Ever since I was five years old, I wanted to be an actor. Okay, that’s not
entirely true. At first I wanted to be a singer, but in my teenage years I
started smoking. It didn’t take long for me to realize I had started sounding
more like Bobcat Goldthwait than Celine Dion, so I scrapped the crooning. It
would be years until I finally figured out that what I should have scrapped was
the smoking. Can I get a rebel yell?
For decades I studied and practiced the craft, trying to pay my dues. I took
classes; I did more cheesy community theater productions than I can count. I did
some low-budget films—I don’t think I even remember the titles. I was also an
extra on Fletch Lives. If you look really closely at the end, you
can see a blurry head in a blue choir robe peeking through a door as they wheel
a body past. The look I was going for was horror; the assistant director
actually told me to keep doing it for all the takes, so I’d like to think I made
an impression. But my real claim to fame is that there are probably enough head
shots of me in garbage cans to shut down a local landfill.
And since I’m being completely honest, there were long stretches of time when
the priority was entertaining my two sons, who (coincidentally) were also my
best audience. If they didn’t have to go and grow up on me, I’d still be happily
doing it. But I knew that if I raised them right, eventually they would venture
out into the world on their own and I would have to have something to replace
that tremendous void.
I started writing to amuse myself and my friends, but still held on to the
acting dream. It was actually the release of the movie The Wrestler that
finally put a pile driver to it. I found out a good deal of it was filmed in
Asbury Park, New Jersey—literally a half mile from my house. It was then that it
dawned on me, like waking up out of a sleeper hold: if I can’t find my way onto
a set as an extra in a movie about a washed-up wrestler that is being filmed a
stone’s throw from my front door, maybe I don’t have the right connections. I
won’t even bother going into detail about the funk that followed.
Luckily, I have some very supportive friends who also happen to be writers and
creative types in general. They encouraged and motivated me to write the novel
Big Girl Panties. I can’t help but see symmetry in it all: whether I’m
singing, acting, or writing, maybe what I really want to do is entertain. I just
took the scenic route to my medium.
I consider it a privilege to have this opportunity to try to entertain you. In
fact, I’ve been waiting for it most of my life.
A sizzling story of everyone’s favorite couple from amazing Stephanie
Evanovich’s New York Times bestseller BIG GIRL
PANTIES: hunky professional baseball player Chase Walker and his sassy wife
Amanda.
When pro baseball player Chase Walker first meets Amanda at her restaurant, it’s
love at first sight. While Amanda can’t help noticing the superstar with the
Greek-god-build, he doesn’t have a chance of getting to first—or any other— base
with her. A successful entrepreneur who’s built her business from scratch,
Amanda doesn’t need a Prince Charming to sweep her off her feet. And a curvy
girl who likes to cook and eat isn’t interested in being around the catty,
stick-thin herd of females chasing Chase and his teammates.
But Chase isn’t about to strike out. A man who isn’t interested in playing the
field, he’s a monogamist who wants an independent woman like Amanda. His hopes
rally when she discovers that squeaky-clean Chase has a few sexy and very secret
pre-game rituals that turn the smart, headstrong businesswoman on—and into his
number one fan.
Then a tabloid discovers the truth and turns their spanking good fun into a
late- night punchline. Is Amanda ready to let loose and swing for the fences? Or
will the pressure of Chase’s stardom force them to call it quits?
It was a top down kind of day. The sky was blue, with a few passing clouds and
just a hint of breeze indicating that winter was waving its final good-bye. It
hinted at summer just around the corner. The sun was bright and warm,
encouraging buds to blossom into fragrant glorious flowers. The very atmosphere
spoke of all the things possible as the earth renewed itself after a cold east
coast hibernation. It was just too tempting. Amanda never put the top down
anymore, not since the first summer she had the Chrysler Sebring anyway. She’d
always wanted a convertible. At least fate had been kind enough to wait until
August two years ago to sport around before a wasp tangled itself in her hair at
40 miles an hour on her way to opening day at the Cold Creek. It ended up
stinging her hand, her neck and inadvertently, her front bumper and an
unsuspecting fire hydrant. She spent the night she had meticulously been
planning for months moping in an ER room with a slight concussion and a burn
from the airbag. It had been air conditioning whenever she was in the car from
then on. But when she walked out the front door that late April afternoon and
was greeted with that first you-know-you-don’t-need-a-jacket day, she was
willing to take the risk. Today felt different. And wasps would still be
drowsy. Amanda watched ducks and geese and squirrels roaming in pairs as she
drove past Maxwell Place Park, looking actually love struck, ready to extend
their respective species. People on the streets were smiling as they hustled
about their day, others were acting flirty. It was nothing short of spring
fever, and she couldn’t help but catch it. At a stop light, she titled her face
up towards the sun to let it shine on her for a moment as she offered up a quick
prayer of thankfulness for this beautiful day, her wonderful life and all the
possibilities that came with it. Maybe she’d do some flirting herself. She
turned up the radio and began to bounce to the music. Yeah, it was a top down
kind of day.
