Like the First Time

by Francis Ray

  “I already looked,” Claire said as they entered her bedroom.

  Brooke dropped Claire’s hand and began going through Claire’s meager selection of clothes. Less than a minute later she turned with a look of stunned amazement on her face.

  “I’ve never gone out much so there’s never been a need to buy clothes except for work. Mama was sick the last months of her life and when I wasn’t working I was home,” Claire said, feeling the uncomfortable need to defend her pitiful wardrobe.

  “You don’t buy clothes because you need them,” Brooke told her. She kneeled to inspect the six neatly stacked boxes of shoes on the floor. Finished, she pushed to her feet. “We’re going to the store and getting you a dress and a pair of high-heeled sandals if I have to knock you over the head to do it.”

  Brooke was so serious and outraged on Claire’s behalf she couldn’t be offended. “You’re a good friend, but I’m not taking your money. Maybe there’s another way.” She picked up the phone on the nightstand. “Can you please give me a minute to make a phone call?”

  “I’ll file the release and work on the product labels,” Brooke said, and left.

  Saying a quick prayer, Claire took a deep breath and dialed her brother’s work number. The receptionist at the used car dealership where he worked connected her immediately.

  “Derek Bennett. If you want a car you’ve called the right man.”

  “Hello, Derek.”

  There was a slight pause. “Hi, Claire. I thought you were a potential customer.”

  Hearing the disappointment in his voice, her hand flexed on the phone. “Sorry.” She took another breath to steady her jumpy nerves. Maybe this time it would be different. “I … I … was wondering if you could wire me a hundred dollars of the money you owe me.”

  “Damn, Claire. I already told you I don’t have it. Don’t you think if I had the money you wouldn’t have to ask? I hate borrowing money from you.”

  Claire’s hand gripped the phone cord, but she refused to back down. “I really need it, Derek. You promised you’d repay me this time. Remember?”

  “So I’m a little late,” he said, his irritation obvious. “Not everyone can be perfect, you know. You were Mama and Daddy’s favorite. You’re the one that went to college.”

  You didn’t want to go to college. They had to beg you to finish high school. “I don’t want to argue.”

  “Who’s arguing? I just get tired of people always coming down on me cause I’m going through some bad times. If I had it, I’d send it to you. You know that.”

  She wished she could say she did, but since she wasn’t absolutely sure, she didn’t say anything.

  “You believe me, don’t you?” Derek asked.

  “Yes.” She didn’t want to get into a disagreement over it. “Thanks anyway.”

  “No problem. Once you open that shop you told me about, you should be raking in the dough. I told the guys here that my little sister was opening her own business. I’m proud of you. Gotta run. Bye.”

  “Bye,” Claire murmured, but Derek had already hung up the phone. What was she going to do?

  Brooke took one look at Claire’s face when she entered the room, and immediately stopped affixing labels on the three wick candles and stood. “Come on, we’ll just go check out a couple of shops. I’d call Lorraine, but she said Hamilton was coming home and she was going to spend the day with him.”

  “I can’t afford much.”

  “It doesn’t cost anything to look.”

  Claire soon discovered that while it didn’t cost to look, she couldn’t afford the clothes. There had been several dresses that she would love to have had, but they were way out of her price range. Those in her price range, she didn’t want.

  As they left the fourth boutique in Towne Centre, she decided that she’d had enough. “Thanks, Brooke, but I don’t want to visit another store. We’ve wasted enough time. We have inventory to complete, labels to print and affix.”

  “What about the dress for your date with Gray?”

  “Getting ready to open Bliss on time is more important.” Leaving the shopping center, Claire headed for Brooke’s car. Opening the door to the Jag, Claire sank heavily into the passenger seat.

  “Claire—”

  “Please, Brooke, can we just drop it?” Swallowing the lump in her throat, Claire was thankful when Brooke started the car without another word.

  * * *

  This could blow up in her face, but she was doing it anyway.

