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      MILLS & BOON

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      To my husband, Greg Logsted, for half a lifetime’s worth

       of love and patience above and beyond

      Acknowledgments

      Thanks, as always, to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, for being a joy of an editor to work with, and to the rest of the RDI team. Special thanks this time to Annelise Robey for being the kind of agent a girl can really love.

      I’d also like to thank Sue Estabrook and Lynn Kanter for being great first readers and great friends. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such support and encouragement, but I’ll take it.

      Another special thank-you goes to librarians everywhere, since librarians form the inspiration for this book. In particular, I’d like to thank Danbury Public Library, my current hometown library, and Bethel Public Library, which figures prominently here: I hope you’re all in your lovely new quarters by the time you read this.

      Thank you to my family and friends for loving me and for not leaving me over my being the self-involved person I am.

      Finally, thank you to Greg and Jackie for everything.

      prologue

      “Come here often?”

      “God, what a line,” seethed Pam, who happened to be my best friend as well as being a world-class seether. “Yes, she does,” she added, summarily turning away Bachelor #1 from our table, “but not to meet people like you.”

      “Buy you a drink?” Bachelor #2 asked me, somewhat timidly I thought, but maybe he’d already seen #1 get shot down by Pam. Despite his timidity, he was steely in his determination not to make eye contact with her, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on me.

      Pam tapped his elbow. “Can’t you see she already has one?” Pam asked him with the kind of overly sweet tone of voice that was petrifying in its Stepford extreme.

      That was all Bachelor #2 could take; off he slouched.

      “Now, I know I don’t know you from anywhere…yet…but I’d sure like—”

      “Get OUT!” screeched Pam, finishing off Bachelor #3 before he could even finish off his first sentence.

      “Gee,” I said ruefully, sucking off the vodka from one of the ice cubes that had been clinking around in the bottom of my empty glass, “you could have at least let me accept a drink.”

      “Oh, right, and then sit here for yet another Saturday night, watching one man after another fall in love with you? No, thank you!”

      “I’d ask you who pissed in your Wheaties, but somehow I’m getting the impression it was me.”

      “You know, Scarlett, it’s not always that easy being your best friend.” For a world-class seether, Pam was looking awfully deflated.

      And, for the record: yes, my mother did have the balls to name me Scarlett.

      “Scarlett O’Hara, the Scarlet Woman—okay, so maybe that only has one t, but still—you’re going to love it once you get older!”

      I’d heard this repeatedly for thirty-nine years—i.e., the entire length of time I’d been alive—all thirty-nine of which I’d spent hating my name.

      “You’re going to love it one day! I promise you!” my mother had promised.

      As if.

      With forty beginning to stare me in the face, along with what friends were warning me was going to be one hell of a midlife crisis—which I preferred to think of as an LRWS (Life Reassessment Way Station)—it seemed increasingly less likely that my mother would see her promise fulfilled. Of course, with forty beginning to stare me in the face, it was probably also a good time for me to begin thinking about giving up using the phrase “as if,” but I supposed I could always worry about that another day.

      But back to our story.

      I’d rather have a seething Pam than a deflated Pam any day of the week. Her deflation was deflating me.

      “Why, Pam?” I asked, deflated, all seriousness now. “Why isn’t it always easy being my best friend?”

      “Because you’re…you’re…you’re…you.”

      “That’s not helpful.”

      “Fine,” Pam seethed one last time, seething at me for once. “Did you ever wonder if you’d still get so much male attention if you weren’t so goddamned pretty, if you weren’t so goddamned thin, if you didn’t have those two—” and here she gave voice to what I had secretly suspected most people thought of first when they looked at me, but hoped was not the case “—spectacular breasts?”

      And that’s basically how it all got started.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter