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“
I’m packing. Mommy’s going on a trip.” She knelt down to Gwen’s eye level, ready to administer hugs if the tears began.

“
Can I come?” Gwen asked, eyes wide.

“
Not this time, honey. But you can help me pack,” Elizabeth offered. Gwen considered this for a moment. Elizabeth flinched internally, thinking, Will she cry? Won’t she cry? Gwen was more unpredictable than March weather.

“
Okay, Mommy,” Gwen said, all business. “If you want to look pretty, you need more sparkles.” She picked up the hat box in which Elizabeth kept her costume jewelry and dumped it into the suitcase.

*

Both kids were in school when Steve dropped her off at the Cedar Rapids Airport the next morning, but the scene around the breakfast table had been remarkably blasé. Elizabeth mentioned this as her husband pulled up to the drop-off-only parking bay in his leased Lexus, the shoulder-strap making an indent in the curve of his belly.

“
Can you believe Keenan? I’m telling him ‘I love you and I’m going to miss you’ and what does he say to me? ‘Bring me back something from Dylan’s Candy Bar’? And Gwen. Not one tiny little tear?” she said.

“
What? You want them to be upset that you’re leaving?” Steve put the car in park, looking in the rear-view for security guards.

“
No. Well, maybe a little. I
am
going to be gone for a whole week.”

“
Yeah, and you’d better leg it if you don’t want to miss your flight.” Steve leaned over and gave her a perfunctory kiss. He hadn’t shaved, and his salt-and-pepper stubble was abrasive against her cheek. Hadn’t brushed his teeth either, from the smell of it.

“
Et tu, Brute?” she said, leaning back in her seat, arms crossed.

“
Elizabeth ...” Steve’s voice was laden with exasperation. “Please?”

“
Right. Fine. Have a great week. Not too many trips to McDonalds, okay.” She patted the button-down covered paunch hanging over the waistband of his Dockers. He gave her a sour look.

Some send off, she thought, retrieving her suitcase from the trunk of the Lexus. No sooner had the trunk click
ed shut than Steve pulled out of the parking bay and sped off, without so much as a wave, further reinforcing the thought. Elizabeth shrugged, wheeling her suitcase toward the check-in desk. This was what happened after fourteen years together, she reasoned. The romance petered out.

In a way, it had started out as their best year yet since they
’d become parents, Elizabeth mused, waiting in line behind a man in overalls who was so obese he looked like he would need a separate seat for each butt-cheek. Both kids were out of diapers and in school full time. Nobody got seriously sick. Within weeks of each other, Steve got promoted and Elizabeth finally got to see her name on the cover of book. The mortgage was paid off. Money in the bank, maybe not as much as Bill Gates, but enough to feel safe. Everything was hunky-dory. Apparently too hunky-dory for those crap-shooting gods on Mount Olympus.

The first bomb was Keenan
’s diagnosis. He’d been having problems adjusting to his first
real
year of school, where they asked more of him than that he sit in a corner with his friends making leaning towers of blocks with the express purpose of destroying them. Oh, sure he’d learned the alphabet and could write his name and count to one hundred, but that was about it for Keenan, academically. That just didn’t cut it in first grade.

Elizabeth had been sick with guilt that she, a former teacher, hadn
’t noticed anything. He had seemed to be the same as all the other hyperactive little punks in his KG 2 class, but now Elizabeth heard that Drake read bedtime stories to his little sister and Evan wrote in his diary every day without fail, and Thomas could count to a thousand. By twos.

There had been hushed consultations with Keenan
’s teacher and less-hushed consultations with the so-called Student Support Team. Okay, she’d raised her voice, but she hadn’t screamed, like Steve said she had. Wasn’t she allowed to get a little upset? They were telling her in the most mincing of terms that her son just wasn’t good enough. That she, as his primary care-giver, wasn’t good enough. No one had told her that she and Keenan were supposed to be cramming every day like he was going to be sitting the bar. Wasn’t childhood supposed to be about playing and having fun? Apparently not.

The diagnosis of ADHD had actually come as something of a relief. They could put a label on why Keenan broke down in tears of exasperation after two minutes of trying to read the same three
-letter words that his classmates could spell forwards and backwards and make anagrams of. They could do something about it.

