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Hand-Me-Down
Lee Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Thanks are long overdue to Nancy Coffey, Farrin Jacobs, Lynn Nichols, Jessica Alvarez, Helen Ross, Paula Ross and Constance Wall.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 01

CHAPTER 02

CHAPTER 03

CHAPTER 04

CHAPTER 05

CHAPTER 06

CHAPTER 07

CHAPTER 08

CHAPTER 09

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 01

The second time Ian Dunne came into my life, I was trapped under a pile of bodies, behind a sheet of plate glass.

I’d just graduated from UC Santa Barbara, my hometown school. I’d finished at the top of the middle of my class—which is the story of my life—and a week later had grabbed the bottom rung of corporate America.

I was folding men’s charcoal woolens at Banana Republic when my manager materialized at my shoulder.

“You’ve almost got it!” Jenny chirped. “First the sleeve, then over, over…” Showing me, yet again, how to fold a sweater.

I gritted my teeth, and gestured to my pile. “Mine are fine.”

“Good enough for the Gap.” Jenny smiled encouragingly. “Maybe.”

“Maybe I should do the windows instead.”

“You can’t do the windows.”

“But I want to do the windows.”

“Sorry,” she said, and scurried into the back office.

My problem was that I was assertive enough to annoy, but not enough to succeed. That’s always been my problem: I’m the uneasy medium. Pretty enough, but not beautiful. Smart enough, but not brilliant. If I were a college, I’d be a safety school. If I were a skirt, I’d be basic black.

Wren finished ringing up a sale and drifted over. We’d started work the same day, and she’d been promoted to the register by the end of the morning. I liked her despite her obnoxious competence and her glossy dark hair and clear olive skin. She smiled and neatened my sweater stack. “Jenny’s teaching you to fold again?”

“Folding’s not really my strength.” I glanced toward the front of the store. “What I should be doing is—”

“Oh, Anne, not again. She’ll never let you do the windows.”

“But I’m pretty sure that window design is my thing.” I stacked the last sweater. “I’m sort of arty.”

“You were a business major.”

“Well, arty-businessy. Anyway, I have the soul of an artist.” Since graduating, I’d been doing some thinking. It was clear I wasn’t going to make it on looks alone. Not like my oldest sister Charlotte. Nor was I anyone’s idea of a girl-genius, like my other sister, Emily. So I figured I’d be the next Paloma Picasso. Artist/designer. Of course, my dad was no Pablo, but still.

“How many art classes did you take?” Wren asked.

“Does pottery count?”

“Only if you got an A.”

“Oh. Anyway—” I lowered my voice. “Aren’t you a little embarrassed to be working here?” Wren had just graduated from Pomona.

She shook her head. “I love clothes.”

“Yeah,” I said, unconvinced. I liked clothes, too. New ones, at least. “Still. Shouldn’t we aspire to greater things than our fifty-percent discount?”

“Like a sixty-percent discount?”

“Exactly! Or, for instance…”

“The windows,” Wren finished.

I smiled. And ten minutes later, when Jenny was on the phone to the head office and Wren—in a fit of self-preservation—disappeared for an early lunch, I crammed myself into the front window with six mannequins.

An assortment of mall-walkers noticed me, and paused and pointed. Enjoying the celebrity, I gave them a queen’s wave and got to work. How hard could it be? Easy as stacking wood, I told myself—ignoring for the moment that I’d never actually stacked wood.

The official theme for the Fall windows was the stunningly original “Back to School.” I decided to stay on topic and create the Banana Republic Cheerleading Squad. Given Jenny’s level of pep, she’d have to approve.

I wrestled the first mannequin, dressed in denims and suede jacket, into a crouching position. It took some doing, as she was not at all limber, but I finally grappled her onto all fours. The second mannequin was easier, but the third required that I kneel on her stomach and roughly yank her legs. The fourth and fifth, wearing light gray sweaters and khaki cords, were male. I twisted them onto their hands and knees and turned to the sixth mannequin, a recalcitrant squad leader in a plaid mini. By the time I finished tangling with her, I was sweaty and exhausted…and had attracted a crowd.

I loftily ignored them, and arranged the first three mannequins. Easy enough. Side by side, on hands and knees—the two males on the outside, a female in the middle. I manhandled the next one on top, balanced another next to her, and stepped back to admire my handiwork. Looking good. Jenny was going to be amazed.

They say a pyramid is a totally stable structure, but I challenge anyone to prove it with cheerleading mannequins. I lifted Plaid Mini, the recalcitrant squad leader, over my head and stepped forward. Neatly avoiding the sprawled limbs of the other mannequins, I rose onto tiptoes and gently flipped Plaid Mini onto the very apex of the pyramid.

She teetered. She tottered. The crowd hushed…and the sixth mannequin settled perfectly into place!

I beamed.

The crowd applauded.

And as I curtsied, there was a knock at the window. My sister Emily. I almost didn’t recognize her. She’s sort of severe and intellectual-looking, not exactly a mall rat. Standing next to her, smiling, was a tall, blond, handsome man.

“I did it!” I told Emily triumphantly through the glass.

“What?” she yelled.

“I did it!” I gestured behind me at the pyramid. “My first window!”

“What?” she shouted again.

She turned to the blond man, and I saw him say: she says she does windows.

Emily frowned as she answered. I couldn’t hear the words, but from her expression I could tell they were pretty ripe. She’d just had her first book published—an indecipherable academic feminist treatise which for some reason had been getting press in Cosmo and Newsweek—and she wanted to be this classy, cool philosopher-queen. Not someone whose sister wrestles cheerleading mannequins in mall windows.

“Back to school!” I mouthed, as if that were an explanation.

This didn’t soothe Emily. The man turned to calm her, and I suddenly recognized him.

I said, “Ian?”

He saw the word. He nodded.

I startled backward, almost tripping on a splayed plastic hand— I grabbed an errant elbow to steady myself. The elbow joggled the barest inch and the mannequin underneath twisted slightly. I lunged to steady him—and slipped. My knee whacked Suede Jacket square in the face and she squirted out of the pyramid like a wet watermelon seed. Then Plaid Mini leapt at me from above and grabbed me in an obscene scissors-hold between her thighs. I struggled for air and popped one of her legs off— I twirled and spun as the pyramid collapsed around me in a hail of cheerleaders, and finally ended on my back, with Khaki Cords splayed on top.

