Cosmopolitan Life

By Deborah Blumenthal

After Jillian Shayne, fitness editor of Savvy Woman, accidentally spills a cosmopolitan into the lap of a party crasher at her company’s annual Christmas party, nothing in her life will be the same. Connor McCain seems to lack an impressive resume, but he makes up for it in sexual heat. Only the more she gets to know Connor, the more mysterious he becomes. When circumstances in their relationship take a startling turn, Jillian decides it’s time to leave Connor and her old life behind.

The only question is how to start over?

Reminiscing on how her electrifying romance with Connor began, Jillian is determined to bring romance to couples all over Manhattan. Along with her best friend Tara, a high-powered real estate agent, they introduce “Romance in a Box” on Valentine’s Day, bringing with it hard won success for Jillian and some romantic surprises of her own along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah Blumenthal
• Release date: Dec 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301746088

Deborah Blumenthal

Deborah Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and nutritionist, and the author of twenty-three books for adults and children. She has been a regular contributor to The New York Times. Her feature stories have appeared in a wide variety of national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Daily News, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, and Woman’s Day. Deborah lives in New York City.

Book preview

After Jillian Shayne, fitness editor of Savvy Woman, accidentally spills a cosmopolitan into the lap of a party crasher at her company’s annual Christmas party, nothing in her life will be the same. Connor McCain seems to lack an impressive resume, but he makes up for it in sexual heat. Only the more she gets to know Connor, the more mysterious he becomes. When circumstances in their relationship take a startling turn, Jillian decides it’s time to leave Connor and her old life behind.

The only question is how to start over?

Reminiscing on how her electrifying romance with Connor began, Jillian is determined to bring romance to couples all over Manhattan. Along with her best friend Tara, a high-powered real estate agent, they introduce Romance in a Box on Valentine’s Day, bringing with it hard won success for Jillian and some romantic surprises of her own along the way.   

COSMOPOLITAN LIFE

Copyright © 2012 by Deborah Blumenthal

SMASHWORDS EDITION

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without expressed written permission in writing from the author.

Chapter 1

Tall-stemmed cocktail glasses filled with blush pink cosmopolitans were set rim to rim along the bar in neat rows. Almost as if someone were preparing to shoot an ad for viewing the world through rose-colored glasses. The concept appealed to me. So did the drinks.

I reached for one and then heard a disquieting groan from behind me.

Christ, a male voice groused. Anything else besides that cotton candy?

I didn’t bother turning and carefully swiped a too-full glass off the bar. As I slowly turned toward the buffet table for some mini quiches to blunt the effect of drinking on an empty stomach, someone bumped my shoulder sending a pink tsunami coursing over the rim of the glass.

Christ, the same voice called out again, this time with greater intensity. I looked up in time to see him leap back, but not far enough to avoid the shower that drenched the front of his pants. I averted my eyes from the Rorschach blot that I wasn’t about to decipher.

Well you’ve got my attention, sweetheart, he said.

I lurched toward the bar and grabbed a wad of napkins and then hesitated as he stared, waiting. Finally, the ends of his mouth curled up slightly and my face turned pinker than the drink.

Well?

It’s a one man job. I shoved them into his hand. Someone slammed into me, I said, to fill the awkward silence, and this place is such a mob scene… Then, cool sophisticate, I burst out laughing.

I’m glad my, ah, predicament amuses you, he said, a glint of humor in his eye.

Your predicament? I tried to avert my eyes.

So who are you? He glanced up briefly as he dabbed at his pants. And what are you doing in a joint like this?

"Jillian Shayne. I’m with Savvy Woman."

Pilates editor? He drew back with mock awe.

Fitness editor, I said civilly.

You look healthy. He shook his head dismissively. We’ll never get along.

"So who are you, editor in chief of the Bartending Guide?"

He looked at me squarely. "No one in his right mind would ever make me editor of anything. And as far as fitness, I never work out if I can help it."

Afraid your heart might start beating?

He tilted his head slightly, studying me as he slowly ran his fingertips up and down the side of his face, a gesture that I took to mean that he was either deciding whether he needed a shave, or was deep in thought about his next move.

