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The Frog Prince

Warner Books

Chapter One

And there's my single mom, spending the next twenty years paying for a lavish wedding for a marriage that didn't even last a year.

Frick.

What happens now? What happens when you've had the fairy tale?

When you've done the big wedding? The dream honeymoon? What happens after the fantasy's over?

You file for divorce. Divorce. Such a big concept for what amounts to a little word.

I still can't quite say it, can't feel anything when I think it, can't imagine that we're now talking about me. But I was the one in the wedding gown, and then I was the one talking to a lawyer, and I was the one who had to ask my brother and my girlfriends and their boyfriends to help me pack so the movers could move me.

I've recently changed cities. Jobs. Lives. I'm starting all over again. But of course, it's not the same. It'll never be the same. Because I've done it. I've been married and divorced, and I'm not even twenty-six.

Long and short of it? He was perfect. I was raised in the country; he was French; together that made us French country. Perfect. The house was perfect; the car, a smokygray Citroen, was perfect; the clothes and restaurant and champagne ... perfect, perfect, perfect!

Not perfect.

Hindsight's amazing. I can see now there were problems in our relationship-huge problems, like trust, respect, and sexual compatibility. I should have known Jean-Marc wasn't attracted to me. I should have known he was avoiding physical intimacy. But I didn't. I blamed it on the wedding, new financial commitments, the stress of my moving into his house.

Maybe if I'd dated more ... Maybe if I'd had more realistic expectations ...

Maybe if I hadn't read fairy tales and then later all those romance novels I bought at the used-book store ...

But back to reality, and I've got more than enough to deal with in reality, what with my new job, in my new apartment, in my new city, with my new boss who doesn't seem to approve of anything I do.

In fact, right now my new boss, Olivia Dempsey, is standing next to my desk at City Events here in San Francisco, and she isn't happy. She's currently conveying her unhappiness in a very loud, crisp voice.

"I thought we talked about this," Olivia says, fashionably slim, toned arms crossed. "You have to take charge of your life, Holly. You're dying on the vine, girl."

I don't look up, because I don't want to hear this, at least not again, not so soon this week. Didn't I just get the need-to-get-out-more pep talk on Monday?

"You were crying in the bathroom again, weren't you?" I open my mouth to deny it, but she holds up a finger and wags it in front of my face. "Oh, no, no lying. No denying. And you weren't just crying; you were sobbing."

"I wasn't sobbing." I shoot her a disgusted look because even the word "sobbing" is irritating, but I know my eyes are red.

Olivia leans down, puts her face in mine. "Sara heard you." Sara being another member of Olivia's team.

I'm beginning to think I'm not ever going to warm up to Sara. She tries too hard to get Olivia to like her. "I'm over it," I say, forcing a toothy grin and feeling absurdly like the wolf from "Little Red Riding Hood."

"See?"

"Hmmph" is all Olivia gives me, but Olivia has no idea how hard all this is for me. No one knows how hard this has been.

There are days I still don't know how I manage to climb from the bed and stagger into the shower, days when I still cry as I make coffee and try to apply mascara and eyeliner between mopping up tears. It's just that I'd barely gotten used to the idea of being a bride, and now I'm a ... divorcee?

"You need to start getting out," Olivia adds firmly, her tone no-nonsense. "It's time for you to be proactive, not reactive."

Of course she'd think like this. She grew up immersed in the world of professional sports, and everything to Olivia is about offense and defense. If Olivia were an athlete, she'd be a quarterback and a pitcher rolled up into one.

"I'm getting out," I say, shifting uneasily, knowing that Olivia's voice carries and not being particularly eager to have the rest of the staff hear my shortcomings. Again. "I'm here, aren't I?"

It was supposed to be a joke, but she doesn't laugh. "This is work, Holly."

"Exactly."

Olivia rolls her eyes. She's beautiful. Even when she rolls her eyes, she looks sleek. Sexy. With the ultimate in DNA-Olivia's mother is a former model, the blonde, glossy type that graced the pages of Sports Illustrated, while her father dominated the Oakland Raiders' offense, a star wide receiver still talked about in hushed voices twenty years later. Olivia is perfection. She modeled for two years in Paris but hated it, apparently modeling wasn't challenging, as it did nothing for her mind.

"This is no social life," she says, leaning against the edge of my desk, her long legs even longer in snug, lowwaisted trousers, her black cashmere turtleneck sweater cropped short enough to reveal two inches of flat, toned midriff.

