows, we deserve it.”

“You sure do,” Camilla smiled broadly and walked farther into Anna’s office. She put her briefcase down on the couch. “But I came in for a chat.” Camilla sat down in one of the deep green wing chairs facing Anna’s desk and crossed her long thin legs at the knee. Anna looked at her and marveled at how absolutely gorgeous Camilla was. She had long silver hair and eyes as sharp and blue as the sky outside the window. Camilla was in her sixties and she looked like a woman twenty years younger.

“All right.” Anna sat back down and smoothed the wrinkled hem of her best black suit. Anna had spent the past five hours in the boardroom in heavy negotiations and she looked like she had crawled out of a trench. Camilla had been in and out of the room—coming in like some kind of fairy godmother when Anna had needed her most—and she looked as fresh and unscathed as she had first thing this morning. She was a marvel that woman.

Anna touched her black hair, relieved it was still pulled back in the bun she had fashioned twelve hours earlier. Of course, considering the serious engineering system of bobby pins and hair spray, having the bun actually fall out would take an act of God.

Anna’s good mood was far too strong to be daunted by something like Camilla’s unwrinkled suit. She dug back into her candy. “Let’s chat about how unbelievably well today went.”

Let’s chat about how I kicked major ass! She thought but didn’t say.

Camilla tilted her head, “I have to hand it to you, you were right about Goddess.”

“Goddess just needed to be refocused,” Anna said about the women’s sportswear line. It had taken a few years to get Aurora Milan and her company to this place, but the effort was worth it. Goddess was about to explode all over the nation, Anna was sure of it. It wasn’t the biggest deal in Arsenal history, but Anna was sure that it was the most important. “It’s a great product with a great philosophy. It just needed some help getting out there.”

“And that’s where you come in.” Camilla smiled.

Anna shook her head. “That’s where Arsenal comes in.”

“You did a great job,” Camilla said, her eyes and smile warm. “I was very proud of you.”

Anna nodded, uncomfortable, and tried not to show how outrageously pleased she was by Camilla’s praise. There was this bubble in her chest, like a laugh trapped in her rib cage. “Well,” she said, nodding, “I just did exactly what you taught me.”

Camilla chuckled wryly, “Honey, in my best days I couldn’t have pulled off that deal—”

“Not true,” Anna interrupted, shaking her head. She knew all of Camilla’s victories. Sitting at the woman’s right hand in that boardroom all these years had been the best education she could have wished for. “Norway Vodka,” she said the name of one of their biggest clients who, long ago, had paid an unprecedented amount for Arsenal’s advertising magic. Camilla had taken an almost unknown product and made it the most exclusive and high-end vodka in the world.

“Well.” Camilla smiled and flicked imaginary lint off the hem of her red power suit. “That was a good one.”

“See, Camilla—” Anna sat back and put her arms out expansively “—I just learned from the master. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Jennifer worked her tail off for the last week.”

“Yes, she did.” Camilla brushed back a lock of silver hair and took a breath. “But, Anna, no one else has spent the past two weeks sleeping on that couch.” Camilla tilted her head toward the couch along the wall of Anna’s office.

“Tell me about it,” Anna said with a laugh. “It might be the most uncomfortable couch on the planet.”

Camilla looked at Anna for a long second and Anna suddenly felt something else in the air. This was a time for laughs and pats on the back. Camilla didn’t look much like laughing.

“What’s wrong?” Anna put down the bag of candy and leaned on her desk.

“Well, Anna, I was going to wait and make an announcement in a few weeks, but I don’t think things can wait that long.” Camilla stood and walked over to the windows. She was a thin red line against the backdrop of the city. And Anna had the strange and terrible feeling that change was in the air. She wasn’t a big fan of change.

“Oh, my God.” Anna stood up. As a rule she jumped to the worst conclusions. It always seemed to get to the heart of the matter. There was very little beating around the bush in Anna’s life. “You’re sick.”

“No,” Camilla said quickly with a reassuring smile. “I am healthy, my family is healthy…”

“But?”

“I am retiring after the New Year.”

Anna collapsed back hard into her chair. She had no idea what to say. Arsenal was Camilla’s company, built out of a spare room in her house twenty-five years ago. Camilla had created, built and nurtured one of the biggest advertising agencies in the city. Even more, Anna felt like Camilla had created, built and nurtured her right along with the company. Anna had started working for Camilla ten years ago as a receptionist and now, she was sealing the deals that would ensure the future of the company. But Camilla was leaving. It was all just too much to take in.

“Anna,” she said firmly and Anna’s eyes darted back to her face. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“I know,” she tried to relax. “It’s just a surprise. But…why are you leaving? You’re at the top of your game.”

“No, sweetheart, you are at the top of your game. I’m just tired.” Camilla chuckled but Anna couldn’t find anything funny in this situation.

“What…?” Anna couldn’t help feeling lost. She looked down at her fingernails and wanted nothing more than to bite them. “What about Arsenal?”

Camilla shrugged. She looked back out the window, her face in profile against the fading blue California sky, and tried to hide a smile. “I think you’ll take good care of it.”

“Me?” Anna asked, floored.

“You.” Camilla turned to face her and Anna could feel the explosions going off in her head. Fireworks and cannons.

Holy shit! Anna Simmons, president of Arsenal Advertising. It was a dream come magically true.

Anna leaped up, grabbed Camilla around the waist and squeezed, lifting her off the ground in her crazed enthusiasm. “This…oh, my God…I…” She was stuttering and laughing and at some point she felt herself crying. It was all just too much.

The day. Goddess. And now this, president of Arsenal. Camilla trusted her enough, believed in her enough to give this to her. Anna could hardly make sense of it all.

“Drinks, definitely drinks!” Anna said, laughing. “Cosmopolitans for everyone!”

“I’m glad you’re so excited, but there’s something we need to talk about first.” Camilla put her cool hands on Anna’s flushed face and made her look at her. Really look at her.

“Okay,” Anna said carefully, the crazy joy subsiding in her chest. Something else was sneaking in, something that felt like dread. Camilla looked worried. Nervous and sad.

Uh-oh.

“Please sit down,” Camilla said, gesturing with elegance and poise to the chair Anna had erupted from just minutes ago. Anna sat and, without thinking, grabbed the bag of chocolate while Camilla perched on the corner of the large mahogany desk.

“What’s going on, Camilla?” Anna asked. “My heart can’t take all this in one day.”

“I am very excited about leaving you Arsenal. I believe in you and I trust you….”

