Read Online Arm Candy by Jill Kargman - Free Book Online
Authors: Jill Kargman
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary Women
Ads: Link
it’s like . . . I may as well be wearing my eighth-grade Calvins.”
“Not true, Buttercup. I’m just in agony, that’s all. I need to take some Excedrin.”
The truth was, he had hardly noticed her pinup getup. Under her cream-colored cashmere twinsets, strings of pearls, and proper pencil skirts, she always paired together a lacey confection. Part patrician kindergarten teacher and part burlesque, Liesel made an effort to rock some titillating lingerie beneath her ho-hum one-notch-above-Talbots WASPy attire. But no such luck tonight for her hope to have her longtime boyfriend crave her. Within a few minutes, after bringing him the two capsules and a drink of bottled water to wash them down, she had slipped a silk floor-length nightgown over her head and was over it.
The next night, Liesel tried her luck again. Perhaps soon she could get a sense of what her boyfriend’s intentions were.
“Mother says we make quite the handsome couple,” Liesel mused as the duo caught sight of themselves on the mirrored door of an elevator up to the Rainbow Room on yet another glamorous date night.
Feeling guilty for being less affectionate with her, Chase kissed her up sixty floors until the ding of the roof destination sounded. As the double doors were about to open, Liesel abruptly pulled back and smoothed her hair, lest, heavens forbid, someone spy their unseemly PDA.
“Liesel, come here,” Chase said, trying to kiss her again.
“Chase, people are looking!” Liesel unfastened the toggles of her Dennis Basso fur coat. “Sweetie, will you check this for me? I’m going to run to the Ladies’ quickly.”
Chase knew her lipstick had to be refreshed; Liesel simply couldn’t make an entrance without being preened to perfection.
As he waited, Chase surveyed the scene, watching one couple cuddle sweetly, while another was reunited across the bar with a huge hug and passionate kiss.
“I’m back! Did you miss me?” she cooed in an almost childlike tone.
“Like the Sahara misses the rain,” he said sarcastically, hand on heart.
“Stop teasing me!” she squealed jokingly, mock-whacking him with her Fendi clutch.
As the years wore on, Chase started to get a creeping feeling about that allegedly perfect word: satisfaction. Isn’t life supposed to be more than “satisfying”? Isn’t there supposed to be an elated surge of heated passion, a crazy, scream-from-the-rooftops, jump-on-Oprah’s-couch epiphany of utter besotted amore ? Little by little, the white peonies on Liesel’s birthday, the bracelets from Tiffany at Valentine’s Day, the necklaces at anniversaries, and the trips for Christmas felt rote. He had tried, a few months back, to do something crazy and surprise Liesel with a helicopter ride, but she had declined, saying she didn’t much like surprises. Or choppers, apparently.
Throughout Chase’s entire life, any latent impulses toward adventure had been summarily quashed by his family, and now Liesel was doing the same thing. When he wanted to travel abroad, The Family warned him of cousin Barrett, who had gone to the Amazon on an ecotour and disappeared; no one knew if he had fallen into a ravine, OD’d on drugs, or encountered some tribal, bone-through-nostrils headshrinkers who rendered his aristocratic melon the size of a clementine. Barrett’s disappearance, along with his great-aunt’s falling asleep cuddling her boyfriend, Jack Daniels, and a cigarette, plus his uncle’s bungee jump gone awry, caused speculation in the press of a DuPree curse. So paranoid was this family tree that its powerful branches swayed with fear when even the slightest threat appeared on the horizon. When Chase subtly floated the idea of parasailing by the family home at Round Hill in Jamaica, Brooke looked at him with squinted eyes.
“Surely, you jest.”
“Mom, please: It’s no big deal! Countless people have businesses doing parasailing all over the island. It’s their living. If people got killed, they
“Not true, Buttercup. I’m just in agony, that’s all. I need to take some Excedrin.”
The truth was, he had hardly noticed her pinup getup. Under her cream-colored cashmere twinsets, strings of pearls, and proper pencil skirts, she always paired together a lacey confection. Part patrician kindergarten teacher and part burlesque, Liesel made an effort to rock some titillating lingerie beneath her ho-hum one-notch-above-Talbots WASPy attire. But no such luck tonight for her hope to have her longtime boyfriend crave her. Within a few minutes, after bringing him the two capsules and a drink of bottled water to wash them down, she had slipped a silk floor-length nightgown over her head and was over it.
The next night, Liesel tried her luck again. Perhaps soon she could get a sense of what her boyfriend’s intentions were.
“Mother says we make quite the handsome couple,” Liesel mused as the duo caught sight of themselves on the mirrored door of an elevator up to the Rainbow Room on yet another glamorous date night.
Feeling guilty for being less affectionate with her, Chase kissed her up sixty floors until the ding of the roof destination sounded. As the double doors were about to open, Liesel abruptly pulled back and smoothed her hair, lest, heavens forbid, someone spy their unseemly PDA.
“Liesel, come here,” Chase said, trying to kiss her again.
“Chase, people are looking!” Liesel unfastened the toggles of her Dennis Basso fur coat. “Sweetie, will you check this for me? I’m going to run to the Ladies’ quickly.”
Chase knew her lipstick had to be refreshed; Liesel simply couldn’t make an entrance without being preened to perfection.
As he waited, Chase surveyed the scene, watching one couple cuddle sweetly, while another was reunited across the bar with a huge hug and passionate kiss.
“I’m back! Did you miss me?” she cooed in an almost childlike tone.
“Like the Sahara misses the rain,” he said sarcastically, hand on heart.
“Stop teasing me!” she squealed jokingly, mock-whacking him with her Fendi clutch.
As the years wore on, Chase started to get a creeping feeling about that allegedly perfect word: satisfaction. Isn’t life supposed to be more than “satisfying”? Isn’t there supposed to be an elated surge of heated passion, a crazy, scream-from-the-rooftops, jump-on-Oprah’s-couch epiphany of utter besotted amore ? Little by little, the white peonies on Liesel’s birthday, the bracelets from Tiffany at Valentine’s Day, the necklaces at anniversaries, and the trips for Christmas felt rote. He had tried, a few months back, to do something crazy and surprise Liesel with a helicopter ride, but she had declined, saying she didn’t much like surprises. Or choppers, apparently.
Throughout Chase’s entire life, any latent impulses toward adventure had been summarily quashed by his family, and now Liesel was doing the same thing. When he wanted to travel abroad, The Family warned him of cousin Barrett, who had gone to the Amazon on an ecotour and disappeared; no one knew if he had fallen into a ravine, OD’d on drugs, or encountered some tribal, bone-through-nostrils headshrinkers who rendered his aristocratic melon the size of a clementine. Barrett’s disappearance, along with his great-aunt’s falling asleep cuddling her boyfriend, Jack Daniels, and a cigarette, plus his uncle’s bungee jump gone awry, caused speculation in the press of a DuPree curse. So paranoid was this family tree that its powerful branches swayed with fear when even the slightest threat appeared on the horizon. When Chase subtly floated the idea of parasailing by the family home at Round Hill in Jamaica, Brooke looked at him with squinted eyes.
“Surely, you jest.”
“Mom, please: It’s no big deal! Countless people have businesses doing parasailing all over the island. It’s their living. If people got killed, they
Similar Books
