The Blonde Theory (6 page)

Just what had I gotten myself into?

I
QUICKLY DOWNED
a second Limontini—under the very wise notion that playing dumb would be easier if I was a bit intoxicated—and set to work.

“Don’t forget to toss your hair a lot, like I taught you,” Emmie whispered to me as I set off to the bar with a giggling Jill. The three girls had decided that if we
all
went up to the bar, I’d be too intimidating to approach. So they drew straws to see who’d come with me.

“Let’s go find you a date!” Jill enthused, grinning at me and reaching over to squeeze my hand encouragingly as we approached the bar.

“I should warn you,” I said, only half kidding. “I don’t find dates very easily.”

“We’ll see,” Jill said mysteriously, brushing her silky blonde hair back over her ears with one perfectly manicured hand and smiling at me.

Ten minutes later, I was eating my words.

“So your friends over there tell me you’re dancer for the Knicks,” said the tall, dark, and admittedly handsome stranger who approached me at the bar. He gestured to Emmie and Meg, who waved and grinned. Great, so he had hit on them first and they had sent him here. He was their leftovers.

But I had to admit, for a leftover, he looked pretty good. He appeared to be in his late thirties, about six foot four with broad shoulders, dark, piercing eyes, and a wide smile. His dark hair was close-cropped in a way that made me think he might have been in the military at one time, an assumption supported by the at--attention way he was standing beside me rather than lounging against the bar.

In other words, just my type. Tall, masculine, probably successful. The type that usually rejected me as soon as they found out I was a lawyer instead of a garden-variety bimbo.

“Yes, I am a dancer,” I said primly, then I caught Jill’s threatening look. Oops, I had answered him like I normally would have. I raised my voice an octave and tried not to roll my eyes at myself. “I mean, uh, yeah. I, like, totally dance for them.” It was my best dumb-Valley-girl impression, and actually, I’d done pretty well. I’d nearly convinced
myself
that my IQ had slipped fifty points in the last few minutes. I choked back a giggle.

For an instant, I wondered if I’d gone overboard, acted too vacant. But Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome didn’t seem to be turned off by my apparent stupidity and lack of mastery of the English language. Instead, he slid in a bit closer and smiled.

“Is that right?” he asked, his voice thick as syrup.

“Totally,” I confirmed in my best chirpy, perky voice. “Like, I totally love doing those cool split jumps in the air, you know?”

I snuck a glance at Jill, whose face had turned beet red as she valiantly struggled to keep her laughter in. She looked as if she might explode at any second. Hey, I wasn’t half bad at this! I was surprising even myself.

“That’s fascinating,” the guy murmured, leaning even closer and dazzling me with his big, white smile. Perhaps this fake me
was
fascinating. So I smiled back and batted my eyes, trying hard to recall the way that Emmie had batted hers at me in front of the dressing room mirror this afternoon. I
thought
I was being sexy. Then I realized that Tall, Dark, and Handsome was looking at me with apparent concern.

“Are you okay?” the guy asked, taking a step closer and looking worried. “Do you have something in your eye?”

I stopped batting. Okay, clearly I was going to have to ask Emmie for a follow-up tutorial on the finer points of eyelash flirtation.

“Uh, I’m fine,” I chirped in my elevated-octave dumb-blonde voice. “Just a little problem with my contact lens.” I tittered softly in that high-pitched giggle Emmie had taught me. I thought I sounded like one of those squeaky toys dogs played with. But instead of looking startled, the guy seemed to like it. He took a step closer, until he was effectively blocking my view of Jill, who was just feet away from me.

Note to self:
Apparently squeaking is hot. Who knew?

“I can take a look at it for you if you want,” he said. I looked at him, startled, and he grinned. “I mean, I’m an ophthalmologist. An eye doctor. My name’s Scott Jacoby.”