The applause was louder, this time.

CHAPTER 02

Emily slammed her bag onto the table at the Coffee Bean and scowled. After the collapse of the Great Pyramid, Jenny decided it was my turn to take lunch—preferably in another state. I didn’t argue, even though Emily was lurking outside the store with smoke issuing from her nostrils. Emily is the middle sister, so she’s supposed to be mild and quiet and timid, but nobody’s ever been foolish enough to mention that to her.

“Well?” she said.

“I’ll have a mocha blended?”

Her eyebrows became an angry V. “You know exactly what I mean, Anne.”

“Oh, that,” I said with an airy laugh, gesturing back toward Banana. “That was just, y’know. So, what’re you doing at the mall?”

“Great show, Anne,” Ian said, returning with our coffees to the table. “I wanted to put out a little cup for you.”

I smiled sweetly at Emily. “And where’d you find him?”

Ian Dunne was six feet tall with blond hair and blue eyes. He was wearing green shorts, a navy T-shirt and flip-flops, and had a Santa Barbara tan—the deep bronze of the pre-skin-cancer era. He looked even more surfer-delicious than when he’d dated Charlotte in high school.

“Anne,” Emily said, as calm as the eye of a storm. “You graduated with a low B average with a degree you don’t value. You’re living with Dad. You’re barely employed at Banana Republic. You don’t have the slightest inkling of a career, a future, a—”

“I’m going back to school,” I said, cringing inwardly at the phrase.

She brightened. “To get your master’s?”

“Art school,” I said. “So Ian, how’ve you been?”

“Art?” Emily said. “You can’t draw a straight line with a ruler.”

“I most certainly can!”

“And you know nothing about art theory. If I asked you to choose between appropriationist and cultural predialectic in the structural paradigm of visual art, which would you defend?”

“Um, the first one?”

She sighed. “Who’s your favorite artist?”

“Paloma Picasso?” I said, in a small voice.

“She makes perfume.”

“And handbags!”

“Anne, you need to focus on your future—”

“I’m fine,” Ian cut in. “How have you been?”

I winced, waiting for the explosion. Emily would reduce him to paste with a handful of words. But, oddly, no explosion came. Maybe micro-celebrity was calming her.

“I’ve been good,” I said, after a short silence. “So where did you two—?”

“We ran into each other in the mall,” Emily said. “Watching you make a spectacle of yourself.”

“A spectacle? It’s not like I was strutting around in a bikini.”

“How is Charlotte?” Ian casually asked, and those three words told me everything: he was still in love with her. After all the years—her marriage, her celebrity, and her pregnancy—he was still in love.

It explained why he’d finagled an invitation to coffee with us. Emily usually wasn’t so welcoming, but she’d responded eagerly to his hints. Of course, her book was out, the early reviews were disgustingly positive, and the publication party was tonight. So she had an ulterior motive: to brag.

“Charlotte’s fine,” she said shortly, and turned to me. “I told Ian about my book.”

“Porn Is Film,” Ian said, as if reciting the title of her book proved something.

“What does that even mean?” I said. “Is Penthouse film? It’s porn. If porn is film, does that mean film is porn? Is The Bicycle Thief porn?”

Usually I can get Emily worked up and defensive about the title. It’s like bullfighting, you have to know exactly how far you can go before you get gored. As long as she sputters angrily, I’m okay. The minute she says something like “the postmodern praxis of potentiality,” I run.

This time, she simply asked, “You’re coming to the reading tonight?”

“I never miss a party.”

“Party?” Ian said.

“It’s a reading,” Emily said.

“With booze,” I said. “So it’s a party.”

“Are you bringing a date?” Emily asked.

“Of course.” I hadn’t planned to, but I sure as hell was going to now. There was plenty of time to dig up a date. It was positively…six hours away.

“Not Matthew,” Emily said.

I rolled my eyes. “He wasn’t that bad.” He was also out of town, or he’d be the first I called.

“He was worse. Good thing he didn’t even make par.”

“What’s par?” Ian asked.

“Anne never dates anyone more than three months.”

“That is so not true!” I said. “What about Kyle?”

“Four months,” she said. “And that was high school.”

“It still counts,” I said—and noticed Ian’s expression.

There was something wistful in his deep blue eyes. He was thinking about Charlotte. About tragic, doomed high school love. He knew Charlotte would be at the party, and he longed to see her. He knew she was famous, he knew she was married. He only wanted to watch her from across the room, his heart silently breaking. And, well, I know I shouldn’t have done it. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson last time: never invite Ian anywhere. But I’d learned nothing.

So I looked at his injured-puppy eyes and said, “Would you like to come?”

“To the reading?”

“If you’re free tonight?”

He smiled. “I’d love to.”

Emily fiddled with her water glass, and I thought, uh-oh. Not good, inviting Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend to Emily’s party. “That’d be…nice,” she said.

“If you’re sure,” he asked her politely.

“Of course,” she said.

“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” he said.

“Come or don’t come,” she snapped. “I could care less.”

“Then I’ll definitely come.”

“And I’ll definitely go,” I said. “Lunch break’s over. If I give Jenny a reason to fire me—”

“Another reason,” Emily said, as I left.

Okay, it was a mistake to invite Ian. But it wasn’t a disaster. It had been ten years since it happened, and he clearly didn’t remember.

Which was almost as galling as if he had.

Wren was fixing the window when I returned.

“Very avant-garde,” she said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She laughed and turned back to the mannequins, sorting them out with efficient, professional motions.

“It was a popular triumph,” I told her. “The people loved me.”

“But not critically acclaimed. Jenny isn’t happy.” She straightened the plaid mini. “Who’s the guy?”

“That’s Khaki Cords.” I kicked the mannequin. “I hate him.”

“The guy at the Coffee Bean.”

“Oh, him. Ian. My sister’s ex.”

“They’re back together?”

“Not Emily’s— Charlotte’s.”

“Ah. That explains it.”

“What?”

