Skipping a Beat Read Online Free PDF

who could clearly use a few tips from eHarmony, dons another disguise and tries to pass himself off as a substitute music teacher for Rosina. Finally she discovers who he is and agrees to marry him, defying the creepy older guy who wanted her. She and the Count are blissfully happy. But unlike other opera characters, they aren’t left frozen in time when the curtain drops.
    Mozart picked up their story years later in an opera called The Marriage of Figaro . By now, the Count and Rosina have been married for years. The passion they once shared is gone. The magic has evaporated from their marriage, and they barely talk to each other.
    I adore Mozart, but I no longer go to see that opera.

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    Four
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    KATE HAD DONE IT again. Just as the elevator doors opened and I stepped into the hospital’s lobby, I received her text message telling me she’d arranged to have my Jaguar brought to the hospital’s parking lot and the keys left at the admissions desk. Whatever Michael paid her, it wasn’t enough.
    For just an instant, I imagined turning the wrong way out of the parking lot and speeding toward the highway. Any highway, it didn’t matter which one. I had a few hundred dollars in my wallet, enough to see me through a week or two’s worth of driving if I wanted to stay anonymous and not leave a credit card trail. I could roll down the windows and blare the radio and keep the ball of my foot pressed hard to the gas pedal. There wouldn’t be room for anything else in the cocoon of my car, not even the icy sensation that something was coming, something I wouldn’t be able to outrun.
    I sighed and turned the key in the ignition, feeling my sedan leap to life with a gentle purr. Bad enough that I’d almost forgotten to answer Michael when he told me he loved me. If I went on the lam now, I’d never be named Wife of the Year.
    Traffic was light, which was unheard of for D.C., even in the middle of the day, and soon I was heading down our driveway, which was flanked by tall pine trees for privacy. I used my remote control to open our security gate, then left my car parked by our outdoor fountain and hurried to unlock our front door. It took me two tries; my hands were trembling again, even though my sugar buzz from the cupcakes had worn off long ago.
    I stepped inside and turned off the alarm as my eyes drank in the bright, abstract artwork on the walls of our entranceway, and I felt the tension in my neck and shoulders ease just a bit. Every time I entered this house, I felt like a guest at the most outrageous hotel imaginable. Maybe that was because I was a sort of guest: Michael had paid for it, and a team of decorators had picked out everything from the colors on the walls to the throw pillows on the couches. The decorators had driven us nuts—I’m still awed by their level of excitement about the merits of ivory versus buff-colored swatches—but in the end, they’d delivered exactly what they’d promised. It wasn’t a house; it was a showplace, filled with air and light and enormous walls of glass. Massive art deco-inspired chandeliers hung from two-story-high ceilings, and our gleaming main dining room table stretched out far enough to seat twenty-four. Both of our kitchens—the large caterers’ one on the main level, and a smaller private one upstairs—were awash in rich granites and copper, and our six bathrooms shone with details like hand-painted tiles and detached glass bowl sinks. “Suitable for embassy-style entertaining,” our real estate agent had murmured, gesturing toward the grand rooms, as if we might suddenly decide to stage a violent coup against the ambassador to Sweden.
    Michael had kept his vow to succeed, and then some: The little company he’d started in our cramped old apartment’s galley kitchen—all-natural, low-sugar, flavored bottles of water—had netted him more than $70 million after its stock went public, just before competitors like Vitaminwater and Smartwater burst onto the