Hmmm, an ophthalmologist. (How nice that he had defined the term for me. I guess the dumb-blonde act was working.) For a moment, I almost wanted to drop the act right there and let him know that I was his intellectual equal, not some high-kicking floozy with bad contact lenses. Think of the conversations we could have: Politics! Business! Science! Technology! But then I remembered that the
real
me didn’t attract tall, dark, and handsome doctors. Pushing down the resentment bubbling up inside me at the unfairness of it all, I forced a smile at Scott.

“No thanks, my eye’s fine,” I chirped. “But it’s, like, totally nice to meet you. I’m Harper.”

“Wow, what a pretty name.” Scott grinned down at me. “Are you named for Harper Lee, by any chance? The author?”

Of course I was. Both my parents had been attorneys, and they had both been moved by Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird,
the twentieth-century classic about lawyer Atticus Finch, his daughter, Scout, and the racial turmoil boiling in their small Southern town. But, I reminded myself, a dumb blonde probably wouldn’t know about the book, would she? And her parents probably wouldn’t have been two well-read lawyers.

“Who?” I asked stupidly, widening my eyes at him and looking as vacant as possible.

He laughed, but it was in a decidedly
Isn’t-it-cute-she’s-so-dumb
kind of way. “Never mind,” he said, leaning in and placing a hand on my arm.

I snuck a glance across the room at Emmie and Meg, who were watching us from their table. Jill, clearly shut out of my conversation with Scott the Eye Doctor, had rejoined them, too, and when they saw me looking, all three of them shot me the thumbs-up sign. I resisted the urge to make a face at them and quickly redirected my attention toward Scott, trying to think of what a dumb blonde would say next.

“Wow, so you’re an eye doctor,” I breathed excitedly in my high-pitched voice. A dumb blonde would be excited to meet a doctor, right? I mean, wasn’t that the gold star atop the Men-to-Be-Desired list? “That’s, like, so awesome. You must be, like, really smart.”

I tilted my head to the side flirtatiously and tried not to giggle. I couldn’t believe words like this were coming out of my mouth, but the more I talked, the more I got into the groove of being a dumb blonde. It wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it would be. Or perhaps the Limontinis had just greased the wheels of my stupidity. Either way, I was a natural! It occurred to me that perhaps I should be concerned about how easily the stupidity seemed to come to me. But I had plenty of time to worry about that later.

Scott laughed.

“Nah,” he said in a way that really meant
Yes, I’m very smart. And rich.
“I wouldn’t say that. I’ve just worked hard, you know? I have an office just off Fifth Avenue.”

“Wow, Fifth Avenue,” I breathed, widening my eyes at him. “That’s like, where Saks is. I totally love Saks.”

Sadly, this was true. Perhaps this was where Dumb Harper and Smart Harper intersected.

“I’m right near there, sweetheart,” he said, rubbing my arm now as he leaned even closer. I resisted the urge to back away, because that’s what a self-respecting lawyer would do, not a dumb blonde trying to pick up a date. “Maybe you can come by sometime after you go shopping.”

“Maybe,” I giggled back, pretending that I liked his touch on my arm. Actually, I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. Sure, it was presumptuous, and I definitely had invasion-of-my-personal-space issues. But he was cute. And it had been a long time since a guy had seemed this in to me right from the outset. It was kind of nice, for once. Even if he was calling me
sweetheart,
which was sort of getting under my skin. Still, his presumptuousness was offset by his cuteness—and the fact that he was already staring at me with adoring eyes. It had been so long since I had seen that look, I hardly recognized it. I was accustomed to deer-in-the--headlights terror.

“So can I buy you a drink, Harper?” he asked.

“Sure,” I giggled. “A Bacardi Limontini.
All
the dancers drink those.”

“Oh, do they?” Scott asked with a lift of his eyebrow, looking amused. He turned to the bartender and ordered, then turned to me a moment later with a frosty, clear, lemon-twisted martini for me and a dirty martini for himself. “Cheers to the prettiest NBA dancer I’ve ever seen,” he said, clinking glasses with me and taking a long sip from his.

I blushed—a real blush this time, because I wasn’t used to being called the prettiest
anything
—and took a sip of my drink. Scott was smiling at me when I lowered my glass.