Of course,
“they” meant Elizabeth. Steve had his job. What Elizabeth considered her job – writing – Steve considered a hobby. His job was what put lamb chops on the table and Baby Gap leggings on Gwen’s doll-sized bottom. Elizabeth’s advance barely covered their annual property taxes.

So it was up to Elizabeth to meet with the Student Support Team and take Keenan to see the specialists and order books with titles like
Learning to Love Your Challenged Child
and
ADHD: A Naturopathic Approach
. The books were lined up on the shelves in her study now, largely unread, more talismans than tools. She could only handle so many pages of some self-styled expert telling her everything she was doing wrong before she gave up. It didn’t help that all the authors contradicted each other, either. What did help, eventually, was cognitive behavioral therapy and Ritalin.

But Keenan was still a constant source of anxiety and a persistent cause of arguments between Elizabeth and Steve. And unlike some couples who almost looked forward to the occasional fight with their spouse, anticipating the inevitable make-up sex, Elizabeth and Steve didn
’t. Make up, or have sex. Their heated discussions would gradually become tepid and finally fizzle out, leaving them both weary, resentful and in no mood for hugs, let alone licking whipped cream off each other’s inner thighs.

Then there was Steve
’s job. He’d been diligently working his way up the chain of middle management at Dean Industry and Agriculture for the past ten years. With his latest promotion, he’d crossed the invisible line that distinguished the middle from the top. He was at the bottom of the top, mind you, but suddenly, everything was different. It was as if he’d been admitted to a secret masonic order, with special handshakes, cryptic acronyms and an unspoken dress code. He started wearing suits. Gave up his gym membership at the Rec Center and began playing golf instead. Checked his Blackberry at the dinner table. And he was traveling a lot more. Which led to two more changes: Steve gained forty pounds and Elizabeth’s mother moved in.

If their sex life wasn
’t already dying a slow death, having a husband who bore more than a passing resemblance to Tom Arnold on doughnuts and her mom cutting z’s in the guest room was like inviting Dr. Kevorkian into their bedroom.

Elizabeth had read countless magazine articles over the years describing the male libido as highly visual and the female libido as emotional, but either she was a man trapped in a woman
’s body or those researchers had their heads up their collective asses – meaning they were probably men.

She
’d like to see any woman try to have an orgasm with two-hundred pounds of flab pressing down on her and the sound of an asthmatic bear wheezing in her ear. She got pretty good at faking it, but even better at coming up with excuses not to altogether. And after a few months of steady rejection, Steve all but stopped trying. She still loved Steve, of course, but loving and wanting to make love to were two entirely different things.

But even if Elizabeth had been able to overlook Steve
’s sudden weight gain, there was the matter of her mother. Connie McCanna got up at 5 AM with a verse from the Bible and a strong cup of coffee and didn’t stop moving until she hit the pillow at 10 PM. She also didn’t stop talking. She had opinions about everything from the price of apples at Hy-Vee to foreign policy, and she would share them with whoever happened to be around. A former army nurse, she knew there were two ways of doing things: her way and the wrong way. When Elizabeth had begged her mother to come stay with them that time that Steve was in Tucson, Gwen was running a fever, Keenan had a mystery rash on his hands and Elizabeth had a book signing at 10:00 the next morning in Iowa City, she knew she was handing the reins of the household over to Connie McCanna in perpetuity.

Not that she could complain. Having her mother around was a godsend, especially when Steve was away on business. But she did put a damper on any lingering romance between Elizabeth and Steve. Never mind sex
, they could barely manage an uninterrupted conversation.

Of course, they had tried
“date night,” going out for over-priced under-cooked pasta at Luigi’s a couple of times, but it had never worked the way
Redbook
said it would. They always ended up arguing. About Keenan. About Elizabeth’s mother. About that fifth slice of garlic bread Steve was reaching for. In the end, they gave up.

Still, things kept ticking along in the Holmes household, if not happily, then at least contentedly. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit she didn
’t really miss the sex. On their monthly girls’ night out, she confessed as much to Emily and Nina over one too many frozen margaritas.

“
It has been three months since Steve and I knocked boots and frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn,” she had slurred when the conversation turned to sex, as it inevitably did at some point in the evening.

Emily had choked on her spinach enchilada. Nina
’s eyes widened as her lips narrowed in disapproval or disbelief.

