Uptown Girl
From the bestselling author of THE FIRST WIVES CLUB comes a sparkling romantic comedy. Perfect for fans of Candace Bushnell.There's something about Billy Nolan. It's not just that he's wickedly attractive, it's that any woman he dates and dumps (and he dates and dumps them all) immediately goes on to marry someone else.Sassy, uptown New Yorker Kate, is immune to Billy's charms but perhaps the 'Billy effect' will work for Kate's friend, Bina, who has fallen apart because her almost-fiancé, Jack, is going away to 'explore his singleness'.All Kate has to do is get Billy to date Bina and dump her – and then await Jack's return and watch the magic happen. It's a great plan and at first it seems to be working. But the one thing Kate hasn't considered is how Billy feels about it all…
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Uptown Girl
Olivia Goldsmith
Table of Contents
To Nina and to Ethel Esther Brandsfronbrener Schutz A lover of books, mangos, oranges and me
‘The Hokey Pokey’ ©1950 Sony/ATV Songs LLC.
Used by permission. All rights administered by
Sony/ATV Music Publishing.
Katherine Sean Jameson sat behind her desk and looked at her client. Although she was a published psychologist with a doctorate and had even completed some post-doc work, her office was simply furnished. It didn’t feature Freud’s classic psychiatric couch. That was because Kate Jameson wasn’t a Freudian, and certainly didn’t need an office full of relics and pottery shards to look at. To look at her what you’d see was rather a mildly pretty twenty-four-year-old (though she was actually thirty-one) with long curls of wild red hair. Now, as she looked at Brian Conroy, she unconsciously twisted those curls into an impromptu bun at the nape of her neck and pushed a pencil through it to hold it in place, a practiced motion.
It was warm. Her office was not air-conditioned and the breeze from the open window felt good on the back of her neck. Brian, looking intently at her, was sweating, but it could just as easily have been from nerves as from the unseasonable April heat.
Kate sat silently. Silence was an important part of her work, though not something that came naturally. But she had learned that at times stillness and space were all that were needed.
Not today apparently. Brian pulled his eyes guiltily away from hers and looked around the office. Instead of the usual museum reproductions, all of the wall space not covered by bookshelves displayed pictures done by children – some of them very disturbing. Kate watched, waiting to see if Brian’s attention focused on one. Like Rorschach’s ink blot test, artistic expression often helped to open doors. She withheld a sigh. She was trying to wait Brian out but was conscious of their time ticking away and for his sake she needed immediate results. Brian was obviously in crisis. His teacher said he was showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder or even schizophrenia and was disrupting the class. And disruption simply wasn’t allowed at Andrew Country Day School. A private school in a smart neighborhood in Manhattan, it accepted only the best and the brightest – of students and staff. Every amenity was provided, from an indoor swimming pool to a state-of-the-art computer center, to language lessons that included Japanese and French for six-year-olds. That’s why there was a school psychologist. Kate had only gotten the plum job recently, and Brian, like other kids who showed the slightest ‘difficult’ behavior, seemed to be immediately remanded to her office. Nothing was to disrupt the smooth daily ingestion of information by the children of the elite.
‘Do you know why you’ve come here, Brian?’ she asked, her voice gentle. Brian shook his head. Kate rose from her desk, moved around it and sat down in one of the small chairs beside her eight-year-old ‘client’. ‘Can you guess?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, do you think it’s for eating gummy elephants in school?’
He looked at her for a moment then shook his head again. ‘There’s no such thing as gummy elephants.’
‘Gummy rhinos?’ Kate asked. Brian shook his head again. ‘Eating peanut butter and raccoon sandwiches at your desk?’
‘It wasn’t for eating anything,’ he said. Then he lowered his voice to barely a whisper. ‘It was for talking. Talking in class.’
Kate nodded, the pencil fell out of her bun and her hair cascaded down over her face while the pencil clattered to the floor. Brian smiled and actually let a giggle escape before he covered his mouth. Good, Kate thought. She leaned closer to her little patient. ‘You’re not just here for talking in class, Brian. If you were just talking in class, then you’d be sent to the principal’s office, right?’
Brian’s adorable face gazed up at Kate with terrified eyes. ‘Are you worse than the principal?’ he whispered.
Kate felt such empathy for the boy at that moment that she was tempted to take his hand in hers, but he was so very anxious that he might shy away. This kind of work was so delicate – like dealing with Venetian spun glass where the slightest jolt could shatter it – and she often felt so clumsy.
‘Nobody is worse than the principal,’ Kate said. Then she smiled and winked at Brian. None of the kids at Andrew Country Day liked Mr McKay and – as so often – their instincts were good. ‘Do I look as bad as Mr McKay?’ Kate asked, feigning shock.
Brian shook his head vigorously.
‘Well. Thank goodness. Anyway I do something different. You aren’t here to be punished because you didn’t do anything wrong. But everybody hears you talking – even though you’re not talking to anybody.’ She watched as Brian’s eyes filled with tears.