The pause. The dreaded pause. Anna felt panic like a wave in her throat. Why is she pausing there, she believes in me. Trusts me. No pauses!

“But…”

“No, Camilla no buts…”

“But,” Camilla talked over her. “I can’t in good conscience allow you to take over the company the way you are right now.”

Anna jerked, baffled. “What does that mean? The way I am right now?”

“It means you are killing yourself for this company and, at the rate you are going, if I give you Arsenal, you will be dead before you are forty.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Anna said. The hard work, the weeks on the couch, the stress of the past five hours and now this…Anna felt a headache blooming behind her eyes. She pinched her nose.

“I know you don’t.” Camilla leaned forward. “For months I have been trying to get you to take a break. A vacation…”

“I will, I know,” Anna sighed, relieved. This was just about a vacation. “Tomorrow. I promise. I’ll book a cruise. I’ll book two cruises. I just had to get this job…”

“Sweetheart, there is always a job. That’s the nature of this business.”

“Right, so…?”

“So, I’ve taken this upon myself.”

“You’ve booked me on a cruise?” Anna asked, confused.

“No, but that’s not a bad idea.” Camilla seemed to consider it for a split second and then she pushed the silver hair off her face and took a bracing breath. “Until I retire in six months, you are, in essence, fired.”

Anna blinked. Her mouth opened, words rushed through her brain but died in her throat. She shut her mouth. Opened it again. “Wh-what? What do you mean fired?”

“I mean you will not be working for six months. It’s a forced, but paid, sabbatical.”

The explosions from earlier came back. Canons in her head. And not the good kind. “Are you joking?” She started laughing incredulously. “Because I have to say, if you are, good one. Really. You had me going.” She shook her finger at Camilla.

“I am not joking.”

“Then I must have fallen asleep on the couch again, because there is no way—” disbelief had her on her feet “—no way the woman who just cemented the future of this company for you is getting fired!”

“Anna, sit down,” Camilla urged calmly.

Anna sat. “Tell me this isn’t real, Camilla. Please.”

Camilla’s unlined patrician face fell and she stood up. “It’s very, very real and it’s for your own good.”

She was elegant and calm and as serene as she was in every situation. It was the end of Anna’s world and Camilla might have been ordering lunch.

Anna’s eye started to tick uncontrollably.

“Listen to me,” Camilla said. “You have six months. A sabbatical.”

“I don’t want a sabbatical,” Anna spat.

“Well, that’s too bad, sweetheart, because you need one.”

“I don’t need one!”

Camilla’s lips pursed for a second. “Anna,” she said carefully. “Yesterday you threatened to shove chopsticks up Andrew’s nose.”

Well, Anna slouched a little bit in her chair. She had been working hard, she had been stressed out and Andrew, the little rat, had thrown out her leftovers. Perhaps holding the chopstick to his throat that way might have been a little much, but…

“Okay, that was too much,” Anna admitted. “But that hardly translates into me needing six months off. Camilla, this is crazy.”

“It’s six months off. You come back and Arsenal is all yours. It’s your company. President, just like we agreed.”

“What if I say no?” Anna asked, her brows furrowed and the pain behind her eye nearly blinding. This was a nightmare. This day should have been a celebration and now it was hell.

“Then you’re fired for real,” Camilla told her in dead seriousness and Anna felt her heart stop for a moment. “You need these six months to get a life.”

“I have a life!” Anna protested, hotly.

“Really?” Camilla asked and the pity in her eyes sent Anna to her feet. The chair spun out behind her and hit the glass of the window.

“Yes, really, this company is my life.” Anna slammed the bag of candy on her desk. “I have devoted everything to Arsenal, every single thing….”

“That’s the problem, sweetheart,” Camilla said, standing to face Anna.

“How can that be a problem?” Anna was beginning to shout and she didn’t care at all, which if she had been rational, would have alarmed her. “In this business, my kind of devotion is usually rewarded.”

“Sit down, Anna,” Camilla said in her persuasive tone usually reserved for tough clients.

“No!” Anna refused. “I won’t sit down, Camilla. Not while you stab me in the back.” Anna began to pace the small distance between the windows and Camilla. “Does this have anything to do with my job performance?”

“No,” Camilla sighed and settled back down on Anna’s desk. “You do an excellent job.”

“Excellent, not just good. Not just fair, but an excellent job.” Anna’s finger jabbed the air right in front of Camilla’s nose. It wasn’t the job that drove Anna. Surely, Camilla could see that it was the excellence she was after. It was the details. It was perfection.

How does a perfectionist get fired?

“Yes.”

“So excellent in fact…”

“Anna.” Camilla crossed her arms over her chest, indicating her temper was wearing thin. “How many times have I come into the office in the morning and found out you spent the night on your office couch?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Anna shrieked, unable to see the correlation.

“How many?” Camilla asked her voice cutting the air.

“A few,” Anna answered throwing up her hands.

“Three hundred and sixty-two times.”

“So?”

“What was the last play you saw? The last concert or movie?” Camilla continued.

“I just saw the new Brad Pitt movie!” Anna said, trying not to sound to triumphant.

“Brad Pitt hasn’t been in a movie in two years,” Camilla pointed out.

“Brad Pitt shouldn’t have any kind of bearing on my job,” Anna cried then shook her head. “Do you see how nuts all of this is? I must have fallen asleep at my desk, because this can not be real.”

“How many dates have you been on in the last two years?” Camilla asked relentlessly.

“A few,” Anna answered trying not to appear uncomfortable. That was a bit personal. And frankly, her love life was seriously…well, non-existent probably best covered it. But that hardly had anything to do with her job.

“Three. Three blind dates that I set you up on. Brent, Charles and Luke. Three nice, handsome and successful men that you completely rejected out of hand.”

“Well, I didn’t totally reject that Luke guy,” Anna mumbled, feeling a blush creep up her throat.

“Anna, I am not talking about getting drunk and mauling some guy in the back of a cab.”

“How’d you…?” she asked, feeling like a sixteen-year-old caught by her mother.

“Marie told me.” Of course. Anna’s sister who couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.

“I took a date to Jeanie and John’s wedding,” Anna protested, talking about a coworker’s wedding earlier in the year.

“You took your next-door neighbor who is gay!”

“I don’t understand…”

“Besides Jim, have you ever had a man in your life for longer than one dinner?”

