Hiring Mr. Darcy (EBOOK)

It is a truth rarely acknowledged that a thirty-one-year-old single woman, wearing control-top granny panties, will have them exposed in the most embarrassing manner possible at the most inopportune time imaginable, which is exactly what happened to me on the evening my boyfriend dumped me to go to the Jane Austen Festival and Games in Bath with a starlet.

A Friday night in August

I hate flying. In addition to igniting my rampant anxiety, it makes me pukey. I also had the misfortune of sitting next to a Level-Five sniffer on my flight home. I offered him a tissue. He declined. Later, we got into a tussle over the armrest. I won.

I spent the rest of the journey in pleasant conversation with the girl on the other side of me, who was flying to Milwaukee to visit her dad. Her parents were divorced, and while she was only thirteen, she was self-possessed and seemed zen about it.

I gave her half of my donut and explained that I wished my parents had split up long before they did. She pointed out that the upside was she got two of everything, like birthday parties and sets of Christmas presents. I told her she had her head on straight. She said she’d follow me on Instagram.

After disembarking from the plane and waving goodbye to my new kid friend, I schlepped my roller bag up the jetway and out to the waiting area to find my boyfriend of two years and eight months—Harrison Macomb Ph.D.—checking his watch and waiting for me. But my tall, blond, handsome boyfriend wasn’t alone.

Lacey Lewis stood next to him. Yes, the Lacey Lewis, up-and-coming Hollywood starlet who looks like a younger, fresher, less-affected-by-Brian-Austin-Green version of Megan Fox. She wore a huge hat and sunglasses to avoid the paparazzi who’d semi-descended on Milwaukee over the summer to keep an eye on her.

I wasn’t surprised by Lacey being there. Harrison and I were English history professors, and Lacey had hired him to teach her how to convincingly portray Lydia Bennet in yet another reboot of Pride and Prejudice soon to be filmed in Surrey.

Personally, I thought it was an unfortunate casting decision. Everyone knows Lydia Bennet doesn’t look like Megan Fox. But Lacey had gotten the part, and she and Harrison had been spending a lot of time together over the last six weeks.

She’d actually interviewed me for the coaching position first. But ultimately, she’d said she felt more comfortable with a male mentor. She’d always been a “guy’s girl.” Or something like that. That’s when the side-eyeing began. And soon after followed the jealousy. Unwanted and unexpected, but it was there in me all the same. I couldn’t deny it. Lacey was gorgeous and rich, and Harrison was handsome and smart and kind and nerdy and completely unused to being wooed by Hollywood types.

I tried to be happy for Harrison, but it hurt to lose out on one of the biggest boons Everton College had ever landed. I learned a long time ago that when you’re female, being competitive is often mistaken for being mean, while a competitive man is revered for it.

I tried to make the best of it, however, and on the few occasions I spent time with Harrison and Lacey together, I gave her a few extra pointers on how best to portray Lydia. After all, I was the one who’d read P&P so many times I could nearly recite it—not Harrison. Yet I couldn’t help but hope that, much like Jolene in the old Dolly Parton song, Lacey wouldn’t steal my man.

Every boyfriend I’d ever had had left me for someone prettier, more fun, or more…something. But Harrison seemed loyal, and he matched every single criterion on my Future Husband Checklist. He was perfect for me. A one-hundred-percent match.

I glanced at the two of them waiting on the other side of security. As usual, Harrison looked like he’d just come from a J. Crew photo shoot. He was sporting wrinkleless chinos and a collared, blue-and-white checkered shirt. He’d topped it off with a navy blue blazer with elbow patches. He always wore a jacket. Even to airports. Even on weekends.

Lacey was wearing a red suit and had matching painted fingernails. I’d long been suspicious of women who managed to match their manicures to their outfits. They clearly don’t like to nap as much as I do.

I glanced down at myself and groaned inwardly. I didn’t look nearly as well-put-together as they did. My toffee-colored pencil skirt was rumpled, and there was a run in my tights and a jelly stain on my light blue sweater that couldn’t be helped—because I always eat bad stuff like donuts to comfort me when I fly due to the whole fear-of-death thing.

To make matters worse, my belly was pooched out because pencil skirts suck if you’re five-foot-three and do reckless things like eat jelly donuts. My belly was also the reason I was wearing granny panties, by the way. They weren’t just any granny panties, they were form-fitting, stomach-control granny panties that were supposed to make my pencil skirt look sleek and pencily, at least as sleek and pencily as one could look when one was vertically challenged and a bit of a pudge.