  Brooke walked into Gray’s office and hoped she hadn’t read him wrong the couple of times she’d seen him. He had the kind of presence women and men noticed and reportedly the kind of intelligence that had taken Livingston to even greater profits since he was CEO. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  He came around the beautiful oak desk with the easy grace of a man sure of himself and one used to wielding authority. “You said this concerned Claire?”

  Brooke relaxed a little bit more. She hadn’t read him wrong. There was genuine concern in his deep voice and on his handsome face. “She doesn’t know I’m here and she wouldn’t be pleased if she found out.”

  His piercing black eyes went glacial. “I have no intention of lying to Claire.”

  His temper made her feel even easier. So whatever was going on between them wasn’t one-sided. It would be fun to see which one stopped fighting it first. “Neither do I. I admire Claire and consider her my friend. She has a sense of honor and fair play that you don’t find in many people these days.”

  Hitching up his tailored slacks, Gray perched on the corner of his antique desk. “Go on.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d give me your word that what is said between us goes no further than this room.” The arch of his brow was Brooke’s answer. She sighed. “Thought so, but I can’t let her be hurt.”

  Gray came to his feet. Brooke leaned back in her chair, the image of an avenging angel coming to mind. His five-thousand-dollar tailor-made Brioni suit didn’t do anything to make him look less lethal. “Is Claire in trouble?”

  “No, no. It’s nothing like that.” She shoved her hand through her hair, then decided to go for it. “Suppose a certain woman had a date with a sophisticated man-about-town, but say this certain young woman’s closet is as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard? This certain young woman is too stubborn and too independent to let her friends play fairy godmother, but this certain young woman really wants to go out with the sophisticated man. The friend of this certain young woman is afraid she’ll cancel the date.”

  Gray studied her, then said, “That would be a tragedy. I can assure you I’ll do everything possible to prevent it from happening.” He held out his hand to her.

  Taking it, Brooke rose. “She’s very proud and a good friend. I haven’t had many female friends.”

  “You picked a good one.”

  “I think so, too.”

  He nodded. “I’ll take care of it from here. And as you wanted, our conversation will not leave this room.”

  She smiled up at him. “I knew I wasn’t wrong about you.”

  * * *

  Claire was standing in her closet when the phone rang. She’d carried in a box of soap and hadn’t been able to resist going through her clothes again. Perhaps she and Brooke had overlooked something. The phone rang a fourth, then a fifth time.

  “You want me to get that?” Brooke yelled from the other room.

  Claire jumped guiltily. Brooke had returned a short while ago after running an errand. She was working while Claire loafed. “No, I’ll get it,” she called, then crossed to the phone on the bedside table. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Claire, it’s Gray. You sound off. Is everything all right?”

  “Fine.” She tried to infuse some enthusiasm into her voice. “I was just thinking about tomorrow.”

  “What a coincidence. That’s the reason for my call.”

  Claire perched on the edge of the bed. He was going to cancel. “Yes?”

  “
Something has come up at the plant in Columbia and we may have to change plans for tomorrow.”

  She hoped her disappointment didn’t come through in her voice. “I understand. You’re a busy man and have a company to run. You can drop by some other time.”

  “I told you you’re going to give me a complex,” he said, then continued, “I still want to see the shop and have lunch, but I have to leave directly afterwards to inspect the plant. Would you mind if we eat someplace my jeans won’t look out of place?”

  A relieved grin spread across Claire’s face. “That’s fine. There’s a nice little seafood place nearby.”

  “Great. See you tomorrow at eleven.”

  Smiling, Claire hung up the phone. Casual she could handle. Then another thought struck. She hurried out of the room and didn’t stop until she found Brooke.

  “That was Gray on the phone and we’re doing casual for lunch, which I can handle, but I think I want to wear a little makeup and do something with my hair. Can you help?”

  “Can a duck quack?” Brooke asked and both women burst into peals of laughter.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They’d forbidden her to set foot in Bliss before ten-forty-five.