Anna’s mouth fell open. Jim Bellows. Camilla was really reaching to be bringing up Jim. Anna had dated Jim when she first started working at Arsenal as a receptionist. They broke up when Anna started getting promoted. “Is this about a boyfriend? Because I think Jim proved that this job isn’t all that conducive to relationships.”

“The way you do the job isn’t conducive to relationships.” Anna opened her mouth to defend herself, but Camilla kept talking. “When was the last time you did something, anything that was fun?”

“I do fun things all the time,” Anna answered, even as the words came out of her mouth she knew she was lying and that it would be only one more nail in the coffin Camilla was making for her. The coffin she was going to have to spend six months in.

“Anna.” Camilla’s tone softened and Anna’s backbone stiffened in response.

“Fine, have it your way. I quit.” She jabbed her finger at Camilla. “I don’t want to have anything to do with an organization that treats its hardest workers like this.”

Part of Anna had believed Camilla would quail under this threat. She had a half-baked notion of Camilla taking it all back and offering her the president position immediately.

But Camilla’s eyebrow arched in the silence and Anna felt sanity slipping right out of the room.

“I could get a job anywhere,” Anna shouted and Camilla’s other eyebrow arched. “Don’t play with me, Camilla.”

“I know Mernick and Simon would kill to have you….”

“That’s right, Mernick and Simon and a dozen other companies,” Anna shot in.

“Is that what you want?” Camilla asked softly.

“It’s the only choice you’re giving me.” Anna couldn’t believe this conversation was continuing.

“Look, I’m giving you six months. If you want to go to another company, fine. You want to forget about all the work you put in here, go right ahead. Andrew will have every one of your accounts. You can say goodbye to Goddess Sportswear.”

Ouch. Camilla really knew how to kick a girl when she was down, which used to be one of the things Anna kind of admired about her. It wasn’t so pretty being on the receiving end of that honesty, however. Goddess Sportswear was Anna’s baby, her very own. She had cultivated Aurora Milan, a ditzy woman with a good idea, had spun her designs into what was going to be the leading sportswear line for women in the country. In turn, Goddess would cement Arsenal’s future.

Anna hung her head for a moment, overwhelmed by the sudden changes Camilla was making with her life.

“Or you can take six months off and come back and all of this will be yours.” Camilla gestured at the view and the office and kingdom she had built and was ready to lay at Anna’s feet. After six months. “I’m not playing with you.” Camilla took a tentative step forward and Anna held her ground but she knew her expression must have been dark because Camilla stopped a safe distance away. “I’m trying to save you Anna. If you continue to work like this and take over Arsenal, you’ll never have the opportunity to enjoy your life. You’ll work yourself right into the grave with nothing to show for it but a bunch of advertising campaigns for sports bras and vodka.” Camilla braved a step closer and Anna, feeling the walls close in on her, growled low in her throat. “Sweetheart, don’t you want a family?”

Anna felt something sharp twist in her chest and she tried to ignore it. She had been ignoring that twist more and more over the past year and had, in fact, become a pro at pretending that there wasn’t some internal clock ticking away inside her body. She had blocked off the part of her brain that had started counting the years that were flying by. If she noticed that all the women she knew her age were married, some with kids, she quickly rationalized it with her career. Some women chose family and some women chose career. Anna had made her choice and if sometimes that choice seemed a little lonely, then she only had to look at one of the million billboards or magazine ads for Goddess Sportswear to feel vindicated.

Besides, she was no good at family. She was good at Arsenal.

“You have to trust me,” Camilla was saying. “This is for your own good.”

Anna took a deep breath and turned to face her window and the view of the harbor and mountains behind it. The birds. She knew every single detail by heart. She had been looking at that view for fourteen hours or more a day for almost five years, ever since she’d moved into the office from her cubicle.

It had taken many long years to get from her spot behind the receptionist desk to this view.

Ten years of service to this woman and her company and this is where I end up. Anna shook her head.

Feeling empty and lost, she looked around her office, the familiar bland artwork and the pictures of her sister Marie, some of Camilla’s kids and the one grandchild that she had gotten close to over the years. Those few pictures were really the only things that made her office different from any other office in any other building in any other city.

Looking at her desk, nothing surprised her, nothing was not just as she had left it. She knew what every file contained, what was in each stack of paper set at right angles. Her pens lined up across the top of her desk blotter. Her phone with the egg timer beside it that she used to keep herself on schedule. Because once you got off schedule, there was no going back.

This was her life. Her whole entire life.

“I think I hate you,” Anna told her friend as she unwrapped another piece of chocolate and shoved it into her mouth. “Really, I think I hate you.”

“I expected as much.” Camilla pushed off the desk and reached into the briefcase she brought into Anna’s office before dropping this bomb. She pulled out a stack of papers and looked through them idly.

“How can you so calmly ruin my life and still look like a woman in a makeup ad?” Anna asked, digging into her bag of candy again. “It’s not right, Camilla. In fact, as I think about it, it’s sick. How does this happen?”

“Anna, I am thirty years your senior and for a while I worked as hard as you do right now. But I always had a man standing right behind me, helping me out.” She was, of course, referring to Michael, her husband and the father of their three children. “Being loved and helped and cared for when I needed it has made all the difference in my life.”

So beyond caring, Anna put a finger down her throat and made a gagging sound, then bit into her chocolate.

“Then I got you,” Camilla said and Anna looked up surprised. “I didn’t have to work as hard because you were working hard enough for the both of us.”

“Damn straight,” Anna said with her mouth full.

“As a result, I feel a little responsible for the way your life is going.”

“I like the way my life is going,” Anna shouted and when chocolate flew out of her mouth she didn’t even care.

This is how low a person can sink in the span of an hour, Anna thought wiping the chocolate off the highly polished surface of her desk.

“We’ll see, Anna.” Camilla looked at the thin watch on her wrist. “It’s eight o’clock. You need to pack your things.”

Anna heaved a big sigh. She put the candy back down, beginning to feel a little bit sick and pulled out her briefcase. When she started to put her files into her bag, Camilla stopped her.

“No work,” she said.

“Who’s going to take care of Goddess?”

“Andrew,” Camilla said.

Anna saw red. “You’re giving Goddess to Andrew?”

“I’ll be advising, it’s going to be fine.”

“What about Bluetech and Norway Vodka and Frederick’s?” Anna asked after her other major clients.

“Andrew and I can handle it,” Camilla nodded her head once. “Keep packing.”

Anna looked at Camilla for a moment in real disbelief and then didn’t even try to hide it when she started muttering things about Camilla under her breath.