“He’s gorgeous.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I guess, if you like the blond, blue-eyed…gorgeous type. Oh! Speaking of which— I need a date for tonight.”

“Your sister’s book thing?”

“Yeah. I was gonna go stag, but…”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded knowingly. “Ian’s going?”

“Well, I sort of accidentally invited him.”

“You have a crush on Charlotte’s ex.”

“I don’t! Not a crush. But I, um…”

“You what?”

“Let’s just say I did something really stupid, once. I wouldn’t want him to think it ruined me for guys ever since.”

“What’d you do?”

“I invited him to a party,” I said.

“I mean last time,” she said.

“That’s what I did last time, too. I don’t know what it is. I see him, I invite him somewhere inappropriate. It’s Pavlovian.”

“Because he makes you salivate.”

I ignored her. “Anyway, I need a presentable date, fast.”

“My brother would do it for ten bucks.”

Her brother is thirteen. “I’m looking for clean-shaven, not pre-shaven.”

Jenny suddenly loomed. She edged between me and the nearest mannequin, as if afraid I’d go for its throat. “You’re back,” she said.

“With bells on!” I told her, smiling gaily as if nothing had happened.

“We have to talk,” Jenny told me.

“Anne needs a date tonight,” Wren said. “She’s got nobody to take to her sister’s party.”

For a moment, I was pissed at Wren. How could she tell Jenny I needed a date? Then I realized it was a perfect distraction. Jenny was a little starstruck by Charlotte, so there was no need to mention the party was for my other sister.

“Your sister?” Jenny considered. “Well, there’s always Billy.”

Billy was one of the Banana boys. Wren and I both had crushes on him—he was a young Brad Pitt—but Wren was the absolute worst flirt you’ve ever seen. As a rule, she was competent and pretty and perfect—but when flirting she flipped a switch, and a stuttering Elmer Fudd took over her body.

“He’ll go out with anyone,” Jenny said.

“Even Anne?” Wren asked.

“Oh, thanks,” I said.

Jenny shrugged. “Why not? I’ll get him to teach you how to use the register. Then you can ask.”

“The register!” I said. That was even better than Billy.

“There’s got to be something you can do around here.”

It turns out she was right. I was a cash register genius. Born to ring. After an hour behind the counter, hitting Sale, No Sale, Taxable and Return while trying to be fascinating, I turned to Billy with a smile. “You have plans tonight?”

He grinned and shrugged. His expression said, make me an offer.

“There’s a party,” I said. “My sister wrote a book. It’s sort of a publication thing.”

“A book party?” He sounded dubious.

“There’ll be booze. Well, wine…”

“Wine?” More dubious.

“Um, yeah.” Time to swallow my pride. “And it’s at Charlotte Olsen’s house in Montecito.”

He straightened slightly, in awe. “You know Charlotte Olsen?”

“A little.”

“The swimsuit model?”

“Is there another Charlotte Olsen?”

“Not in my life,” he said.

Mine either.

CHAPTER 03

Early evening. I sprawled across the bed and painted my fingernails with Charlotte’s blue polish.

“Not that,” Charlotte said, from her palatial walk-in closet. “It’s so last season.”

“It’s Hard Candy. I like it.”

She shook her head, but didn’t push me. Charlotte never did. “Well, on you, it still works.” She rummaged in the closet and held up a satin blouse and velvet jeans in a gorgeous powder blue. “Here, these’ll match.”

“I don’t think so, Charlotte….”

“They’re Gucci.”

My jaw tightened. I loved Gucci. She knew I loved Gucci. But I had my principles. Or at least I had my single solitary principle: not to wear my sisters’ hand-me-downs. “Why don’t you wear it?” I said, with a straight face.

She was eight months pregnant, and a honker. She was wearing a black tank top, a long knit skirt and a belly like an overinflated beach ball. “Because it’s not a size seventy-two.”

“Give it to Emily then.”

Charlotte snorted. “God knows what she’ll show up in. I wish she’d let me take her shopping.” She held up a cream linen dress. “How about this?”

I ignored her. I was sticking to the white blouse and jeans I’d bought with my discount at Banana. “Speaking of Emily.” I screwed the cap back on the polish. “Guess who we ran into today?”

“Ian Dunne. She said you invited him.”

“Well, it sort of popped out….”

“She also said you were putting on quite a show dressing the mannequins. You know, if you want to dress models I can introduce you to a stylist.”

I looked at Charlotte. “You don’t mind?”

“Of course not, Annie.” Her natural pregnancy-glow doubled in wattage. “And I know just the woman. She dressed me for my calendar.”

“I meant, you don’t mind that I invited Ian. And it’s exaggerating to say you were dressed for your calendar.” Charlotte was America’s favorite swimsuit model. She’d won the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue two years in a row. Her calendar sold a zillion copies and I’ve seen her naked looking more modest than she did in some of those swimsuits.

“Why would I mind about Ian?” Charlotte smiled. “Do you remember how you asked him—”

“I remember.”

“It’ll be fun to see him. I can’t wait for David to meet him.”

David was Charlotte’s husband. She’d always dated gorgeous men, because they were the only ones with the egos to think they deserved Charlotte Olsen. Then she’d met David. A shy, unassuming anesthesiologist who looked like a young Billy Crystal. It was love at first sight.

“When’s he get home?” I asked.

Charlotte glanced at the clock. “An hour. And InStyle should be here soon.”

“I still don’t know how you convinced them to shoot Emily’s book party.”

“It wasn’t that hard—The Nation did name Emily one of the ten most dangerous young minds in America.”

“Yeah, number seven,” I said dismissively, because having two famous older sisters was more than I could bear. I’d thought Emily was safely obscure, but as a new Ph.D. at twenty-seven, she’d rocked the feminist world with her dissonant thoughts on pornography. Wonderful. “Somehow I don’t see InStyle caring about dangerous minds.”

Charlotte became suddenly fascinated by the shoes she was holding. “I can’t even wear normal shoes. I have hippo feet.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Something with InStyle?”

She lowered her bulk into a velvet boudoir chair. “I had to promise People, which is owned by the same parent company, exclusive pictures of me and the baby after the birth.”