As a matter—

Sorry about your pants, I said quickly. Anyway, I won’t keep you. I know you’re probably rushing to get a seat at the bar.

I turned abruptly and strutted off to talk with the magazine’s art director who at the moment looked like a circus performer in training as he tried to bite off a chunk of turkey, while balancing a plate and a drink.

Before you jump to conclusions about me, I’m not uppity and defensive. Not most of the time, anyway. It’s just that I ran four miles before getting to work. That should have been a good thing, except for the sudden throb behind my knee, and then the e-mail from the managing editor marked priority because my lead story wasn’t, edgy. Add no lunch, late period, and finally the drink in the crotch.

Bottom line, I wasn’t in the mood to be trading barbs with a smooth talker. Despite those eyes, he was no doubt a party-crasher and most likely a drunk. New York was filled types like that who wormed their way into high profile events with a practiced cool.

Considering that the guest list for the Metronic Industries summer party numbered close to a thousand, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that along with staff, PR people, and celebrities who were showcased in the magazines, the party would draw hangers-on who wanted to freeload while reveling in the fact that the event would undoubtedly make it into the next day’s gossip columns.

In fact, it was unusual for Metronic Industries, the publishing giant that owned Savvy Woman and a host of other magazines, to be holding a party. But after being taken over by MCM industries – boosting them to the nation’s number one media conglomerate – it was time to party, and MCM was making a show of it by taking over the Waldorf ballroom.

Job-related socializing rarely offered me opportunities to meet men. If you’re wondering why, it’s clear that you haven’t been hanging around too many women’s magazines. Except for mail room clerks, janitors, construction workers, cafeteria workers, delivery boys, the comptroller and maybe a vice president of something, the workers are all female. At one point I thought briefly about applying for an editorial job at one of the men’s magazines as the token woman. The issues are different there, but the biggest is limited access to the elite men’s club or inner circle.

So an MA in health science plus a minor in Phys Ed qualified me for fitness and beauty editor, and I concentrated more on ground-breaking stories (The Myths of Passive Exercise, and The Truth About Baby Products), than where I would be going on Saturday nights. I spent days visiting gyms, and day spas, interviewing physicians and physical therapists, and occasionally traveling around the country to spas, fitness centers and medical centers to find out about the latest trends.

And while my hips and thighs stayed slim, my desk drawers bulged with stacks of index cards listing beauty and exercise tips and fallacies, treatments, products, and trends, all scrawled in colored markers. I became Savvy Woman’s quick-fix queen with tips for everything from zapping pimples to freshening breath.

In the months ahead with corporate urging us to become more national in perspective, I hoped to be traveling more to report on what was happening outside of the city.

It’s not like there were no men in my life. At the moment there was a trainer at New York Sports. Who doesn’t fantasize about what it would be like to make it with the buff trainer at the health club? But in this case the relationship didn’t start out with me gawking at him while I was pumping my inner thigh muscles on the old Cybex. Rick was sent to my office by New York Sports after I called for help with a pre-summer spread on tighter abs. He proved to be the Einstein of tight torsos. There was also something about the way he hovered over me on the office floor - at 7 PM after almost everyone had left for the day - while pinning my lower back to the floor to ensure proper form, that enticed me to crunch closer and closer to his lips. So there was heavy breathing, we went to the East Village for a macrobiotic feast, he shaped me up, and things worked out, so to speak. Maybe he wasn’t my dream man, but he compensated – in a big way.

I checked my watch. He was due any minute. Then I saw him stroll in, his goofy black baseball cap turned backward, black jeans clinging to his slim hips, a black New York Sports Master Trainer t-shirt hugging his lean chest, and his backpack slung over his shoulder. I was about to wave when a strong hand reached out from behind me, clenching my upper arm and drawing me back.

If all the editors at Metronic Industries are as stuck up as you are baby, he hissed into my ear. I’m starting a national boycott.

Do you have to strong arm women to get them to respond to you? I said, wriggling free and turning to face green eyes as my breath got shorter.

"Who are you, anyway?" I said, briefly glancing down to assess the extent of damage I had wreaked on his…chinos.