“My mother has nothing to do with this,” Camilla said, but she was smiling. Anna collected her personal digital assistant, cell phone and pager to put in her bag, but again Camilla stopped her.

“You won’t need those,” she said.

“What am I allowed to take?” Anna asked, throwing her hands up again.

“Well, you can take those oranges you’ve got in your desk and that candy. It will probably be the only food you have in your house.”

“Fine. Great. You know, as I think about this, this is a great idea. Six months away from your manipulations will serve me a world of good.” Anna went to the small closet in her office. She opened the door and pulled out the suits hanging there. There were several, for those odd times that she slept on the couch.

“I’m sure it will.” Camilla was still smiling and Anna snarled as she shoved her tailored suits, all black and expensive, into her very large briefcase. “But you’ll be seeing me,” Camilla said.

“Probably not,” Anna answered over her shoulder as she went back to the closet for the toiletry bag she kept there. “I’ll probably be too busy getting married and having children and learning how to knit to hang out with you,” she growled. She grabbed the gym bag she used for her lunch-hour workouts, her blow-dryer, her contacts and spare glasses and the alarm clock.

“Well, actually.” Camilla smiled and looked at the papers in her hand. “I realized that you wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to actually get a life so I signed you up for some of the classes I take.” Camilla flipped the papers. “And I made a list…”

“A list?” This was crazy. Camilla was accusing her of not having a life.

“A short one, just a few things I think you should do….”

“Maybe you need a sabbatical,” Anna muttered.

“Starting,” Camilla talked over Anna, “with the picnic we have on Monday for Memorial Day and Meg’s birthday.” Camilla referred to her oldest granddaughter; this was an event Anna usually missed for work.

Apparently not this year.

“You are worse than my mother,” Anna said and didn’t feel at all bad about what they both knew was a serious insult considering Anna’s mother. But Camilla didn’t even flinch. “At least she never kicked me out.”

Anna shoved her extra blanket and the pillow into her gym bag and threw both bags over her shoulders. But they were so heavy that they fell a little bit and she ended up with them across her elbows, cutting off circulation to her hands. Her slippers fell out and she picked them up and carried them in her hand.

“This doesn’t prove anything,” she hissed when she saw Camilla laughing at all the stuff she kept at the office. But Camilla just smiled that enigmatic, could-be-a-model-for-Revlon smile. Anna grabbed the lists out of Camilla’s hand and shoved them in the feet of her slippers.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Camilla called as Anna breezed out of the office.

Anna ignored her and held her head up high as she walked out of the place she had considered home for the past ten years of her life.

2

ANNA STABBED another piece of bread into one of the dips in front of her. She noticed, but certainly didn’t care, that the roasted-red-pepper-whatever fell in huge globs onto the counter and onto her Donna Karan suit.

She shrugged and ate the bread in one bite. It was a few hours later and she still felt as though she was Chicken Little and the joke really was on her.

“Sis.” Anna’s sister Marie leaned against her oven and crossed her arms over her chest, ten bracelets arranged themselves on her wrists. “Take a breath. You’re losing it. You didn’t even taste those dips,” Marie pointed out.

“Well, I’m too busy coming to grips with the total destruction of my life to notice hummus,” Anna snapped. “I get to lose it. I am completely within my rights to lose it right now.”

Marie blew out a breath and hung her head for a moment before crossing the kitchen to yank the piece of bread out of Anna’s hand. “You have been here for an hour, you’ve eaten every carbohydrate I’ve got in my house. You’ve had half a bottle of wine and I still don’t understand what’s wrong.”

Marie’s long black curly hair fell over her shoulder, escaping from the scarf she was using to tie it back.

She looks like a gypsy, Anna thought a little glumly, her own self-esteem somewhere below sea level. She looks like a gypsy and I look like… Anna looked down at her probably ruined suit that was so terribly sensible and felt like her sister’s shadow. Which, frankly, was nothing new. She yanked the piece of pita out of her sister’s hand and ate it. Marie, who had spent most of the evening trying to be calm and sympathetic, finally cracked and laughed at Anna.

Get a grip, Anna told herself and mentally tried to rally.

“Okay, okay,” Anna said. She swallowed and dusted off her hands. “I’m all right.”

“There you go.” Marie nodded her head and leaned against the other side of the counter where Anna was seated. They were in Marie’s new apartment, her freshly painted orange kitchen. Not a color Anna would have picked, but somehow an orange kitchen totally suited Marie.

Marie picked up her glass of red wine and took a sip. “Now, let’s talk about this rationally,” Marie said. Anna chuckled, knowing those words had never come out of her sister’s mouth. Rational and Marie were like oil and water.

“What have we got here, really?” Marie asked. She began cleaning up the mess of breadcrumbs and dip splatter that Anna had made in her whirlwind of stress eating.

“I’ve been fired for six months.”

“Well, I imagine it’s all in how you look at it. You think fired. I think…six months vacation.” Marie shrugged. “Sounds like a dream to me.”

“Imagine telling me to get a life and then handing me a list…I mean, what is she thinking?” Anna asked, not really listening to her sister. She was not dealing with this well, she knew that. She would feel calm for a second, then there would be an explosion in the back of her head and all she could think about was not going in to work tomorrow and how dumb it all was. How ridiculous. What was she supposed to do?

“Camilla is just looking after you like she always has.” Marie walked back over to the sink and dumped the crumbs.

Anna laughed a dry little bark. “Couldn’t she just slip me a twenty or…?”

“She’s still doing that?” Marie asked, turning from the sink surprised. “She never slips me twenties anymore.” When Anna had gotten a job at Arsenal at age eighteen, Marie had been sixteen. And when Camilla started taking Anna under her fine and gracious wing, Marie found a place there, too. Now both women looked at Camilla as someone much more than a boss or a friend. She was family of sorts, like a favorite aunt and it made the pain of this six-month betrayal even worse.

“No, no twenties, but anything would be better than this,” Anna said glumly. She fiddled with the breadbasket and because it was empty, she used her finger to scoop up more of the hummous she wasn’t actually tasting and put it in her mouth.

“You work too much,” Marie said, snatching the basket and dips away from her. “And frankly, it’s not like you are really fired. You are being slightly overdramatic here and, as a woman with a fine appreciation for dramatic, I can tell you there is no need.”

“Yeah, but do you know what can happen in six months?” Anna asked her sister. “With Andrew in charge of Goddess, I may not have a company to run when this little vacation is over.”