“Charlotte!” She always tried to keep her personal life out of the spotlight.

“Well, you know. For Emily. David said it would be okay.”

“For that, they should put her in the ‘50 Most Beautiful’ issue.”

She inspected the shoes more closely.

“You asked and they said no?” I said.

“Don’t tell Emily.”

“Believe me, I won’t.”

When a model breaks out like Charlotte had, agents start looking at her sisters—same genes, right? Her agency offered to test shoot me when I turned fourteen. I was tempted, despite them wanting me to lose fifteen pounds, but Charlotte and Dad said no. I sulked, but was secretly pleased. I do look vaguely—very vaguely—like Charlotte. Except in front of a camera, her light hair shines, her tawny skin glows, and her smile blinds unprepared passersby. In front of a camera, I just look like me. Plus, I like to eat.

Nobody ever offered to test shoot Emily.

Dad showed up before David or InStyle, and immediately headed for the buffet.

I knocked a taquito from his fingers. “Wait till the guests arrive.”

“I’m starving. I held off lunch for this.”

“And if Emily catches you?”

He stepped away from the buffet, almost knocking over a vase of flowers. Dad was always nervous at Charlotte’s. The reek of wealth was disconcerting—the mansion in Montecito, the garden, the pool. Actually I was a little nervous myself, as Billy would arrive in an hour and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with him. At least I looked all right. Charlotte hadn’t convinced me to wear her clothes, but she’d done my hair and makeup. She was a cosmetics genius—with me spackled and shellacked, it was obvious we were sisters.

Then she waddled into the living room on David’s arm, and I sighed. She’d made herself up, too, so we were back to looking like strangers. Even pregnant, she was gorgeous. It was rare for me to see her fully made-up, and I’d forgotten how stunning she was. Perfect bone structure, large blue eyes, and lustrous hair that was meant to be long.

“Dad’s hungry,” I said.

“I skipped lunch,” Dad explained.

David’s admiring gaze broke from Charlotte. “I’ll get a plate from the buffet.”

“Emily,” Charlotte and I said.

“Right,” David said. “There’s chips in the kitchen. Back in a second.”

“Get me a slice of cheese,” Charlotte said.

David headed off and I eyed Charlotte’s enormous stomach, realizing I hadn’t capitalized on her condition as much as I should have. She’d grown positively huge. “Sit by me,” I said, and patted the couch. If I were lucky, the InStyle photographer would get a shot of this. The caption: A grotesquely pregnant Charlotte Olsen, and her svelte, much younger sister, Anne.

Charlotte sat beside me and the cushions seesawed me into the air. “You two sick of each other yet?” she asked. Meaning me and Dad, living together.

Dad and I looked at each other. Why get sick? We got along great. Plus, I didn’t have to pay rent, so I could spend my little all on necessities like clothes, mochas, and alcohol.

“Because the guest house is empty,” Charlotte said. “With the baby coming, I thought it’d be nice to have Anne close.”

Sure. I’d already had a lifetime of Charlotte’s secondhand goods, the last thing I wanted was to take care of her second generation. Then reason lifted its shaggy head. The guest house was a cozy cottage with one bedroom, a kitchen with a Wolf stove and Sub-Zero fridge, and a living room out of Metropolitan Home.

“How much for rent?” Dad asked, a shade too eagerly.

“Well, if she’d baby-sit every now and then…”

“No.” Dad shook his head. “Anne needs to pay rent. It’ll be good for her.”

“Dad.”

“How about three hundred?” Charlotte said. “Including utilities.”

Three hundred I could swing.

“Not enough,” Dad said.

“But if she takes the baby a couple times a week.”

“Wait one infantile second,” I said. “I never said I’d help with the baby.”

“Of course not,” Charlotte said. “Only if you had time.” She and Dad looked a little nervous. There’s a bit of Emily in me.

“What do you think?” I asked Dad.

“I’d miss you…” he said, gloomily.

And I realized I couldn’t leave him. It wasn’t like he still had Mom to take care of him. Maybe it’s a youngest daughter thing, but I felt I had a responsibility. And he did like having me around, even if he grumbled about it occasionally.

“…but I’ll help you move next week,” he finished.

When Emily arrived, the photographers positioned her in front of a huge poster for a film called Spanking Schoolgirls. She’d been posed to hide the naughty bits, and hadn’t budged since. I guess she had a little of the model in her after all. Her publisher, Jamie Lombard—early thirties, an ink-stained cowboy, with rugged good looks and a receding hairline—stood proudly beside her. He was a local publisher, and few of his books had ever sold more than five hundred copies. The unexpected success of Emily’s book had left him slightly shell-shocked.

Emily, on the other hand, looked utterly comfortable chatting with a reporter about the dichotomizing of sub-textual prurience or something. As far as I could understand, her point was this: women like to fuck. Not exactly an earth-shattering insight, but apparently if you dress it up in postmodern theory, you get famous for your dangerous mind.

It did make me eye Emily speculatively. She’d been secretly dating someone all summer, and my bet was that he was someone in the “film” trade who she was too embarrassed to introduce to her family. A porn star like Johnny Deep, maybe, or Roger More.

I looked for Charlotte, to expand upon this theory—why had none of us met this mystery man?—and my Aunt Regina drifted into range. She eyed me and said, “I’m glad you’re finally out of mourning.”

This was her joke. Her only joke. My mom—her sister—had died when I was ten, and though I sometimes missed her, I hadn’t been in mourning for twelve years. But Aunt Regina had an arrested image of me from what she called my “Goth Phase” in high school. Every time she saw me since, she was amazed anew that I wasn’t wearing black lipstick.

I gave a courtesy laugh, and starting heaping food on my plate.

“Now you’ve stopped coloring your hair black,” she said, “you look much more like Charlotte.”

“We’re often taken for twins,” I lied.

“Surely not identical,” she said. “Now if only you were a success, like your sisters. How proud your mother would be.”

Before I could kill Aunt Regina and stuff her body in the crawlspace, Billy and Ian arrived—at the same time, like they’d shared a ride. This worried me for some reason, so I raced over to introduce them and be sure the introduction was necessary.

