"Could you wait a moment, please?" she huffed and blew a spiraling curl out of her eyes. "It's not like this thing is as light as a feather."

"You knew that before you volunteered to help me."

"Shut up," she hissed and rolled her eyes.

That was Lizzy. My best friend since... God knows how long.

One summer day, 20 some odd years ago, she walked up to our gate, bold-as-brass, and asked me if I wanted to play with her. I look back on that moment with some chagrin, but what does a mere boy know about playing 'Doctor'? I didn't know who she was at that time and although she was a girl, I was still eager for some company. She was 5 and I was 8. I lived and still do live in the biggest house in the city. It's situated up on the highest hill and out back is a breathtaking view of the downtown area and the ocean beyond it. Anyway, I found her odd and intriguing, for there were no other houses close enough to us that some kid could just wander away. Before I could call my mom to ask her to open up the gate, Lizzy smiled at me, squeezed through the wrought-iron bars, dusted her little hands on her shorts, grabbed my arm and dragged me towards my own playhouse. I swear, before 15 minutes had passed, we were running around, laughing, jumping through the sandpit, playing 'Cowboys and Indians' and such like we had known each other from birth. I had never had so much fun.

I'm an only child, my father worked night and day, and my mother didn't run or jump. So you can imagine just how enjoyable her friendship was to me. But because of the noise, my mom came flying out of the house to see to the matter. I proudly introduced my new friend. My mother smiled sweetly, called for some lemonade, and sat us both down to talk. Lizzy, even at that age, could talk a blue streak. Beautiful, precocious, and cheeky - a mindboggling combination for someone so young. I was not immune to her charms, even then. She had my mother wrapped around her finger in an instant, just like she had me. Once she was satisfied with the interview, my mom went back into the house and let us play for a few hours. I didn't know it at that time, but that's how long it took my mother to find Mr. Bennet's phone number and for him to calm his wife down. I couldn't tell the difference though - Mrs. Bennet was still hysterical when she ran down the lawn, screaming and crying and scolding my new friend like a crazy woman.

After Mrs. Bennet was lying comfortably on the chaise under the back portico, my mom and Mr. Bennet talked while Lizzy and I played quietly in a corner. I could tell she was embarrassed and angry and being 8 years-old I didn't know what to do, so I let her drive my trucks through the sand while I tried to build a castle...

"I'm ready now. Hey!" She smacked me on my arm.

"What?" I answered, caught somewhere between the past and present.

"Day dreaming?"

Indeed! "Just... remembering something."

"Anyway... I said, I'm ready."

"Oh... okay."

We went to back to the ends of the sofa and picked it up. Okay, I was able to lift my end up - no real help from the other side - and moved it into the library. As was her usual, she looked wonderingly around at all the books and shelves and sighed.

"I see your science fiction section has increased."

I didn't bother to ask her how she knew that because I was certain she was more aware of what was in my library than I was. "Just feeding my new obsession."

"I suppose it's better than your old one."

I wasn't going to touch that with a 10-foot pole. Lizzy's told me often enough that I was a rich arrogant pretty-boy prick who only had to make eye contact to get laid. However, she's failed to mention, on numerous occasions, my dark brooding scowl that drives women creamy and I sometimes don't have to make eye contact for they are already on their knees, but I digress. Instead I just shrugged. "When I get off work I need something to relax me enough to unwind." And since I haven't been laid in almost a month, my hands needed another occupation.

She raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

When we came back to the family room, I stopped and frowned as I looked at the hardwood. My mother would kill me if she was alive to see this. "You're in big trouble, young lady."

"I'm so sorry, Will!"

"I wonder if I have any floor wax."

"We don't have the time to get down on our hands and knees. The party starts in 4 hours and we have yet to get the booze. Besides, it'll get even more scuffed up tonight."

Hands and knees and scuffing the floor brought wicked but inappropriate images to my mind and they needed to be cast-off quickly.

In any case, Lizzy was right. She was always right. I was hosting an engagement party for my best friend, Charles Bingley, and her elder sister, Jane. It's just the two of them, but unless you knew them intimately, you'd never be able to tell they were sisters. Jane is everything that is sweet, calm, and compliant while Lizzy blazes her own paths. Fire and Ice, I refer to them in my mind.

Darcy Enterprises is a conglomeration of several entertainment sideshows: music and movies being the main. Most of the employees are from my father's era; the stone age, but I've brought in a few movers and shakers from rivals and have managed to increase profits while being able to spread it around liberally. Charles came to work for me 3 years ago as Vice President of Sales. A real ladies man but not cocky. His easy smile, southern drawl, and boy-next-door good looks took the socialites and starlets by surprise and they were on his jock before you could whistle Dixie. Not that he took advantage of his position; quite the opposite, I assure you. The man knew when to separate business from pleasure. However, he also knew exactly how much pleasure could be found in L.A. Some of the scrapes we got into and out of, I'll take to my grave.

