Dearest Reader,
You opened the stable door on your first date and now it’s going to be difficult to herd that stallion back inside. Prudence believes you should stand firm in your decision. Celibacy is a virtue and your body a prize to be treasured. If this man can’t respect your feelings, then send him straight to the glue factory. And please, promise Prudence that you won’t go riding again until you’ve said “I do.”
The horse metaphor was a little trite, yet it was typical Prudence—smart, sassy, with just a touch of sarcasm. Nora reached out and typed in the command that would send her column to her copy editor. Though times had changed, the words could just as easily have belonged to the very first Prudence, a woman named Hortense Philpot who rode herd on etiquette problems in the roaring twenties.
Nora had been hired as an assistant by Prudence IV, right out of Stanford. With an undergraduate degree in medieval art, her job prospects had been slim. But she’d possessed something more valuable than a degree: a pedigree from a socially prominent San Francisco family that gave her a genetic predisposition to proper etiquette. She’d been born and raised in Sea Cliff, the bastion of social propriety.
Upon Prudence IV’s retirement, Nora had signed a five-year contract as the new Prudence. She’d taken the job because—well, because there wasn’t much call in San Francisco for an expert in medieval tapestries. But she also thought she might be able to inject a little class and propriety into the everyday life of her readers.
She pulled off her horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed her eyes, then reached for the stack of letters her assistant had selected for upcoming columns. Pushing up from her chair, she began to pace the office. “Infidelity,” she murmured, tossing the first letter onto the floor. “Deception.” As she flipped through the letters, she found new problems to replace the old problems she’d just solved. “Anger. Resentment. Dysfunctional families. Sexual fantasies.”
Nora stood and wandered by the window that overlooked the Bullpen. She peeked through the slats of the miniblinds. They were still playing their silly little game, and Pete Beckett was in the middle of it all. She watched as he stretched to catch the ball, his shirt pulled taut against his torso. Even from a distance, Nora could see the outline of his narrow waist and muscular chest. All thoughts of work slipped from her mind. “Sexual fantasies,” she murmured.
All right, maybe she did find Pete Beckett incredibly attractive. But that was just a physical reaction. It had nothing to do with the man, just the body. A flat belly and a cute butt certainly didn’t mitigate his bad qualities. Nor did chiseled features and a perfect profile…or his short-cropped dark hair, always so casually mussed, as if some woman had recently run her fingers through it. And maybe he did have a smile that was known to melt a girl’s heart, but he rarely turned it on her. Nora had heard that women found his devilish sense of humor quite irresistible, though when he bothered to toss a tiny bit of his charm in her direction she usually reciprocated with some shrewish reply.
“Any juicy letters today?”
Nora jumped away from the window, the slats snapping back into place. Ellen Kiley stood in the doorway of her office. Embarrassed to be caught spying, Nora sent her friend a disapproving frown, then handed her a letter. “You, too? Have you joined those at the Herald who believe sleaze sells?”
Ellie had started at the Herald the very same day Nora had, and they’d been inseparable friends, at least until Ellie had married Sam Kiley a year ago. “I’m the circulation manager. When the circulation goes up, I’m happy. So what’s got your knickers in a bundle, Prude?”
“Don’t call me that!” Nora sighed, surprised by her reaction to Ellie’s gentle teasing. She flopped down in her office chair and gazed up at her friend. “When you think of me, do you really think of me as Prudence Trueheart? Or as Nora Pierce?”
Ellie frowned and sat down across from her, her gaze fixed on the letter. “I don’t get it,” she murmured. “What’s the difference?”
“There is a difference!” Nora cried, leaning over her desk and snatching the letter from her friend’s hand. “Don’t you see?” She crumpled the paper and tossed it aside, then began to pace the width of her office. “I’m not Prudence Trueheart. I put words in her mouth, but she’s not me. And I’m not her.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Nora said, unwilling to explain further. But she couldn’t hold in her frustration any longer. “It’s just that sometimes I get sick of Prudence. She’s so…prissy!” Only after the word slipped from her lips did she realize it was Pete’s word again, his description of her. “People expect me to be her. And it’s getting awfully hard lately to figure out where she ends and I begin.”
“A lot of people have trouble separating work from their personal life,” Ellie offered.
“I—I just expected things to be different. When I first got a job at the Herald, I thought my life was going to change. I moved out of my parents’ house, away from my mother, and I found that little apartment in the Castro. I expected my life to be more exciting. Look at me now. I dress in these suits and ride around on my high horse all day long, looking down my nose at ordinary mortals and scolding them for falling short of their moral and ethical duties.” The last was said with a hysterical edge, and Nora took a deep breath to calm herself. “How can I advise people about passion when I have no passion in my life?”
The question caused Ellie to pause before answering. “You’re very passionate about your work…about etiquette.”
“A person can be passionate, but still have no passion in their life. Look at these letters.” She picked up a stack and tossed it across the desk. “These people have passion. They live by their hearts, not their heads. I’ve never had that. Sure, there have been men in my life. Lovers, even. But I’ve never felt passion so overwhelming that it dissolves common sense. That it makes me crazy. And the longer I’m Prudence, the worse it gets.”
Nora yanked open her desk drawer and pulled out a bag of peanut M&Ms. Shoving a handful into her mouth, she waited for the chocolate to soothe her. “I should just quit,” she mumbled, her mouth full. Prudence never talked while she ate, but Nora was past caring about good manners. “I could go back to school. Get my doctorate in art history. Find a job in Paris or Rome.”
“You can’t quit. You’re the heir apparent to both Dear Abby and Miss Manners. And you make more money than anyone at the Herald, except for maybe Pete Beckett. And someday, you’re going to be a multimedia goddess, just like Martha Stewart.”
“Don’t say that name in this office,” Nora said, popping another handful of candy into her mouth.
“Martha Stewart?”
“No, Pete Beckett. He is the antithesis of everything Prudence Trueheart values in a man. He’s fickle and shallow and unscrupulous and—and because of him, I have this black eye!”
Ellie squinted to examine Nora’s injury. “And how does Nora Pierce feel about him?” she asked pointedly.
Nora stopped cold, realization hitting her like a sharp slap to the face. She coughed slightly, an M&M lodged in her throat. “That—that is how I feel about him. The way he treats women is appalling. Promiscuity is a trait that both Prudence and I detest.”
“Now you sound like your mother!”
Nora groaned.
“You also sound a little jealous,” Ellie observed. “Just how much time do you spend thinking about Pete Beckett’s romantic life?”
“None at all,” Nora lied. She thought about evading the subject, but Ellie was her best friend, and they never held back anything from each other. “It just that after he hit me with the baseball, he—”
“He hit you with a baseball?”
“A whiffle ball. And it was an accident. He came into my office to apologize and he—he touched me. It was completely innocent,