Get out there and have some dating disasters.”
“I’m sure I can manage that.”
“Great.” Miriam hung up.
Diana gripped the arms of her chair in the tiny office in her apartment and reminded herself to take deep breaths. She dropped her head back and groaned. How in the hell was she going to pull this off? Her love life had never been dramatic. Things always just fizzled out with the men she dated. Her mother had drummed into her head from an early age that Diana needed to support herself. Diana’s father had left when she was toddler and her brother was just a baby, leaving her mother to scramble for a job to keep the family afloat. So, while Diana longed for a family of her own, her career always came first—and it showed in her relationships. That wasn’t very interesting. How was she going to orchestrate dating disasters? She wasn’t a hot mess or a drama queen.
She twirled her pencil between her fingers. If dating the same professional, reliable men always led to the same result, then she had to start dating totally different men. Men who seemed entirely unsuitable for her.
She jumped up and looked around the room as if the perfectly bad guy was hiding behind the curtains in the bright, airy room. How was she supposed to find Mr. Wrong? It’s not like she’d gone out trolling for her past boyfriends. She’d met all of them at charity events or friends’ parties. She couldn’t start there if she wanted to meet someone different. Diana paced the office, her heels clunking on the hardwood floor.
Her brother had a string of ex-girlfriends. He was great at being Mr. Wrong. She called him up and made plans to meet him for drinks that night. And maybe she’d find a bad boy at the bar once she was done interrogating her brother. Her clients met disappointing men at bars all the time. If she wanted to find Mr. Never-No-Way, that would be a great place to start.
She dashed into her bedroom to choose the perfect outfit for picking up the wrong type of guy. But after trying on six different pantsuits, she realized she’d never attract any attention walking into a bar in a double-breasted blazer. A trip to the mall was needed before she went searching for bad boys. She didn’t even have any girlfriends she could trust with shopping for this adventure; they’d all automatically steer her toward Ann Taylor or Talbots. No, Diana would have to do this on her own.
Two malls and six stores later, she had a new wardrobe consisting of shorter skirts, higher heels, and skimpier tops. And absolutely no barrettes or headbands. “Leave your hair down, you look less uptight,” one of the sales girls had told her. “It’s like, super pretty for someone your age,” another teenager added. After downing a milkshake at the food court to get over that slam, she reminded herself that thirty-three really isn’t that old these days.
And Diana was going to out with lots and lots of perfectly wrong men to prove it.
***
Toby Carter nodded and smiled over dinner, as his girlfriend detailed the pros and cons of the apartment complex she was going to buy. “What do you think?”
He pushed aside his plate. “I think we’re going to have to kiss our cruise goodbye this summer. You’ll be too busy with this latest project.”
Lorna shrugged without looking up from her phone. “So we move the trip back to the fall, or maybe next spring. I have to get this complex. My portfolio isn’t diversified enough. If the market ever crashes again—no, when it crashes again—this rental income will be a good cushion.”
Toby snaked his arm around her shoulder and lowered his voice. “The only kind of cushions I want to talk about are the ones on my couch where we should go right now and do it.”
She removed his hand from her shoulder. “Focus on the rental.”
He sighed and sat back in his seat. “Fine. Speaking of real estate, I was thinking about buying a beach house in Miami. What do you say we do a little house hunting down there this weekend?”
She sighed, like he was a foolish boy she had to correct yet again. “Toby, I’m going to have to spend the weekend checking out other apartment buildings to be sure I’m getting the right one.”
Toby poured himself more wine. When he’d first inherited the surprise windfall from his mother, he’d been very careful not