The Sleeping Beauty Proposal Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Teaser chapter

  About the Author

  Praise for The Cinderella Pact

  “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

  “A big, cheery story with enough fairy tale and froth to let us escape the mundane, and with enough intelligence to make it worthwhile.” —BookPage

  “Takes the best of Bridget Jones and Sex and the City and makes it fresh and entertaining.” —Romance Readers

  “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

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

  “What a find! From the moment I read the first page, I was hooked. . . . The Cinderella Pact 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 How to Be Cool

  Praise for The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives

  "An uproarious, upscale, tongue-in-cheek tour de force.”

  —Booklist

  "Wicked, frothy fun ... Life may be steamy in the metropolis, but it’s just as bawdy in the burbs.” —Publishers Weekly

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

  —The Boston Globe

  “A wicked, quick read.” —Houston Press

  "[A] frothy tale of love, lust and lies.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Praise for Sarah Strohmeyer’s national bestselling,

  Agatha Award-winning Bubbles Yablonsky novels

  "[Sarah Strohmeyer] has a gift for snappy prose and comic timing ... amusing subplots, rollicking fun, and enough peril-and-romance to raise the pulse.... This frothy, funny fiction is a great escape.” —Seven Days (Burlington,VT)

  "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

  “Bubbles is fun, and so is Strohmeyer’s book.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  "Possibly the first novel of its kind to offer beauty tips.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Fizzy as a bicarb, funny as Evanovich. Should bubble right to the top of the mystery bestseller lists.”

  —Carolyn Hart, New York Times bestselling author

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

  “Wicked wit and playful intelligence.”

  —Claire Cook, author of Must Love Dogs and Multiple Choice

  "Bubbles ... has evolved into one of the toughest investigators around. And she does it all with a rollicking sense of humor.”

  —Calgary Herald

  “As much effervescent fun as its heroine’s name.”

  —Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries novels

  “Relentlessly funny. I love it!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

  “The dumb-blonde shtick works well with the whole loony business, and Strohmeyer’s sharp eye for styles and regional details adds to the realism and the charm.” —Publishers Weekly

  “There’s a lot to be said for silly that’s done so very well.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “In an era of pluckier-than-thou females, a nitwit heroine could be a welcome change. Enter Bubbles Yablonsky—a breath of fresh air.” —Kirkus Reviews

  ALSO BY SARAH STROHMEYER

  The Cinderella Pact

  The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives

  Bubbles Betrothed

  Bubbles A Broad

  Bubbles Ablaze

  Bubbles in Trouble

  Bubbles Unbound

  Bubbles All the Way

  New American Library

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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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 2008

  Copyright © Sarah Strohmeyer, 2007

  Excerpt from Sweet Love copyright © Sarah Strohmeyer, 2008

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  eISBN : 978-0-451-22396-8

  1. Marriage proposals—Fiction. 2. Self confidence—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.T6972S55 2007b

  813’.6—dc22 2007012791

  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, mechanical, 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 fictiti
ously, 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.

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  For the indomitable Kathy Sweeney

  You’re engaged to be married.You’re radiant, feeling a bit like a celebrity.... Do not panic.

  —MARTHA STEWART’S KEEPSAKE WEDDING PLANNER

  Chapter One

  If you ask me, the best part about the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale is that she didn’t have to do anything to get a man. She just lay around for a hundred years. And one day a cute guy with lots of ambition and extra time on his hands rode up on an expensive horse, hacked through a bunch of brambles, ran upstairs, and kissed her.

  Voilà! Instant husband.

  This has been my problem. I’d like a husband in theory, but I don’t want to have to work for one in practice.You know, keep my legs shaved and my figure trim. Dress well for all occasions. Learn how to grill a steak, twice-bake a potato, check my teeth for spinach, say no to desserts, look stunning in a bikini, bat my eyes, suck in my stomach, never burp, fetch beer, giggle at his every joke, wear thongs that ride up my butt, make nice to his sister, and play those games.