Connor McCain, he said, a small satisfied smile on his face.

Should I know you? I hoped he wasn’t some up and coming celebrity whose story I had missed in the competition’s latest issue.

Definitely, he said, staring nakedly into my eyes.

No, I meant…are you–

I am, he said, brushing that aside. Now why don’t we get out of this zoo and go have a drink.

At that point, logic would have dictated that I ask him exactly who he was, what he did, if anything, or even how he found himself at a party for a company that he didn’t work for and seemed philosophically opposed to. But my brain activity flat-lined. Did I say anything back? I can’t remember. What I do recall is that he hooked his finger through mine and without another word, led me out of the party. So there I was, grinning like an airhead, sailing past the executive editor of Savvy Woman, without pausing for a nanosecond to chat which might have served me well on the career ladder. Like an automaton, I followed Connor McCain across the length of the ballroom as if being drawn not by a loose finger, but by an invisible force. Rick faded into the background, and all that I could think of was that the curly-haired Irishman in the black linen shirt and half soaked chinos was undoubtedly the sexiest man I had ever met in my entire life.

Chapter 2

According to the next day’s tabs, the giant arrangements of Calla lilies alone added up to more than the salary of the average editor, and the gift baskets handed out to employees at the door - filled with Tiffany key rings, Chanel perfume miniatures, and Hermes scarves - brought to mind the goody bags lavished on Hollywood stars at the Academy Awards. I didn’t get one of the goody baskets, of course, but for the first time in a long time, I followed my pounding heart instead of my head. And considering that I spend my days writing about cardio health, I construed that – at the time at least – as a valid career move.

If you think I’m the kind of girl who meets men in bars or parties and goes home with them because I like their bone structure, or the way they talk, you’d be – as our teen readers say – like SO wrong. This was different. There was something irresistible about Connor McCain. Aside from his visceral sex appeal - and if he didn’t work out, he did something to look like that - it had to do with the fact that he appeared to be a guy who seemed not only smart and gorgeous, but also totally self-assured, and in control. What a challenge then, to find out about his vulnerabilities and push his buttons.

I’ve always been intrigued by the unconventional. My road to Savvy Woman was about as smooth as a rock climbing wall. I had an inherent dislike of corporate America and office life. I took temp jobs, waited on tables at a vegan restaurant, bought shoes for Saks, peddled designer French handbags, helped a friend sell Avon, and even tried selling my aunt’s collection of crystal on eBay , none of which catapulted me to richness.

I remember entering a contest for Living the Dream Life. They offered twenty-five thousand dollars to buyers of aromatherapy products, I think, for the person who most eloquently answered the question, How would you describe the dream life?

I wrote about the mythical stone mansion in the country, set among lush, overgrown English gardens. I’d have dogs roaming free, horses in my fields, and a sun-filled farmhouse kitchen with an Irish pine table in the middle and glass pitchers everywhere, overflowing with purple and pink wild flowers. For the moments when inspiration struck there would be a laptop computer near a west window where I would marvel over the sunsets or watch the onset of threatening country storms as I wrote small, sensitive poems about the changing seasons and my inner emotional landscape that would immediately appear in The New Yorker.

I suppose that I was so overtaken by my rapturous fantasies that I omitted the part about taking sybaritic baths scented with lavender oil, or using energizing peppermint oil inhalations to center me, or connect me with the earth because I didn’t win the contest, and seriously questioned whether anyone did. I mean, do you ever hear about the people who win online contests? All I know is that I have yet to be invited to the opening of a Hollywood movie on the arm of the leading actor, or be sent to Rome with tickets to Aida at the Baths of Caracalla. No, all I get as a result of entering contests are penis e-mails or Viagra offers.

So I had to get real, and that meant a steady job to pay the mortgage on my studio apartment on East 57th Street. It was too small, of course, but it had a fireplace in the living room with a carved marble mantle, a medium-sized closet with fabulous oak cabinetry that I later realized reduced the amount it could actually hold by half, but whatever – that was all compensated for by the view of the back courtyard where the building’s gardening committee cultivated rose bushes in our carefully tended gardens.