I stared at tall, leggy Lacey Lewis and decided that she’d never scarfed down a donut or been an anxious flyer in her whole perfect life. I needed to stand away from her. No good could come of my being next to her. We were sure to look like Barbie and Hobbit Skipper.

Harrison and Lacey were chatting animatedly, caught up in their conversation. When I reached them, I had to clear my throat to get their attention. Lacey placed her manicured hand on Harrison’s sleeve. “Oh, Dr. Knightley,” she said to me, blinking. “There you are.”

“Hi, you two,” I said in as cheerful a voice as I could muster.

“Meg, I didn’t see you there.” Harrison leaned down and kissed me awkwardly on the cheek. It made me suspicious, because he wasn’t a fan of PDAs. Neither was I. “Welcome back. How was your flight?” He handed me his handkerchief and pointed at the side of my mouth, “It’s seems you’ve got a bit of…something.”

“Oh, it’s probably jelly.” I took the handkerchief from him and scrubbed my mouth. “As for the flight, I had to sit in the middle seat,” I offered, handing Harrison’s handkerchief back to him.

Harrison winced. “Ooh, that’s too bad.”

“That’s why I love first class so much,” Lacey said. “No middle seats. Don’t you love first class?” Her hand had returned to Harrison’s sleeve. I eyed it. Resentment gnawed at my insides like a Midwesterner on a corncob. Lacey must have realized I was staring, because her hand moved slowly back to her side.

“I’ve never flown first class,” Harrison told her.

She blinked at him and cocked her head to the side as if he hadn’t spoken English.

I took a deep breath. Really. What was I so worried about? Harrison was a dorky history professor from Milwaukee who, like me, had never flown first class, and Lacey was a jet-setting starlet. Harrison didn’t even know what a spray tan was. Lacey had probably majored in spray tan. Surely, she wasn’t interested in my nerdy boyfriend, when she could catch the eye of someone super-hot, rich, and famous, like Henry Cavill.

I pushed my glasses up my nose with one free finger and stared at Lacey in fascination. She was too pretty and too perfect. She also seemed too calculating. How would she ever pull off naïve, flighty fifteen-year-old Lydia Bennet?

“Shall we go?” I asked, still staring at Lacey.

“Oh, right. Of course,” Harrison said. “My car’s in the shop and Lacey was kind enough to offer us both a ride.”

“Oh.” That explained why Lacey was here. It struck me, however, that he’d called her Lacey, not “Lewis,” as he’d been fond of doing before I left. He’d called her Lewis, sometimes Lew, and she called him “Dr. M.” It was not adorable. Great. They’d obviously fallen in love and I was about to get dumped. The thought had plagued me the entire five days I’d been in Connecticut.

I was about to ask what had happened to Harrison’s car, but his next question quickly diverted my attention.

His eyes narrowed on my chest. “What’s that on your sweater?”

I cringed and tugged at my sweater. “Jelly.” I felt like I was ten years old and in the confessional again. “From a donut.”

“Oh, I love donuts,” Lacey gushed, blinking her false lashes at me.

I eyed her up and down. Fine. She ate donuts—or at least claimed to—but I bet she never dripped any on her suit. And she’d clearly made a deal with the devil to avoid gaining weight from donut consumption. Heat crept up my back and burned my neck, mostly born of disgust, although whether more for her or for myself, I couldn’t say.

We left the airport, made our way into the parking garage, and climbed into Lacey’s car. An Audi. A black one. The kind of car a gorgeous starlet would drive. I drive a Jetta. A little silver Jetta with a Herstory sticker on the bumper that Harrison hated, a trash bag in the back seat, and a window that didn’t always roll down correctly, causing many an embarrassing moment at a variety of drive-thrus.

We drove to campus, Lacey at the wheel, Harrison beside her, and me sitting in the middle of the backseat staring between their shoulders because I get car sick when I can’t see the road.

Harrison had offered to let me sit in the front, but I’d stupidly declined. We exchanged awkward, stilted conversation for the nearly thirty-minute drive. I told them about the sniffer. They dutifully laughed. I wished for another donut.

I kept glancing back and forth between them, wondering if they’d slept together or even kissed. I trusted Harrison, but seeing them together gave me a flashback to high school, riding the bus to a football game with my boyfriend, John, while he sat with Mary, the cheerleader who would be his future girlfriend. Doom throbbed in my chest. I asked Harrison for his handkerchief again and rubbed halfheartedly at the jelly stain on my shirt.

“So, I was reading more about Bath on the way home,” I finally said. Our trip to the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England was less than three weeks away. Harrison and I had been planning it for a year. We were partners in the multiple days of Austen-themed competition. He would attend as Mr. Darcy. I, of course, would be Lizzy Bennet. We were sure to win. “We can take the train there from London and—”

“Yes, well, we can talk about that later.” Harrison cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I hear Bath is nice in September,” Lacey offered in a jelly-donut-sweet voice.

