See Jane Date (32 page)

She nodded. “Yeah. This is home. And I like the idea of being near my aunt Daphne and my parents, even if they hate me.”

“I think your folks will come around, Natasha. I really do. Your aunt and uncle promised to work on them, right? And, since you're staying, maybe you'd like to come to the next Flirt Night Roundtable.”

“What's that?” she asked.

“It's me and Eloise—you met her at Posh that day I got promoted, remember?” Natasha nodded. “And our friend Amanda. Every Friday night we go to some bar or restaurant and talk for hours. It's a tradition six years running.”

I could tell Natasha was touched. “I'd love to come. Speaking of invitations,” she said, “are you going to the Forest Hills High reunion in October?”

Ten-year high-school reunion. “I wasn't planning to. Are you going?”

“I'd like to, if you'll go. I'd be really happy to walk into that reunion with you as my friend, Jane.”

Now it was my turn to be touched. “Deal.”

I felt eyes on me again. It was
Northern Exposure
Guy. We locked eyes for a moment, then his attention was taken by the elderly man sitting next to him. There were so many people blocking my view of his table that I couldn't tell who was on his right. A date? Would he be checking me out if he was with a date?

“Ask him to dance,” Natasha prodded. “Go ahead. Take a risk.”

I gnawed my lower lip. “What if he says no?”

“What if he says yes?”

“Yeah, but what if he says
no?
”

Natasha laughed. “What if he says
yes.
Go.”

I stood up before I lost the guts. But
Northern Exposure
Guy apparently had had the same idea, because he was standing right next to me!

“Would you like to dance?” he asked over the blast of a Madonna song. Six feet. Tux. Brown, wavy hair. Dark brown eyes. Perfect skin. Thirty, thirty-one, maybe? Did I mention he was beyond cute?

I smiled. That was answer enough for Fleishman's double. He took my hand and led me onto the crowded dance floor. I glanced back at Natasha and sent her a grin. She shot me a thumbs-up and was whisked onto the dance floor herself by a George Clooney look-alike.

It was too loud to talk or to even ask his name. We danced and smiled and flirted without saying a word. The band played the Backstreet Boys next, and I laughed and twirled around. And when the bandleader crooned the first note of a Frank Sinatra song,
Northern Exposure
Guy took my hand and put his other at my waist, and suddenly I was slow-dancing to Frank in a mini-ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. When Frank ended and Abba's “Dancing Queen” blasted,
Northern Exposure
Guy held up a hand and gestured to the bar. I smiled and nodded and followed him. Just as I was about to sit down next to him at one of the five stools around the bar, Aunt Ina and Uncle Charlie left the dance floor. Abba definitely wasn't their speed.

“Grammy's just tickled pink,” Aunt Ina whispered in my ear. “She was going to introduce you to Ethan Miles, but you beat her to it.”

Huh? Were they still trying to push Mr. Incinerator on me? I could find my own type myself, thank you very much. “I haven't met him.” Thank God.

“Who do you think you just danced with to three songs in a row?” Aunt Ina asked.

My mouth dropped open.
Northern Exposure
Guy was Ethan Miles? Grammy's next-door neighbor? The very Ethan Miles who took out his trash in front of people and played chess with Uncle Charlie and carried Grammy's grocery bags from the elevator to her apartment? That Ethan Miles was my
Northern Exposure
Guy?

The man himself turned around at the bar and handed me a glass of red wine. “So, I don't even know your name,” he said, a slight Texas drawl making his voice as sexy as he was.

“It's Jane,” I told him, a smile tugging at my lips.

“I'm Ethan,” he said in that drawl.

I couldn't hold back the laugh.

“Find that funny, do you?” he asked, his brown eyes twinkling.

“I'll tell you all about it later,” I murmured. “After this dance?”

As Ethan Miles twirled me around the dance floor in the mini-ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the tiny, twinkling lights adorning the ceiling and knew that my mother and father were both watching.