“
Seriously,” Elizabeth continued, “Between the kids and writing and trying to squeeze in the odd run, when I have a free half hour, I’d much rather melt into the couch and watch HBO, you know? I’m so over sex.”

“
Jesus, Liz,” Emily said. “I’ve heard about dry spells, but three months?”

“
I, personally, could not last a week,” Nina added. She was French, Elizabeth reasoned. They were like that.

“
You’re not thinking about cheating on Steve, are you?” Emily asked, giving Elizabeth a suspicious look over the rim of her glass. Emily had lived through Elizabeth’s Rampant Slut phase that had started after Noah Olsen dumped her and ended when she met Steve.

“
You’ve got to be kidding me.” Elizabeth scoffed at the idea. “First, when would I find the time? Second, it’s not exactly like my life is overflowing with muscular men who want to rip my bodice off. I think the last time I was alone in a room with another man was at the dentist’s, and Dr. Wiseman makes Steve look like a runner-up in the Mr. Universe competition. And third, my libido is as dry as a prune. I have about as much interest in sex with
anyone
as I do in competitive sock knitting.”

Elizabeth figured her slackening libido was mainly because of age. She was just two years shy of forty, after all. It was only natural for things to start drying up, so to speak, as she entered middle age. She still loved Steve, even if the passion had fizzled out. The thought of having an affair had never even entered her consciousness.

But that was before she met Sebastian.

Chapter 2

Elizabeth always freaked out a little bit when she was away from her kids. Her friends were the same, she knew, programmed with a biological panic button that didn
’t allow them to enjoy their freedom from parenthood with the same impunity as their husbands. But as long as she made contact with them, she could get through the first twenty-four hours, and once she made it through one kid-less day, the strangest thing happened: she almost forgot about them. She reverted to pre-mommy Elizabeth, a woman who took the time to put on makeup in the morning, who read magazines cover-to-cover, who didn’t anally check her bag to make sure she had tissue and wet-wipes and a box of crayons, who stayed up past 10:00 and accessorized.

It kind of terrified her to see this other Elizabeth. But she also liked it. Away from her family, and home and responsibilities, she felt a strange liberty, as if she really was a different person who could do things like speak intelligently to a room full of strangers, or sing karaoke or tell a wunderkind director exactly what she thought about his script.

Elizabeth had been delivered by airport limo directly to the Mercer, where Abbie was waiting in the lobby. She hadn’t even given Elizabeth the chance to check in before whisking her outside and down the street of earth-hued brick buildings huddled shoulder to shoulder, their fire-escapes casting shadows like a like a lacy veil. Abbie kept up a steady stream of chatter as they entered the expensively lit lobby of one building and took the elevator to the top floor. She tried not to ogle like a hayseed as the elevator doors opened onto an enormous two-story penthouse that had been temporarily transformed into a movie set. It was all exposed brick, brushed steel and about as different from her shabby chic farmhouse as her classic camel coat was from the trim leather bombers and biker jackets that dominated the set.

Elizabeth spotted Cullen immediately, despite never having seen
a picture of him. He was like the nucleus of an atom around which all the electrons were whizzing. Even though everyone was going about their own business, it was like they were connected to Cullen by invisible elastic bands that he just had to touch to bring them springing back to him. She hated him on sight.

“
Cullen, honey! How
are
you?” Abbie greeted the director, plump arms extended for a hug.

“
Hiiii!” Cullen air-kissed Abbie’s cherubic cheeks. “How are you?” It was pretty clear to Elizabeth that he didn’t have a clue who either she or Abbie were.

“
Cullen!” Abbie chided. “It’s Abbie. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

Cullen winced slightly.
“Of course, Abbie. How could I not?”

Abbie either had skin thicker than a Hampshire hog or was completely oblivious. Maybe a bit of both.

“
And this is Elizabeth,” Abbie said, a complicit smile on her face.

Cullen, who was the same height as
Abbie – barely tall enough to ride a rollercoaster in most states – squinted up at Elizabeth through his turquoise-tinted glasses, a measuring look on his face. Elizabeth took in his freshly shaved head, black-and-white checked
keffiyeh
and faded black jeans tucked into unlaced Doc Martens.

“
Elizabeth Holmes,” she said, plastering a smile on her face. “Um, I wrote ...”