“Come on, Camilla is going to be there,” Marie said skeptically.

“Sure, but she hasn’t been a part of the day-to-day life of Arsenal in years.”

“Anna,” Marie interrupted sharply. “Do not sell that woman short.”

Anna blew out a big breath and rolled her eyes. Camilla was hardly the one who needed to be defended here. Anna was the injured party, why couldn’t her sister see that?

Marie poured more wine in her glass. “What’s really got you so upset?” Marie asked quietly.

“You mean it’s not enough that life as I know it is over?” Anna asked and took a sip of her wine. Marie hummed and leaned on the counter. “It’s not enough that the fall line for my pet project is going to be run by a spineless imbecile?” Anna was working herself up; she could feel her heart rate doubling. “How about I really have no idea what she wants me to do? What am I supposed to do for six months?”

“How about sleep?” Marie suggested.

“I sleep,” Anna protested, but Marie obviously didn’t believe her. “Okay, so I sleep for a week, then what. Get a life? I don’t have any idea what she means.”

“That—” Marie lifted her glass and looked over the edge at Anna “—is the saddest thing I have ever heard.” Marie drank and the buzzer on the stove went off. She turned around to deal with what had become a very elaborate midnight snack.

Anna sat in her barstool and felt lost. She felt as though she was eighteen years old and her mother was leaving all over again. What was with the older women in her life abandoning her like this? Just when she felt like she was accomplishing things, someone she loved and trusted ripped the world out from under her feet. Get a life? It made no sense.

“So,” Marie was saying as she pulled a casserole dish out of the oven. The air filled with the smells of oregano, basil and buttery pastry crust. Despite having eaten everything within arm’s reach, Anna was starving. “You do what she needs you to do. You read some books, take naps, help your sister renovate.” Marie looked merrily out of the corner of her eye at Anna.

“You can’t take my lemons for your lemonade,” Anna laughed ruefully, but the gorgeous tart Marie was putting on the counter to cool distracted her. “What is that?”

“Tomato and basil tart,” Marie said and pulled out some dishes. “I am thinking of adding it to the menu at Marie’s.”

Tired and sad and lost and hungry, Anna looked at her sister buzzing around her kitchen and felt a sudden deep appreciation for her. Marie had finally moved back to San Fransico a few months ago and, after working in others’ kitchens for most of the past eight years, she had figured out, as Anna knew she always would, that she was not a good employee. She put down her savings on a little restaurant in a funky new area of town and was planning on taking the San Francisco dining world by storm. And she would, Anna was sure of it. Marie took everything by storm.

Not like Anna, she thought bitterly. Anna gets fired.

With a groan she put her head on the counter. She had not set out in this world to be an advertising executive. But she was one. A damn good one. And the only place in the world that she wanted to be was Arsenal.

Her childhood had been filled with a hundred moves. A thousand little changes over that span of years that made Anna feel as though her whole life was built on quicksand. The only concrete thing, the only real thing besides her sister was Arsenal. Ten years of work and steadfast devotion to the woman who gave her a chance to build her life and the odd twenty dollar bill when things got tight.

She had just gotten to a place with Goddess that would ensure Arsenal would always be in her life. It was all she wanted, something real to keep her going.

“Oh, come on,” Marie laughed. “You know, I still remember the day when you told Mom you weren’t going to move away with her again.” Marie was leaning against the counter again. Anna sighed heavily hoping to push away the pain that always accompanied that particular memory.

“She had that crappy car, that…” Marie paused, trying to remember.

“Hatchback,” Anna supplied, her voice muffled as her head was still on the counter.

“She had gotten fired again, remember? And we were going to go south…some relative that we hadn’t already hit up….”

“Her aunt in Arizona,” Anna said.

The memory was there, no point in trying to push it away. Anna, Marie and their mother, Belinda had lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment off Haight-Ashbury—an apartment that smelled constantly of fried chicken and wet dogs. But they had stayed in that place for a year. Anna finished her whole senior year there. She made friends. Sort of. She fell in love with California. With staying put. When Belinda had come home and said they were moving again, Anna felt sick. And she felt very mad. Her mother was so lazy, she would rather leave than do what it took to keep a job and stay. There was always a free lunch someplace else.

“It’s the last time,” Belinda had told them and Anna knew her mother believed it. Belinda if nothing else had faith and that faith had kept them going for years. Through small towns and big cities, East Coast and West Coast. Endless “uncles” and “friends.” Endless crappy one-bedroom apartments.

Belinda fed them faith and, hungry for anything, Marie and Anna ate it.

But that day when Anna and Marie walked out of the dumpy apartment into the cool and sweet-smelling California air, Anna took one look at her mother who was so willing to destroy the fragile roots she had put down, and Anna set down her bag.

She had no more room in her stomach for faith.

“I’m eighteen and I’m staying,” she had said.

Anna lifted her head from Marie’s counter and found her sister smiling at her. “I thought you were nuts then,” Marie told her quietly.

“Well, you got in the car with her,” Anna laughed, though the memory felt like rocks in her stomach.

“But I came back a month later,” Marie whispered.

Anna’s smile was wide and real and she reached out to pat Marie’s head. “The best day ever was when I opened my door and there you were sitting on your old suitcase.”

“What did I say?” Marie asked, because this was an old game for them. As two women against the world, they traced their connections.

“Arizona is hot,” Anna repeated. They both smiled.

“You are the woman who found us places to live when we had no money.” Marie reached out and twined her fingers with Anna’s. “You got me through high school and yourself through college. You kept us in oranges and peanut butter cups. There’s nothing more you have to prove, Anna. Take a break. So, you take some yoga classes, you meet Camilla for tea. Big deal. This has nothing to do with your worth as a person. This is about you relaxing. You can do anything you set your mind to. This is a cakewalk to someone like you.”

Set your mind to it.

She sighed heavily as she understood Marie was right. She had certainly survived worse things than getting a life. She would just have to put her mind to it. The heart was a messy organ, tears and hummous everywhere. Anna’s brain, however, was well used to cleaning up the mess.

Put your mind to it. Exactly.

“What I need,” Anna said, slowly realizing that this wasn’t a complete disaster. It certainly wasn’t going to be as hard as creating Goddess Sportswear out of a crazy woman’s daydreams. It wasn’t going to be as hard as paying her sister’s way through culinary school. It wasn’t going to be as hard as watching her mother drive away for the last time. “Is a plan,” she said, dusting crumbs off her hands.