“So what’s it like dancing for the Knicks?” he asked. “I love basketball. I try to make it to a few games a season.”

“Oh, it’s awesome,” I enthused, smiling flirtatiously at him like Emmie had taught me. Ah, she’d be so proud. “I’m a big fan of...” My voice trailed off and I stopped, lucky to have caught my-self before I continued. I was
going
to say that I was a big fan of the Knicks’ aggressive offense, because I was. I actually loved basket-ball—I always had. When you were born and bred just down the street from the home of the OSU Buckeyes, there was sports in the water, sports in the air, probably sports in the breast milk. Every Ohioan was born loving sports. But it wouldn’t sound very dumb-blondish of me if I admitted my hankering for hoops or passion for the pigskin, would it? So instead, I tittered lightly and started again. “I’m a big fan of the way all the guys run really fast and all. But I don’t really
get
what goes on on the court. It’s way confusing.”

I grimaced, practically choking on the words. Surely I’d just gone over the top and sounded stupider than I’d intended to.

But Scott was still grinning and nodding. “Maybe I can teach you more about the game someday soon, baby,” he said, giving me a conspiratorial wink and rubbing my arm in a way that was apparently meant to be seductive.

I smiled back brightly, not quite believing that I’d managed to convince him. “That would be, like, really nice,” I said, feigning shyness and attempting to bat my eyelashes again.

“Are you sure you don’t need me to take a look at your eyes for you?” Scott asked with concern. Obviously, I needed to officially retire the eye-batting move for the evening.

“I’m fine,” I said. “But thank you. You’re, like, really sweet.”

Scott smiled down at me admiringly. Then he looked at his watch.

“Damn it,” he said, turning back at me with a pained expression. “Listen, I have to get going. I promised a friend I’d meet him uptown at ten. But look, could I maybe take you out sometime? I’d really like to hear more about what you do. I’ve never gone out with a Knicks dancer.”

“And I’ve never gone out with an eye doctor,” I said with a smile. I couldn’t believe it! I’d only talked to him for fifteen minutes, and he had already bought me a drink
and
asked me for a date! That had never happened while I was being myself—not even
pre-
Peter.
Clearly there was more merit to this Blonde Theory than I had anticipated. I just wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“So is that a yes?” Scott asked, looking a little nervous, if I wasn’t mistaken.

“Yeah,” I said with a confident smile. Hey, I was hot stuff as a dumb blonde. I was completely unused to this feeling of attracting men rather than repelling them.

“How about tomorrow night, then?” he pressed on. “I mean, I know it’s soon. But if you’re free...”

“I would love to,” I said, beaming at him. Then I remembered: Tomorrow night was the firm dinner. The one Matt James had agreed to go to out of pity for me. The one I was dreading. But I still had to go. And it’s not like I could tell Scott that. “Um, I mean, I’m actually busy tomorrow,” I corrected myself. “A dance squad meeting. But maybe the next night?”

“Sure,” Scott said with a smile. “Wednesday it is.”

“Wednesday it is,” I echoed. The girls would die. I was going on my first Blonde Date the day after tomorrow! And Scott was just my type: smart, cute, self-confident. The plan was working!

Maybe I could get to like the dumb-blonde version of myself after all.

Chapter Five

F
or the hundredth time, Harper, it’s not really a date,” Emmie’s voice bubbled from the phone, which I was currently holding a few inches away from my face and glaring at. “So there’s nothing to worry about.”

“I
know
it’s not a date,” I said sharply as I returned the phone to my ear, wondering if she was picking up on the tension in my voice. It wasn’t like I was lying. I
did
know it wasn’t a date. It’s not like I was delusional. It was just one of those irrefutable laws of the universe—like gravity and e = mc
²
. Newton or Einstein had probably also cataloged the fact that hot soap actors were never attracted to stuffy, brainy thirty-five-year-old lawyers.

“So why are you worrying?” Emmie pressed on. I pulled the phone away to glare at it again. Too bad I didn’t have a videophone yet. I felt that Emmie deserved to see the death rays I was currently shooting in her general direction.

