1 Chapter 1

Everyone tells me how lucky I am. You know, like, “Miranda Ashley O’Neal, you are just too blessed for words.” I guess it’s true. I mean I have everything a girl could want. Well, almost everything. But lately life seems to be unbearably tedious. Like today, I spent all morning cruising my favorite boutiques along Scottsdale Road and didn’t find a thing I wanted. All at once, I just couldn’t get excited about another Vuitton handbag, a new pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes. Not even jewelry. I mean is that sick or what?

I was just so bummed. I’d given up shopping for the day and was driving home in my little red Jag when it all happened. I really would have preferred a Maserati, but when your father has the Jag dealership in town…Of course you’ve heard of Daddy. You know, “If you’re into steals, try O’Neal’s Deals on Wheels.”

Mom says the slogan has no class. She insists he ought to change it, especially now that he has the ritziest dealership in the metro area. He says he’s used it since he opened his very first lot back in the last millennium and he’s not about to change it now. Something about good luck and keeping a talisman and nonsense like that.

Anyway, before you start to think I am like so totally spoiled and crass and shallow, let me tell you that I’m working on a degree in child psychology. When I finish, and find out where Matt is going to hang out his shingle, I intend to open a practice to counsel troubled children. I mean there are so many nowadays and so many parents don’t have a clue what to do for them, you know? For now, when I’m not in class, I help my friend Heather Hollister in her art gallery and volunteer three days a week in the children’s wing down at University Hospital.

Matt? Oh, yes, that’s my fiancé, Dr. Matthew Marcus Conlan III. Well, almost a doctor—he’s got a few more months to go. Quite the catch, everyone says. My parents adore him. He’s everything a girl could ask for—good looking, incredibly suave, and he’ll be as rich as Trump and Gates once he sets up his plastic surgery practice. A dream come true, they all say. We’re a perfect couple.

Right now he’s doing his residency, though, and that means hours and hours of work. Of course he’s so stressed and exhausted he doesn’t have much left to give us. I understand. I swear I don’t pout, but it hurts all the same. He acts like I can’t really understand about his work and everything, but I do. I really do. I’d coddle him if he’d allow it, but he won’t. I mean, what is a woman supposed to do?

We announced our engagement at New Year’s when he gave me a bling the size of Texas. It has this huge yellow diamond and around it are little white ones for my birthstone, which is April, and little sapphires for his, which is September. All my girlfriends just drool over that ring and naturally over him. He plays tennis and handball to keep fit, even now when he’s slaving in the hospital, so he still looks totally buff. He says I’ll always be beautiful to him, even if I inherit the Blaisdell double chin like Mom is getting. He’d fix it, of course.

So what’s wrong with me? I’m not feeling anything lately. No buzz to my toes when we kiss, no fireworks in bed. As for the big O, well, half the time I fake it, and the other times my world barely rocks. I’m wondering if maybe I’m frigid or something. I mean, like that would be awful! How come I don’t get turned on? Really, the only time I came close to being wild with passion was back in my freshman year when I dated that foreign student.

Oh, my! He was Spanish and Egyptian and soooo gorgeously sexy, but Mom and Dad thought he was totally out of my league. A foreign son-in-law would’ve given Mom the vapors, as Grandma used to say. We broke it off after a few weeks, but since then, sex is just like, well, having dinner or taking a shower or something. I am so disappointed. I know it isn’t supposed to be that way.

It’s totally depressing. I’ve really started to wonder what is wrong with me. I was lost in thoughts and not paying strictest attention to my driving, I must confess. I know I didn’t run that light, though. I don’t care what the cops say or that drugged up redneck in the monster truck. I was in the middle of the intersection, but there were other cars ahead of and behind me. Then all at once this humongous four-wheel-drive truck comes roaring up on my side. It loomed over me like Godzilla in those Japanese anime flicks before everything went into slow motion.