Infatuation

"MILLA, SWEETIE. Not to be a bitch or anything, but for being the absolutely gorgeous woman that you are? You look like crap today." Milla Page glared with no small amount of envy at her coworker's mirrored reflection. She and Natalie Tate had taken the elevator from their shared tenth-floor office in San Francisco's Wentworth-Holt building down to the much roomier second-floor ladies' room since theirs was yet again under renovation. Looking at the other woman's caramel skin, deep coffee-colored hair and vibrant green eyes was a welcome change from Milla's staring at her own reflected deathlike palette of white and, um, even whiter. That's what she'd been doing now for five minutes at least, staring and wondering what she'd been thinking, letting herself out of the house this morning without so much as a brown paper bag over her head. "Crap pretty much covers it," she finally replied, sighing heavily. "Though originally I was thinking pasty. Like a ghoul. Or a zombie. Maybe even a corpse." "Whatever. You're definitely hovering near the transparent end of the pale scale." Natalie tossed the words over her shoulder, latching the stall door behind her. Well, yeah. The ghoul-zombie-corpse-pasty-death look would definitely be the wrong end. This is what happened, Milla mused, when one stayed out too late, ate too much food, drank too much drink, slept too little sleep, did it too often in the company of men who were poster children for single-hood being a good thing, and had to get up the next morning and do it again that night. What in the world had she been thinking, taking a job with the San Francisco office of MatchMeUpOnline.com that essentially made dating her career? She was a glutton for punishment. There was no other explanation. Dating as recreation was bad enough, all that waxing, shaving, polishing, styling...and for what? Shaking her head, she reached into her pebbled leather tote for her makeup bag, setting her blush on the restroom's brown marble countertop, and wavering between the soft Sweetie Chic lipstick or the bright Chili Pop. She went with the former, certain the latter would make her look like a fat-lipped bloated clown. Even though she had lived in San Francisco since graduating from university here six years ago--giving her a decade's worth of experience with the ins and outs of being single in the city by the bay,andearning her the Web site's choice restaurant and club review gig--she was still at a clear disadvantage when it came to doing her job. Basing her thumbs-up or thumbs-down on whether or not the hot spots she was assigned to review worked as locations for intimate dates meant...dating. Dating was hardly a solo gig. Dating meant finding men. And since she hadn't been in a serious relationship since college, finding men meant work. At least her two female coworkers did what they could to help out. Both Amy Childs and her husband Chris, and Natalie and her fianceacute; Jamal were good at fixing up Milla with really great guys. When it had become obvious that nothing was going to develop but the shared chemistry of friendship, she kept a couple of the men on the hook for regular dates. Knowing that she would show them a good time, get them into the toniest of places,andpay for the food, how could they say no? And for Milla, it seemed so much easier to deal with the sure thing than with the iffy. Unfortunately, it also defeated the purpose of what she'd been assigned to do. Gauging a club's up-close-and-personal potential with a man who was only a friend didn't always provide her reviews the same zing as would a more, uh, heated encounter. Then again, if taking that leap into the unknown as she'd done last night was going to mean dragging into work the next day with a ghoul-zombie-corpselike pallor,fuggetaboutit!Except now that she'd been given this newest assignment--the best sort of challenge, her bossKent, Alison is the author of 'Infatuation', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373792917 and ISBN 0373792913.