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Diary of a Domestic Goddess
Elizabeth Harbison
THE GODDESS RULEBOOK:RULE #1: FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU WANT–AND GO AFTER ITColumnist Kit Macy's dream house was almost hers. Then the entire staff of her old-fashioned household magazine was fired by the new, hip, handsome boss. No job meant no mortgage, and no backyard for her four-year-old son. She needed a plan…and decided to reinvent herself.RULE #2: CHANGE IS GOODHotshot editor Cal Panagos intended to revamp the magazine–from its staff to its stories. But the stubborn single mom's desire to succeed–and her beautiful eyes–soon got under his skin, while Kit's ideas breathed life into his publication. Working closely day after day, Cal began to forget the most important rule of all: Never mix business with pleasure….
“We’re going to go out right now and get our own sampling of what women are interested in.”
A dimple dented Cal’s cheek as he smiled. “Though if you want to fill one of these surveys out, you’re welcome to.”
Kit shot him a look. “No, thanks.”
“I don’t think I will either, though I do appreciate your interest in me.”
“I’m not interested in you!” she returned too fast. “Where do we start?”
“Central Park, of course. I bet there are a bunch of Little League-type games going on. We’ll probably find hundreds of women like you.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Panagos,” Kit said, feigning insult. “But there are no women like me.”
Cal stopped and looked over at her with a smile. “No, I don’t think there are.”
Dear Reader,
If you’re eagerly anticipating holiday gifts we can start you off on the right foot, with six compelling reads by authors established and new. Consider it a somewhat early Christmas, Chanukah or Kwanzaa present!
The gifting begins with another in USA TODAY bestselling author Susan Mallery’s DESERT ROGUES series. In The Sheik and the Virgin Secretary a spurned assistant decides the only way to get over a soured romance is to start a new one—with her prince of a boss (literally). Crystal Green offers the last installment of MOST LIKELY TO… with Past Imperfect, in which we finally learn the identity of the secret benefactor—as well as Rachel James’s parentage. Could the two be linked? In Under the Mistletoe, Kristin Hardy’s next HOLIDAY HEARTS offering, a by-the-book numbers cruncher is determined to liquidate a grand New England hotel…until she meets the handsome hotel manager determined to restore it to its glory days—and capture her heart in the process! Don’t miss Her Special Charm, next up in Marie Ferrarella’s miniseries THE CAMEO. This time the finder of the necklace is a gruff New York police detective—surely he can’t be destined to find love with its Southern belle of an owner, can he? In Diary of a Domestic Goddess by Elizabeth Harbison, a woman who is close to losing her job, her dream house and her livelihood finds she might be able to keep all three—if she can get close to her hotshot new boss who’s annoyingly irresistible. And please welcome brand-new author Loralee Lillibridge—her debut book, Accidental Hero, features a bad boy come home, this time with scars, an apology—and a determination to win back the woman he left behind!
So celebrate! We wish all the best of everything this holiday season and in the New Year to come.
Happy reading,
Gail Chasan
Senior Editor
Diary of a Domestic Goddess
Elizabeth Harbison
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELIZABETH HARBISON
has been an avid reader for as long as she can remember. After authoring three cookbooks, Elizabeth turned her hand to writing romances and hasn’t looked back. Her second book for Silhouette Romance, Wife Without a Past, was a 1998 finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA
Award in the “Best Traditional Romance” category.
Elizabeth lives in Maryland with her husband, John, daughter Mary Paige, and son, Jack, as well as two dogs, Bailey and Zuzu. She loves to hear from readers, and you can write to her c/o Box 1636, Germantown, MD 20875.
Dedicated to Greg Cunliffe, the best friend I ever had,
in loving memory.
And to Yolande Cunliffe and Jane Cunliffe Aylor,
with heartfelt thanks for your friendship in the difficult
times we’ve shared and in the brighter times yet to come.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter One
Edith’s Diary
Home Life Magazine
October 2005 issue
As the days grow shorter and the air carries the crisp bite of autumn, my thoughts turn to cool red apples, amber sunlight and ghosts and goblins with flashlights wandering the narrow country lane of our home in the Virginia hills. Steve has picked a pumpkin from the sunny patch on the hill and is in the kitchen right now sketching out an elaborate jack-o’-lantern using the stencil pattern on page twenty-two. Little Johnny is standing by, watching with fascination. Soon he’ll come in to help me make his pirate costume. That’s right, we’re making it. No more hot plastic masks that smell like glue, no nylon costumes that fall apart halfway through your little one’s candy pilgrimage. Everything you need to make a wonderful and memorable Halloween costume is probably already in your house.
“Mommy!”
“Just a minute.”
For the pirate costume, gather a red bandanna, black sweatpants, long white sweat socks, aluminum foil, a woman’s long-sleeved blouse, some gold craft paint and a plastic shower curtain ring for the pirate’s earring—
“Mommy!”
Kit Macy stopped typing and pushed her laptop back on the ancient Formica kitchen table with exaggerated patience. Then she turned to the four-year-old who was still tugging on her sleeve. “Are you on fire?”
“No—”
“Are you bleeding?”