But as I walked out of the Waldorf Astoria, getting ahead on the career track took a back seat to sitting next to Connor in a taxi, his arm casually slung around me. For the first time I enjoyed the whipping short stops because it felt like we were two kids in a bumper car who wanted to be together so badly that they cut school.

You’re throwing yourself at me, Connor said, after the driver made a sudden right turn from the left lane and I was pressed up against him. He grinned, obviously unperturbed about the wild ride.

The rules of the road must be different overseas.

That may be where he’s taking us, he whispered. The driver steadied the course, but neither of us moved apart.

We separated at Third Avenue and Seventy Fourth Street, in front of JG Melon, a dimly lit East Side bar where locals go for nothing more exotic than hamburgers, club sandwiches, and cottage fries. We sat at a small square back table and then ordered food and drinks. After the waitress turned away, he studied me like a painter observing how the light fell on his subject.

Are you always so quiet? I said, before turning back to the Heinz ketchup bottle as if it were a Ming vase worthy of close scrutiny.

He nodded.

I shifted my gaze to the nap of the green and white checked tablecloth, and then past him to the tables around us where beers were being chug-a-lugged by exuberant couples whose loud conversation seemed amusing and effortless. Outside, a woman walked by with a small black dog that sat, refusing to budge. That seemed to encapsulate the New York experience – tugging at dead weight in an attempt to get control. Almost involuntarily, I pushed a lock of my perpetually wild hair back behind my ear. He reached over and lightly placed it back where it was. We looked at each other for a moment and then I pushed it back again. He smiled slightly.

He looked down finally when the waitress brought us our drinks. I stared out the window again, but the woman and the dog had vanished. Before picking up my Bloody Mary, I glanced over at Connor and he pushed his chair back slightly.

Ready.

I lifted my glass. To safe drinking.

And to my good fortune, he said, lifting his scotch and toasting.

I raised an eyebrow. You had a drink spilled on you. Is that what you call good fortune?

Definitely.

I shook my head.

So what do you do? I said, casually licking a drip of tomato juice from the end of my celery stick before taking a bite.

When? he said, sliding the celery from my hand and biting off a chunk, then handing it back.

Every day… for a living?

He shrugged. Introduce people, manage investments, write, do some long term stuff, stay out of offices as much as possible.

That narrowed it down. Was he independently wealthy? A starving writer? An arms dealer? CIA? If he were a writer who was doing a story for me, and he handed in copy like that, I would have red lined it and demanded in boldface: What KIND of job, exactly?

Does all that add up to actual employment? I said, wondering if I’d end up with the check.

Keeps me busy. Then opting not to continue on the topic of his so-called job, he lifted his head slightly and turned his attention back to me as the waitress served the food.

"So tell me about you, Jillian Shayne, he said, propping his chin on his fist. You’re more interesting. What’s your life like outside of the award-winning Savvy Woman?"

About me, I said, pausing. I majored in Esperanto in college, I’ve won five consecutive national Tae Kwon Do championships, I raise Arabian horses, fly B-52’s, and in my free time vacation in the Greek islands with shipping magnates.

Evasive wench, huh?

Touché.

I dragged a cottage fry through a puddle of ketchup, then looked up and stared across the table at him. What do you want to know, Connor?

He wiped a speck of ketchup off the side of my mouth with his thumb. Are you in love with anybody?

Not you, I said, staring back at him.

We’ll we have ourselves a goal then.

And you? I said, unable to resist.

He looked off for a minute, and then slowly turned back to me.

No, he said, shaking his head back and forth. No.

Chapter 3

What happened to you last night? Rick said, dropping his backpack to the floor. I had never examined the contents, but I was willing to swear that he carried weights so that he was literally pulling his load and working his muscles, even when he wasn’t at the gym. One minute I saw you, and the next you were gone. He put his hands out in front of me, just under my elbows and then hoisted me up to kiss him.

It was a great party, he said, shaking his head. Where did you disappear?

I ran into someone…and it was just so impossible to catch up with all the commotion. I held my hands out, helplessly. Fortunately, Rick was never one to press, except for dead weight.

Did you get any numbers? I said, cattily, turning it back to him.

Two new potential clients. Does that count?