“I’m not,” I grumbled, saying each word slowly and distinctly. But of course I was. It was hard not to feel a little spark of something as I sat in my living room, dressed in a black Armani dress and a string of pearls, waiting for a soap star to come pick me up for my firm dinner. But that
something
was actually an abundance of patheticness. Seriously, I knew Matt James didn’t have any interest in me; either he felt sorry for me, or he was just looking for an opportunity to be exposed to a roomful of lawyers so that he could study for his role on the show. And here I was, dressed up, looking rather hot, if I do say so myself, waiting for a knock on the door from a guy who would never look at me as anything but his co-star’s dorky, pathetic lawyer friend.

I had tried to express this to Emmie earlier, but she had taken it all wrong, and I had gotten embarrassed. I mean, it wasn’t like I could tell her that I actually had a minicrush on Matt, because of course that was immature, illogical, and downright embarrassing. So my mumbled explanations had somehow come out sounding like I was afraid of this date or something. Emmie had laughed and started joking about how Matt and I would never work out anyhow. “As
if
he would ever ask you out!” she had added with a giggle, completely unaware that she was offending me.

Emmie was right; I wasn’t his type. I was sure of it. And you know what? That was fine, because he wasn’t my type anyhow. He probably hadn’t even gone to college. He probably wasn’t settled in his career like most of the guys I dated; I suspected that to him, the soap opera was just a step on the ladder of fame, and he hoped to move on to Hollywood sooner or later. And I’d decided in my midtwenties that I wouldn’t date any more men who were still trying to “find themselves.” Inevitably, while looking for themselves, they seemed to find a reason to discard me. Then they promptly moved on and married the next woman they stumbled across. Seriously. Before Peter, it had happened to me three times in a row. Not that it mattered then: I was young myself, and I wasn’t ready to get married to anyone. But now, at thirty-five, the stakes were higher and I didn’t want to be an inadvertent surrogate mother to any more guys searching for their identity. It never ended well. For me, at least. For my exes’ new girlfriends-turned-fiancées, I supposed my “mothering” worked out beautifully.

After a few more moments of faux-encouragement from Emmie, she wished me luck and we hung up. I sat back against the couch, trying to rid myself of all signs of attraction to Matt James, because it would be entirely futile. Not to mention self--destructive. And of course I was an attorney, so logic was my forte. All I had to do was come up with the reasons why I shouldn’t like him, and I’d be fine.

Okay, so he was cute. But the cute ones were always the ones you had to worry about. They’d have all the girls looking—and they usually looked back. And sure, he was friendly and flirtatious. But surely he flirted with every woman he met—not just me. And those snappy comments he was so fond of making? They
sounded
smart, but I bet they were just lines he had used on the show or something. No way was he a witty brainiac walking around in an actor’s admittedly hot body. He was just some con artist who liked to make girls think he was smart and sexy and witty all rolled into one. Real guys were
never
like that.

Just then, as I was deep in the midst of the little game I liked to call Pass Judgment on a Guy Before He Has a Chance to Pass Judgment on Me, the doorbell rang.

“Coming!” I yelled, leaping to my feet a little too eagerly for someone who had just convinced herself that there was no compelling reason to be attracted to Matt James.

I opened the door and there he was, standing on my welcome mat, larger than life. His dark hair was tousled—but in that sexy way that made me want to run my hands through it. (Would that be wrong? Okay, yes.) He was wearing a charcoal suit with a maroon shirt underneath, the top button undone. He looked polished and professional—but at the same time laid-back. It was a look only he could pull off. His eyes looked greener and brighter than usual today, and his teeth were so white they seemed to sparkle in the hallway lights when he smiled.

I was dismayed to find that he looked really good. Hot even. Really hot.

“Hey, Harper,” he said, smiling that wide, white toothy grin at me from the doorway.

“Hey, Matt,” I said. Or at least that’s what I intended to say. But in my effort to remain calm and casual, I think the words came out in sort of a gurgle instead.

