Rent A Husband by Sally Mason Read Free Book Online

series, and he wrote the character bibles and the story arcs and the odd episode, and oversaw the scripts via email.
    Life was good.
    Life was golden.
    But he felt for his neighbor and dearest friend.
    He had, of course, been very pleased to see the back of Porter Pringle, but unlike many of the members of Santa Sofia’s excuse for a society he hadn’t rejoiced in Darcy’s heartache.
    He simply believed that Porter Pringle wasn’t good enough to lick the pair of Manolo Blahnik’s Eric had taken Darcy down to LA to buy for the ball—along with a very fetching little Valentino number.
    Porter, though he had a cute smile and a pert ass, was a Neanderthal.
    A boring man who had kept his wife trapped inside his lowbrow world.
    Eric saw something in Darcy: she had potential.
    Real potential.
    Potential to soar far beyond the suburban cage Porter Pringle had fashioned for her.
    But Darcy didn’t see it herself.
    Or not yet.
    As Porter takes his daily stroll on Long Beach, the Pacific stretching blue and limpid, surfer boys jogging by with their boards, he remembers walking along here with Darcy shortly after Porter left her, their arms entwined, Darcy’s hair tugged and teased by a chill little wind coming in off the ocean.
    “Do you believe in pair-bonding, Eric?”
    “No, darling, I don’t.”
    “I do. Look at swans. They pair for life.”
    “Darce, where are you going with this?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Your cob has flown.”
    She stopped and blinked, wiping a tendril of her from her eyes.
    Eric said, “A male swan is called a cob, darling.”
    “Oh, okay.”
    “And if you’re trying to write some silly fairy story using a swan analogy, forget it. He’s gone. He’s not coming back. Good riddance.”
    This had brought tears to her eyes and he’d held her in his arms. “Oh Darce, Darce, Darce. What a cheap little bastard he is.”
    “I still love him, Eric.”
    “I know and he doesn’t deserve it.”
    “I keep hoping he’ll come crawling back.”
    “Swans don’t crawl, Darcy.”
    This got the weak laugh it deserved. “Well, come flapping back with one broken wing.”
    “You’d take him back?”
    “Yes.”
    They’d walked on without speaking for a minute, then Darcy said, “Each morning I wake up and look in the mirror and ask myself what I did wrong.”
    This got Eric turning, and his posh accent slipped for a moment, “Hell, Darcy, that’s the ripest crap I’ve ever heard coming from your mouth.”
    She stared at him in astonishment.
    He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, darling, if I misspoke. But really, what is it with you silly women?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “That idiot dumped you because of some inadequacy, some flaw in himself. Some need to prove his virility, or have some mush-headed bimbo tell him how great and all-powerful he is. He’s the one who has the problem, not you.”
    “I couldn’t give him a child.”
    “That’s just making an excuse for him, Darcy and you know it.” He hugged her. “You’re wonderful. He’s a stupid, limited boy who never bothered to grow up. Move on, darling. Move on, you beautiful pen, move on.”
    She staring at him again, and he sees his Hallmark poetry has confused her.
    “A female swan, Darce. A pen.”
    “God, I thought you were calling me a ballpoint.”
    “No, never. If you were a writing implement you’d be a quill.”
    They laughed and walked on, Darcy doing a good job of pretending she was stitching together her broken heart.
    As he returns his to Jeep, something of the screenwriter stirs in Eric, and he marvels at this little scenario he has set in motion with Darcy and Forrest.
    Eric’s not naïve enough to expect anything lasting to come of it—Forbes is a gadfly—but he hopes that an evening in the company of decadent, debauched but very, very worldly and sophisticated Forrest Forbes may be the start of Darcy broadening those horizons.
    He’s looking forward to the Ball, not for the reasons the rest of the town