“Mmm-hmm.” My Bath discussion thwarted, I stared out the windshield at the leafy greenness of the trees as we approached the college campus. Minutes later, we pulled up in front of my little brick townhouse on the outskirts of campus, and Harrison helped me pull my small, black roller bag out of Lacey’s trunk. He walked me to the steps that led up to my front door. The purr of the engine behind us combined with the imagined burn of Lacey’s scrutiny made me nervous. Plus, I could feel my granny panties inching up my back. Why wasn’t Lacey driving away? I did a sort of half-dance hop move, hopeful that the panties would somehow fall back into place while I glanced at Harrison, who, to my utter surprise, had retreated a couple of steps toward the curb where the starlet and her Audi were still idling suspiciously.

“Aren’t you coming in? I thought we were having dinner tonight.” I pushed the bottom of my black ballet flat against the side of the first step.

Harrison sighed and lifted his chin. “Look, Meg, we need to talk.”

That was when time stopped—stood still—and I felt like I was Elinor, and Harrison was Willoughby, and Colonel Brandon had just told me about him. Sounds and colors slowly moved past my head, but none of it registered. Nothing after, “We need to talk.” Let’s face it. Nothing good ever comes after the words “we need to talk.” A catastrophe is sure to ensue.

The truth was I’d been expecting a marriage proposal from Harrison. Not like soon. Like literally tonight. He said he’d made reservations at this cool new hipster restaurant called Orsay. We never made reservations. Or went to cool hipster restaurants. In an effort to look cute, I’d worn a frickin’ pencil skirt instead of the pajama jeans that my brother bought me for Christmas after I emailed him the link. A pencil skirt was serious in my world. I’d prepared myself for proposaldom.

Sure, there was the slight complication of how I would manage to divest myself of the granny panties without Harrison seeing them before we made love, but that was a minor consideration and one that could be solved with a well-timed trip to the bathroom. But I’d bothered with the pencil skirt, and then the incident with the accursed donut had happened—it wasn’t my proudest moment, I agree—and then the starlet and the Audi, and now this. The entire evening had descended into chaos. Not at all how it was written in my day planner.

Harrison’s brows were lowered, a guilty frown tugged at his mouth. He leaned down and whispered, “I’m sorry. I promised Lacey we’d work tonight. She’s paying me extra.”

“Okaaay,” I said slowly, the jealousy pounding its bitchy fists against my precarious composure. When would this new and poisonous emotion go away? Probably not until Lacey left town.

“There’s something else I have to tell you.” Harrison took a deep breath and folded his hands together in front of him. “She wants to go to the festival in Bath with me. She wants to be my partner.”

The sound that emerged from my throat was some unholy cross between a cat being stepped on and a pissed-off bird. “She what?”

Harrison glanced back at the Audi with its beautiful, yet now potentially evil, occupant inside. “Shh. Keep your voice down. I told her you’d be reasonable about it. She wants to go for the experience. For the role.”

“Can’t she find her own partner?” I plunked a fist on my hip and accidentally knocked over my suitcase.

Harrison and I both moved to pick it up at the same time and knocked our heads together. He took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Competitive even over something like this?” He shook his head.

I lifted my chin. “It’s fine. I don’t need you to help me with my suitcase.” I wanted to add, “While you’re dumping me,” but I kept my mouth shut, tears burning the backs of my eyes.

Harrison reached out and stroked my shoulders. He knew I liked that. “Meg, listen, you know as well as I do that you and I are the leading authorities in the country on this subject. Not to mention Dr. Holmes wants the publicity over this for the history department. We cannot screw this up.”

I took my own deep breath and counted to ten, a trick my mother had taught me when I was young. Harrison was right. Our boss, Dr. Edwin Holmes, the chairman of the history department, had told us many times that the entire college was watching us in the wake of Lacey Lewis coming to town. Paparazzi had been spotted on campus. Everton was getting more press than it ever had, and all because of Harrison working with Lacey Lewis.

“Dr. Holmes asked me to take her,” Harrison said, moving his hands down my arms and cupping my elbows. “Several members of the press will be going too.”

“I know,” I muttered under my breath. Harrison and I both wanted the same thing. Tenure. We’d do anything to make Dr. Holmes happy. I’d been hoping a win at the Jane Austen Festival might give us the publicity Everton needed. Apparently, Dr. Holmes had thought of a better idea.

“My hands are tied here, Meg.” Harrison glanced back at Lacey again and gave her a little wave that made the creeping feeling of doom wrap its tentacles around my insides.

