Thing About Men by Elizabeth Bevarly

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The Barnes & Noble Review
USA Today–bestselling author Elizabeth Bevarly explores the idiosycrasies of love in this engaging romantic comedy about two people who aren't who they pretend to be. Young Martha Stewart clone Claire Willoughby is a national lifestyle diva who can't actually cook or stencil; she secretly gets all her good ideas from her mysterious best friend, Olive. But a major complication arrives, threatening to destroy Claire's carefully cultivated image: baby Annbel, left to Claire by her No. 1 fan, Eleanor Sage, who has died suddenly. Enter, on a Harley, Ramsey Sage, the baby's only living relative. Father material? With his diamond stud earring, ragged jeans, and black eye, Ramsey looks like the farthest thing from it, but he sure can kiss, as Claire finds out. How Claire and Ramsey inch their way into love and ultimately reveal their true selves is at the heart of this charmer. Ginger Curwen

From the Publisher

Running a lifestyle business doesn't leave much time for Claire Willoughby to have a lifestyle of her own. But, hey, you've got to give up a little if you want to be revered as the Nigella Lawson of the simplicity set! However, Claire's gotten herself a number-one fan, and this number-one fan has willed everything to Claire.including one Anabel Sage, aged 13 months.

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Chapter One

"What do you mean the chicken is still alive?"

Claire Willoughby gaped at her producer in stark-staring terror, her mind racing with all the ramifications the live chicken brought with it. And there were plenty. "It can't still be alive," she said. "I have to cook it on camera in thirty minutes. How's it going to go from cage to frying pan, unless we ... "

The rest of that statement didn't even bear thinking about, let alone speaking aloud. Especially not by a woman wearing beige Ann Taylor separates and ivory Bandolino pumps.

"Sorry, Claire, but there must have been a mix-up in the directions," her producer, Nina Ritchie, replied without a hint of apology as she lit a new cigarette with the still-burning butt of her last one.

The set for the show was supposed to be smoke-free, but the first time Claire had reminded Nina of that, Nina had set fire to a trash can in the women's room in what she swore was an accident that occurred while she was trying to put out the offending cigarette. So Claire didn't mention her producer's cigarette now. She didn't want to put the good people of the Nashville Fire Department through all that trouble again.

"For some reason," the tall, too-slim redhead continued, "they delivered a live chicken instead of a broiler/fryer." She stubbed out the butt on her clipboard, one marked by a variety of small black burn spots, and flicked it away heedlessly -- beaning her production assistant in the side of the head in the process.

Then she inhaled deeply on the new cigarette, until its tip glowed bright orange. Everything about Nina was orangey today, Claire noted, from her hair to her Nehru jacket and sultan's trousers, to her amber beads and earrings, to her copper sandals. "And we're nowhere near a grocery store," she added, "so we don't have time to send someone out for another one. We either have to kill the chicken or kill the segment."

Oh, easy for her to say, Claire thought. Nina's last job had been as an assistant producer for one of those trash-talk day-time TV shows where things like Satanism and alien paternity and family fistfights had been daily staples. A chicken execution would be nothing to her.

Claire tucked a stray strand of pale blond hair back into the otherwise flawless chignon fixed at her nape as she pondered her dilemma. Aunt Halouise's "Red, White, and True Fried Chicken" was the centerpiece of their "Fourth of July Picnic Cookout" feature, and the "Fourth of July Picnic Cookout" feature was the centerpiece of today's show. And the irony was that the theme of Claire's nationally syndicated -- and live—TV show, Simple Pleasures, like the theme of Claire's nationally distributed magazine, also called Simple Pleasures, was "Back to Basics." That was, in fact, pretty much the mission statement of her entire lifestyle business -- to promote a return to the simpler ways of simpler times. Ways and times that had included, for example, raising livestock for the purpose of holiday cuisine.

Not that Claire thought the entire country should return to farming and animal husbandry as a way of life. But everyone at Simple Pleasures, Inc. was a big proponent of self-sustenance. They had to be if they wanted to remain employed. Still, Claire herself had always preferred to focus more on the gardening and sewing and baking sort of self-sustenance than she had the butchering-of-small-animals sort of self-sustenance. After all, there were some simple practices that weren't especially pleasurable. And those were the ones best glossed over and not featured on national daytime television. Especially during the summer, when children were out of school and very likely to be plastered to the family TV.

"No, wait, this could work," Ginny Lymon, Nina's recently beaned assistant, chimed in as she rubbed the side of her forehead. Claire wondered if she should tell the young woman that she'd missed a smudge of cigarette ash near her eye. Then again, Ginny wore so much liner and such dark shadow that an extra smudge of ash was negligible. And considering the fact that she dyed her hair jet-black, wore jet-black nail polish and lipstick, and dressed from head to toe in -- surprise! -- jet black, she'd probably welcome the added darkness. "If we cut the banjo bit," Ginny went on, "and push Dorcas Marcum's peony piece back 'til Monday, we could expand the chicken segment."

Claire eyed the production assistant with horror, worried that she and Ginny were on the same wavelength. Very cautiously, she asked, "And by 'expanding the chicken segment,' you would mean ...?"

Ginny shrugged. "We could kill and pluck it as part of the show."

Claire closed her eyes and willed herself not to pass out. Yep. She and Ginny were on the same wavelength, all right. But not one of those wavelengths that lapped lovingly at a tranquil beach in a soft, reaffirming way. No, this particular wavelength was more of a raging tsunami that threatened to wipe out all of Osaka.

"And after we've dealt with the thousands of letters and e-mails we receive from the ASPCA, PETA, and our animal-loving viewers," Claire said, "we can pack up the set, because the network will have canceled Simple Pleasures. Of course, that will be nothing compared to the angry, torch-bearing mob waiting for us outside the studio, something that will necessitate our running for our lives under cover of darkness."

"Oh, hell, Claire," Ginny said indignantly, her Southern twang more pronounced than usual, because of her irritation, "people who eat chicken know they're eatin' a dead animal. We'll just be showin' 'em how it got that way."