  I am lousy at those games.

  My mother loves them. She loves the whole challenge of baiting and trapping the elusive white-collar, upwardly mobile North American male. I think she wishes she were still single like she was back when she lassoed my father, the prudent bank president in a gray suit, the guy who never fails to lead strangers to the brink of suicide with mind-numbing lectures on the importance of building credit and pursuing equity.

  For example, one day my mother sent me a present with a note on pink stationery that said: “Be the first to hang up and he’ll be the first to call back!” It was a white plastic egg timer. I sat on my front step and stared at it, baffled.

  Then I called my best friend, Patty Pugliese, who said, or rather yelled, as she tends to do, “It’s so you’ll know when to get off the phone with a guy, you moron!”

  Patty’s a successful lawyer at a boutique firm in Boston, unmarried and determined to stay that way. As the oldest sister of seven kids growing up poor in South Boston, she likes to say that she’s already raised her family.To her, marriage means diapers and a husband who stops by long enough to get you pregnant again. She’d much rather sleep around and drive a Porsche.

  I found a spot for the egg timer on my stove and there it sat for years, reminding me every morning, as I flipped my Egg Beaters omelet with salsa and low-fat cheese, of what I was doing wrong. Like putting it by the stove instead of the phone, for starters.

  One by one my closest friends from college got married. Mary Ann went to Germany, married a doctor, and had two children named Louise and Hanz. Sara married Gary, who lived in the apartment above us junior year. (We’d all seen that one coming.) Julia married a guy she met in law school. Lorraine married her dentist. Only Ellie and I were left and Ellie was looking, hard. She had egg timers next to every phone in her apartment, and one by the cell in her car. (I am not kidding.)

  It haunted me, my egg timer. I’d think about it as I went to work, riding the number 73 Waverly bus to Harvard Square and taking the Red Line up to Thoreau College, where I’m an admissions counselor. I’d ask myself, is it me? Do men not find me attractive?

  Clearly, that wasn’t true. Guys asked me out all the time and they’d tell me that they loved my hair, which is nothing spectacular, your run-of-the-mill brown, or that they thought my legs were really strong. (Just what does that mean?) They said I was funny and had a great personality. But something about me was not marriage material.We’d last four, maybe five dates discussing, as always, their ex-girlfriends and how to win them back, and that was it. They never called again.

  Why? I mean, I had the timer!

  Maybe it was my job. Maybe it wasn’t exciting enough to attract quality men. In a college town like Boston, everyone knows there are two types of admissions counselors: the recent graduates biding their time until something more exciting comes along, or the hacks, like me, who have decided to make a career out of breaking kids’ hearts.

  Not that I’m one of those. I’m not. I’m the person on the admissions committee who votes for Suzie Plain Cheese of Dayton, Ohio, because she’s a hard worker and a sincere student who didn’t pad her resume. I know Suzie will grow up to be a generous member of society, joining her community’s school board and maybe leading a Girl Scout troop or two.

  But Thoreau College is in a losing war against Harvard. (As if we could compete!) Inevitably, my Suzie is overruled in favor of the rich kid from New Jersey whose parents have paid for him to distribute clean needles in Ghana and for him to take classes that coach him to a perfect 2400 on the SATs.

  So, I went to work and did what I could for the Suzie Plain Cheeses of the universe. I spent my lunch hours eating turkey sandwiches with diet mayo, lettuce, and tomato on whole wheat along with a Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke while reading their essays about the life-changing aspects of To Kill a Mockingbird. On the train home I read their explanations for why they bombed biology and, after a dinner of Lean Cuisine and a Skinny Cow sandwich, I read about their plans to take over the world while my overweight, diabetic cat, Jorge, barfed on the carpet by my feet.

  I kept up this routine hoping that life might change of its own accord.

  And then, just when I had given up and signed myself over to a limited existence in my Watertown apartment with my nearly blind cat, a miracle occurred.

