The Cinderella Pact Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Acclaim for The Cinderella Pact

  “Outrageous fun! Opening a book by Sarah Strohmeyer is like opening a box of chocolates—sweet, a little nutty, and absolutely irresistible.”—Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries and Queen of Babble

  “What a find! From the moment I read the first page, I was hooked. Any woman who has ever struggled with her weight will instantly connect with the story. Seriously, it doesn’t get much better than this. . . .[The book] delights on all levels. I can’t think of enough gushy things to say about it. You will not be able to put it down.”—Johanna Edwards, bestselling author of The Next Big Thing and Your Big Break

  “The Cinderella Pact is for every one of us whose foot was too big to stuff into that glass slipper. It’s engaging, funny, and as hard to put down as a bag of M&M’s.”—Harley Jane Kozak, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award-winning author of Dating Dead Men and Dating Is Murder

  “Comedy abounds. . . . It’s a well-told tale of friendship, tied in with everyday, relatable issues like job satisfaction, weight issues, divorce, and love.”—Romantic Times (4 stars)

  “Nola is an intelligent heroine worth cheering for . . . with insights about the difficulties of not being beautiful in a beauty-obsessed society. This is what chick lit is supposed to be.”—BookPage

  “A side-splitting humorous tale of self-discovery and a sighing happily-ever-after romance. The story’s premise . . . is one that most women can identify with. . . . Buy this book, but be careful where you are when you read it unless you want to explain your sudden and frequent outbursts of laughter.”—Single Titles

  “A highly entertaining romp through New Jersey society, featuring a lovable, if hapless, heroine.”—Fresh Fiction

  “[A] delightful frolic . . . featuring an authentic woman who can’t help but dabble in a little bit of fantasy.”—Kirkus Reviews

  “Big laughs, a big imagination, and big trouble all seamlessly meld together. . . . Get-the-heating-pad-honey-I-laughed-too-hard-and-my-stomach-hurts funny!”—Fallen Angel Reviews

  “This contemporary fairy tale, complete with a Prince Charming, differs from the original in that, with a little help from her friends, the lady effects her own transformation. Very enjoyable.”

  —Library Journal

  Raves for The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives

  “The mordantly observant Strohmeyer skewers the lifestyles of the rich and fatuous with spot-on irony. . . . An uproarious, upscale, tongue-in-cheek tour de force.”—Booklist

  “Equal parts bitterly emotional and ironically misogynistic . . . a wicked, quick read. Somewhere, Jane Austen is turning in her grave.”—Houston Press

  “[Strohmeyer] uses her observations to sharp comic effect.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Tart-tongued . . . wicked, frothy fun.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Like drinking champagne in a bubble bath: a total but rather guilty pleasure. . . . Real fun lies in watching these proper women gone wild.”—Romantic Times

  “You will never travel through the upper-crust suburbs again without wondering what type of drama is happening silently within.”—Huntress Book Reviews

  “A vastly entertaining depiction of life among the country-club set.”—Affaire de Coeur

  “Aims to be the chick-lit Carl Hiassen. . . . It’s silly, silly, silly, but extremely funny.”—The Washington Post Book World

  “Read this when Desperate Housewives doesn’t have your attention.” —All You

  Praise for Sarah Strohmeyer’s national bestselling, Agatha Award-winning Bubbles Yablonsky novels

  “Bubbles Yablonsky is . . . bright, slightly trashy, [and] outrageously funny. This is one to take to the pool.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “You’re going to love her.”—New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie

  “A sexy, irrepressible heroine, riotous supporting characters . . . and even a makeup tip or two.”—Library Journal

  “For anyone who has ever looked at a Barbie doll and thought it’s time the lady left Ken and flung herself at G.I. Joe, there is a riotous world waiting in these pages.”—The Houston Chronicle

  Also by Sarah Strohmeyer

  The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives

  Bubbles All the Way

  Bubbles Betrothed

  Bubbles a Broad

  Bubbles Ablaze

  Bubbles In Trouble

  Bubbles Unbound

  New American Library

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Previously published in a Dutton edition.

  First New American Library Printing, June 2007

  Copyright © Sarah Strohmeyer, LLC, 2006

  Excerpt from The Sleeping Beauty Proposal copyright © Sarah Strohmeyer, LLC, 2007

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  eISBN : 978-0-451-22124-7

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, me
chanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  For Lisa, of course

  The Fabulous Belinda Apple’s

  Guide to Indulging Your Inner Cinderella

  • Take that photo of you as a little girl off your mother’s refrigerator. Tape it to your bathroom mirror. Admire how happy she is, how sparkling. Be her, again.