Matt looked confused for a split second, then the perfect grin returned to his face. “You look gorgeous,” he said, looking me up and down appreciatively. His gaze made me blush just as it had in the dressing room. Damn my excitable cheeks. “I really mean it, Harper,” he said, his green eyes returning to rest on mine. “You look really nice.”

“So do you,” I said. And of course, that was the understatement of the year. It was getting hard to focus on him thanks to the increasing tempo of my heartbeat.

“Come on in,” I said finally, stepping aside and holding the door open for him. I tried to deactivate the pitter-patter in my chest. But so far, I couldn’t seem to locate the off switch. Matt grinned again and crossed over the threshold, taking in my apartment appreciatively.

“Nice place, Harper,” he said, nodding with apparent approval as I led him down the narrow hallway into my living room, which was actually quite spacious for a Manhattan apartment. Well, that’s what a $300K salary could buy. “You have great taste.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling at him shyly.

The living room walls were painted a pale beige with one broad accent wall a deep maroon color. The sofa and love seat, which I had bought after the Peter breakup to replace the sofa he’d taken with him, were made of overstuffed taupe leather with accent pillows that matched the wall. I had a teak coffee table and two teak end tables with tall, chrome lamps on them, and the walls were filled with large, teak-framed photos of Paris, Venice, and San Francisco, my three favorite cities in the world. The tables and two metal magazine racks were piled high with old issues of
InStyle, Real Simple, W, Mod, Vogue, Wine Spectator,
and
Time
, all of which I devoured the moment they arrived in the mail.

I led Matt over to the sofa and asked if I could get him a drink while I finished getting ready. He thanked me and said he’d make it himself, so I pointed him toward the bar in the corner of the small dining room, which was stocked with Grey Goose, Bacardi Limón, and Tanqueray, as well as a large selection of wines I’d picked up here and there when a label interested me. I was as obsessed with wines as I was with shoes and often made impulse purchases based on
Wine Spectator
ratings or simply the interesting names on bottles (Fat Bastard wine had become a favorite of mine, oddly enough). While Matt mixed a Grey Goose and cranberry for himself and a Limón and Sprite for me, I went back into my bathroom and applied one more coat of lipstick. Then I just stood there for a moment, looking at myself in the mirror.

What was I doing? I stared into my green eyes reflected in the mirror. I wasn’t bad looking, even though my hair hadn’t wanted to cooperate with me today and was currently sticking out at moderately funny angles. And I wasn’t that hard to get along with. I wasn’t unpleasant or mean or anything. At least I didn’t think so.

But I’d been dating for more than twenty years, and some things never changed. From the time I’d had a crush on Ryan Patterson in the sixth grade and he had told me to my face that it wasn’t cool to go out with nerdy girls, to the last few years when every date ended with guys running scared, I was slowly learning that I was just undatable, unlikable, and clearly downright threatening to every male ego in Greater Manhattan. Maybe rather than hating Peter, I should have been commending him for sticking around so long in the first place.

That was a depressing thought.

“Get ahold of yourself, Harper,” I said sternly to my reflection.

“Are you talking to yourself in there?” came Matt’s muffled voice from the other side of the bathroom door. I froze and widened my eyes at myself in the mirror. Great. Now Matt probably thought I was a lunatic who talked to herself in the bathroom. The night was clearly off to a stellar start.

“Uh, I’ll be right out,” I said quickly, cringing once more in front of the mirror before opening the door.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, Matt was standing a few feet away, holding two glasses. He handed me the one with the clear liquid and raised his own glass in a toast.

“To the most beautiful attorney in town,” he said with a wink.

I arched an eyebrow at him skeptically as we clinked glasses. “You don’t have to butter me up,” I said flatly after I’d taken a long sip of my drink.

Matt looked surprised. “I’m not buttering you up,” he said, clearly feigning hurt. “I mean it.”

“Whatever,” I scoffed, still feeling pathetic. I averted my eyes and took another sip of my martini. When I looked back at Matt, he was staring at me. “What?” I asked.

“I just don’t understand why you do that,” he said, shaking his head.

