Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection

by Lauren Weisberger

  ‘Emmy, is she okay? Is everything all right?’

  The sound of concern and sympathy in Leigh’s voice triggered something; within moments the tears were coursing down her cheeks.

  ‘Emmy, seriously, talk to me. What’s going on with you?’

  ‘Oh, Leigh, I’m a horrible person,’ she sobbed. ‘Disgusting. Vile. Loathsome. My only sister, my best friend on earth, is pregnant, and I can’t even be happy for her.’

  ‘Izzie’s pregnant?’ Leigh asked in her serious voice.

  Emmy nodded and then remembered she was on the phone. ‘Sure is. Due in February. They find out what it is next month.’

  ‘Oh, Emmy,’ Leigh said. ‘I want to say “congratulations” and “I’m sorry” at the same time, so I can only imagine how you feel.’

  ‘Of course I knew they would start a family eventually; I just didn’t think it would be now. Leigh, she’s my baby sister!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Leigh soothed her. ‘Just don’t think for a single second that you’re wrong in anything you’re feeling. Of course you’re happy for her, but it’s understandable that you’d have mixed feelings about it. Anyone would, especially in light of everything that’s happened with Duncan …’

  This is precisely why Emmy had called Leigh instead of Adriana or – perish the thought – her mother.

  ‘I come down here and spend three straight hours talking about all these stupid failed flings of mine – literally, droning on and on about how I can’t bring myself to sleep with strangers – and Izzie is starting a perfect family with her perfect husband at the perfect age. What’s wrong with me?’ The plaintiveness in her own voice made Emmy start crying all over again. This pity party felt good and, if she gave herself a little slack, deserved. She resolved to be nothing but supportive and wildly enthusiastic in front of Izzie, but that didn’t mean she had to fake it for Leigh.

  ‘Emmy, darling, there’s nothing in the world wrong with you. You and Izzie are just at different stages right now. It’s purely a timing thing – it has nothing to do with who you are as people. And of course I have no doubt that you’re going to be a great aunt and sister, but more than that, I just know that you’re going to find a great guy, too. A perfect guy. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Emmy sighed. She pulled her feet from the jacuzzi, rolled her pants up even higher, and plunged them back in. ‘Distract me. Tell me what’s going on with you.’

  It was Leigh’s turn to sigh. ‘Not too much. Oh, wait, actually I’m lying. Guess who I met last night?’

  ‘Give me a hint.’

  ‘Adriana has him pegged as her future husband.’

  ‘You met Tobias Baron? Oh my god! Tell me everything! I didn’t even know he called her.’

  ‘I know, she’s been a little weird about this one. Quiet. Almost like she’s worried about jinxing it. I guess he went home to LA for a couple weeks and is now back in New York. They went out for the first time last Wednesday, and then again with Russell and me last night, and check this out – she still hasn’t slept with him.’

  Emmy gasped. ‘No!’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with him? Adriana has never, ever gone out with a successful, famous, good-looking guy and not slept with him – and on two dates, no less. Like, ever.’

  ‘I know.’ Leigh laughed. ‘I think she might be taking this whole bet you two made seriously, because it didn’t seem like there was anything drastically wrong with him. He was charming in that slightly smarmy Hollywood way, but not offensive. Polite, engaging, and definitely into her.’

  ‘And her?’ Emmy asked.

  ‘She appeared to worship him. We all went to a late dinner at the Odeon and I’m not sure why we bothered. The two of them couldn’t stop nuzzling each other.’

  ‘That’s so great,’ Emmy said automatically, supplying the expected response. Of course she should be happy that her commitment-phobic friend had found true love, just like she should be thrilled that her sister was having a baby. But the shoulds weren’t translating to reality.

  ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see. She’s going to LA to see him next weekend, so that’ll probably be the deal-breaker. She’ll screw it up then for sure.’

  ‘Leigh! That’s not very best friend-like of you.’ Emmy feigned outrage but was actually delighted.

  ‘Yeah, well, kill me. We both know that girl, and we know she’s nobody’s wife. Not now, and probably not ever. It’s sweet that she wants to try, but I’m not sold.’