  Parking her car, Claire got out and started toward the store. She couldn’t help the furtive looks she kept throwing at the storefront windows to catch a glimpse of the new her. She still couldn’t believe the woman looking back at her was her. Brooke hadn’t been bragging. She’d expertly used her bulging bag of cosmetics to make Claire’s eyes appear deeper, a bit of rouge to emphasize her high cheekbones—courtesy of her great-grandmother who was Cherokee, then cut and styled her thick hair—courtesy of her African ancestors—into a wedge cut. The change had been dramatic.

  But best of all Brooke hadn’t said one word about all of Claire’s talk about Gray just being a friend. Neither had Lorraine when she arrived this morning. She had just set about helping with her transformation. They didn’t want Claire working in the shop and mussing her hair or ruining her makeup.

  They told her she was not uncrating boxes of products and getting the shop ready before her date with Gray, and that was an order. Claire smiled. After all these years of being alone, it was nice to have two wonderful friends.

  Still smiling, Claire turned the street corner and came to an abrupt halt. A group of women were standing in front of Bliss, pointing and laughing at something in the window. The first thing that went through her mind was that they were laughing at the products. Dread coursed through her as she hurried up the sidewalk to peer over their shoulders.

  In the display window was a twenty-four-by-eighteen-inch picture of Brooke by herself with her head thrown back, looking sensual, with a caption underneath that said, “Pamper yourself with Bliss.” On the other side of the door was another promo piece for the new line of bath and body products and a photo of Brooke and John together with the words “Is it the man or the Bliss? You’ll never tell.”

  Claire gasped.

  “Same thing I thought when I saw it,” the woman in front of Claire said with a wide grin. “I’ll certainly be back for the grand opening.”

  Claire turned to go inside the shop, then stopped. “Please do,” she said and extended her hand to the woman who had spoken. “I’m Claire Bennett, one of the owners of Bliss. We’ll have samples of the products available at the grand opening.”

  “Can we sample him, too, and see for ourselves?” one of the women asked.

  Claire laughed before she could stop herself. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  She was still smiling when she unlocked the front door and entered the shop. Brooke and Lorraine hadn’t wasted their time. Beside the window display, they had already put out one complete line of products.

  “The window display is a hit,” she said as Brooke and Lorraine came out of the back through the swinging white louvered doors.

  Brooke grinned. “People have been stopping by all morning.”

  “It’s just what we needed to get a buzz going.” Lorraine’s eyes sparkled. “I can certainly attest to Brooke’s marketing savvy about men.”

  Claire’s eyes widened at the implication. She couldn’t keep the blush from spreading from her neck upward.

  Brooke wrinkled her nose, viciously tore open another box and began pulling out bath and shower gel in cylindrical plastic bottles. “She’s been grinning and bragging like that ever since we arrived and put up the pictures. If I had known that, I might have waited.”

  “I thought you’d be happy I’d test-marketed your theory. Hamilton certainly was.”

  Brooke plopped a bottle on the glass shelf none too gently. “Not when I can’t test-market it.”

  “I think I’ll take the Peach Meringue body cream home tonight,” Lorraine said, placing a jar of the product on a shelf.

  Brooke shot to her feet. “Claire, don’t you think it’s in very poor taste for Lorraine to rub it in when we can’t do our own test-marketing?”

  Claire opened her mouth, closed it, then tucked her head. “I … I … er … don’t think there’s a possibility for comparison in my case.”

  There was dead silence for five full seconds. “You couldn’t be!” Brooke rounded the counter. “Tell me you aren’t,” she asked in disbelief.

  Claire wanted to slink away. There should have been at least one man she’d met in her thirty-nine years who she’d cared about enough to be intimate with.

  “There’s nothing wrong with waiting, Claire,” Lorraine said from directly beside her. “Is there, Brooke?”

  Claire lifted her head to see the astonished look on Brooke’s face before it cleared. “No. No, of course not.”

