The shop manager, an elegant redhead, whisked past him in a dress that said, “I’m hot, powerful, and you couldn’t handle me.” She had a smile of welcome that invited and a ring that attested to the fact that some man thought he could, indeed, handle her.
“You’re looking lost,” she eased to a stop close beside him on a return loop.
“I’m with the blond one,” he hooked a thumb toward Lana sighing over evening gowns with low cuts that his daughter would never, ever, under any circumstances be allowed to even dream about wearing.
“It was so nice of your daughter to agree to be Tammy’s model,” the redhead sounded delighted. “We truly do appreciate you helping her out. However, it looks like they’re going to be a while. If you want to wait, they’ll end up in the back room eventually. There are places to sit there out of the fray.”
He took one last glance around the room. He was the only male present and was receiving the eye from several of the very well-tended women in the shop. That had been Lana’s mother’s trademark—he still did his best not to think her name—she was always well tended. And had finally found herself a sugar daddy who had offered to make sure she stayed that way—far beyond the capacity of the opera’s chief lighting designer who had merely loved her.
“Yeah, that would be good.”
The redhead guided him through the swinging doors to a diner’s cook line that was filled with women’s accessories. It was such a creative space that he had to slow down to admire it. Someone here knew what they were doing. Handbags dangled from pot hooks, pantries were filled with fine boots, and a walk-in freezer was lined in lush winter coats. The ceiling was hidden by dozens of inverted open umbrellas, splashes of color to delight the eye. It would be even better if they were backlit and the light shone through them—not his place to point that out. Still a very cheerful effort.
Another set of swinging doors and he was in a space that would almost put the opera’s costume shop to shame. It was far smaller in scale, but there wasn’t a wasted inch; it was a dressmaker’s dream.
The redhead pointed him to a chair at a sewing machine, then whisked back to the shop while he admired the departing view. She might be too high-end and too married for his taste, but that didn’t mean he was dead.
At the same instant a tall woman swooped in from the next room with her arms full of a gaudy mish-mash of fabric. Some of it looked like it had been graffitied all over, like girls used to do to their notebooks when he’d gone to high school. Now Lana stored all her school stuff in her tablet computer and he couldn’t even check the outsides of her notebooks for doodles of boys’ names.
She’d gone on dates; group dates, but even she called them dates. It had taken him a lot of careful prodding to discover that “hanging out” was a bunch of people and that a “date” meant little more than that the bunch of people had an even number of boys and girls, not necessarily paired off thank heaven. If there was a boy in the next-level “going out” category, she hadn’t let him know about it yet.
The woman dropped into the chair in front of the machine beside him.
“You applying for a job?” she nodded toward the machine he was seated at. Like the ones at the opera, it looked oversized and immensely complex.
“Not likely.”
Then he looked at the woman. She was a knock-out in a different way than the store’s manager. Long dark hair curled past golden skin. She was as shapely as the redhead, but because she was so tall it looked right on her. The redhead was more in a powerfully voluptuous category. This brunette was built…just right?
“Then what are you doing other than checking me out?”
He didn’t fight the grin at her teasing tone. “Not much, I have to admit.”
Chapter 3
Lana stepped into the back room and froze. There was her dad and he was…she knew that posture. Enough boys had tried it on her on dates. That laid-back pose with the “I’m so cool” smile. They always thought they were so charming and handsome, and most of them were just jerks.
Her dad was like the handsomest guy on the planet, except maybe Francis the track team captain. But what was he doing?
She grabbed Tammy’s arm. “Who’s that? She your aunt or something?”
“Kinda. We’re not related. Kari just looks like me or maybe I look like her. Seriously though, she’s amazing.”
Lana couldn’t believe that Tammy had asked her to come be a model, because Tammy always had the most incredible wardrobe. Every guy watched her walk by, not that she was so beautiful—though she was awfully pretty. They watched because she dressed like she was gorgeous. A lot of girls hated her for it; others envied her. If Lana got Tammy’s help, maybe Francis would look at her that way.
Lana had known Tammy since right after her mom died and they moved to Seattle four years ago. As friends, they now had Dad’s divorce behind them and Tammy’s new mom. Friends didn’t get better than Tammy, but Lana still didn’t like the way that Dad was looking at Kari.
“C’mon. You’re like forever tall. I need to see how my clothes look on you.”
Lana submitted, moving behind the screen to try on whatever Tammy had in mind. It felt weird changing with Dad in the room, but Tammy made it seem normal, so Lana did her best to calm her nerves. And peeked around the edge.
But her dad wasn’t watching her.
Chapter 4
Kari only had a distant look at the girl before she ducked behind the screen, but it was enough. The measurements that Tammy had given her had been good, these clothes should fit just fine. Rather than just leaving the fabric pinned, she dropped the dress she’d been working on under the sewing machine’s foot and began running the seam.
“She’s beautiful, Richard. She looks so much like you.” His sleekly handsome and blond was transformed elegantly into her slender frame. She was a good choice for a model; a sharp contrast to Tammy’s short, curvier frame and darker complexion.
