Insatiable by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page A

last—time she’d let Mary Lou set her up with a guy, someone from her husband’s office…the one whom Meena had felt compelled to inform over calamari when they’d met at a trendy restaurant downtown that he needed to have his cholesterol checked, or he was going to have a heart attack before the age of thirty-five.
    Needless to say, he’d never called for a second date.
    But hopefully he had called his doctor and gotten on Lipitor.
    And yet she persevered in praying for the one thing that never, ever seemed to come true.
    With the frequency of their encounters, Meena might as well have been dating her neighbor.
    Every morning, poof! Mary Lou appeared, just as Meena pushed the Down button. Same thing each evening.
    It was uncanny.
    And every single time, any hope of having a civilized commute was shot.
    Because then Meena was forced to listen to Mary Lou wax enthusiastic about whatever new guy she’d met whom she was convinced wouldbe just perfect for Meena or whatever incredible story line idea she’d thought up the night before for Insatiable .
    Oh, really? Meena would be forced to reply politely. Thank you, Mary Lou. Actually, I’m seeing someone. Someone from my office.
    Or, No, really, I’ll definitely run your idea that Victoria Worthington Stone should become foreign ambassador to Brazil by Fran and Stan. I’m sure they’ll love that.
    Except that there was no guy from Meena’s office whom she was seeing (except Paul, platonically; he’d been happily married with three kids for twenty-five years), and the countess had never, not even once, come up with a single usable story line for her favorite character, Victoria Worthington Stone.
    It was too bad, because Meena genuinely liked warm, if somewhat over-the-top Mary Lou and her unassuming, slightly harassed-looking husband, Emil.
    It was just that Meena was beginning to feel a little how Ned must have felt the day of his nervous breakdown in the ABN dining room…especially since David had left, and Mary Lou had become obsessed with Meena’s love life. How was Meena going to bring a date home if her older brother was always hanging around the apartment, making fettuccine Alfredo? Someone just needed to give Meena a little push in the right direction.
    And Mary Lou had obviously appointed herself that person.
    This became especially obvious that day, when Meena was once again unable to meet her goal of avoiding the countess at the elevator….
    Poof!
    There she was.
    “Meena!” the countess cried. “I’m so glad I ran into you! Did you get my e-mail? Emil’s cousin, the prince, is coming to town. You’re going to love him; he’s a writer, just like you. Only he writes books, not for a soap opera. A professor of ancient Romanian history, actually. You got my e-mail about the dinner party I’m having in his honor this Thursday, right? Do you think you’ll be able to make it?”
    “Oh,” Meena said. “I don’t know. Things are crazy at work—”
    “Oh, your job !” Meena realized she should have kept her mouth shut, since Mary Lou warmed to the subject immediately. “You work way too hard at that job of yours. Not that I don’t love every minute of it. Last week when Victoria made out with Father Juan Carlos in the vestibule after she went to confession over her guilt about sleeping with her daughter’s riding instructor, I had to stuff a napkin in my mouth to keep from screaming my head off and startling the maid while she was vacuuming, I was that excited. That was so brilliant! That story line was one of yours, wasn’t it?”
    Meena inclined her head modestly. She was proud of the Victoria-and-the-hot-priest story line. It was different when it was a priest who was nobly restraining himself from sleeping with a woman. Father Juan Carlos didn’t also want to kill Victoria.
    “Well, actually—” she started to say, but Mary Lou interrupted her.
    “Still, you’re going to drive yourself into early menopause slaving away for that