  ‘Fair enough. How are you? How’s Russell?’ Emmy noticed the two guys packing up their backgammon board and giving each other the not-really-touching backslap good night. The fairer one with longish hair who looked quite young gathered the two empty beer bottles and the board and walked toward the lobby. The darker-haired one, who was about five-eleven, maybe six feet, and wearing a short-sleeved white linen shirt, walked toward her.

  ‘He’s good. Not much new to report. Our mothers have gone into full wedding-planning mode, but we’re both trying to stay out of it.’

  ‘Clearly a good call,’ Emmy murmured. She was annoyed to see the guy toss his wallet and towel on a nearby chaise and begin to remove his shirt. If the entire pool area was completely deserted, why did he have to be right next to her?

  ‘Yeah, not so interested. Things are crazy enough at work right now, and I just found out I’ve got to go to Long Island next weekend.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Emmy said, not hearing a word. The guy stripped off his jeans to reveal navy mesh shorts beneath them, and Emmy was intrigued to see that he actually appeared much leaner without his clothes on. Some might even call him skinny, but Emmy preferred to think of him as lithe. She wondered if it was okay to describe a boy as lithe. He had a completely flat stomach and an undeveloped chest, but he was still appealing, in a John Mayer sort of way. Brooding and temperamental. Possibly even sexy, if you could get past the short-sleeved button-down shirt.

  Leigh was saying something about the Hamptons and a new author, but Emmy wasn’t paying attention. She was too conscious of the guy listening to her side of the conversation, so instead she said, ‘Leigh, I’m just going to head inside. Can I call you in a few minutes from upstairs?’

  ‘I’m going to sleep, so let’s just talk tomorrow. Russell is—’

  ‘Sounds good, sweetie. Sleep well.’ Emmy clicked the phone shut without waiting for Leigh’s response.

  The guy smiled at her – a nice smile, she decided, although not spectacular – and stepped onto the hot tub’s top step. He lowered himself in quickly, seeming not even to notice the scalding water, and said, ‘Aww. Missing your boyfriend?’

  She could feel herself blushing, which she hated. ‘No, uh, that wasn’t my boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend. It was my friend Leigh. From New York.’

  He grinned, and she wanted to kill him, and then herself. Why did she always talk like this? Was it any of his business who was on the phone, where she was spending the night, whether or not she had a boyfriend? She knew she had serious disclosure problems, but did he have to laugh at her for it?

  ‘Ah, got it. How is Leigh from New York?’

  Emmy couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or asking seriously, and she found this unnerving. ‘Leigh from New York is just fine,’ she said, a bit more haughtily than she intended. And then, as she wiggled her toes in the warm water and watched this boy watch her, she suddenly no longer cared what he thought. ‘She’s having a really busy week at work and doesn’t sound nearly as excited about her impending marriage as I think she should be. Which is strange, because her fiancé is fantastic. She just told me that our other friend has fallen head over heels in love with a famous director – and no, I won’t tell you his name, because I’m discreet like that – and it’s just so unlike her because Adriana doesn’t commit to men, she collects them. And to top everything off tonight, I just found out my sister – my younger sister – is having a baby.’

  ‘Well, it sounds like you and Leigh from New York had a lot
to talk about,’ he said, looking amused but not surprised.

  ‘Anything overly personal or otherwise inappropriate that you want to share with me?’ Emmy asked.

  He shrugged and waved his hands in a ‘what you see is what you get’ sort of way. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s fascinating,’ Emmy said. Asshole, Emmy thought. She wasn’t the one who invaded someone else’s personal space, interrupted a phone call, and initiated conversation, was she? Emmy pulled her feet from the water and began to stand up.

  ‘Okay, okay. My name is George. I’m in law school at UM. That guy I was playing backgammon with is my first cousin, but he’s really more like a brother. And he just told me that his girlfriend has chlamydia … and it’s not from him. Let’s see, what else? I only got into UM because my father pulled strings, and he never lets me forget it. And probably the dumbest thing I ever did was get married in Vegas one night when I was really, really drunk.’