“Ian, this is Billy,” I said, taking Billy’s hand in a loverlike fashion. “Billy, Ian.”

They said hello.

“So this is your boyfriend,” Ian said.

“Yep,” I said—giving Billy’s hand a warning squeeze.

“What?” Billy said. “Me?”

I laughed and dragged him to a corner where I hissingly instructed him that, for the duration of the evening, he was my boyfriend. He claimed he wasn’t. I told him he was. He became stubborn. So I offered an introduction to Charlotte, and he said he’d be my boyfriend for a whole week if he could shake her hand. A month if he could lick it.

We threaded through the crowd as I internally debated the merits of allowing the lick, but Billy dug in his heels when he spotted Charlotte.

“That really is Charlotte Olsen!” he said.

“Yeah.”

“No way. She’s totally—”

“Pregnant,” I explained.

“—hot. She’s totally hot.”

“She’s a water buffalo.”

“She’s a fox.”

“But she’s five hundred pounds!” I pointed out.

“I need a cold shower just looking at her,” he said. “Oh, man.”

“Her feet are bloated.” I thought he should know. “She’s a bloated hippo with clown feet.”

“She’s even hotter than her calendar.”

“And bigger than her car.”

“You know,” he told me, man to man, “I jerked off to that calendar three times a day for like two months.”

Fifteen minutes later, I slipped onto the patio. There was a couple sitting on the Adirondacks overlooking the pool, and chatting in low tones. I was going to sneak past, but it was only Ian and Emily.

“Why aren’t you inside with your adoring fans?” I asked.

“I needed some air,” Emily said. “The photographers…”

Ian shot a longing glance back at the house. “A little peace and quiet.”

It was disgusting. Even in herd-of-buffalo form, Charlotte was breaking his heart. “She’s enormous,” I mumbled. “She’s a one-woman stampede.”

“What?” Ian gestured toward the party. “Is that what that crash was?”

“Oh. Um. That was me. I broke up with Billy.”

Ian opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it again.

“A long way from par,” Emily said. “He didn’t even make it to the first hole.”

“Emily!” I said.

She blushed bright red. “I meant golf hole—like in golf.”

“You’ve been watching too much porn,” Ian told her.

“Porn is film,” I observed.

“Why’d you break up?” Ian asked me.

“We’d grown apart.” I turned to Emily. “So where’s your invisible boyfriend?”

“We broke up, too.”

“Really? When? Why?” The relationship may have been clandestine, but she’d seemed happy.

“It was only sex,” Emily said.

“Well, what did you expect from a porn star? Intellectual fulfillment? I don’t know what—”

“A porn star?” she said.

Ian laughed. “Hung like a moose, I bet.”

Emily shot him a stern look, then finally copped to her blue-movie adventure. “The sex was great,” she admitted, “although his idea of a good film was The Sperminator. He just wasn’t right for me. We didn’t have anything—” Her face lit up as Jamie Lombard stepped out of the house with two margaritas. “Jamie! Over here.”

He headed our way and she sprang at him like a hungry lioness and dragged him to the corner of the deck, where they could talk privately. Did she have her eye on Jamie? They’d make a perfect pair.

I looked at Ian. “Did I imagine that?”

“Maybe she had two secret boyfriends.”

“The porn star and the publisher. Sounds like a sitcom.”

“On the Spice Channel.”

I laughed more than that deserved, because I liked Ian. And he looked good. And apparently had forgotten what I did last time we met. “So…you saw Charlotte,” I said.

“More beautiful than ever.”

“She makes a very attractive Mack truck. Meet my sisters: dangerous mind and dangerous curves.”

“Not feeling dangerous, yourself?”

I held up the plate of food that hadn’t left my side all evening. “Only to the buffet.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s a little wickedness in you.”

Okay, he was Charlotte’s ex, so this was marginally incestuous and repulsively secondhand. But he was handsome, single, funny, smart…and nobody had ever called me potentially wicked before. I gave him my lower-wattage version of Charlotte’s smile and said, “A lot of wickedness.”

He laughed. “Remember last time we met? You invited me to your school dance.”

My smile dimmed.

“You were what?” he said. “In seventh grade? I was a senior in high school. It was so sweet. What was the theme again?”

Hawaiian luau. “No idea.”

“Hula or something. You were cute in your little grass skirt.”

Actually, I was. I’d wanted to wear a coconut bra, too, but Dad wouldn’t let me.

Ian smiled at the memory. “You marched up to me with a flower necklace and asked if I wanted to get laid.”

“Lei-ed,” I said faintly, remembering the mortification. I was trying on my outfit and had gone to Charlotte’s room to show her. A half-dozen other kids had been there, Charlotte’s friends, and they’d howled with laughter. Not Ian, though. He’d said, very kindly, no, and on the night of the dance had actually sent me a corsage.

We were silent a moment, listening to the party sounds from the house. Then I turned to him and—God help me— I said, “The offer’s still good.”

Ian took my hand. He told me how flattered he was. He said I was beautiful, wonderful, perfect in every way—but he’d rather staple his earlobes to the deck than sleep with me. Well, I don’t know exactly what he said, because I was busy trying to transform my utter mortification into the ability to sink unnoticed into the ground, leaving behind only a thin film of humiliation.

Okay. So he hadn’t forgotten.

The next morning Dad and I met in the living room for coffee. We usually chatted for about twenty minutes before I left for Banana and he headed to his office at UCSB.

“You looked pretty last night,” he said.

“Nice that someone thought so,” I muttered into my coffee.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.” I put my cup on the coffee table and held out my arms to show off my new red T-shirt and black mini. “And what do we think of today’s ensemble?”

“Not the book!” he said.

I grabbed my cup from the book I’d used as a coaster. It was Porn Is Film. Emily had placed it there, and we didn’t dare move it. She’d come on a surprise inspection last Tuesday and found it buried at the bottom of the bookcase. The echoes were still fading.

Dad inspected the cover for stains and declared us safe when he found none. He smiled at the book, from fondness for Emily. “Mom would be so proud. Little did she know when she named you after the Brontë sisters, one of you’d become an author.”

“Mom published stuff. So did you,” I said sulkily. “All professors get published.”

“In journals. Not like this.”