I feel like a slice of Wonder bread. "I don't need one." Her gray-green eyes narrow, squint. She looks at me hard, the same up-and-down sweep she gives decorated ballrooms before handing responsibility over to an underling. "You need something bad, girl."

Yes. I need my bed with my duvet pulled up over my head, but it's only Wednesday, and I have two more days before I get to dive back between my covers and stay there for the rest of the weekend. "Am I not performing?" I ask, trying to shift the focus from personal back to professional. Olivia was the one who hired me three months ago. She'd be the one who'd fire me.

Another narrowed-gaze inspection. "You've lost your ... edge."

Edge? I don't remember having an edge. I was desperate when I interviewed for the job, but there never really was an edge. I mentally add "Get edge" to my increasingly lengthy to-do list.

"You need attitude," she continues. "Presence." I say nothing because, quite frankly, I do have an attitude, and I suspect it's not the one she wants.

"What do you do when you go home, Holly?" Olivia's fine arched brows beetle. "Sit down in front of the TV-"

"No ..."

"Eat your way through a bag of chips? A carton of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey?"

"I don't even like Chunky Monkey."

Olivia is gaining momentum. Her purple-black polished nails tap-tap the laminate on my desk. Her stellar eyebrows flatten. "You're getting fat."

The word "fat" hangs there a moment between us, pointed, sharp. Ugly. This is a full-scale assault.

For a moment nothing comes to mind, and I inhale hard, topple forward in my chair, feet clattering to stop my fall.

I check to see if anyone else has heard. This is about as low as anyone could go. She knows it. I know it. "I'm not fat."

Surreptitiously I glance down at my lap, homing in on my thighs. They do look rather big, but that's because I'm wearing speckled wool pants, and the fuzzy spotted texture isn't exactly slimming. "My clothes fit fine." Olivia shrugs. Says nothing.

I feel all hot on the inside, hot and prickly and a little bit queasy. I move my right thigh, check the shape. It does look rather spread out on the chair. "I need to work out," I add awkwardly. "I haven't joined a gym since moving here."

She shrugs again, and I look down, see my lunch still sitting on my desk: a half-eaten burrito, guacamole and sour cream oozing, obscuring the chicken and black beans.

I can picture my leg naked. Or what it must look like naked if I ever looked at myself in a full-length mirror anymore, because I avoid mirrors, especially full-length mirrors. I haven't taken a look at myself naked in, oh, three months-ever since I moved to San Francisco and realized I couldn't bear to look me in the eye, couldn't bear to see what I, once so pathetically hopeful, had become.

But beyond the burrito and the mirror, it's not all bad. I still drink Diet Coke. I've always drunk Diet Coke. There are limits to indulgence, and I know mine. "The point is," Olivia says more delicately, "you go straight home after work. You sit on your couch. Veg in front of the TV. That's no life, and you know it." For a moment I say nothing, because I'm not even thinking about my new apartment in San Francisco, but about the house I left in Fresno, where until recently I'd been a brand-spanking-new wife.

The house in Old Fig Garden was originally Jean-Marc's, a 1950s ranch that looked cozy and cottage-y with a split-rail fence and hardy yellow summer roses. After we married, I couldn't wait to make the house mine, too, and I loved personalizing it, adding festive, feminine touches like the new cherry-sprigged dish towels from my bridal shower, hanging on towel bars in the kitchen, or the sparkly crystal vase with zinnias and yellow roses displayed on Jean-Marc's dining table. We had new 300-threadcount sheets on the king-size bed and fluffy white-and-blue towels in the bathroom, and it was like a dollhouse. Charming. Warm. Storybook.

Turns out I wasn't the storybook wife.

"Holly."

Olivia's impatience cuts, and I look up quickly, so quickly I have to bite my lip to keep the rush of emotion away.

"You moved here to start fresh." Olivia taps her nail on my desk. "So do it."

Olivia's right. I'm lonely as hell, but I've hit the place where it's not just a little lonely but really lonely. The lonely where you slide below the radar screen, lonely where you've become pathetic, lonely where it's better just to stay inside, hidden from civilization.

I don't belong in civilization. I'm a misfit. A blight. Well, maybe not a blight. But I definitely feel like a pimple on a chin. As you know, not a good way to feel. Cautiously I shift my left leg, checking to see if the left thigh spreads as much as the right. It does. I suppress the rising panic. I'm in trouble, aren't I?

I look up, meet Olivia's eyes. "I am a little ... big ... ger."