And then there was the seagull that flew overhead.
Amanda watched it all go down from the rearview mirror as she checked her
make-up after pulling into The Cold Creek Grill’s small parking lot. The white
and green gloppy goo fell perfectly onto the right side of her head, a stark
contrast to her long black waves. She stared at it for a few moments as the
reality and the poop sunk in.
“That didn’t just happen.”
But it did happen, and once again, Amanda Cole had been reminded. Never get too
cocky. Avoid using words like perfect or wonderful. Never attach your own
name. They were invitations to comeuppance. She wouldn’t go as far as to say
she considered herself particularly unlucky, she just knew her boundaries. She
couldn’t pinpoint when she’d learned it for sure, but it was probably somewhere
in between not making cheerleading and being as her mother called it, “twenty
pounds away from prom queen.”
Her mother wasn’t cruel, but she was blunt. Sometimes it was hard to tell the
difference and every now and then, someone you love says something thoughtless,
and it sticks.
Catherine Cole didn’t really want her to be a prom queen, anyway. As Essex
County DA, Amanda’s mother wanted her to be smart and shrewd and strong.
Amanda was beautiful and sensitive in spite of herself, her retired family court
judge father never failed to remind her.
Amanda stomped in through the Cold Creek’s front door and slammed her purse on
the bar with a loud thud. Eric and Nicole were going through the beer cooler’s
inventory in preparation to stock up from the basement whatever they would need
for the evening. Eric was a lanky blonde blue eyed surfer boy who had been
accepted to Harvard, but opted for Bartending School instead when he realized
how late he liked to sleep. All his savings and vacation time were spent in
search of the perfect curl. In between budgeting, he felt New Jersey waves were
as good as anyplace else, and he could be close to his family. Nicki was a free
spirited Seaton Hall drop that Amanda had known since high school out who was
trying to break into acting. She was a petite, vivacious brunette who had a
great horror movie victim scream, but her booking to audition ratio was often
disappointing. She did her best to stay optimistic, paying her dues, as they
all called it. Eric was a few years younger but that didn’t prevent him and
Nicki from becoming fast friends as well as roommates. Although nobody got
involved, it was common knowledge that the two were known to hook up now and
again, usually the result of her not getting the call and his ability to make
the best commiserating cocktail. Amanda didn’t care if they shined the bar with
their butts, as long as they could work together, did it after closing and
cleaned up afterwards.
Eric looked up briefly from his clipboard and then took a double take as Amanda
approached their end of the bar.
“Yikes,” he said, his face scrunching up in distaste, “Hope that’s not a fashion
statement.”
“Bird,” was Amanda’s one word reply as she proceeded past them.
“Geez, what was that thing eating?” He said, casting a quick look to his
counter-part.
“It’s supposed to be good luck!” Nicki called out while Amanda began
disappearing within the ladies room.
“Not feeling it,” Amanda could be heard snapping as the door closed behind her.
She walked up to the mirror over the sink to best assess how to clean the mess
up. It had begun to drip further down, appeared to be soaking into the thick
black hair she spent a half hour blowing dry. She took a deep breath. This
was nothing more than a problem that needed solving. She had this. First she
took some toilet paper and tried to scoop as much as she could with one grab.
It got the bulk of it, but the parts left behind were now successfully smeared
deeper into her hair and beginning to clump together. She wet some more tissue
and tried to wash the remainder out, but it started to decompose in her hand and
her hair, leaving bits of it behind and adding to the mix. She took one more
handful of tissue and wet it again but this time left it too soaked. When she
tried to gently squeeze it over the affected hair, the overflow dripped down her
hand and onto the front of her blue silk Jones of New York blouse, leaving a wet
spot directly over the center of her ample right breast.
“Really?” she shook her head in disgust at her reflection in the mirror. Not
only did she have bird shit and toilet paper remnants in her hair, now she
looked like she was lactating.
She had only managed to make things worse. Giving the shirt priority, she tried
the hand dryer for it. After a minute, it dried up the moisture but left a
rather large off color stain where the water had been. It no longer looked like
she was lactating, but merely that she had lactated. The right side of her head
was now crunchy.
Strike two.
Amanda stormed out of the bathroom, back to the bar where Eric and Nicki were
now waiting.
“You can barely notice it,” Nicki said after staring for a minute.