“Well, Charlotte helped.”

His smile wavered. “Your mom never would have expected her daughter to become a swimsuit model, though. I think she’d have supported it….” This was an old conflict with Dad.

“Dad, she’s still Charlotte. Fame, fortune, and public nudity haven’t done a single bad thing to her. Look what she’s made of herself.”

“Speaking of which…” he said, and I realized I’d been deftly maneuvered into this conversation.

“I like Banana.”

“Anne—”

“Yes, Anne,” I said. “The Brontë sister no one’s ever heard of. So lay off!”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Dad.”

“I’m only saying—”

“Dad.”

“Okay, okay. I’m saying nothing.”

“And I’ve heard it all before.”

At the end of that summer, Emily and Jamie were married. Charlotte had a baby girl. And I got a job working for a dot-com. I was destined to make millions—in an artsy-businessy way, of course.

I heard Ian moved to New York.

CHAPTER 04

The third time Ian Dunne came into my life was eight years later.

I was twenty-nine, with a steady job and a steady boyfriend and a steady life. And I still managed to invite my sister’s ex-boyfriend to an inappropriate party. There’s a word for that: Fate.

Or maybe it’s: Stupid.

It started when Emily and I were having lunch at the Sojourner, a natural foods restaurant downtown. We were arguing over a gift for Charlotte’s birthday. Emily and I always joined forces to buy presents for Charlotte. Even though Charlotte insisted she loved everything we got her, together we could afford something unembarrassing.

“You know what she gave me last year?” I asked.

“A mahogany tilt-top occasional table.”

I nodded. “Used furniture.”

“It’s an antique. Must’ve cost thousands. And it’s in perfect condition—it looks brand-new.”

“But it isn’t.”

“I’ll take it, if you don’t want it,” Emily said. Like she needed secondhand used furniture. Between her book and her articles, her lectures and TV appearances, she was almost as stinking rich as Charlotte. Well, maybe a tenth as rich, but that was still pretty stinking if you were only an office manager, like me.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it,” I said. “Just that it wasn’t new.”

Emily shook her head. “Well, neither is the gift I want to get her, so you’re even.”

The waitress came and I ordered a Gorilla Fizz, which I’d been ordering at the Sojourner since I was a kid, and a Popeye Salad, which I’d been ordering since I had trouble zipping my Levi’s last week. Emily quizzed the waitress about what exactly was in the vegetable timbale, then ordered the pumpkin ravioli with a totally different sauce than was on the menu. Then called the waitress back and changed to the stew. When she finished, she turned to me. “Charlotte and I found a new antiques place in El Paseo a couple weeks ago.”

“Antiques,” I said, disgusted, “are the world’s biggest scam. First something is new. Pristine. Unsullied. Then it’s gently used. Crusty. Questionable. Then used. Old. Nasty. And finally, if nobody’s thrown it away, it becomes antique. Repulsive, rancid, swirling with layers of greasy body oil. And more expensive than when it was new.”

“It amazes me you can eat in a restaurant,” Emily said. “You know other people have used that fork.”

I paused midbite, trying not to think about it. Hundreds of mouths sliding wet tongues over the prongs. It was deeply off-putting—but fortunately, my fondness for all things new and unused was (mostly) limited to what I owned. Besides, I liked to eat. I put the forkful of salad in my mouth and smiled triumphantly at Emily. “See! Not crazy.”

“Good,” she said. “Prove it by picking up Charlotte’s gift at the antiques store.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“A lacquer box. She loved it when she saw it in the window.”

“Why can’t you get it?”

“Because I have a real job, Anne.” Emily thought I wasn’t living up to my potential, answering phones at a real estate company. She didn’t understand that that was my potential.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Academia. Nothing more real than that.”

“At least I enjoy what I’m doing,” she said.

“So do I. Putting people in real homes, with roofs and doors—things they can use. Not theories about how porn queens articulate their genitalia.” Emily had actually said that once, articulate her genitalia, on Crossfire or Politically Incorrect or somewhere. She hated to be teased about it. “Don’t tell me how important your work is compared to mine.”

“I didn’t say it was important. I said I enjoyed it.” She looked down at her plate. “At least I used to.”

I immediately felt awful for snapping at her. She’d been having a terrible time with her second book, struggling with it for years. “Problems with the book again?”

“No, it’s—well, it’s finished. The first draft.”

“But…” I prompted.

“But nothing.”

“What does Jamie think?”

“He says he likes it.” She dipped a hunk of bread in her stew. “My agent wants to shop it elsewhere.”

“You mean—elsewhere?”

“She says I should get a big-name publisher.”

“Instead of Jamie?”

She nodded.

It would kill Jamie. Emily was his lead author as well as his wife. The reason he’d been able to attract other good writers was because of Porn Is Film. And Emily relied on him more than she knew, and not only because he stayed in Santa Barbara with their son, Zach, while she commuted three days a week to UCLA.

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I know.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. Not really. Remember when my first book came out? How excited I was? Everything seemed possible. I just want to feel that way again.”

I felt for Emily—and still wanted to stab her in the eye with my fork. She had a career she loved. She was famous enough to get mentioned on NPR—though, I’m pleased to say, not on SNL. She had Jamie, who doted on her, and Zach, who was a great kid. Yeah, she wasn’t a dangerous young mind anymore, but she had the perfect life. Well, Charlotte had the perfect life. But Emily’s was first runner-up.

Still, because I’m a good sister, I made sympathetic noises and kept my fork to myself. I even paid for lunch—treating Emily as a reward for finishing her book.

She gave me a quick hug outside the restaurant. “You won’t forget Charlotte’s gift? The place is called Tazza.”

I wrinkled my nose.

“Just buy it, Anne.”

“Okay, okay. But if I come down with medieval squirrel-pox, it’s your fault.”

“What are the symptoms?” Emily asked. “Irritability, lack of ambition, fear of commitment— Annie, you’ve already got a terminal case.”

After the EMTs arrived to remove my fork from Emily’s forehead, I rushed back to my job at Parsons Realty. I tried not to take long lunches, even though I’d been dating the owner, Rip Parsons, for six months. Knowing where the boss sleeps at night (the right side of the bed) is pretty good job security.