“Do what?” I asked suspiciously.

“Put yourself down like that,” he said. “You always do that.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Matt, I’ve maybe had three or four conversations with you in my entire life,” I protested, feeling suddenly defensive. What, like he thought he knew me or something because we’d said hello to each other a few times at cocktail parties and at bars? “I don’t
always
do anything.”

Matt shrugged. I noticed with some surprise that he didn’t look unpleasant or aggressive. Just concerned. That was worse, somehow.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said matter-of-factly. “I just meant that you should give yourself more credit.”

I glared at him, still defensive, even though on some level I knew he was trying to pay me a compliment. It didn’t feel like it, though. He didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Thanks for your input,” I said drily. “But that doesn’t carry much weight when you’re just here out of pity for me. Or as a favor to Emmie because her friend can’t get a date to her firm dinner on her own.”

The second the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Even I knew that one of the cardinal rules of dating—not that this dinner with Matt was a
real
date, but still—was never to tell the person you were going out with what an abysmal failure you were with the opposite sex. And I had just broadcast it loud and clear.

“Harper,” Matt said slowly, looking at me strangely. “I’m not here as a favor. I’m here because I want to be here. See, you’re doing it again. Putting yourself down.”

What was he, a psychiatrist? Well I wasn’t interested in any dime-store amateur psychoanalysis tonight, thank you very much.

“Okay, whatever,” I said quickly, because I didn’t want to be having this conversation anymore. I took a long sip of my drink, draining the glass. I suddenly felt a little light-headed. “Are you ready to go?”

Still peering at me strangely, Matt nodded and took a long sip from his own drink, finishing it off. In silence, he took my glass from me and carried them both into the kitchen, where I could hear him rinsing them in the sink and setting them on the counter. He returned a second later. As we stepped into the hallway and I locked the door behind us, Matt put a hand on my arm. I turned to look up at him

“I really do want to be here, Harper,” he said softly, looking at me with such intensity that my heart started doing that crazy pitter-patter thing again. I forced myself to look away. Those green eyes were deadly.

“Okay, thanks,” I said brusquely, studying the floor. Whatever. He was an actor. I didn’t believe a word he said.

Besides, wouldn’t he have asked me out long before now if he wanted to date me instead of waiting for Emmie to practically beg him to go out with me?

Of course he would have.

I rest my case.

I
HATED FIRM
dinners. Really, I did.

But there was virtually no way out of them. Partners were required to go. I would have had to fake a death in the family or something if I couldn’t come up with a date. And believe me, I had done so in the past. More than once.

Booth, Fitzpatrick held these firm dinners four times a year, once a quarter. I firmly believed that they were simply institutionalized forms of torture.

For example, the dinners were always on weeknights. Did it make any sense for one of the most prestigious firms in the city to hold dinners on nights when all the associates and most of the partners should presumably be staying up late, holed up in the office, reading legal briefs? No. It just meant that everything was thrown into disarray for the week for everyone but the senior partners, who didn’t do a lot of hard work anymore and wouldn’t be caught dead in the office after 6 pm anyhow. Clearly they had forgotten what it was like to be lower down on the totem pole.

Another reason that I strongly believed this was just some cruel form of torture was that I didn’t really care for most of the people I worked with. It’s not that I
disliked
my co-workers. But with a few exceptions, the people around me were really competitive. I wasn’t. Okay, that might sound nuts, because obviously I had a little bit of a competitive streak in me, too. But really, the only competition I’ve ever felt is an internal one. I competed with
myself
to get good grades and ace the LSATs
.
I pushed
myself
to get a great job and succeed at it
.
I was happy for my co-workers when they got promoted, not jealous of them. And when I’d made partner, it hadn’t been at anyone else’s expense; I was the only patent attorney in the firm who concentrated in chemical engineering. It was such a specialized area of law that few people went into it. And because there were fewer sharks swimming in my pond, I was worth more to the company and moved up more quickly. It wasn’t that I was any better than them; I just went into a different area of law. And I worked hard to be good at what I did. End of story.