  • Buy a tiara. Admit that it looks good on you. Fantastic, in fact. Wear it whenever.

  • Take a personal assessment test. Do you have what it takes to be a fairy princess? Do you feel peas? Prick your fingers? Kiss talking frogs? On second thought . . .

  • Believe it. Be it. Maybe that means more exercise, fewer calories, Swedish skin care. Or maybe it just means realizing that you’re worth being treated like royalty.

  • Remember that you don’t need a prince to be Cinderella, and that Prince Charming was nothing but an icky foot fetishist.

  • Find your fairy godmother. Or godsister. Or godgirlfriend. You know who she is. Thank her. Buy her a special gift—some perfume, flowers, tickets to Hunk-O-Mania.

  • Stick with the program! We know it’s hard treating yourself like royalty. Keep in mind that eventually you will rise to meet your destiny. It’ll be worth it. If you don’t think so, ask that little girl taped to your bathroom mirror. Remember, you’re changing for her.

  • Act like Cinderella. Trill while you do the dishes. Invite birds to sit on your fingers, chipmunks to nestle in the folds of your skirts. Do not mind that the neighbors have called your relatives, expressing concern. Pity them, for they know not that you are a woman of noble birth kept captive among commoners.

  • Look like Cinderella. Start with your hair and your feet while your body catches up. Become a stunning blonde or a sultry brunette. Get your brows done. Your pores minimized. Your wrinkles eliminated. Treat yourself to the most fabulous shoes you can afford.

  • Unveil your inner Cinderella. Step into your new, glittering, body-hugging dress with the plunging neckline. Put up your hair. Slip on great shoes and, finally, add your tiara. Smile to the girl in the mirror, who will be smiling back. Tell her you did it! Feel the joy of accomplishment, the thrill of being glamorous. And now, let the whole world see the Cinderella you’ve kept hidden. Her pumpkin carriage has been waiting for far too long.

  Chapter One

  We are all Cinderellas, no matter what our size. This is what I, Nola Devlin, fervently believe.

  I believe that within every one of us is a woman of undiscovered beauty, a woman who is charming and talented and light of heart. I believe that all we need is a fairy godmother to dust us off and bring out our potential and, while she’s at it, turn the rats in our lives into coachmen.

  I don’t know about the glass slipper, though. That seems to me to be a design flaw.

  Perhaps it was my fascination with Cinderella that brought me to a town named Princeton. Princeton is, in fact, a magical kingdom with shady, tree-lined streets and, at its center, a big castle of a university complete with Tudor turrets and court-yards of lush green lawns.

  There are even a few genuine princes who have come to study here, honing diplomatic skills they will later use to seduce buxom snow bunnies on the Italian Alps. Unfortunately, these princes tend to wear leather jeans and snap their fingers at the local waitstaff before racing off in their $100,000 Maserati Spyders. Honestly, they’re enough to put you off princes entirely.

  That’s the annoying thing about Princeton—everyone’s rich, everyone’s perfect. Well, most people are, especially the students. Walk down Nassau Street on a sunny Saturday in spring and you’re surrounded by lithe, taut, vigorous youth. Bronzed men in bicycle shorts whose biceps bulge as they carry their front wheels. Blond women with flawless skin and zilch upper-arm flab, their flat stomachs bared above skintight jeans.

  This is why Nancy, Deb, and I are best friends—because we’re far from perfect. Well, that’s not entirely true. Nancy, who’s a passionate lawyer and smarter than Perry Mason, has the perfect career, and Deb, who married her childhood sweetheart and has two lively kids, has the perfect family.

  Me? I’ve got the perfect imagination, I suppose. Then again, my imagination tends to get me in a lot of trouble, so maybe it’s not so perfect after all.

  What we don’t have are perfect bodies.

  In Princeton, where appearance is 99.9 percent of success, not having a perfect body is a definite handicap. Wait, you say. No one has the perfect body. We all have flaws. Too big on the bottom or too thin on top. Frankly, we would give anything to be too thin anywhere.