“Are you kidding?” Eric took the more direct approach. “It looks like a
pterodactyl flew over her after a chili cook-off.”
Amanda closed her eyes, bit her lip and began counting. When she reached eight
the phone rang. She quickly fired off nine and ten out loud and went back near
the front door.
“Cold Creek Grill. How may I help you?” She answered the phone as if her day
was right as rain. She was a business woman, first and foremost.
“I need a reservation for tonight,” a gravelly voice barked into the phone. The
caller was either on a cell phone with a bad connection or had a mouth full of
marbles.
“Of course sir, what time are you looking for?”
“Seven,” he said impatiently and Amanda pictured him running to catch a subway.
“Let me make sure I have that available,” she told him, trying to buy time while
she booted up the computer at the podium a few feet away. She moved the phone
to the other side of her head, forgetting it was a war zone and her hair
crackled near her ear.
“Trust me, sweetheart, you have a table available.”
“Sir?” She didn’t know what to be more offended by, his use of the word
sweetheart or the underlying threat that she better be able to seat him. And
she determined he was just some arrogant blowhard who was sitting with his feet
up on his desk overlooking the water and a fat stogy in his mouth.
“A superstar is having dinner at your restaurant; you don’t want to make him wait.”
“All of our guests at the Cold Creek are VIPs Mr…?”
“Maybe I should speak to the owner?” he cut her off and she thought she heard
more spit squish out of the end of his cigar.
“I am the owner. My name is Amanda Cole. To whom do I have the pleasure
of speaking?”
“Don’t seat us someplace high traffic like near the front. He’s not there to be
an advertisement. You’ll get your photo op.”
It sounded so scathing, like she was some sort of a bistro whore looking to make
a buck, as if she would be interested in taking a picture with him in the first
place. Supreme Court justices and past presidents dined at the Cold Creek
without incident. “Mr. What-ever-your-name-is, I’m not only concerned for the
comfort of our guests, but the safety of my staff. And we have had some high
profile guests in the past. Several are regulars.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard that. That’s why I’m calling. But lady, you never had
anyone this big,” he said with an air of superiority that was nothing short of
skin crawling. At least he had upgraded her to lady.
If he wasn’t being such a total jack-ass, she might have taken him more
seriously. “Would you like to tell me who he is, so that I might inform
security?” she said with overt sarcasm. He could either take being spoken to in
kind, or he would start to ream her out and she would hang up on him and he
could dine elsewhere, bad business or not.
There was a pause and she thought he may have hung up on her first. But then he
said, “No. Better you don’t know till he gets there. Someone tips off TMZ and
the night’s a bust. And he brings his own security”
“Will they be joining you for dinner?”
His laugh was particularly smarmy. “They’re not paid to eat.”
So he wasn’t only rude, he was also a tyrant. “That’s fine, sir, they can stand
guard with mine.” Only hers were imaginary. She no longer cared if the computer
was ready. It was a Weds, they were rarely fully booked, and this man and his
famous guest seemed intent on dining there. He was probably going to be more
aggravation than anything else, even if he was only half as self-important as
his representative. “You’re all set, dinner for two at seven. Would you like to
leave me a name or is there a code word or what?”
There was another pause, and once again Amanda was given the false hope that he
may have hung up and saved her from a night of inconvenient distractions at the
very least. But then she heard him on the other end, it sounded like a snort.
“You’re spunky, kid,” he told her. “Name under Alan Shaw. I’ll be there at
6:50. I don’t like to wait either. And make sure there are good steaks on
hand, he’s a meat-eater.”
There was no mistaking the disconnection this time. A security conscious
carnivore with pope-like status was joining her for dinner tonight. One who had
an obnoxious toady. She pulled the phone away from her ear, turned it off and
wiped the watered down bird residue off it with the sleeve of her shirt before
setting it down on the bar. She noted the time on the now fully booted up
computer, which opened to the day’s reservation page. They were completely
booked for seven. She had forgotten about the art house theatre opening a few
blocks away. Strike three. Her day officially went bust at 2:02 pm. That was
fast, and on a day that started off so well. When would she learn to keep
thoughts on perfection out of her head?
Amanda took a look over at Eric and Nicole. When the exchange started taking a
turn for the testy, they stopped what they were doing to watch, waiting to see
if their usually competent boss was about to unravel. Amanda picked her purse
up off the bar.
“Can you two hold down the fort for a couple hours?” she asked, more out of
courtesy than concern while fishing out her keys.
“Sure,” they said in unison. Then Nicki added, “Where you going?”
“I’m using a mulligan and starting the day over,” Amanda said over her shoulder
as she headed for the door. She wasn’t sure it was going to help.