Carly Laine - When Size Matters

Dear Reader,

I’m a low-maintenance chick. The kind who’s happy with the way things turn out and not in need of a lot of extras to sustain me. So, naturally, Destiny thought it would be fun to dump me in Dallas, Texas—Planet Central for appearances and all things material.

Fortunately, I’m also a survivor and found myself a group of great girlfriends—beautiful women who spent massive chunks of their waking hours in manicures, highlights and cosmetic procedures. We got along great, those diamond-loving girls and I. They thought I was a breath of fresh air. Which, translated, meant I needed lots of help. And they were willing to give it. Sadly, it didn’t take.

But my experience got me thinking and another low-maintenance chick, Sky Dylan Stone, was born. Dylan’s friends think you can tell the depth of love by the weight of the diamond. All Dylan wants is a soul mate, someone to complete her, to set her on fire, capture her spirit, mind and heart. Not an easy find. Until Brad Davis comes along, the long-legged, boot-wearing guy of her dreams. If only he wasn’t so busy chasing his own!

Be you a low-maintenance gal or a diamond-girl supreme, we could all use a soul-scorching love. Drop me a line at carlylaine@comcast.netor visit my Web site at http://home.comcast.net/~carlylaine.

Happy reading!

Carly Laine

Like when you’re fifteen or seventeen or hell, even twenty.

I could think of a few other situations when it’s not only okay, it’s a damn good idea.

Like if you’re the heroine of a romance novel and you lost it on page eighty-six to the guy with the big pecs on the cover.

Or you’re super-religious and want to wait until you’re married.

But lots of times it was not okay. Like when life got messy early and things hadn’t worked out the way you planned. Your friends were settling down and you hadn’t even gotten started yet. Then it was just plain mortifying.

I wasn’t sure when things changed, when I quit fighting off the guys who pretended they wanted nothing more out of life than to sleep with me.

All I know is, by the time I was a senior in college, it had gone from being a prize to a problem and I couldn’t pay someone to do the deed.

When did sex become such a hassle?

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After residing in many places, including Texas and France, Carly Laine currently finds herself living in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, where she spends her days wearing a hard hat and her nights writing about slim-hipped guys with magical smiles. When Size Matters is Carly’s first novel for Harlequin.

To my family, where the living is easy.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

DOES SIZE really matter? I mean, can how big it is actually tell you anything? Because my friends all think so. They’re convinced it shows how much he loves you. As if you can weigh love. That you measure it in carats. Mathematically, it looks like this: carats = love. And, despite appearances to the contrary, my diamond friends excel at math. Increase one side of an equation and they know the other side magically grows with it. More carats, more love. Therefore—and this is the most important part—a really big diamond = true love.

The only thing is, I don’t know if I buy it.

But if I did, then what I was witnessing on top of the hill that amber afternoon in October was the real thing. Capital T, capital L True Love. Because the bride’s ring was h-u-g-e, a diamond doorknob. And as I watched her turn from the makeshift altar they’d set up outside for the ceremony with her new diamond wedding band snuggled against the knob, I thought her left hand hung a little lower and that she had to kind of drag it back down the aisle. Think Quasimodo.

I can see my friends if they heard me think that. “D. E.,” they’d sing. Knowing for sure that mine was just another sad case of soul-devouring, stomach-cramping Diamond Envy. They could spot it anywhere. And often did. Even if it wasn’t. Or maybe it was, I don’t know. I do know I wanted some. TL. Real love. The kind you could always count on. Lifetime guarantee.

So maybe the real question was this: How do you find that? Or rather: How do you know you’ve found it?

I’d been to ten weddings in nine months. That made this one number eleven. Like the Diamond Girls, I, too, am good at math. It was October and—somebody shoot me—there was still another one to go. All things considered, it had been a fairly depressing year.

Number eleven was my fourth bridesmaid gig. The first time, back in April, I was excited. I got over it. My closest friends had trapped me into spending hundreds of dollars on dresses that made me look pale, fat and ugly. Unforgivable what those dresses do to a girl with a chest—think marshmallows, vacuum-packed.

This bride had chosen an anemic rainbow theme for her B-maids, vapid springtime pastels that made us look like little unfound Easter eggs. Faded lumps, lost and forgotten in the autumn leaves. I got stuck with the orange dress—the exact color of that milky, orange, public bathroom soap—because it does really awful things to tawny skin and because, in truth, brides know precisely what they’re doing. They know what will make their B-maids look their absolute, unforgettable, all-time worst.

Yeah, yeah, I know, brides say that’s not true anymore, that times have changed. But—and I say this with authority based on a great deal of recent experience—there are way too many sorry-looking bridesmaids out there for it to be coincidence.

Number eleven wedding was done up in the high style of the new millennium: overblown and overbudget. Six-figures if it was a dime. They staged it on the groom’s parents’ spread, a small kingdom chiseled into the Hill Country just outside of Austin, an estate on its own private hill.

When it was featured in the architectural magazine—the one that never does Texas houses if it can help it—they gushed, and I quote:

With its creamy blond fascia hewn from the chiseled limestone of the Austin hills, with its patchwork of rooftops quilted in the rusty blues of Texas slate, this magnificent home proudly straddles the hill’s rough summit. In the early evening sun, the meandering silhouette forms a miniature golden cityscape, a buttery skyline that peaks and dips in mimicry of the rise and fall of the rock beneath.

Rusty blue? Buttery skyline?

I knew the whole article by heart. It had been recited to me daily, breathlessly, for most of the past twenty-four months. It just so happened that this miniature golden cityscape, this monster mansion with its eye-bugging views of hill and river, lake and sky was more than mere backdrop. It was, in fact, the magic potion, the crucial catalyst that had brought the loving couple together. Love at first sight. My friend had seen the place on the cover of the magazine, had fallen in love first with the house and then, after a period of focused Diamond Girl determination, with its only son. Poor guy. Targeted, pursued and bagged before he knew what was chasing him. I guess if you had to marry a house, though, this one wasn’t bad. As houses go.