F
ebruary 14 found me at an engagement party in the arms of my beloved, wearing my Valentine's Day gift—small, sweet diamond stud earrings from Tiffany's. No, no, no. This wasn't
my
engagement party. It was Amanda and Jeff's. Jeff had popped the question on Christmas Eve and had given Amanda a rock. We're talking two carats. The party was being held in a West Village restaurant. Amanda's very tall, very blond, very Louisiana family had flown up for the occasion.

Ethan and I had very recently celebrated our sixth-month mark with a trip to Negril, Jamaica. Aunt Ina, Uncle Charlie, Dana, Larry and Grammy had been sure he'd propose there. I had a feeling Ethan and I were headed in that direction, but at six months, we were still getting to know each other, still getting to love each other. For the first time in my life, I felt as though I had all the time in the world.

Dana and Larry bought a huge house in Chappaqua, near the Clintons and the Welles; they made good use of all their France-inspired kitchen stuff by throwing barbecue after barbecue in their huge backyard. Ethan and I had attended their housewarming and two of the barbecues. Dana had joked that I'd be getting all of Great-Aunt Gertie's money now that I was with Ethan, who Grammy still couldn't stop raving about. I had to admit, I understood what all the fuss was about.

A very pregnant Natasha Nutley stood chatting with two other pregnant guests. Natasha had become close with Amanda. They'd bonded on that very first Flirt Night Roundtable Natasha had come to back in August. Eloise and Natasha had hit it off, too, and had become shopping friends. Natasha's parents still hadn't come around, but she was hopeful that when the baby was born, they might melt. I hoped so, too. Natasha's aunt Daphne promised to attend her baby shower, and I had a feeling her mom would show up with tears in her eyes. The baby was due in less than four weeks. Natasha had thought of a thousand names, but in the end she decided that she had to clap eyes on the little munchkin in order to name him or her. She'd finished the memoir a few days before Thanksgiving, and I'd edited it and turned it in to rave reviews from Jeremy, who, by the way, had married his
Vogue
executive in a small, family-only ceremony at the Plaza this past December.
The Stopped Starlet
was due out this coming December. I had made Remke very happy by signing Natasha to the sequel he wanted so badly. It was focused on self-esteem and recovery, not “sexy rehab.” Natasha was hard at work on the outline.

Promotions had been aplenty at Posh these past six months. Right after Labor Day weekend, Eloise had finally gotten promoted from Assistant Art Associate to
Assistant Art Director, which pleased her to no end. She had decided to take a break from dating and was now passionately involved with kicking the nicotine habit. She'd gone back to SmokeNoMore for her free session and was two months nicotine free. Morgan Morgan had been promoted to Assistant Editor and was as on the lookout as ever. As for Remke, he'd stopped snapping so much ever since Gwen, who'd returned from maternity leave with a vengeance, managed to sign the Backstreet Boy.

Opera Man, aka Archibald Marinelli, moved last month, much to my joy. A very quiet young woman now resided in his apartment. I hadn't heard one
oh
since.

Ah, I almost forgot: Natasha and I had indeed attended our ten-year high-school reunion in October. Lisa and Lora Miner hadn't come, nor had Jimmy Alfonzo. But Robby Evers had been there. Nope, he wasn't bald or grossly overweight or a used-car salesman. He was better-looking than ever and the globe-trotting foreign correspondent he'd always wanted to be. And very happily married to a fellow globe-trotting foreign correspondent named Tatiana. I hadn't asked Ethan to attend the reunion with me because I already had a date. Natasha had been the hit of the reunion, naturally, and so had I, if I do say so myself. She'd played me up as Ms. Glamorous Important New York City Editor. I'd even been voted Most Changed in the class poll that had been announced at the close of the reunion; Natasha had been voted Least Changed.

We'd shared a good laugh at our wins. Natasha had never been what anyone thought she was. And I had only begun to change.