She thought hard for a few moments trying to create a todo list. She tried to give herself a clear objective. A task. But there was nothing there. Just day after day of tea and yoga.

“It’s going to be okay, Anna, you’ll see.” Marie slid a plate filled with tart and salad in front of her.

Anna shrugged and dug in. She felt better. Not great, but better. Part of her still believed she was very small in this world and the sky was, in fact, falling.

ON THE FIRST DAY of unemployment Anna was staring up at the ceiling over her bed at 5:30 a.m. There were thirty-two cracks in her ceiling that she had never noticed before and if she stared at them long enough—which she had been doing since five o’clock—the cracks started moving, making shapes, spelling words.

Right now the cracks were spelling “get a life.” It was better than the “loser” she’d read there at 3:00 a.m.

She flopped over onto her stomach and closed her eyes trying hard to fall back to sleep.

You’re unemployed, she thought. You can sleep all day.

After a few moments of trying to call up sheep to count, Anna gave up and flopped back over on her back, considering as she had been since yesterday evening, what exactly “getting a life” entailed.

She still lived in the first apartment she’d moved into after she could afford to get her and Marie out of that smelly one-bedroom up on Haight. Marie had just graduated and Anna had gotten a promotion from receptionist to Camilla’s assistant. Marie, instead of sticking around, had decided to go to Texas. Or was it Minnesota? Anna wondered.

Well, whichever it was, Anna was still rattling around in an ancient, one-story, two-bedroom condo close to University of California at Berkley because she’d had no time to even look for a new place. But the apartment suited her. She was very rarely here anyway.

Maybe it’s time to move on, Anna thought. Maybe I should buy a house. The soft pastel houses of Sausalito lit up her brain for a moment, but Anna quickly got rid of that idea. A house meant commitment and upkeep and responsibility. Maybe she’d think about it when this sabbatical was over, but right now she simply wasn’t ready to make those kind of long-term changes.

No matter what Camilla wanted.

Cosmetic changes, that’s what she was looking for. She liked her life as it was and she would jump through Camilla’s hoops long enough to get back to that life, while giving the appearance of change without really changing. Smoke and mirrors. Anna smiled just thinking about it.

Looking around, she realized she didn’t have one single thing on the wall. Not a poster or a picture, not even a bulletin board. Nothing. She should get some home decor. Camilla had a modern art collection with some kind of weird chrome sculpture in her living room. Camilla had, at one time, tried to get Anna to care about the crap she had up on her walls but Anna had been occupied with Goddess Sportswear’s quarterly numbers and, if she remembered correctly, she couldn’t be bothered.

Anna grinned and decided she would take some time, which she had plenty of, and buy some crap that Camilla might like and put it on her walls.

“Step one,” she told her ceiling. “Get crap.”

See how easy this was going to be?

Camilla had long been telling Anna about the inherent relaxing and mind-expanding properties of “having a hobby.” For Camilla a hobby was something entirely creepy, like pottery and Tai Chi. Those were two of the things on Camilla’s list.

Anna grimaced at the idea of all those weirdos in the park swaying in the breeze. And pottery? Who was Camilla kidding? A bunch of middle-aged women sitting around playing with mud. Anna would rather take up dentistry. She looked up at the ceiling. The hobby question would require more thought.

Anna let out a big sigh and reluctantly turned her mind to what she was sure was Camilla’s big hang-up.

Don’t you want a family?

A boyfriend. In Camilla’s eyes Anna needed nothing more than a boyfriend to marry her and give her babies. Camilla had said so only about four million times in the years Anna had been at Arsenal.

“If I get a boyfriend—” Anna jabbed her finger at the cracks in the ceiling “—it’s game over. I win.”

A boyfriend. Anna didn’t particularly want one. She certainly wouldn’t mind some of the naked benefits that came with having a boyfriend. She wouldn’t really even mind having someone to drink Sunday morning coffee with. In bed. And then some being naked.

That would all be fine. It was the other stuff Anna didn’t want. She and Jim had had a fun and happy relationship for about a year. A year that she had thought was pretty normal. They went to movies, out to dinner. They laid on a blanket in the park on Sundays. She had felt normal, and while not exactly in love, she did like Jim. But as she got promoted at work, her job demanded more time and things between them fell apart and everything about Jim began to bother her.

He used to clean his ears and then put the Q-Tips in the toilet, but he wouldn’t flush the toilet. It made Anna crazy. The sharing of space. The family obligations. The arguing over the amount of work Anna did. That was the stuff she could do without. That was the stuff she didn’t have time for.

Poor Jim just didn’t understand what Arsenal meant to her. And so Poor Jim had left. And that had been mostly okay with Anna.

Anna looked up at the cracked ceiling and frowned. Poor Jim had been really good with the naked stuff.

But Anna was looking for smoke and mirrors, not a relationship.

“Nope,” she told the cracks in the ceiling. “A boyfriend at this point just isn’t in the cards.”

3

AT 6:30 A.M. ON THE FIRST DAY of her unemployment, Anna was eating one of the oranges from her office while she stood in front of her shut closet door, contemplating what was going to be behind that door. Two months ago her washing machine had broken down and she had stopped doing laundry except for the things that could be dropped off at the dry cleaners. Which was why she was now wearing a dark blue silk suit.

When the machine broke, she had called for someone to repair it, but that required her being home to let the guy in. Which, of course, had been impossible in the middle of the week. And considering her sometimes twenty-hour days, she could forget about hauling herself to the laundry room. So, for two months, instead of washing her underwear, she’d bought more on the internet.

Behind that closet door Anna guessed there might be close to a hundred pairs of dirty underwear. And blue jeans, Anna thought suddenly remembering that she actually owned some of those.

Anna popped another segment of orange in her mouth and considered getting a cleaning woman. After all, Camilla had one. And, Anna realized this morning as she looked around her place for the first time in what was probably months, there were things in her apartment covered in a thick fur of something that might be dust. She remembered that she had contemplated a cleaning woman a few months ago, but she just never had the time to straighten up before someone could come over to clean. Besides, Anna was not a big fan of a stranger being in her house, touching her things. So she had put it off and put it off, until like most things in her private life, she had forgotten all about it.

Perhaps she should invite Camilla over to watch her sweep the dust out from under her bed. Surely, that was life-getting at its best.

Putting the last segment of orange in her mouth she threw open the closet door and stood still in the small avalanche of dirty clothes that rolled out onto her feet.