“
Habibi Baby
, of course. So great to meet you, Liz. I loooved
Habibi Baby.
I’m sure Abbie told you. Genius. Geen-ius.” He had his hand on Elizabeth’s back and was steering her toward a corner of the room.

“
I know, right?” Abbie said. She was following them, her stiletto booties clicking sharply as she tried to keep up.

Cullen cast a cursory glance over his shoulder at
Abbie. “Yeah. I can take her from here, hon, thanks. I’ll have my people contact you if there’s anything we need.”

“
You got it,” Abbie called, excited smile fixed in place, though it was clear she was being dismissed. “Bye Lizzie. I’ll call you,” she said, waving at her client. “We’ll do lunch!”

Elizabeth waved back, feeling a lump of nervousness growing in her chest. She was on alien territory and all on her own, no
Abbie to hold her hand. She took in the set as Cullen talked. Clumps of artfully disheveled people fiddled with cameras or adjusted furniture or just stood together, faces serious over their cups of Starbucks.

“
So, Liz, the vision I have for the film is like this,” Cullen was saying, still propelling her toward the corner. “I see it as an ensemble piece, each story separate, but connecting.” He held his hands out toward her interlocking his fingers to demonstrate.

“
Like a Robert Altman,” Elizabeth said. She wanted to show him that she wasn’t a complete film ignoramus.

He stopped and flashed her a pained smile.
“More of a Cullen Zweibeker. You have seen
Dirty Girls
, haven’t you?”

She had. Steve had downloaded it from Pirate Bay, though he was too busy to watch it with her, despite the promising title. It wasn
’t the worst film she had ever seen, but she had found it a bit like her first impression of Cullen Zweibeker: pretentious and trying too hard.

“
Yes, of course!” She had spent the plane ride from Des Moines to JFK rehearsing how she’d answer this question. “It was inspired. You definitely tapped into the zeitgeist. Real
schadenfreude.
” This at least was true: it was inspired, probably by Gap commercials and reality TV. And he had tapped into the current fascination with rich, talentless people exposing their banality for all to see. He didn’t have to know that she wasn’t a fan of the zeitgeist, did he? And she just liked saying
schadenfreude
.

Cullen put his hands together in
a prayer-like pose and bowed briefly toward her. “Thank you. Box office receipts, award nominations, they’re all nice. But the praise of another artist? That’s what it’s all about. You feel me?”

Elizabeth felt something. Nauseous, maybe.
“I have to say, though,” she continued, “I liked
‘O’
better.” His gritty breakout film, shot on a shoestring, was a modern-day interpretation of Pauline Reage’s erotic novel,
The Story of O
. It was the reason she had agreed to this crazy deal. That and the fact she had nothing to lose.

Cullen looked at her as if really seeing her for the first time. He stroked his chin.
“Is that so? Most people don’t.” Elizabeth didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. And Cullen sure wasn’t saying.

He had stopped in front of a canvas chair, the kind directors typically sat on. But this one had
“Elizabeth Holmes” stenciled on it. It was in a dimly lit corner, away from the action, next to the craft-services table.

“
Well,” he said, his wide smile cutting through the tension of the moment. “Enough about me, right? What do you think?” Cullen ran a hand over the chair. Elizabeth could feel the invisible elastics connected to Cullen thrumming, the actors and sound engineers and camera people and makeup artists and gophers attached to them, hovering impatiently.

“
Uh. Nice.”

“
I thought you could hang out here. Not that you have to stay here the whole time. Wander freely. Come and go as you like. You’re in New York, baby! Check out a museum, take in a show, go shopping, right?”

“
Right,” Elizabeth said, uncertainly. Was this what script consultants did? Went shopping?

“
Sit. Try it out.”

Elizabeth sat. As soon as she did, it was as if whatever weak solvent
had been holding Cullen’s attention on her dissolved. All the invisible elastics snapped, one after another.

“
Cullen, I think I’ve got the angle you want for the next shot.”

“
Cullen, Universal’s on the phone. Something about a screenplay.”

“
Here’s the double skim mocha latte you wanted, Mr. Zweibeker.”