I’d been working there for eight months, and considered the longevity of both relationship and job fairly impressive. The longest I’d worked anywhere was at the dot-com, a little-used search engine called The Ask It Basket. A name even lamer than “Rip,” but the company had been started back in the days when all you had to say was, “It’s a company on the World Wide Web. Which is on the Internet. Which is a global network of computers,” and millions dropped into your lap.

I’d worked three years at The Ask It Basket. My job title was Coordinator of Technology, but my business card said Geek Wrangler. I basically translated requests from management into geek-speak and back again. If a manager asked: “Why are the coders three weeks behind deadline?” I’d ask the geeks: “Would you stop downloading porn and get to work?” Or if the coders said, “Seagate’s got a brand-new campus, with a video-game room and everything,” I’d tell my boss: “They want free Mountain Dew and fruit leather.”

Then I’d sold my stock. But you weren’t supposed to sell stock, you were supposed to spend hours online every day, watching it go up and up and up and up. Selling stock was a betrayal worse than corporate espionage or claiming that Bill Gates wasn’t actually Rosemary’s Baby. I became persona not-entirely grata, and quit shortly thereafter, clutching the meager proceeds of my stock sale close to my heart.

Then I spent a depressing year watching the stock go up and up and up and up.

Then down. Wheeeee!

Everyone had thought I was crazy to sell, but after the dotcom crash I felt like Warren Buffet’s love child with Suze Orman, despite having sold a year early and spending nearly everything. Still, Dad was so impressed he said I should become a stockbroker. Instead I convinced Wren to hire me at Element—the clothing boutique she managed. We’d been best friends since working together at Banana, so she sort of had to hire me. Sadly, I was so bad at selling clothes that she sort of had to fire me three months later. But at least she wept while giving me the pink slip, so I forgave her.

After Wren fired me, I starting doing temp work—which I loved. Every job was a new job. I worked for an interior designer, the community college, a sheet music business, and World of Goods, a nonprofit. A local title company hired me permanently, and I stayed six months before I realized I’d paper-cut my throat if I had to type one more set of title instructions.

Right on cue, Rip Parsons had wandered into the office. A little flirting, an extra-long lunch, and I had a new job. He wanted an assistant, but I insisted on “office manager,” because it sounded almost reputable. Plus, I figured it was a good way to explore the possibility of becoming a Realtor (who basically mints money in Santa Barbara) without actually taking the courses and test.

A couple months later—a little more flirting, a few dinners added to the lunches—and I had a boyfriend. Rip had short brown hair and green eyes and I liked his arms, muscular from tennis, with the hair bleached blond from the sun. He looked faintly like Peter Gallagher, and on paper seemed like a jerk—a too-handsome young Realtor, a smarmy salesman. But he was lovely, super kind and always caring.

So, sure, I was twenty-nine and working behind the front desk of a real estate company—my career peak apparently long past—but at least I had a wonderful boyfriend.

Actually, getting boyfriends had never been a problem for me. I have a system. Wanting them after a few months was tougher.

There was Matthew. I broke up with him when he said, “Because I’m Matthew, that’s why,” once too often. There was Billy from Banana. My “dumping” him at Emily’s party had somehow ignited his interest, but I dumped him for real after he admitted he fantasized about Charlotte when we had sex. I didn’t mind him doing it, but couldn’t forgive him admitting it. Then Doug, the creative genius behind The Ask It Basket. I broke up with him when he started a porn-only search engine, called The Beaver Basket. There had been Mason, the public defender who was great fun when drunk, incredibly tedious when sober. Nick, the portrait artist with the trust fund who I had to leave because he wore Mary Janes. Arthur, the world’s sexiest plumber who liked laying pipe a bit too much. Alex, the wannabe screenwriter who asked me to give him “notes” about his lovemaking.

And Rip. Who had just buzzed me from his office. I hated that buzzer—sounded like I’d said the wrong thing on Family Feud—and had warned Rip not to touch it. Now he only buzzed to annoy me.

I opened the door to his office. “What?”

He grinned.

“I’m on a deadline, Rip. The ads are due.”

“Guess who just sold Knox Tower.”

I looked at him. “No!”

“Yes!”

“Oh, my God! That’s fantastic. Who? When?”

The Knox Tower wasn’t a tower. It was an old lodge in the Santa Barbara mountains, with 360-degree views of the valleys below and the distant crystal blue of Lake Cachuma. A rich socialite of the Great Gatsby type—though named Knox, I presume—had hosted lavish parties there until it burned down into ruins, many decades ago. It was never rebuilt, and the land and rubble had been on the market since. For millions.

“Just now,” Rip said. “That was the buyer on the phone.”

“Who is he?”

“Super rich L.A. contractor. CEO of Keebler, Inc.”

“Keebler? Like the elves?”

“If you meet him,” Rip said, “that’s the first thing you shouldn’t ask. Anyway, he’s big into low-impact, green construction. Fell in love with the place.”

“I thought you couldn’t build up there.”

“Green construction, Annie. He’s gonna put up tents. Or yurts or something, a cistern, solar energy, the whole deal.”

I shook my head. “Will it actually close?”

“I spoke to the lender. It’s a go.” A gleam came into his eyes. “I’m thinking I deserve a reward.”

“Oh, is that what you think?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He put his hands on my hips and pulled me close. “That was a good movie last night.”

We’d watched Secretary on video. “You want me to play your secretary?”

“You are my secretary.”

I nipped his ear. “Office manager.”

“Even better.” He nuzzled me. “Besides, you told me you liked spanking.”

“When? I never!”

“You’re always begging for it.”

I started to giggle. “I am not.”

“I can’t get into bed without you shouting, ‘Smack me, baby.’”

“I have never in my life said, ‘Smack me, baby.’”

“And ‘tan my naughty ass!’”

I shoved him, laughing. “‘Tan my naughty ass?’”

“See! There you go again!” He ran his palms down my hips, took both my hands in one of his and rubbed my bottom with the other. “Just one?”

I bit my lip. “Okay. One.”

He gave my ass a wallop and his eyes lit up—meaning he was ready for business.

