Chapter 1 : Part 1

The Frog Prince
by Jane Porter

Holly Bishop is the proverbial, small-town good girl. She always follows the rules, thinks of others first, and she never, ever makes mistakes. Until she marries the man she thought was her Prince Charming, who confesses on their honeymoon that he's not sexually attracted to her. Now, 14 months later, Holly's marriage is in the toilet, along with her self-esteem. Determined to start over, she moves to San Francisco, where she must navigate the landmines of dating in the big city. In the shadow of the Golden Gate and amid a population of wacky Bay Area eccentrics, Holly will discover that nice girls don't always finish last. In fact, they sometimes end up with everything they'd ever wanted.

Chapter 1

Here comes the bride, all dressed in white. There goes the groom, running from the room . . .

And there's my single mom, spending the next twenty years paying for a lavish wedding for a marriage that didn't even last a year.

Frick.

What happens now? What happens when you've had the fairy tale?

When you've done the big wedding? The dream honeymoon? What happens after the fantasy's over?

You file for divorce. Divorce. Such a big concept for what amounts to a little word.

I still can't quite say it, can't feel anything when I think it, can't imagine that we're now talking about me. But I was the one in the wedding gown, and then I was the one talking to a lawyer, and I was the one who had to ask my brother and my girlfriends and their boyfriends to help me pack so the movers could move me.

I've recently changed cities. Jobs. Lives. I'm starting all over again. But of course, it's not the same. It'll never be the same. Because I've done it. I've been married and divorced, and I'm not even twenty-six.

Long and short of it? He was perfect. I was raised in the country; he was French; together that made us French country. Perfect. The house was perfect; the car, a smoky gray Citroën, was perfect; the clothes and restaurant and champagne . . . perfect, perfect, perfect!

Not perfect.

Hindsight's amazing. I can see now there were problems in our relationship-huge problems, like trust, respect, and sexual compatibility. I should have known Jean-Marc wasn't attracted to me. I should have known he was avoiding physical intimacy. But I didn't. I blamed it on the wedding, new financial commitments, the stress of my moving into his house.

Maybe if I'd dated more . . . Maybe if I'd had more realistic expectations . . .

Maybe if I hadn't read fairy tales and then later all those romance novels I bought at the used-book store . . .

But back to reality, and I've got more than enough to deal with in reality, what with my new job, in my new apartment, in my new city, with my new boss who doesn't seem to approve of anything I do.

In fact, right now my new boss, Olivia Dempsey, is standing next to my desk at City Events here in San Francisco, and she isn't happy. She's currently conveying her unhappiness in a very loud, crisp voice.

"I thought we talked about this," Olivia says, fashionably slim, toned arms crossed. "You have to take charge of your life, Holly. You're dying on the vine, girl."

I don't look up, because I don't want to hear this, at least not again, not so soon this week. Didn't I just get the need-to-get-out-more pep talk on Monday?

"You were crying in the bathroom again, weren't you?" I open my mouth to deny it, but she holds up a finger and wags it in front of my face. "Oh, no, no lying. No denying. And you weren't just crying; you were sobbing."

"I wasn't sobbing." I shoot her a disgusted look because even the word "sobbing" is irritating, but I know my eyes are red.

Olivia leans down, puts her face in mine. "Sara heard you." Sara being another member of Olivia's team.

I'm beginning to think I'm not ever going to warm up to Sara. She tries too hard to get Olivia to like her. "I'm over it," I say, forcing a toothy grin and feeling absurdly like the wolf from "Little Red Riding Hood."

"See?"

"Hmmph" is all Olivia gives me, but Olivia has no idea how hard all this is for me. No one knows how hard this has been.

There are days I still don't know how I manage to climb from the bed and stagger into the shower, days when I still cry as I make coffee and try to apply mascara and eyeliner between mopping up tears. It's just that I'd barely gotten used to the idea of being a bride, and now I'm a . . . divorcée?

"You need to start getting out," Olivia adds firmly, her tone no-nonsense. "It's time for you to be proactive, not reactive."

Of course she'd think like this. She grew up immersed in the world of professional sports, and everything to Olivia is about offense and defense. If Olivia were an athlete, she'd be a quarterback and a pitcher rolled up into one.

"I'm getting out," I say, shifting uneasily, knowing that Olivia's voice carries and not being particularly eager to have the rest of the staff hear my shortcomings. Again. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Copyright © 2005 by Jane Porter

About the Author

A UCLA grad with an MA in Writing, I am one of those original book geeks, the girl with the coke bottle glasses that sat with a novel next to the classroom door rather than play during recess. I wrote my first story in first grade, my first picture book in second grade and my first novel in 4th, and I've just continued to write from there - bad poetry, passionate essays, romance rich novels and poignant, bittersweet contemporary fiction.