More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2) Read Free

physical exertions—because I’d been hoping to get upgraded to business class so I could sit next to Viggo. In that scenario, acted out in front of the hotel’s bathroom mirror, I was flinging my must-have locks around and flirting with the charming actor about art and music and living a purposeful life as we winged our way back to la-la land after his stellar performance in a series of Kubota Tractor commercials. Not that flirting on the airplane was going to get me any further than flirting during the shoot had—which was nowhere. But I’d still be angry with myself for not trying, and at last check, he was single; so for me, this would be something new.
    I have this love-hate thing with actors: I’m attracted by the larger-than-life, valiant characters they play on screen, but, in reality, so many of them are vain, self-serving, and not even very good in bed unless there’s a mirror nearby that allows them to—while gazing at their reflection as they penetrate some arbitrary body—actually make love to themselves.
    Clearly, I wasn’t going to sit with Viggo, but at least I’d made my flight, which is more than I could say about the time, a couple of years ago, when I spent two weeks in Switzerland for a series of BMW spots with Catherine Zeta-Jones. That time, it had totally been my fault. Nobody had made me have a fling with a remarkably handsome and amusing German microscope company executive who was attending a convention in the same hotel and who, of course, turned out to be married—detecting a pattern yet?—with a penchant for screwing anything over forty degrees that moved. He’d lied so convincingly, I believed him when he told me he was divorced and hadn’t been with anyone in a year.
    That time, I missed my flight because I felt compelled to do what any self-respecting modern woman would have done under the circumstances: I crashed the Annual Bausch Microscope business breakfast, picked up the lying pig’s plate of pickled herring, and broadsided it into his gaping maw. Soon, three other women began hurling water pitchers, coffee cups, and pastries at the louse. It seemed they, too, had succumbed to his charms. They hadn’t known about me, and it was abundantly clear they hadn’t known about each other. My only regret had been not sticking around to see what happened next.
    This singular event may have helped me steer clear of self-destructive relationships with married men while on work-related trips (the only kind I ever go on unless you count infrequent visits to Fresno), but it had yet to cure me of my attraction, unwittingly (and unwillingly, of course), to married men in my own city, like the one I was currently ensnarled with back in L.A.
    Now, as I try to move through first class with grace and aplomb, I’m aware of the dirty looks from men in suits and the haughty-looking “women who shop”—the latter probably headed to the U.S. to ransack American stores with their inflated yen, euros, dinars, and pounds—perturbed at having their shopping trip delayed by the likes of me, slowly making my way through their cabin to get to the rest of the people of no consequence in coach.
    I feel the glare of one of these women judging me and, “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry!” I say, as I accidentally knock her elbow just enough to ever-so-slightly spill her free Mimosa onto her pale beige haute couture traveling costume with matching designer handbag. Such a shame…she’ll have to go straight to the Balenciaga Boutique in Beverly Hills and buy another . Well, at least I confirmed her worst suspicions about my character.
    Continuing on through business class, I spot Viggo, sunglasses on, head tipped back, enjoying an apparent snooze. Damn, he had looked so fine on that tractor—what an earthmover. But now, he doesn’t even know I’m here, the ingrate. I flick my tangled web of hair anyway. Some body might be noticing.
    And then I enter coach, that engorged mid-section of any commercial