The light of battle shines in Olivia's eyes. "It's not the end of the world. Yet." She sounds crisp now, decisive, as if we've settled on a plan, and she leans forward, urgency in her voice. "The key is to get a grip. Face whatever it is you're avoiding." She pauses, considers me. "Are you still in love with him?"

Him? Him, who? And then I realize she's talking about Jean-Marc. "Y-no. No!" I repeat more forcefully, because I'm not. How could I still be in love with a man who essentially rejected me on our honeymoon?

But Olivia isn't convinced. "Do you need professional help? There's no shame-"

"No." God, this is so humiliating. Olivia could be my mother. My mother would handle a conversation this way. "I'm fine. I'm ... better. Getting better." And bigger, according to Olivia. I squeeze out a smile. "But you're right. I need to take charge. Join a gym. Take better care of myself."

"What else?"

What else? I thought that was really good stuff. Olivia rises, and her stomach goes concave, making her trousers hit even lower on her magnificent hip bones.

"You need friends."

"I have friends."

"Where?" I open my mouth, but she holds up a slender honey-cocoa finger. "Don't say 'here.' Work isn't your social circle. If you got fired-"

"Am I getting fired?" Olivia doesn't own the company, but as a director she's high up in management, knows everything, has a say in everything. It doesn't hurt that Olivia has that enviable trait called star quality. People want to be around Olivia. Customers flock to City Events to work with Olivia. Olivia makes things happen.

"No." Olivia glances at my half-eaten burrito in the foil wrapper, the crumpled napkin on my desk, the Diet Coke with the smudge of lipstick on the rim, and the files spread open in front of me. "You work hard; you're conscientious, detail oriented."

But?

"But what happens here, at your desk, is only part of the job," she adds. "We're all responsible for bringing in new accounts, for promoting City Events, and one of the best ways to sell City Events is by selling you." And she smiles, a dazzling smile of lovely straight white teeth-her own, not veneers. "But you know that, Holly, and that's why I hired you."

I like her, I really do, and yet right now I'm wanting to crawl under my desk and stay there forever. More pathetic internal monologue: if Jean-Marc had loved me, I wouldn't be here, in San Francisco, in a strange, cold apartment, at a strange, confusing job, trying to figure out where I got it wrong, how I failed in love, why I'm the first of my friends to marry, as well as the first to divorce.

Rationally, I know that Olivia is trying to help me. It's her job to give me feedback and direction, but honestly, her cool, crisp analysis cuts, wounding my already bruised self-esteem. I know we're not supposed to rely on others for our self-worth. I know we're supposed to look inside for validation, but how are you supposed to like yourself, much less love yourself, when the person you trust most asks you just to go away?

"Two words," Olivia says, holding up two fingers and looking down her long, elegant nose at me.

"Zone diet?"

"Image. Success."

I can feel my thighs sprawl on the chair, the weight of my limp ponytail on my neck. How can it be only Wednesday? I need Friday. I really need Friday.

"You've got to take charge, Holly. I know you said in the interview you've just been through a rough patch-divorce, you said-but it's time to return to the land of the living. Get back in the ring. Make something happen."

"Right." And she is right. More or less. "We're going out for drinks after work. Join us. You already know some of my friends, and you'll meet some new people. It'll be good for you."

"Right." Her friends are gorgeous. And manically extroverted. A thought comes to me. "But cocktails have calories."

"A lot less than a pint of Ben and Jerry's." Enough said.

Olivia walks away. I stare at my desk. So that's where we are. I'm Holly Bishop, living the suddenly single girl life in San Francisco, which is also the turtleneck capital of the United States. Everyone here wears turtlenecks, lots and lots of black and gray turtlenecks with the inevitable leather coat, barn coat, barn leather coat. It might be the City by the Bay, but it's also the City of Cold Hands, Neck, and Feet.

Despite the need for sweaters even in July, I'm told that San Francisco is a great city to live in. You don't have to drive to get around; there's decent public transportation, but I don't know anyone who actually takes the public transportation. We drive on the West Coast.

And drive.

And drive.

We also pay huge sums to park. We pay for parking at work. We pay for parking at home. We pay for parking each time we head out to shop or see a flick or do anything remotely fun. (This is new to me. I was raised in a small town where you got free angle parking on Main Street.)

But I'm not in Kansas anymore, or in California's Central Valley, for that matter.

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Frog Prince by Jane Porter Copyright © 2005 by Jane Porter. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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