Adventures of a Salsa Goddess Read Online Free

face me. “There are some professional women who seem to be beating the odds by marrying men with blue-collar jobs. But under no circumstances will you end up with an uneducated man. I want you to marry the dream man, the perfect man, the man our readers want to marry: professional, college-educated, and preferably drop-dead gorgeous.”
    Sure, no problem, Elaine. Would you like me to throw in a cure for cancer and a peace treaty for the Middle East while I’m at it?
    “By the way, Elaine,” I said, deciding to humor her, “what is the new updated statistic for single women over forty?”
    Ever prepared, she handed me a copy of a press release announcing the imminent publication of a book written by Harvard-educated sociologist Dr. Victoria Huber, titled, The Single Professional Woman Over Forty: The Hopeless Search for Happily Ever After .
    A single sentence on the press release had been highlighted in pink: A never-married, single professional woman over forty now has a better chance of winning a seven-figure lottery jackpot than ever marrying .
    I felt my jaw drop.
    “Don’t worry about those silly numbers,” Elaine said with a wave of her hand as if she were holding a magic wand that had just made this dire pronouncement disappear.
    I scanned the rest of the press release, my eyes landing on another sentence: Of the fifty most populous cities in the United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has consistently ranked last, in all age groups, for the percentage of single professional women marrying .
    “You just need to focus, Samantha,” said Elaine briskly. “Now, remember, this is a top-secret project. During the sum mer you’ll send your articles about your dates directly to me for editing. You leave in two weeks.”
    Two weeks? Wait a minute. I don’t have to worry about these statistics or Elaine’s outlandish scheme.
    “I’m not sure I’m the right person for this assignment, Elaine,” I hedged.
    Failing would be disastrous not just for my career at Tres Chic but also for my self-esteem. After a broken engagement, more than a few failed romances, and scores of bad dates over the past twenty years of my life, I could be declared a hazardous romance site. And despite my grim track record, I keep trying. I’m not one of those women who believe she can’t be happy without a man. Lord knows most of the men I’ve been involved with have either bored me to a stupor within minutes or driven me temporarily insane. But growing up seeing how happy my parents had been, I’ve never been able to picture any other future for myself.
    My mother and father had been one of the giggly, gooey-eyed couples who embarrass the hell out of everyone around them. I remember them constantly h olding hands and looking dreamy-eyed at one another at the dinner table and the movies and melting the frozen food sections of grocery stores. And then my dad had died of pancreatic cancer when I was sixteen. He was diagnosed one day and gone within five months. And after that, my mother had never been the same.
    Elaine perched on the edge of her desk directly in front of me. I could feel her breath on me as she put her hands on my shoulders.
    “I know you can do this, Samantha,” she said, ignoring the real issue.
    How could I possibly find someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with in just one summer? Not just any man would do. I wanted exactly what my parents had had—absolute blissful happiness; in other words, the type of marriage that eluded 99 percent of the population. But knowing Elaine, true love wasn’t part of her agenda.
    “But what if I fail?”
    “You won’t,” she said, with a flash of concern in her pale blue eyes. “You won’t fail, promise me.”
    “Okay, I promise.” What the hell? I’ll throw in my first-born son too.

Two
    Brew City
    “There’s supposed to be a lake out there somewhere, but I can’t see a thing,” I said into the cordless telephone.
    I thought I had landed in the Bermuda