A beautiful woman is hard to resist. She will pitch your boat, make your compass needle go haywire, have you begging your friends to tie you to the mast. But a beautiful woman with a gift for laughter will put you on the rocks as sure as a Londonderry fog. Here, then, is Kimberly Donley, faithfully
...demonstrating the fencer's classic stance, balancing her weight on the coil of her long legs. "I can do the moves, but I don't know their names yet. It's all in the wrist," she divulges with a whisper and a bounce, then cracks up completely. Her laughter is a joyous reflex, hinting at capitulation with the right joke. Prepare to abandon ship. "I laugh a lot," the 27-year-old Aurora, Illinois native concedes. "Maybe I should take life more seriously." Certainly, adult life for Donley started out in a more somber direction. After completing instruction in computer science, Kim sought high fame in the insurance industry. "Some time ago, I went to a product liability seminar, and that's when I said to myself, 'What am I doing? This is not me. I'm going to die of boredom in the insurance world.'" Swapping her low deductible for a chance to break into modeling and acting, Kim now divides her time between Arizona's painted deserts (she leases a condo in Phoenix) and the shrink-to-fit hysteria of Los Angeles, where her boyfriend has a local following as a guitarist and songwriter. "I come to L.A. to relax, can you believe it?" she asks, laughing again. "All my friends are back in Phoenix and the phone's constantly ringing. Something's always happening. I come here, kick back in Benedict Canyon to visit my boyfriend and watch the crabgrass grow." Perhaps more stunning than her classic Gaelic features is the fact that until her foray with Playboy, Kim had no modeling or acting experience. "I don't see myself as the voluptuous Playmate type," says our duelist with a modest shrug. "And I'm probably too short to be a model. I think I have a lot of beauty within me. I did go to charm school -- learned how to eat, how to sit, how to answer the phone. All of it has really paid off, can't you tell?" And there's that surrender-your-vessel laugh again. But let's not dismiss this woman's charm. After all, her ex-boyfriend remains devoted enough to feed her cats when she's away from home. Just another willing victim of Kim Donley's siren call - her infectious laughter. Hear it once and you're stuck for life.
