Shoe Addicts Anonymous Read Free

retriever, a walk-in closet in her bedroom, and no money troubles.
    It hadn’t worked out that way. Boyfriends came and went. And came and went. And came and went, long beyond the time when people stopped saying, “You’re young, you should play the field!” and began saying, “So…when are you going to settle down?” When she’d dumped her most recent boyfriend—nice, but dull dull dull George Manning, who was an attorney—her coworker Bess had all but called her stupid, saying, “He may be boring, but he wears Brooks Brothers and pays the bills!”
    But that wasn’t enough for Lorna. She couldn’t stay with the wrong guy just because he offered financial security, no matter how tempting that financial security was. So she’d lived as if some answer—some miracle that would wipe her slate clean—was going to turn up around the next corner. The solution was always coming right up, in her mind.
    Therefore, Lorna hadn’t done nearly so much as she should have to find her own solutions and stop her spending problems before they got out of control. Like the gambler who kept doubling the bet with the idea that the big payoff had to come, statistically, Lorna kept doubling her troubles until finally, now, she realized she was holding a losing hand no matter what she did.
    She was in a very real crisis. If she didn’t change something, and quick, she was going to go broke.
    Not just I can’t buy these strappy sandals broke, and not even beans and rice for dinner for the next few months broke, but honest to God, corrugated cardboard is warmer in subzero temperatures than plywood, so hang out behind Sears and get a refrigerator box before all the good ones are gone broke.
    She had to do something.
    Fast.

Chapter
2

    S o you’re taking birth control pills and letting him think you’re trying to get pregnant?”
    Helene Zaharis snapped to attention. The question wasn’t directed at her, but it could just as well have been. In fact, it was so completely accurate that for a moment she wondered if someone had figured her out and sat down at her table to blackmail her.
    But no, the conversation was between two twenty-somethings at the table next to hers at Café Rouge, where Helene was meeting Senator Cabot’s wife, Nancy, for lunch.
    Nancy was late, which was fortunate, since Helene found the conversation next to her far more interesting than the conversation Helene and Nancy would invariably have about who was going to the point-to-point races in Middleburg in October and what political figure was the latest to propose what preposterous tax cut.
    Or tax hike.
    Or whatever other hot button was lately of interest to those inside the Beltway.
    None of it was of much interest to Helene.
    “It’s not exactly like suffering.” The woman who was evidently on the pill giggled and sipped a pink drink. “He just has to try a little harder…and a little longer.”
    Her friend smiled, like she loved being in on this particularly delicious secret. “Then you’re going to stop taking the pills?”
    “Eventually. When I’m ready.”
    The second woman shook her head, smiling. “You’ve got some nerve, girl. You just better hope he doesn’t find the pills in the meantime.”
    “Not a chance.”
    “Where do you hide them?”
    Duct-taped to the back of the drawer of my bedside table, Helene thought.
    “In my purse,” Pink Drink woman answered with a shrug. “He’d never look there.”
    Bad move. Rookie mistake. Men respected that particular boundary only until they got a small inkling something was up. Then it was the first place they checked. Even the stupid ones.
    If Helene hid anything in her purse, Jim would find it right away. He’d passed that point of courtesy a long time ago.
    She shuddered to think what he’d do if he found out she was foiling his attempts at reproduction.
    But Helene was firm on this. She didn’t want a child. It would absolutely be unfair, primarily to the child, since the only reason