How to Sleep with a Movie Star by Kristin Harmel Read Free Book Online Page B

silent for a moment. “So where are you now?”
    “At the Chinese place. What do you want me to get?”
    “You’re already back?” He cleared his throat. “That was quick.”
    “I guess so,” I said with a shrug. “Do you want the Szechuan chicken?”
    “That sounds good,” Tom said.
    “With lo mein, white rice, and an egg roll?” I asked. Man, I knew him well. Either that, or we ordered Chinese way too much. Looking at Mr. Wong, who was still staring at me patiently, I realized it was probably the latter. I talked to him more frequently than I talked to my own mother—and he barely spoke English.
    “Yeah,” Tom said again. “Thanks for picking it up. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
    The line went dead, and my stomach growled again. I ordered quickly and didn’t refuse when Mr. Wong, who must have been a mind reader, silently passed me a little bag of crispy noodles to munch on while I waited.
    *
     
    “Dinner has arrived!” I panted, pushing open the door to my apartment and catching my breath after climbing the four flights of stairs. If I hadn’t gotten this apartment at a very reduced, rent-controlled price (my dad’s cousin Josie had lived here for twenty years before I moved in, and I was lucky enough to share her last name—therefore, somewhat illegally, her rent-control reduction), I definitely would have insisted upon a building with an elevator.
    “Hi, Claire.” Tom emerged from the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel. His shirt was half tucked in and looked like he’d been sleeping in it for a week. He looked every bit the part of a stereotypical struggling novelist. “You’re home.”
    “Finally!” I exclaimed, setting the brown bag of Chinese food down on the kitchen table and thinking how cute he looked. The maternal instinct in me wanted to tuck his shirt in and spray it with wrinkle releaser. The sex-starved twenty-six-year-old who had been writing about one-night stands for the last forty-eight hours wanted to jump him. My stomach growled and reminded me to put off both alternatives until after I’d eaten. “What a day!”
    Tom crossed the room and kissed me on the top of my head.
    “Thanks for getting dinner,” he said. He sat down at the table and started unpacking the contents of the bag, which Mr. Wong, who was not only a mind reader but also apparently a mechanical engineer of Chinese food, had assembled perfectly. “Can you grab me a Coke?”
    “Sure,” I said. I grabbed two Cokes—regular for Tom, diet for me—from the fridge and set them down on the table. “I’m just going to wash up, then I’ll be out in a sec.”
    “Sure,” said Tom, his mouth already full of lo mein noodles. “Grab me a napkin too, would’ya?”
    “Yeah,” I said, reaching under the sink. I grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the cabinet and put them on the table. “I’ll be right back.”
    With Tom hungrily slurping lo mein behind me and the crispy noodles doing very little to fill the growling hole in my stomach, I hurried to the bathroom, flicked the light on, and closed the door behind me.
    I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror carefully. I’d long stopped cursing the freckles that were splashed across my nose and both cheeks. I used to hate them—they didn’t quite seem to go with my wavy, hard-to-tame blond hair—but now I thought they were sort of cute. Even if Tom said they made me look like a teenager. At twenty-six, I was anything but.
    I sighed and went into the bedroom to change into my favorite University of Georgia T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Stripping off the black A-line skirt and H&M boat neck tee I’d worn to work that day, I frowned as I caught a glimpse of my pasty white shape in our full-length mirror. In the past few months it seemed my thighs had started to thicken, and I’d added a few inches around the waist. Sure, I’d probably put on only five pounds or so, but when you’re just five feet tall, every pound seems to show in