  I met Hugh.

  Not any Hugh. Hugh Spencer. I’m sure you’ve heard of him or read one of his books. Though when we hooked up, he wasn’t famous. He was just an assistant English English professor. I didn’t repeat myself. He taught English and he was English. How cool is that?

  All the freshman girls had crushes on him. His office hours were booked faster than a Rolling Stones reunion tour. And they weren’t there to discuss his brilliant analysis of Shakespeare’s use of feminine foil in All’s Well That Ends Well, either.The guy is the spitting image of Hugh Grant, heavy-lidded blue eyes, that naughty grin, even the stutter. (Though Patty thinks it’s totally affected and she may be right.)

  Better yet, I didn’t have to put out bait or trap him. He came to me. Literally. He opened the door of my office one night when I was “working” late and there I was, naturally, with my skirt over my head inspecting my ass with a hand mirror.

  Granted, it wasn’t the best of circumstances to meet a future husband. That’s not exactly putting one’s “best face forward,” you might say. But it was funny. Hugh had come looking for a flashlight to help Alice, our secretary, change her tire and what he got instead was an uncontrollable fit of hysterics.

  I, of course, didn’t find it funny at all. I was mortified! But no matter how hard I tried to explain that I was checking for cancer—having just taken a break to read a Cosmo article entitled "Killer MolesYou Don’t See”—the more he doubled over. I mean, it was a matter of life and death. And he was laughing!

  To make up for his callous attitude toward my health, he took me out to dinner. (All clear on the ass-mole front, by the way.) The next thing I knew we had one, two, three, four, five, and six dates. Then I stopped counting.

  It was glorious. Saturdays we’d go to the North End and pick up fresh pasta for dinner. Sundays we’d sleep late and read the NewYork Times. We biked. We jogged. We had mind-blowing sex on fresh white 1,000-thread-count cotton sheets. It was like living in a catalogue.

&n
bsp; Suddenly, I had Adirondack chairs on my front porch. I was wearing gray yoga pants and facing the morning sun with an earthenware cup of fair-trade espresso in my hand, Hugh kissing my neck, his abs chiseled above his Ralph Lauren striped boxers. My kitchen was bright with fresh vegetables, green peppers, red peppers, and organic garlic sautéing in heart-healthy safflower oil. I completely forgot the whole line of Lean Cuisine or my excitement when I learned that Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa now came in Cherry Cordial!

  Then came the Big Hurdles. You know the ones I’m talking about—the meeting of each other’s parents; the vacation at a beach house; the Christmas together, alone; the first anniversary.

  Surely, I thought, he will pop the question soon.

  Not that I was one of those desperate women who, having passed her thirtieth birthday, was anxious to get on with the next half of womanhood: being a wife and mother. I wasn’t.

  Really. It was merely that I enjoyed being with Hugh and he seemed to enjoy being with me and, unlike Patty, I was of the opinion that two people in love in their thirties who had been together for over a year should probably start discussing things like whether it was better to raise children in the security of the suburbs or amidst the stimulation of a city, and if Labradoodles really were safe with babies.

  But the first anniversary came and went and the only diamond Hugh gave me was the one patterned on a blue silk scarf (to match my “cerulean” eyes). Nor was the famous Spencer family diamond ring hanging from the tree on our second Christmas, no sapphire at the bottom of my champagne flute on New Year’s.

  Summer arrived, bringing with it warm and romantic nights. We took what had become our “annual” vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, strolling hand-in-hand down the beach as the fog rolled in. No diamond in the sand, either. And I looked. Looked hard.

  Three years later, I was still looking, my big toe turning over clam shells and crab claws, certain a diamond-and-platinum solitaire had been dropped somewhere.What was he waiting for? He’d told me he loved me.That was now a given. He often brought up our old age, how he could see us hobbling down the same Vineyard beach in our twilight years. I assumed that by then we’d be married, if only for the Social Security.