  Now this was more like it! He was no Paul in the intelligence department, but he was definitely amusing. Emmy laughed. ‘Like, Britney-style,’ she said.

  ‘Like, total Britney-style, right down to the annulment. Although possibly worse, since I’d just met this girl the night before.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Emmy clapped her hands and dunked her legs back in the water. ‘So tell me, George, what do you think about—’

  She stopped midsentence and stared, mouth hanging open in surprise, as George seemed to materialize in front of her. Before she had a moment to think or react, he slid his body between her legs, propped his knees up on the hot tub’s bench, and placed his lips on hers. Too surprised to do much of anything, Emmy kissed him back. Instantly, she felt that long-forgotten jolt of excitement run through her, the same one she used to feel in the early days with Duncan but hadn’t felt much after the first year. It wasn’t even there with the Australian she made out with in Curaçao – a perfectly nice experience if ever there was one, but she hadn’t lost herself enough in the moment to shut down the constant internal monologue. Here, with George, her mind was magically, blessedly blank, with a single exception: She was vaguely aware, in some deep recess of her consciousness, that she had never been kissed like that before.

  The gentleness lasted only a few minutes, just long enough for Emmy to lose herself entirely, and then George enveloped her in his arms, pressed his bare chest against her T-shirted one, and tugged her lower lip with his teeth. He buried his face in her neck and for a second – just a second – Emmy was pulled out of the moment and thought, My god, this is straight out of a bad romance novel. But the next minute she threw her head back in pleasure, all subtlety gone out the window, and practically begged him to keep kissing the sensitive skin on her neck and shoulders. She wrapped her legs around his waist and ran her fingers through his hair as George breathed heavily, and then, without any warning at all, lifted her butt off the cement, pulled her entire body against his, and lowered them both into the water.

  This was, finally, sufficient to rouse Emmy from her dreamlike state.

  ‘George! Oh my god. I’m fully dressed. What are you doing?’

  He answered her by pressing his mouth to hers. She continued to protest until he did that thing with her lower lip again. All the moisture from their mouths and the rising steam and the unique sensation of the hot water soaking through her clothes made Emmy feel like she was melting. Floating. Which is why she noticed when George pulled her sopping wet T-shirt over her head – it was, after all, heavy with absorbed water – but didn’t completely process this event. Tonight, like always, she was braless, the single perk of being boobless, so they both felt the immediate gratification of bare skin on skin, and it was this moment of intense contact that made Emmy wonder why on earth she had never felt this way before. If it weren’t so goddamn fabulous, she would have been humiliated to be thirty years old and not really understand what all the fuss was about. Not that it had ever been anything less than perfectly pleasant with her previous three boyfriends, but this? Who needed pleasant when there was this?

  From that moment on, George ceased to exist as a separate person, or really as any person at all. He wasn’t a law student or the guy playing backgammon or a stranger she’d met minutes earlier; he was merely the body she desperately wanted to be near. It felt like the most natural thing in the world when he expertly removed her capri pants and cotton thong and allowed them to float away, and then, using only one hand while the other held her head to his lips, slid off his own shorts. He lifted her back out of the water and laid her gently on the pavement. The cool surface and air were a relief from all the heat. Emmy forgot she was completely naked in the presence of a total stranger and in view of god knew how many apartments; she didn’t worry for a single second about the state of her bikini line (just barely acceptable), the way her face flushed when she was excited (a deep wine color), or how flat her breasts looked when she lay on her back (very). She thought of absolutely nothing except how much she wanted him, and feeling him against her thigh, she maneuvered in every possible manner to get him closer, but he seemed to enjoy teasing her. It was only after what felt like an interminable amount of pressing and kissing and kneading each other that a condom materialized from his shorts pocket and George pushed into her, and Emmy knew, at that moment, she could no longer live without this.