Even so, Lizzy insisted and I introduced him to Jane about a year and a 1/2 ago. It was love at first sight and they've been inseparable since then. He chilled out immediately and I was left to pillage and conquer on my own.

The party tonight was impromptu and no one but our friends and significant others would attend. The 'official' engagement party, thrown by the Charles' family, wouldn't be for another few weeks because his sister couldn't or wouldn't change her schedule to accommodate an earlier date. Plus, it was going to be a posh, formal affair and we just wanted to have fun. So that's how I got stuck throwing it together with Lizzy's help. Of course, she's the one that railroaded me into this mess in the first place, so it's only fair that she's the only one available to help me set up.

"Is Robert going to be able to make it tonight?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "If he can, he'll call me."

Robert is Lizzy's husband. A nice enough guy, but an actor... need I say more? He's okay after a movie wrap but if he's idle too long, he gets flakily insecure and annoying. His whining and pouting about his age and how nobody wants him any longer gets older and older every time I have to sit through dinner with him; it makes me cringe. The big baby... He's older than I am. In fact, he's almost old enough to be her father. He's 43 but in Hollywood that's often light years beyond marketability. Still, although he never deigns to play some young girl's father, he gets leads in B-rated movies that earn enough money to be considered respectable.

Sometimes I just want to put my foot up his ass and tell him to shut up about it but then Lizzy would get upset with me. I don't want that. I've been on the wrong end of her sharp tongue only a few times in my life and each time was pure hell. When she goes off, she has this way of making my dick shrivel. Nope, I don't want that; it has enough problems of its own recently.

"Who's your date tonight?"

"Lydia."

"Lydia?! The teenager?!"

"Lizzy..." I sighed. "She's not a teenager, she's 21."

"Barely!" she spat.

I knew this was coming. "Yeah, so what?"

"You're 32 years old, Will... I think you have a problem."

Lydia Belmont is luscious, young, and nubile and she wants me. "I don't have a problem." At least I hope I won't after tonight.

"Since you turned 30, you've been on a rampage and they've been getting younger and younger..."

"Think what you like." I shrugged. I'm still sowing my wild oats. She has no concept of what it is to scratch an itch... on occasion.

Once Lizzy graduated from UCLA medical school, she fell, literally, head over heels for Robert. They were married in less than a year of acquaintance and before she settled into her internship as a Pediatrician. Too early if you ask me, but nobody asked. Her mother, in her ever-bubbly effusions, could not contain her joy or influence. Personally, I think they all saw their father/husband in Robert. He wanted to take care of Lizzy and she let him. With all her feminist ideas, I was thoroughly disappointed that she settled so fast. But then it was less than a few months after Mr. Bennet died and I suppose she was, as they all probably were, looking for something or someone to feel safe with. They've been married for nearly 5 years now and everything in her life is perfect. "Not everyone has to get married before they turn 30."

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to," I pouted. Lizzy had definite plans and ideas she wanted to accomplish before she turned 30 - I know them all. She repeated them to me often enough that by high school, I was sick of hearing them.

"Can we stop arguing long enough to set up the rest of the room?"

She knew I was pissed. "Whatever."

"Aw, come on...?" She sauntered over to me, threw her arms around my neck, and kissed my cheek. "You know I'm only teasing you."

"You take great delight in vexing me." She laughed gaily. I love her laugh. She lights up the world when she lets loose.

"You're the perfect target. You never stay angry with me longer than a minute," she said with a saucy wink.

Right again. I never could stay mad at her, infuriating as she sometimes was. I pushed her away and went back to moving the other furniture around.

"I think this looks good," she said after I had the last of leather chairs pushed up against the wall. "Didn't I tell you it'd be better in this room?"

"No. I'm the one that told you."

"Did not."

"Did too." I have to give it to her though, she did call a caterer, and because she was Robert's wife they, with only a week's notice, jumped at the chance to fall into her good favor. I could've done that just as easily, my name is pretty big in this town too, but Lizzy likes to feel needed. "You wanted to do it in the living room because it was closer to the dining room."

"Well... I don't remember saying that but there's no sense in arguing over something's that now moot."

She hates to lose. "So true," I smiled.

"Are we ready to go?" She also hates my smug smile.

"Let me get my keys."

"I'll drive."

"Not in this lifetime," I snorted.

"Chauvinist..."

"This is not news to you, Lizzy." She huffed and rolled her eyes at me. "You just want to show off your new Jag."

"Do not."

"Do too." I didn't want to get into that again, so I changed tactics. "Your Jag's trunk isn't big enough."