“Later,” I said. Because we’d agreed: never in the office. But I could still tease. I kissed his neck and wriggled as he ran his hands over me.

“You’ll play secretary tonight?” he asked, a bit breathlessly.

“Office manager.”

“Office manager it is,” he said, and spanked me again.

Rip was out all afternoon, so I had time to finish the ads before they were due. It was a near thing though, and I was halfway home before I realized I hadn’t stopped at Tazza Antiques. I wasn’t exactly bothered—if I forgot to buy the desiccated old pot, maybe Emily would agree to get something else. Something better. Like a magazine subscription.

I picked up my dog, Ny—a ridiculously red chow mix—and took him to the beach before going to my dad’s house. I stopped at Dad’s two or three times a week, to check in and mooch dinner. Actually, checking and mooching were one and the same. Because if he knew I was coming, he’d buy food. Otherwise, he’d eat cold cereal three times a day. He was a bit of an absentminded professor.

Ny romped with his dog buddies and chased seabirds through the waves until he was exhausted. I toweled him dry and helped him scramble into the cab of the pickup—he was getting chubby and needed an extra boost.

My truck was a silver Ford Ranger pickup, the Splash model with chrome wheels. I’d bought it with my Ask It Basket money—the only new vehicle I’d ever owned. If I closed my eyes and sniffed deeply, I could still smell the new-car perfume. Plus, it was half of the patented Anne Olsen System for Being Semi-Successful with Men. Step One: don’t care about long-term relationships. Men love this. They swarm. Step Two: drive a pickup. Women driving pickups are to men what men driving Armani suits are to women. Don’t ask me why.

Dad lived in the same old Victorian on the upper east side where I’d grown up. It was a mixed neighborhood, filled with old houses like my dad’s that locals had owned for thirty years, and the updated versions that wealthy L.A. people had recently bought and renovated.

Dad glanced up from his newspaper when I let myself in. “What’s hanging?”

“‘What’s hanging?’” I let Ny track his sandy paws inside and closed the door. “Where’d you hear that?”

“I like to keep up with you young people,” he said.

“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t feel so young anymore.”

“Of course.” He shook his newspaper derisively. “You’re bent with age at twenty-six.”

“Nine,” I said. “Twenty-nine.”

“Really?” he said. “That is old.”

“What?”

He laughed. You’d think after twenty-nine years, I’d know when he was teasing.

“Still gullible as a teenager,” he said. “Have you eaten?”

“Of course not.” I headed for the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?”

“Stuffed pork chops. You’re staying?”

“I am for pork chops.”

He followed me into the kitchen and checked the oven. Two pork chops and two potatoes were already baking.

“Why two?” I asked. “Am I stealing one of yours?”

“No,” he said, “I was making leftovers for tomorrow.”

I glanced upstairs. “You haven’t got a woman hiding in your bedroom, waiting for me to leave?”

“Of course not,” he said. “She’s in the bathroom.”

“Oh! Sorry! I should’ve called—” I saw his expression. “Ha-ha. Very funny.” I opened the fridge and grabbed a soda. “But the way you play the field, I keep expecting to hear you eloped.”

He shook his head. “Three girls is enough.”

“Why haven’t you remarried?” I wasn’t sure if I liked the idea, but my dad wasn’t really meant to live alone. “It’s been almost twenty years.”

“You’re one to talk, with all your boyfriends.” He grabbed lettuce and carrots for a salad. “You’re a female Lothario.”

“I am not.”

“You’re Lotharia.”

“I’m not Lotharia.”

“You break up with every man you date. I can’t imagine Rip’ll last much longer, poor guy.”

“You like him?” Every time Rip met my father, he tried to sell him a new house.

“The question is, do you?”

“He’s funny and smart and wonderful—what’s not to like?”

“You’re not getting VD?” Dad asked.

No, he didn’t mean VD VD. He meant Vague Dissatisfaction. I’d stupidly confessed to him once that I had an acute case of Vague Dissatisfaction. Nothing in particular was wrong, but nothing felt right. It was why I never stuck with things very long. Dad considered it a low-level social disease, which would flare up periodically into unsightly outbreaks: VD. Dad thought he was pretty funny.

I glared. “Everything’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Then give me an onion.”

I gave him an onion, and we let the subject drop. He told university stories over dinner, and when we’d finished, he offered me Oreos for dessert.

“Is it a new package?” I asked.

“Anne, you’ve got to stop this.”

“My diet starts tomorrow.”

“You know what I mean. Your obsession with newness.”

Easy for him to say. With two older sisters, hand-me-downs had been the primary fact of my young life.

Charlotte had a Malibu Barbie with a full wardrobe. Emily had a slightly used Malibu Barbie with two outfits. I had a one-armed, bald Barbie who enjoyed nudist colonies.

Charlotte wore Jordache when it was popular. Emily wore Jordache when it was passable. I wore Jordache when it was passé.

Charlotte learned to drive on a six-year-old VW Rabbit. Emily learned on a seven-year-old VW Rabbit. I learned on a twelve-year-old, rusted-out junker with suspicious stains on the seats and the faint odor of Gruyère.

But all I said to Dad was, “I don’t like stale Oreos is all.”

He lifted his pipe from the ashtray on the kitchen table and packed it with tobacco. “They’re fresh from the factory.”

“Where are they?” I asked, heading toward the pantry.

“Bottom shelf.”

I pulled the half-eaten package from the shelf and forced myself to take one. From the back. The very back. “Not bad.”

Dad looked pleased as he lit up his pipe, and I surreptitiously pulled a brand-new carton of milk from the fridge—ignoring the one which was already open—and poured myself a glass. I’d let him discover that little treat tomorrow.

When I got home, I found a message from Rip. The nights we weren’t together we usually talked before sleep, and lately we’d been discussing moving in together. I’d lived with other men—Doug and Alex, for about twenty minutes each—but always returned to Charlotte’s guest house when things went awry. I wasn’t sure if living with Rip was a good idea. We already worked in the same office, and spending more time together seemed a great way to kill a nice relationship.

I picked up the phone to call him back, but didn’t feel like talking. I was itchy and restless. I switched on the TV. I’d see Rip at work tomorrow.