“
Cullen, I’m sorry. You know me. I’m totally flexible and will do absolutely anything for a part, you know, to make the character authentic, but I
cannot
wear this dress. It’s polyester. Never mind that I break out in hives if I come within ten feet of the shit. Shana would never wear polyester. She’s totally a natural fiber girl, you know?”

This last was spoken by Naomi Clamp, twenty-six
-year-old blonde screen goddess and Oscar nominee. Elizabeth was amazed at how tiny she was in real life. She had seen the trailers for the film she’d been nominated for, playing Celtic warrior-queen Boadicea. Her presence had been regal, larger than life, nothing like the miniature diva on the verge of a tantrum in front of her now. A picture of her own tiny diva, Gwen, flashed through her mind and Elizabeth felt a pang of anxiety. She’d have to make that call home soon.

“
Whoa, whoa. Not a problem, Princess. Lose the dress. Talk to wardrobe. And everybody chillax, already. There’s enough Cullen to go around.” Cullen started to walk away. Then, as an afterthought, he turned back to her. “And everyone, say hi to Elizabeth Holmes! She’s the reason we’re here, people.”

All eyes lit on Elizabeth.

“Um. Hi.” She lifted the corners of her mouth in an approximation of a smile.

“
Hi!” They chorused back with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Naomi grabbed both of Elizabeth
’s hands in hers, leaning on the corner of her chair, practically in Elizabeth’s lap. “Oh, my God! I love, love, love
Habibi Baby
. I totally feel the part of Shana was like, made for me. We’re both so raw and open and in tune with the universe, you know?”

Elizabeth nodded, overwhelmed by Naomi
’s radiant self-love. She was beautiful. Elizabeth couldn’t deny it. Porcelain perfect skin. Zooey Deschanel blue eyes. A waist that any grown man could span with his hands.

“
God, I love your hair,” Naomi said, wonderingly, touching a strand. Elizabeth got that a lot. The waterfall of thick white-blonde waves cascading wildly around her shoulders down to her waist was completely natural. While her friends spent fortunes covering their grays and boosting their volume, Elizabeth didn’t do a thing to her hair, other than wash it every couple of days.

“
Thanks.”

“
You’re so much prettier than your picture.”

“
Mm.” Elizabeth wondered if this was a compliment. “You too.”

“
Aw. Thank you! We should hang. Do girl stuff. I’m in the Courtyard Loft. Come by anytime.”

“
Yeah. Sure.”

Naomi skipped away in Cullen
’s direction, leaving a puff of her lemony-sweet scent behind. Elizabeth shook her head and reached into her bag for her phone to call home.

“
She’s right,” a male voice behind her said. If a sound had a flavor, this voice would be dark chili-spiked chocolate, spicy, sweet and sinful.

“
Pardon?” Elizabeth swiveled around in her chair.

“
You are so much prettier than your picture.”

She had seen his face before, of course. She didn
’t watch much TV. Between (almost) meeting deadlines and soccer games and ballet classes and keeping the house halfway clean, who had time? But Sebastian Faulkner’s face was, if not everywhere, in a lot of places.

First of all there was his TV show,
AWOL
. NBC was promoting the hell out of it. You couldn’t pass a bus stop or change the channel without seeing Sebastian’s mud-smeared naked torso and take-no-prisoners glare. Then there was his ad campaign for Calvin Klein underwear in every woman’s magazine, in which you saw more than just his torso. Considerably more. It was this picture that flashed through Elizabeth’s mind as she looked up into his eyes for the first time.

“
So are you.” She said it without thinking.

He laughed, flashing straight white teeth. It was true. As darkly sexy as he was in the ads, there was something verging on beautiful about him in person. The deep-set eyes, the full lips, the
long, lean muscles visible under his white t-shirt and fitted jeans, those were the same. But there was an added delicacy, a feline grace to his features in person.

“
Sebastian!” Cullen’s voice shot across the suite.

Sebastian ignored the director. He handed a copy of
Habibi Baby
to Elizabeth, along with a pen. Mont Blanc, she guessed, feeling its cool heft. “Can you make it out to Sebastian, the best lover I’ve ever had?”

Elizabeth laughed, too shocked to say anything.

“Sebastian. We’re waiting for you here. Come on, bro.” Cullen’s voice cut through the atmosphere between them, saving Elizabeth from responding.

Sebastian started walking away, backwards.
“I’ll be back for my autograph.” He winked at her.