  “I didn’t have many dates in high school because I wanted to get an academic scholarship so I could go to college. Then in college I needed the grades to maintain the scholarship and to get the best possible job afterwards.” She shrugged and placed her purse on the countertop beside a grouping of Honeysuckle Passion candles. “I always thought there’d be time for marriage and children.”

  “There is and I don’t want to hear you say otherwise,” Lorraine told her firmly.

  “Then, Claire, you can do your test-marketing,” Brooke said wink.

  “What’s this about Claire doing test-marketing?” a deep voice from behind them asked.

  The women spun around to see Gray. Claire swallowed hard. Not so much from embarrassment, although she was. She’d never seen him in faded jeans that looked as if they’d been poured on and a white Polo shirt that stretched across his wide chest. Thoughts of test-marketing popped into her mind.

  A smile lifted the corners of Gray’s sensual mouth. “Ladies, I’ve been around enough women in my family to know that look.”

  Brooke managed to speak first. “We were just startled, that’s all.”

  “Because you were caught talking about men,” he correctly guessed.

  The women’s jaws dropped.

  Gray laughed and as always Claire was fascinated by the way it softened his face. It made her want to curl up in his lap and sigh. Closing the door, he started toward her, the laughter still lurking in his eyes when they suddenly narrowed. Claire tensed in spite of herself.

  “You look beautiful.”

  She stared wordlessly at him as pleasure spread through her, but she’d be darned if she choked on the first compliment she’d ever received from a man. “Thank you.”

  He glanced around the shop. “Looks good. The window display should bring customers in by the droves.”

  “They’ve been stopping all morning,” Lorraine said.

  “Brooke’s idea,” Claire added, feeling more at ease. “I think the women want to meet the man almost as much as they want to sample the product.”

  A snort came from Brooke’s direction. Spinning on her heel, she went back to shelving products. “Once he opens his arrogant, egotistical mouth they’ll be running for the hills.”

  Gray’s eyebrow lifted. “I thought you and John got along very well
.”

  Brooke’s gaze clashed with Gray’s. “Even you can make a mistake.”

  “I stand corrected,” Gray said, then turned to Claire. “How about the tour and we can go to lunch before the place gets too crowded?”

  She showed him around the shop, then they were ready to leave. “Would you ladies like to join us?” Gray asked.

  “No, thank you,” Brooke and Lorraine said in unison.

  Gray opened the door with one hand and placed the other one on the curve of Claire’s small waist. “We’ll be going then. By the way, Brooke, if you hadn’t thought to do so, I’d trademark the captions beneath the photos and any other ideas regarding ‘test-marketing.’”

  Claire tensed. “Just how long were you standing there?”

  “Not nearly long enough.”

  Trying to decipher what he meant, Claire let Gray usher her out the door and down the street.

  * * *

  The restaurant was once a barbershop and still had the original pounded tin ceiling and hardwood floors. It also had some of the best fried cheese grits, she-crab soup, and pan-fried catfish sandwiches in the city. Claire and Gray just managed to beat the rush and snag a table on the patio surrounded by lush greenery and colorful flowers.

  “I’d forgotten about this place until you mentioned it,” Gray said, digging into his shrimp sautéed with scallions and mushrooms with gusto. “Good choice.”

  “Glad you approve,” Claire said as she dined on pasta salad with grilled vegetables. “Thanks for the tip about the copyright.”

  “No problem. Comes with being in the business.” He tore off a chunk of French bread. “The three of you complement each other very well. It’s not easy forming a working relationship.”

  Claire sipped her raspberry iced tea. “I wish I could do more besides just making the products.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Gray told her. “Without the products there’d be no Bliss. And don’t forget you came up with the first marketing idea.”

  Down went Claire’s head. He wished again that he’d caught the women’s conversation earlier. Like he’d said, he surmised they were talking about men. What he didn’t say was that it was probably about men and sex. Somehow he didn’t think Claire had very much experience with either.