  Thin. A word so unattainable, so revered and denied to us, that we never speak it. Thin makes us cry. Thin makes us angry. Thin conjures up memories of years of starvation on high protein, cabbage soup, hot-dog-and-banana, two-day fasting, and all-liquid diets only to see our weight drop and then—poof—rise again, more determined to stick around than before.

  Thin is why guests at our tenth birthdays got cake and we got frozen yogurt. Thin is what we weren’t in high school. Thin is what other people are. Not us.

  This morning I don’t have time to worry about thin. Something big is brewing at Sass!, the magazine where I am a far too undervalued editor. Something bad. Lawyers at our parent company in Manhattan are driving down to Princeton to meet with our ailing eighty-five-year-old publisher, David Stanton, who has ordered up additional nurses and oxygen for the occasion. That’s how we know it’s really serious, when the nurses and oxygen are called in.

  The truth is we don’t know exactly what’s going on, though I’m sure we’ll find out during the sure-to-be-a-thrill-a-minute “Reemphasis of Ethical Standards Mandatory Staff Meeting” this afternoon. If we don’t show, don’t bother coming to work, the memo from our managing editor (aka, prison camp overseer), Lori DiGrigio, threatened. She’ll be happy to put our severance check in the mail.

  My fellow editor Joel and I are discussing what the big scandal might be and whether it has to do with rumors of fashion writer Donatella Mark embezzling Christian Louboutins in her coat, when Lori pops up in Features, Palm Pilot in hand.

  Joel turns to his desk and pretends to edit, though really he’s reading the local newspaper’s sports scores, while I quickly call up a copy of Belinda Apple’s latest column and stare at my computer screen intently, tapping on the keyboard every now and then to add authenticity. Seeing Belinda Apple’s byline, Lori sneers, makes a tic on her Palm Pilot, and cruises past me to Fashion. In Sass! land, Lori’s evil has no power over the good witch that is Belinda Apple.

  Belinda Apple is Sass!’s most cherished columnist, partially because she is British and chic, along with being très au courant and other cheap French adjectives. Everyone praises her as being a wonderful writer with wry wit and sharp observations, though I think the real reason she’s famous is because of her footwear—pink cowboy boots with silver studs.

  That’s what she’s wearing in her column photo, along with a mauve gossamer shirt open to reveal the rack of ribs that passes for a chest, her red hair falling over half her face and her long legs in skinny jeans tucked into those
boots. All across the country, women are wearing pink leather cowboy boots, thanks to Belinda Apple. She is fast becoming the Sally Starr of our generation.

  As if being thin, gorgeous, witty, British, and the owner of hand-stenciled pink cowboy boots wasn’t enough, it is also rumored that Belinda is dating Sass!’s other high-profile columnist, Nigel Barnes.

  Like Belinda, Nigel’s British and hot, with a twist. He’s intellectual enough to be a pop-culture professor (with tenure) at Princeton and groovy enough to appear regularly on CNN’s 90-Second Pop as the slightly irreverent Popper. He’s also written scripts for several movies featuring Hugh Grant and is supposedly the genius behind Hugh’s famous stutter—or so Nigel claims.

  Vanity Fair has been dying to do a cover story on Sass!’s dream couple, only they haven’t been able to get a hold of Belinda. Belinda’s very reclusive. Some say mysterious, despite tabloid accounts of her partying in SoHo with her fabulous model friends and zipping off in limousines stocked with champagne.

  But of course these stories of her wild behavior aren’t true. They couldn’t be. Belinda’s too hardworking and dedicated to be out socializing at all hours.

  Plus, Belinda Apple doesn’t really exist.

  This I alone know, and it is a secret that must never, ever be revealed. Because if it gets out that frumpy Nola Devlin from Manville, New Jersey, is the real Belinda Apple, my readers will hate me, my publisher will fire me, and my mother—who has openly proclaimed Belinda a “smart-mouthed slut who is single-handedly destroying the morals of our society”—will never speak to me again.

  Then again, the markdown on pink studded cowboy boots will be phenomenal.

  Shortly before noon I skip out to meet Nancy and Deb for our standing first-Friday-of-the-month lunch date. You might think, with the “Reemphasis of Ethical Standards Mandatory Staff Meeting” hanging over my head, not to mention possible immediate employment termination if I miss it, that I might reconsider the crab salad croissant with homemade sweet potato chips at the Willoughby Café. But it’s the Willoughby Café. Princeton’s best restaurant, smack on Nassau Street. Are you kidding?