“No, but—”
She lowered her chin. “Are you supposed to interrupt me when I’m working?”
Johnny pressed his lips together and glanced at the kitchen doorway behind him before saying, “No.”
Big, guilty kid eyes. They got to her every time. Kit smiled and ruffled his hair. “Look, I know you’re hot and bored. Just let me finish and we can go to the pool, okay? Maybe Mr. Finnegan can fix the air conditioner while we’re gone.” It was July, and the mugginess of the New Jersey summer had already hit them full force. The fan Kit had propped in the corner of the small apartment kitchen sputtered ominously, and she glanced at it. “Before that thing dies, too, and we melt.” One more month and she would be closing on her own house. A house with central air-conditioning and a community pool.
Sometimes it was the only thought that kept her going.
Johnny gave a distracted nod. “Okay, but Mommy?”
She sighed. “Yes?”
“Um, Mommy?
“Johnny, what?”
“Steve has something stuck on his nose.”
It took a moment for her to rewind and replay the mental tape. “What is it?”
He squirmed visibly around the question. “He wouldn’t come with me to show you.”
Two nights ago Johnny had smeared peanut butter on Steve’s nose because it was “so funny to watch him try and lick it off.” A quick calculation told Kit that if Steve wasn’t in the kitchen—and he wasn’t— it was likely that he was in the TV room with her new sofa. Her new twelve-hundred-dollar Open Space sofa with the custom vine-patterned upholstery. That and peanut butter would make for an ugly combination. Actually anything and peanut butter made for an ugly combination.
She jumped up. “Where is he?”
“In my room,” Johnny admitted, his voice small behind her as she dashed out of the kitchen.
She rounded the corner to the small, dark hallway and heard repeated sneezes behind Johnny’s closed bedroom door. “You’re not supposed to lock him in there, baby, you know that.”
“I know,” Johnny answered, drawing each syllable out guiltily.
Kit pushed the door open and saw Steve, the black Labrador mutt, lying on the floor, sneezing and growling and trying to wrestle something off his nose.
“Damn.” She dropped to the floor and tried to calm the squirming dog down enough to remove the shower curtain ring she’d gotten out of the bathroom to make an earring for the stupid pirate costume. “Damn, damn, damn.”
“You said a bad thing!”
“You’re right.” She pried the ring open and pulled it off the dog’s nose, trying to resist saying another stream of “bad things.” “You know you’re not supposed to put people things on Steve. I’ve told you that like a hundred times already.”
“That’s not a people thing,” Johnny said, his voice stern with four-year-old condescension. “It’s a bathroom thing.”
“Today it’s a people thing.” Arguing with him was like arguing with a slick Jersey lawyer. He always came up with some loophole she hadn’t previously covered. Last week, in the late-night emergency pediatric clinic, it was that she’d never actually said not to put the wheels from his Matchbox cars into his ears. Now she looked at him pointedly. “But, for the record, keep bathroom things away from Steve, too.” She examined the plastic ring. If it had managed to squeeze that tightly on Steve’s nose, it probably wouldn’t be all that good for a toddler’s ear. Frankly it had struck her as a stupid idea when the woman from the local playgroup had mentioned it in the first place. Now she’d have to come up with an alternative before her deadline.
“What’s it for anyway?” Johnny asked, taking the ring from her and immediately getting it stuck on his fingertip. He barely had time to whip up a good whine before Kit reached over and pulled it off with a snap.
“It’s supposed to be for your costume.”
He looked skeptical. No, afraid. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither does Steve.” Upon hearing his name, the dog pushed his wet nose against her hand and she patted his head.
“I don’t like pirates.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t like boats,” Johnny went on, clearly covering all pirate bases so that she wouldn’t try to convince him to be, say, a superhero pirate. “And I don’t like earrings. I don’t like them at all.”
Sometimes it felt as if he was plucking at her nerves as though they were strings on an out-of-tune ukulele. “Look, buddy, you don’t need to like pirates. You don’t need to wear the costume on Halloween. All you need to do is be a kid long enough for me to make sure these homemade costumes work so I can print them in my column.”
Though he was only four, Johnny had long since understood that all the quirky domestic things his mother worked on were part of her job as “Edith Chamberlain,” Home Life magazine’s monthly “Edith’s Diary” columnist. She’d been the managing editor of the magazine for five years now, but she’d taken over writing the column two and a half years ago when the real Edith Chamberlain—who had established the column forty years ago—had passed away.
“I don’t want to be a princess, either,” Johnny said in a small, husky voice. He’d been saying it ever since she’d taken him to the craft store to get the glitter for the princess costume she was also detailing in her article.
Kit gave the dog one last pat, then stood up. “Yeah, well, you’re just trying the costume on for me, then we’ll take it off really fast, okay?”
His voice went glum. “Okay.”
She looked at her watch. “In fact, we should do it now because your dad’s gonna come pick you up when he gets off work in an hour.”
“You said we could go to the pool!”
“We will. We’ll try the costume on really quick, then we’ll go to the pool and watch for him from there. Deal?”
“Okay.” He was already busy peeling off his sweaty Batman T-shirt and the pull-up diapers her mother kept telling her he was too old for.