"Alright, Will. You win."

I always do.

"Aren't you afraid you'll catch something?"

"I haven't been caught yet."

She glared at me from across the front seat. "You know what I mean."

"Awwwww! You care!"

"I'm being serious, Will!"

"Then be serious. One of us has to."

"Grrrrr!"

I rile her when I so flippantly disregard her medical advice. It's enough to see her fine eyes flash at me, but I know when to call it a day. "Look, as you said I'm 32. I've been an adult for more than 10 years and on my own for almost as long." I then gave her a pointed look. "I'm very careful, Mom. Don't worry."

She nodded and looked out the passenger window.

It felt good to see her so properly humbled.

"More Corona."

"I think one case should be enough."

"I think you're wrong."

"Only you and I drink it."

"Still..." she tried to reason while pulling a case of said brew out of the fridge.

I grabbed the heavy package from her and pushed it back in. "Are you planning on getting drunk tonight?"

"One never knows, does one?"

"I thought you were planning on getting pregnant this year?"

"Jane and Charles put the kibosh on that."

"What?"

"I don't want to waddle down the aisle looking like a fat blimp."

Fat blimp is an oxymoron but I wouldn't say something stupid like that to her on so sensitive a subject. She's always wanted to be a mother but held off because her career and husband demanded so much of her time, attention, and energy. Honestly, that excuse, like all the others, sounds more like Robert than Lizzy. She never cared one straw about what other people thought of her. Not that anybody would ever have a complaint. Lizzy is... how can I put this? Absolutely gorgeous - body and soul. Smart, caring, nurturing, beautiful, everything a man could want. "I understand." I didn't though.

"In 6 months, we'll try again."

Try again? Is 'the Geezer', as I often refer to him in mind, shooting blanks? I was just about to ask that very question but at that moment, some random guy came out from the back room to see if we needed any help. Lizzy was about to say that we did but I jumped in and said, "No, we don't. But thank you anyway."

"Will!" she hissed. "How are you going to get all this up into the house?"

"How else do you think?" Duh! I struck a pose to show my muscles. Lizzy turned away. She's gotten so used to having everything done for her that she has no clue about manual labor. Not that I do either but I wasn't going to admit that in front of some store clerk.

"I'm not helping you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"We have delivery. If you know what you want, I could..."

"Thank you, but no," I answered tersely. Thank God, the guy left. I think he was trying to impress Lizzy. Good luck! She's not exactly handing out the milk and honey right now, is she?

As soon as I pulled up to the garage, Lizzy jumped out of my truck, slammed the door behind her, and stalked purposely toward her car.

"The caterers' should be here by 7:00 pm!" I yelled to her retreating figure.

She stuck up her middle finger without turning around. The next minute, she was gunning the engine of her finely-tuned Jaguar XK8 and literally spinning out of my driveway.

"What did I do?" I asked to her dust. She had been pissed ever since the liquor warehouse but I didn't know why. I got out of my truck, opened the hatch, and stared at the bounty in the trunk. "Shit! How in the hell am I supposed to carry all this up into the house?"

Charles and Jane were near the front door accepting the congratulations and best wishes of 40 or 50 of our closest friends as they came in. A quarter of whom I don't even know but Lizzy was in charge of the guest list, so what did I care? Just as long as they don't get sick on my furniture. L.A. is full of people just waiting to go somewhere for any reason just to be seen. Our friends are no exception. The party was in full jump mode when Lizzy came in. She has a key to the house so I didn't even notice; I was being the consummate host.

"Where's the Corona?"

I startled and turned to her. "No 'hi Will. Love what you've done with the place'?"

She rolled her eyes. "I've already seen too much of you today."

She wasn't as sparkly as was her usual party mode nor was her sarcasm ever this sharp. I know when to back down, so I just pointed. "Check the bathroom." I had the tub filled to the brim with ice and libations.

"Thanks." She turned and walked away.

I'll have to apologize later for whatever it was that I did or said. I saw Jane follow her. Not that that was anything strange or uncommon, but her lack of decorum in walking away from the guests in her corner was. "Hmm?"

"Hey Will, did you meet my sister yet?" Bingley asked.

"No." I smiled my best smile at the woman; she was an elegant creature. A little too elegant and a little too overdressed for this rowdy crowd though but Charles told me she was a high-end decorator in Boston. I'd heard Bostonians wore pearls even to the grocery store. "I haven't had that pleasure."

"Caroline, Will Darcy."

"Welcome to my house." I took her hand as it was extended to me and was tempted, as was my usual suave greeting, to kiss it but it felt kind of odd: limp-like and slimy. I tried not to dry-heave the hors d'oeuvres; it wouldn't be pretty. Then she laughed or what she thought was a laugh and I almost lost it.