“I wondered where those went,” Anna said, looking down at a pair of khaki pants that she hadn’t seen in months. “I thought I threw that out.” She picked up an old U.S.C. sweatshirt that was stiff with whatever was growing on it. “Gross,” she muttered and quickly dropped it.

Standing ankle-deep in clothes that had been stagnating in her closet Anna guessed that her first real effort in getting a life would be laundry.

She had a small plastic hamper, which was ridiculous in the face of all of her dirty clothes. Even her gym bag was too small. With a resigned sigh, she pulled her giant roller suitcase off the top shelf, put it on the floor and began shoving clothes into it. Halfway through, Anna started breathing through her mouth.

When all of her clothes were in the suitcase, she felt pretty good and decided there was nothing wrong with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for breakfast. After all she was unemployed. She didn’t need to worry about getting a healthy breakfast.

After laundry, she would have to tackle the grocery store.

In the back of the closet, Anna found some laundry detergent. So, with her suitcase, a mouthful of chocolate and laundry soap that hadn’t seen daylight in two months, Anna set out to find the building’s communal laundry facility. She had been given a tour when she moved in. That was the last time she had seen it.

Before walking out the door she remembered quarters and grabbed the jar she kept on her dresser that was filled to overflowing with change.

Anna’s apartment complex was huge, much bigger than she’d ever realized. There were pathways that seemed to go on for miles. Buildings she never knew existed were nestled in small hills and valleys that were actually quite pleasant, or would be if Anna wasn’t wandering around in high heels dragging a heavy suitcase filled with dirty laundry. Her hand was beginning to cramp around the change jar, so she switched hands with the laundry soap and tried to drag the suitcase in her soap hand. For a few minutes it was okay, then that hand started to cramp. So she rearranged everything again.

Anna walked around lost for fifteen minutes, but finally she found the laundry room. After the bright sunlight, stepping down the small cement steps into the basement facilities was like stepping into a cave. It was cool and smelled like every laundromat she had been in with her mother and Marie over the years. That strange combination of detergent, fabric softener and cigarettes.

Anna looked around and noticed that all of the washing machines were open.

“Excellent,” she mumbled. She unzipped her suitcase and began filling the washing machines with armloads of laundry.

Whoever lived in the apartment directly above or perhaps to the right of the laundry room apparently loved Celine Dion and seemed to have a hearing problem. Anna could hear the singer clearly through the wall and as she dumped soap and clothes into every washing machine she started bobbing her head in time. She wasn’t a huge fan of the woman, but she played on the radio every ten seconds.

And she recognized the song currently playing and sang along—Celine Dion style, adding some chest pounds for the hell of it. And for the moment, Anna didn’t mind at all being unemployed. She was busy, she had some tasks, there was an agenda and it was early. After the day she had had yesterday she would take what she could get.

Walking back to her suitcase and the jar of coins, she saw a sock she had dropped on the floor and she bent to pick it up. She twirled with a little flourish in time with the music and pitched the sock toward the last open washing machine. It went in and because she was in a good mood and the air smelled clean and no one was in the room, she lifted her arms turning her silly dance into a victory dance.

“Excuse me?”

Anna screamed, startled and whirled toward the deep voice behind her. “Holy…” she breathed, her hand at her chest. “You scared me.”

A man was standing on the step leading into the small laundry room. He was backlit by the bright sunshine and in the relative darkness of the room she couldn’t see him clearly. But she saw he was big. Tall and wide. Not fat.

“Sorry,” the man said and though Anna couldn’t see his face, she guessed he was smiling. He sounded like he was smiling. He was a big, wide, smiling man. Anna felt her day improve a little more.

“No problem,” she said as her heart rate went back to normal. “I…well, I thought I was alone.”

“Obviously,” the guy said.

Obviously? Anna thought, her brows snapping together before she reminded herself that he could see her. What the hell does that mean?

“The dancing gave it away,” he said and Anna ridiculously felt herself blush. He should have ignored that. Pretended he didn’t see her dancing around to some teenager’s music. Polite people pretended they didn’t see people do embarrassing things. “The singing, too,” he added with a chuckle.

Wow. He’s laughing at me. A few choice words about spying and the difference between polite and rude rose to her tongue. Then, tall wide man stepped out of the doorway into the laundry room and Anna’s brain shut down.

Oh. My. God. Anna thought. He was easily the most handsome man Anna had ever seen in real life—short blond hair, green eyes that even in the darkness of the laundry room seemed to glow. He looked down at his laundry then up at her and his eyes seemed to touch her and she felt the strange chill of awareness creep up her back and across her chest. He was still smiling and she could see it all there in his green, green eyes.

Her heart, usually so strong and steady, went ka-thunk.

All the rest of him—the bones, the skin, the stubble across his chin and cheeks, even the veins on his arms that every woman on the planet absolutely adored—combined to create some kind of Prince Charming. This man was what her mind would conjure up when she was a little girl and her mother read fairy tales to her and her sister. When the hero came cruising up on a white horse he looked like this guy.

She had forgotten all about that, but as she looked at him it all came back to her and she smiled.

His eyebrows lifted and the look in his eyes changed from merry to uncomfortable. “Hi.”

Oh, God, stop staring, Anna told herself. “Hi.” She smiled stiffly and turned away, feeling dumb.

Great, she thought as she grabbed her jar of change. Prince Charming. Wonderful. Fairy tales, what is wrong with me? The man laughed at me.

“Are you using all of the machines?” he asked as Anna shoved quarters in the washers. Anna shut the lid on the last one, put in a small fortune in coins and glanced around the room at all the washing machines quietly chugging away.

“Looks like it.” She walked over to her suitcase and threw the detergent and the jar of coins into it.

“You didn’t leave one open?” he asked and Anna looked up sharply at his tone. That tone was not a Prince Charming kind of tone and the look in his eyes was not nearly as merry as it had been a moment ago.

“I’ve already started all of them,” she told him. “You could come back in—” she looked at the digital read out on the first machine she had started “—fifteen minutes.”

“Since I’ve never seen you here before I am going to guess that you didn’t see the sign.”

He gestured with his thumb to a sign on the wall that she hadn’t seen.

“Of course I’ve seen the sign,” she huffed.

“Well, then you know.” He obviously didn’t believe her. Smart-ass, Anna thought. “You should leave one machine open.”

“Who the hell are you?” Anna asked. “The laundry room police?”

“No, I’m a guy with no clean clothes,” he snapped back.