When he turned back to face me, I asked, “Are you sleeping with Lacey?” I couldn’t help myself. The question just jumped out of my mouth like a dramatic little skydiver.

Harrison’s eyes registered true surprise and instantly I felt like an ass. “Meg! No. What are you saying?”

What was I saying? I had even briefly considered asking Lacey the same question. I glanced over at Lady Red Suit and then at Harrison again. He was handsome, but not movie star handsome. I supposed it would be funny to Lacey Lewis if I even suggested such a thing.

“Look, Meg.” Harrison held up his hands in a calm, reassuring gesture as if he were trying to reason with an unpredictable monkey. The insane noise I’d made earlier was likely to blame. “I know how much you were looking forward to the festival. I think you should come with us. Be our consultant.” He cleared his throat and pulled at the lapels of his jacket like he did whenever he was anxious.

Be their consultant? I’d rather be boiled in donut oil. Besides, Harrison didn’t need me. He knew everything I knew. He was just trying to appease me. I closed my eyes. I’d only been gone for five days. Five lousy days, giving a series of lectures on nineteenth-century England’s social norms to the history faculty at Yale. In a mere five days, it felt like I’d lost my boyfriend to someone who better knew the ins-and-outs of shopping for a tight-fitting red suit than the first thing about Jane Austen’s brilliant characters.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, glaring at his tattersall shirtfront and considering how I could gracefully pull my suitcase up the multiple stone steps to my front door. Where was my deadbeat roommate brother when I needed him?

“Let me help you with that.” Harrison started forward to assist me. Always the gentleman.

“No. I’ll be fine.” No female with any self-respect and a Herstory bumper sticker allows a man who has just finished dumping her as his partner in Jane Austen fandom to carry her suitcase up ten stairs. Even if the stairs are ridiculously steep and she has a bunch of heavy books inside the suitcase. It’s bad form.

“Okay.” He knew I didn’t like things such as having my car door opened for me or help with my luggage. He jogged over to me and kissed me quickly, half on the lips and half on the cheek. He turned to leave, and I began to hoist the case up the stairs like I was going for the crown in the Miss Ignominious pageant—which would be a much more fun pageant to watch than your run-of-the-mill beauty pageant, if you ask me.

Harrison must have turned back and seen my slow, awkward plight, because the next thing I knew, he was at my side, trying to help me with the suitcase again.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, refusing to look at him. A short semi-slap fight ensued, which I won. I needed to get my suitcase into my house and not cry. I continued my assent, my eyes focused on the shiny black door above me. The suitcase bumped my leg on each step and pushed me forward a little. Apparently graceful was out of the question.

I pulled the luggage up the remaining three steps, hoping that when I turned back, Harrison and Lacey would be long gone. I pivoted on my heel.

No such luck.

Harrison was headed for the car, while Lacey’s shining eyes gazed at me from the side window. She actually had the audacity to make a frowny face. A freakin’ frowny face. Then she waved at me. An honest-to-goodness wave. Like, “See ya around. I didn’t just take your spot and run off with your boyfriend or anything.”

“Meg, I’ll call you later,” Harrison said as he climbed into the car. “We’ll finish our talk.”

“Fine,” I shouted over my shoulder, fumbling in my purse for the key to the front door. Why did I have so much crap in my purse? No one needs four different kinds of tiny hand sanitizers, even if they are ‘buy three get one free.’ I pushed aside the sanitizers, the empty orange and pink donut bag, my purple journal, and my ubiquitous dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice. By the way, purse-fumbling? Also not graceful.

Then it began to rain. Because A) it was poetic, and poetic things always happen to me, and B) because the only thing less graceful than standing in front of your door, fumbling for your key in your crap-filled purse in desperation to get away from your boyfriend and his hot, famous employer as they stare at your back...is fumbling for your key in your crap-filled purse, in front of them, in the rain. Which plasters the bangs you shouldn’t’ve let your hair stylist talk you into to your wet forehead and makes you look like you are crying. Which you are not doing...yet.

I finally found the bloody key, but in my haste to put it into the lock, I dropped it in front of my feet. When I leaned over to retrieve it, the unmistakable sound of fabric ripping met my disbelieving ears. I closed my eyes. Damn. Damn. Damn.

I scooped up the key and jammed it into the lock as quickly as possible, and twisted the knob open with a jerk. I was just about to pull in my suitcase behind me and slam the door with gratifying force when I heard Lacey’s mock-concerned voice drift up to me from below. “Dr. Knightley! I hate to be the one to tell you, but your skirt ripped and your panties are showing.”