www.millsandboon.co.uk

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      A big thank-you to all who inspired and supported me during the writing of this book:

      My family, especially my wise and beautiful mother, who always knows what to say, just when I need to hear it.

      My wonderful editor, Joan Marlow Golan, for her insightful editorial expertise, her amazing support and most of all, her TLC.

      All the talented people behind Red Dress Ink, especially Margaret Marbury, senior editor extraordinaire and dear friend. Laura Morris, Margie Miller, Tara Kelly and RDI’s own engaging man, Craig Swinwood.

      All my wonderful friends, especially Linda Guidi, for always listening (even when I don’t…). Stacey Kamel, for bringing on the laughter. Julie Ann Coney, for that fab photo of me and the facts on adoptive search. Anne Canadeo, for the Tight-Lid Theory that inspired this book, and her sage writing advice. Jennifer Bernstein, Lisa Sklar and Farrin Jacobs, for keeping me from wigging out. Sarah Mlynowski, for always telling me how fabulous I am and for, umm, lending me her boyfriend (it’s not what you think…).

      Elizabeth Irene, who told me just what it takes to make it as an actor in this town. Michael Scotto di Carlo (aka Motorcycle) and Katrina Lorne for the cool Web site. Pam Spengler-Jaffee, for sharing her PR savvy, as well as margaritas and the post-book Elton and Billy serenade.

      And let us not forget all the ex-boyfriends (you know who you are…) who inadvertently inspired me to write this book, by sheer virtue of the fact that none of them ever actually got around to proposing.

      Contents

      1 Tight lids and other theories of male behavior.

      2 I’m not really a wife, but I play one on TV.

      3 Welcome to Brooklyn. Population: Married

      4 I just called…to SCREAM…I LOVE YOU!

      5 A rose by any other name…might still do the trick.

      6 Love means never having to pack an overnight bag.

      7 All a girl needs is a little courage—and a hefty credit line.

      8 I have seen the future (and it’s gonna cost a bundle).

      9 Caution: This jar is not a toy! Please keep out of reach of children.

      10 A nose is a nose is a nose….

      11 When life gives you lemons, screw the lemonade. You need a real cocktail.

      12 Happiness might just be a warm gun.

      13 Till death (at 30,000 feet) do us part.

      14 I shoulda packed the ruby slippers….

      15 I’m in a New York state of…mania.

      16 And you thought it was just a common house plant.

      17 I’ll take a carat and a half—hold the husband.

      18 Love happens. (And there really is nothing you can do about it.)

      19 The heart is a hearty muscle (Thank God).

      Epilogue

      1

      Tight lids and other theories of male behavior.

      It started with a message on my answering machine.

      “Guess who’s getting married?” came a voice I knew all too well.

      It was Josh. My ex-boyfriend. Turned someone else’s fiancé. Not that I’d ever wanted to marry Josh, who suffered from an aversion to dental floss. “Did prehistoric man floss?” he would argue. “Is prehistoric man still around?” I argued back. We lasted only six months, then I told him I couldn’t see myself at sixty-five, making sure he took his teeth out at bedtime every night. “Okay, okay. I’ll floss,” he’d replied. But it was too late. The romance was gone.

      Now he was getting married. To someone he’d met not three months after we had broken up four years ago. And he wasn’t the first ex-boyfriend to go this route. Randy, the boyfriend before Josh, was whistling “The Wedding March” a mere six weeks after we had tearfully said our goodbyes. Then there was Vincent, my first love—he’d been married for nearly a decade. According to my mother—who lived within shouting distance of his mother in Marine Park, Brooklyn, and never failed to keep me updated—Vincent and his wife were already on their third kid.

      One ex gets married, a girl can laugh it off. Two begins a nervous twitter. But three? Three?

      A girl starts to take it personally. I mean, what was it about me that didn’t incite men to plunk down large sums of money in the name of eternal love?

      “It’s the tight-lid dilemma,” my friend Michelle said when I expressed my despair at sending another man to the altar without me.

      “Tight lid?” I asked, awaiting some pearl of wisdom that might turn my world upright again. After all, in the time it had taken me to get a four-year degree in business administration that I no longer made use of, Michelle, who’d grown up three blocks away from me in Marine Park, had gotten a husband, a house and a diamond the size of New Jersey.

      “You know the scenario,” she continued. “You struggle for a good while trying to open a jar and the lid won’t budge. But sure enough, the next person you hand that jar to pops the lid off, no problem. I mean, you don’t really think Jennifer Aniston, cute haircut aside, would have landed Brad Pitt without the Gwyneth factor, do you? Then there’s me and Frankie, of course,” she continued, referring to her husband of seven years, whom she had snagged soon after his devastating breakup with Rosanna Cuzio, the prom queen of our high school.

      I couldn’t