“Look, I didn’t think anybody else would be doing their laundry at—” she looked at the clock which was right by the sign she hadn’t read “—8:00 a.m.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize I needed to run my laundry schedule past you.”

Anna and Prince Charming had a little silent showdown. She guessed he expected her to apologize and haul a bunch of wet clothes out of a machine so he could wash some of his big, tall clothes. And perhaps she might have done that, if the man—a complete stranger—hadn’t laughed at her. Really, you don’t laugh at strangers. It doesn’t make you any friends.

His eyes were boring into hers and, tired of him, she raised her eyebrows, well aware that there were few better standoff enders than a properly raised eyebrow.

“Fine,” he said, moving to the door. “But you could be a little more considerate.”

“Jerk,” she muttered under her breath.

“Bitch,” he muttered back and she had heard it enough times that it barely even hurt.

IT TOOK ANNA four hours to do all of her laundry. Well, an hour of laundry and then three hours of folding and trying to figure out where to put all her clothes. She was able to avoid seeing Prince Charming again, which she was pretty happy about. Having cooled down, she realized she had acted childishly and didn’t look forward to having to see him.

Anna was comfortably wearing clean underwear, freshly laundered jeans and a U.S.C. sweatshirt she thought she had thrown out. At the grocery store—the second item on her agenda today—she toyed with the idea of actually buying food to cook. Then she remembered who she was and bought some staples and a lot of microwave dinners.

She was unloading groceries back at her place when the phone rang.

She cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear while she opened the refrigerator door.

“Hello,” she said, picking up the three bags of oranges she bought and dumping them onto one of the shelves.

“Anna?”

Anna stilled, the hair on the back of her neck pricked. She shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it.

“Hello, Camilla,” she said smoothly.

“How is your first day of unemployment?” her boss asked brightly.

“Fabulous,” Anna answered snidely. “I should have quit years ago.”

Camilla only laughed at Anna’s little dig.

“What do you want, Camilla?” Anna grabbed up the bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups she had bought and fired them into a cupboard.

“I’m just making sure that you are going to be at the barbecue on Monday.”

“I can’t,” Anna said quickly. “I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t know that,” Anna snapped.

“Of course I do. Your sabbatical just started yesterday.”

Anna put a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread in the fridge.

“I already told Meg you were going to be there. Marie will be there.”

“That’s a seriously low blow, Camilla.” Anna blindly shoved a quart of milk into the cupboard.

“Well, sometimes low blows are the only ones that get things done,” Camilla chuckled. “It’s a barbecue with people who love you. It’s not the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Fine,” Anna breathed. “I’ll be there.”

“Oh, Anna, I am giving you fair warning so that you don’t freak out at the picnic…”

Just those words sent a chill to Anna’s heart, those were words with trouble all over them.

“I’ve invited someone I would like you—”

“No, you didn’t,” Anna interrupted, knowing that this someone was a single man who Camilla was dying to fix her up with. “You did not do that, Camilla.”

“Well, yes, I did. He’s very nice. A doctor.”

“I don’t care. I don’t care who he is. You have meddled enough with my life.”

“It’s not like I’ve set you up on a blind date. I just invited a nice single doctor—” Camilla put a little emphasis on the doctor part “—to my granddaughter’s birthday party. There is nothing more to it than that.”

But Anna knew better. With Camilla there was always something more. She was a Pandora’s Box of more.

AFTER PUTTING all her food back in the right spots Anna was at a loss. What did unemployed people do all day? She collapsed onto her couch. She was wide-awake so taking a nap would be fruitless. She checked her watch and thought longingly of the meeting she would be attending if she were at Arsenal.

But she wasn’t at Arsenal and thinking about it would just depress her. She dug the remote control out from under her butt and decided she would discover the joys of daytime television.

A half hour later she threw the remote back on the couch and decided there was no joy to daytime television.

People, she thought, shouldn’t sleep with amnesia victims who might be relatives. It’s gross.

Anna stood up and decided to clean her apartment. She had cleaned plenty of apartments. She had picked up after her messy sister and mother, so she was no stranger to the mop and broom.

But this. This was very much beyond her. She quickly realized that what had become of her home was something best left to a professional. The basics, sweeping and mopping she could handle. It was the advanced cleaning, the things involving mildew and harsh chemicals, that were destroying her apartment. She’d already accidentally bleached part of her carpet and the paint was bubbling up from the wall in her kitchen where she had sprayed the wrong kind of cleaner.

She quickly called a cleaning service and scheduled someone to come deal with the disaster. But in the mean time, the bathroom with its sturdy tile proved to be less destructible so she tried to tidy that up.

She was on her hands and knees in the tub working at the brown stuff around the drain when the solution to her problem—no, not the brown stuff problem. The other, bigger problem. The getting a life problem—hit her. Like a lightning bolt.

What better way to thwart Camilla and this doctor than to show up with a date of her own?

She sat straight up, the toothbrush in her hand dripped onto her jeans.

She needed a date, but not just any date. She needed a man who would expect no romantic entanglements. A man she wouldn’t have to exchange small talk with or any other uncomfortable platitudes.

“Gary,” she said with a smile.

She climbed out of the tub, threw the gloves and the toothbrush in the sink and headed out the door for Gary’s apartment.

Gary was perfect as a date-on-call for several reasons.

1. He lived just around the corner in her condo complex.

2. He was a mostly out of work actor and he had viewed the wedding she took him to as a chance to be on stage, which was why halfway through the night people were expressing their condolences for the brain tumor Gary was telling people he had.

3. He was gay. There were absolutely no uncomfortable entanglements.

In a word: perfect.

Anna crossed the small stretch of grass between her unit and his with a glad heart. She was going to beat Camilla at her own game. Anna laughed a little bit thinking about how perfect this was. How truly satisfying it would be to get back at Camilla in just this exact way.

Gary had been leaving messages on her machine for the past two weeks that she had not had the time to return and she felt a little bad. But he would understand. Gary was good like that.

The light was on behind his blinds, which Anna took as an omen that her plan was going to work out okay. She stepped up on his small cement landing and knocked. She felt bad that she hadn’t seen him in so long, a few weeks anyway. He had gotten some part in a play and she, of course, was always busy, so time flew by. She smiled and knocked again, happy that she had more time to spend with Gary who was always fun.

She heard footsteps and for the first time in a while, felt a smile that wasn’t forced spread across her face. She pushed back a lock of hair just as the door opened and she felt all the blood drain from her face.

“Well, well.” Prince Charming leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his bare chest.

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