  all cocky confidence and killer smile

  It always baffled Adriana why people hated flying so much. Really, what was so awful about a few hours spent curled under a cashmere travel blanket sipping champagne and watching movies? The food was hideous, of course, even in first class, but when you came equipped with the staples (Zone bars, a Whole Foods mixed-fruit salad, and an Evian mister), it could actually be quite enjoyable. Especially when, like today, your seatmate was a handsome, famous, unattached actor. A TV actor, admittedly, but still a star on NBC’s most popular prime-time series, a show even Adriana watched. He’d just gone through a very public breakup with a twenty-one-year-old trashy daytime soap star with a knockout body. Adriana had followed the whole tawdry affair in US Weekly, right down to reprints of the angry BlackBerry messages they’d exchanged one night from opposite coasts, and she was convinced he could do better. She’d thought it then, but now, sneaking subtle glances at his pretty profile and his sculpted biceps, she was quite positive.

  Too bad she was taken, Adriana thought with an audible sigh. This caused her seatmate to glance up, a gesture Adriana consciously ignored. Lord knew there was no more challenging species than the ego-inflated entertainer – Adriana had dated enough actors, musicians, comedians, and professional athletes to consider herself an authority – and any girl worth her La Perlas knew that they responded to one and only one thing: a challenge. They were more like children than real people, Adriana always said, and so it stood to reason that the only thing they desperately wanted was what they couldn’t have – which is precisely why Adriana pretended he didn’t exist.

  She had immediately recognized him when he claimed the aisle seat next to her but had provided only a ‘hmm’ when he politely said hello. Filling the time between boarding and takeoff with as many chatty and upbeat phone calls as possible, and switching on her iPod the moment electronic devices were permitted – before he could make the decision to drown her out – Adriana felt as though she’d done an adequate job so far. And when the cheerful flight attendant asked if she’d like a drink, a request that Mr. TV Actor repeated to Adriana, she smiled only at the flight attendant, ordered another champagne, and once again donned her headphones.

  Minutes later he pulled out a script and made a big show about flashing the telltale CAA cover. He began to read, although Adriana got the feeling he was really just flipping the pages for appearance’s sake. For her benefit, naturally – she was supposed to be impressed. She rolled her eyes and allowed herself to smile, a gesture he picked up on immediately. Adriana wasn’t the least bit surprised. He was, after all, just waiting for an excuse to talk to her.

 
; ‘Are you listening to something funny?’ he asked, flashing a pretty decent smile of his own.

  Adriana wasn’t actually listening to anything at all. The headphones were merely a prop, something that indicated her disinterest in talking, and as she’d predicted, they’d done their job to perfection.

  She glanced at him, waited a moment, and slowly pushed the left one off her ear.

  ‘Pardon?’ she asked with wide eyes. ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘I was just wondering if you were listening to something funny. You were laughing …’

  Adriana waited a few seconds longer than necessary to throw him off balance and then stepped in to save him. ‘Oh, did I? No, I was just remembering something really fun.’ Vague. Suggestive. Mysterious. All Adriana’s specialty.

  He grinned. Christ, he was cute. ‘Well, I’d love to hear about it. We’ve got nothing but time,’ he said, extending his arms. ‘Four and a half hours, to be precise.’

  ‘I might take a rain check,’ Adriana said. Slowly, she tucked a loose tendril behind her ear, making sure that he got a good look at her delicate, feminine hands, with their elegantly long fingers and pale pink lacquered nails and unblemished skin, and then offered one to him. ‘Adriana,’ she said, giving her name a little extra Brazilian inflection.

  ‘Dean,’ he said, swallowing her hand in his.

  Of course she already knew this, but Adriana made no sign of recognition. ‘So, Dean, what brings you to LA today?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Just some meetings. With some directors and studio people, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, you’re an aspiring actor! I had no idea.’ She was laying it on thick now, but it was necessary. Of course no aspiring actor would fly first class, but he’d gotten too famous too fast; if she gave even an inch, his ego would crush them both. Plus, just a hint of recognition on her part would instantly plummet her from a sexy and sophisticated Brazilian New Yorker to a sycophantic starstruck fan, and Adriana would rather die than let that happen.