"As am I!" she chortled.

I stared at her for a moment and was amazed that she was almost as tall as me. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Oh! Such a gentleman!" she gushed. "I'll have a Drambuie."

I tried to disengage my hand from hers but all of a sudden the flaccidity of her grip turned to a vice. "Well, I..."

"Charlie can get it for me!" She tossed him a brief look then batted her big eyes at me.

I have a feeling this is going to be a long night.

I was finally able to pry myself from the sweaty clutch of Caroline for a moment to go to the little boys room. I'm sure she would've offered to hold it for me, if she thought she could get away with it. She's not getting anywhere near Little Willie. Perish the thought! On my way back to party central, I heard a distinct whinny and decided to find a low-key spot by the front door.

"Hey Will!"

Damn! That's just my luck.

"Great party!"

"Thanks, George. You okay?"

"Of course!" he laughed and raised his bottle to his mouth.

I was certain he was. Why he brought two women with him, I'll never know. But knowing George, as I grudgingly do, he's on a minge-binge after breaking up with his last girlfriend and hoping for a threesome.

"Did you meet Candy and Mandy?" He winked and did something I can't describe with his mouth. "They're twins."

"You introduced them to me when you came in."

"Oh right!" he slurred. "Hey where's your latest?"

"She's not here yet." She was very late. Maybe something happened to her?

"Maybe her parents didn't want her to be out so late on a Saturday night without a chaperone?"

I glared at Lizzy. Boy, was she being a bitch today.

Wickham leaned over to me and said in a stage whisper. "If she doesn't show up, maybe you might wanna toss me for one of my babes?"

"Thanks," I sneered. I know I did; I felt the right side of my lip tilt up. "But I doubt I'll be needing your tosses."

"Suit yourself." He walked off and settled himself on the couch where the lovely twins were saving his seat.

I knew he wouldn't be long at this party. "Like I would ever want his sloppy seconds." I shuddered at that thought.

"But you didn't exactly turn him down, did you?"

"I did."

"Did not."

"Did too!"

A cackle landed in my right ear and I cringed. "You two act like married people!"

Damn! She's got 'Hunter' written all over her face. "Caroline, have you met Lizzy?"

"Yes I have."

Lizzy smiled at her; it was bright but it didn't reach her eyes.

"So... are you?"

"What?"

"Married?"

"She's married, I'm not."

"Oh!"

Then the witch latched onto my arm again. I'll have to buy her a clue... right after I chew off my arm.

"Well Janie said you were married to a gorgeous hunk and I thought..."

Lizzy's hackles went up. I couldn't tell if it was because of Caroline's shrill voice, her using Jane's nickname as though they had been friends for life, or the fact that she was interested in scoping out her husband... or me. Either way, I had to get one away from the other. "Why don't we..."

"So!" Her eyes took on a new luster as she quickly took stock of the size of the rooms, the antiques that I hadn't managed to put away, and the mahogany dining table and chairs. "How long have you two known each other?"

"Since we were wee little babes."

"I see... Did you two ever...?"

"Ever what?" Lizzy clipped.

"You know?" she assayed then winked.

Lizzy blushed and turned away.

That was odd. Lizzy rarely blushes anymore, yet that was a pretty personal question from a relative stranger. Soon-to-be-family or not, I was expecting a sonic boom. It never came and I was astonished.

"We... um..."

Caroline raised a stylish eyebrow. "Oh..." Suspicion rolling around her brain where I just knew danger was lurking.

"It was just one night!" Lizzy blurted then calmed. "My graduation night. We were drunk."

I know both my eyebrows shot up beyond my hairline. I was shocked at her admission. Yes, we did it, but I barely remembered it and I doubted Lizzy would ever tell anyone, let alone a nosy outsider. "Yeah." I could only throw up my hands and shrug. What was I supposed to say? "I'm going for another brew... want?"

Caroline shook her head while Lizzy nodded and I took the opportunity to escape.

The tub was decimated. Not what you think, there were only 3 bottles of beer left. I ran to the stash out on the deck, same outcome. Damn! When in the hell did my friends suddenly become lushes?

"Probably because it's free."

"Did I say that out loud?"

"No," Lizzy smiled slightly. "But it was written all over your face."

"I have to go back to the store," I sighed and looked at my watch. It might've only been 11:30 pm but apparently the show would go on and I didn't want the crowd to get restless and trash my house for lack of nourishment.

"I'll go with you."

"No, I'm cool. I need you to stay here so that when Lydia comes, you can look after her for me."

"Why would I want to be your babysitter?"

She asked that so nastily, I really didn't know how to answer her. I shrugged and walked to my bedroom to get my keys.