“Scares the life out of me every day,” he rubbed at his face. “When she grows up I’m in so much trouble.”
“Hello. Already grown.”
He grimaced at her before slouching even lower in the chair and groaning. “I really didn’t need to hear that.”
“Oh,” Kari did her best to sound contrite, “I mean she’s such a cute toddler. Do the little boys follow her all over the pre-school grounds?”
“With their tongues hanging out. Have since she was about three. That’s the problem,” his chuckle acknowledged he was being ridiculous, which she liked about him.
“What’s the problem?”
“I’m a guy. I know what they’re thinking at their age and I can’t believe they’re thinking it about my daughter.”
“Bad news first or good news?” Kari appreciated the way he talked about his daughter, as if she was precious and worth protecting. Her own father, well, he hadn’t made her feel the least bit safe. He’d never grabbed her, but his big-screen sports drinking buddies hadn’t been so hands off; she’d learned to be scarce come half-time or seventh inning stretches or even long commercial breaks.
Richard looked at her through blue eyes shaded darker by an assessing scowl.
“Good news?” he asked cautiously.
“I’d say she loves you a lot.”
“How can you tell? Did you even notice her?”
“I know, because of how long she was glaring at you for talking to me.”
At his “Huh?” she pointed up at the mirror leaning against the wall behind the sewing machine.
“It wasn’t me she was glaring at or she’d have spotted me watching her in the mirror,” it had offered a clear view of Lana and Tammy talking.
“Perfect. It’s not as if I have a love life for her to guard against anyway.”
Kari had just assumed he was married, but saw there was no ring. She kept her thoughts about handsome single dads to herself. But it was hard. Perrin had married one just a year ago, had adopted his two children, and would soon add a third to th
e family. Yeah right. And she’d known Richard for about five minutes. Stupid fantasies never did a girl any good.
“Okay, pretty lady. What’s the bad news?”
“Sure you want to hear it?” Pretty lady? She rather liked that Richard was plain-spoken. Had he always done that, or learned it from his daughter? Teasing was fine, but she’d never liked games, and Richard didn’t appear to be one to play them.
“No, but tell me anyway.”
There was that straightforward thinking again. This time she waited until she finished her final seam and had clipped the thread.
She turned to face him fully for the first time. He was slouched low in the chair, but he was watching her face rather than her body. More reason to think he was decent.
“At her age…”
“Oh no!” Richard moaned and closed his eyes, wincing as if she’d just poked him with a sharp stick.
“…she’s thinking along pretty much the same lines as the boys.”
“Whoa! I didn’t need to know that either,” he moaned.
Chapter 5
Lana had kept an eye out while Tammy went back and forth bringing her different clothes. The first couple had looked cool, especially the off-the-shoulder black-and-white zigzag top, but Tammy had rejected every one. A lot of them she didn’t even get to try on; Tammy would just hold a killer blouse up in front of Lana, sigh and take it away.
Each time Lana peeked, Dad was looking less and less comfortable talking to the woman, which was good.
Tammy held up another, then took it away.
“Hey! That looked great!”
“Wrong color,” Tammy insisted. “See?” She twisted Lana around to face the small mirror behind the screen. First she held it up to her own chest and it looked totally awesome. Then she held it up in front of Lana. It was good; it was hot. Francis would definitely look at her in it…but it didn’t snap the way it did on Tammy.
“It’s just because you’re so different,” Lana often envied Tammy her gold-skinned beauty. Their high school was in Ballard, a Scandinavian neighborhood of Seattle, and a whole lot of people were colored like Lana. And Tammy had developed real curves, Lana’s body was so flat that she was barely female—at least it felt that way sometimes.
“No,” Tammy shook her head. “You’ll see, once I find it.”
“I want to knock Francis off his feet.”
“Then try this.” It was the woman, Kari. Up close she looked as if she really could be Tammy’s mom. Way taller, but the same Italian gold skin and real shape, just way taller—almost as tall as her dad.
Lana started to turn for the mirror.
“Don’t look,” Kari turned her away from it. “Instead, put it on and step out to show it to your dad. Watch his reaction. That will tell you more than your own.”
Lana squinted at her, but Tammy stood behind her nodding.
She took the clothes from over Kari’s arm. It was a dress. “I don’t wear dresses.”
“Trust her,” Kari nodded at Tammy. “She’s an amazing designer.”
“Then what’s your job?”
“She,” Tammy slipped an arm around the woman’s waist, “is the most amazing seamstress on the planet. I can think it up; she can make it so that it hangs great and actually fits people.”
Lana shrugged. She was half out of her clothes before she realized that Tammy and Kari weren’t going anywhere. She wanted to shoo them out, but already they were helping her. No one had helped her dress since her Mom had forced her into a stupid formal dress for a birthday party when she was six—the only one not wearing jeans, she hadn’t been able to play in a single game. She fought down against the bitter tears that apparently had no end. Stupid tears because Mom had only ever cared about how her daughter had made her look; they were so hard to stop.
Finally, she just closed her eyes against the pain and let them dress her in…whatever.
Chapter 6
Richard was so desperate for a distraction that he picked up a teen fashion magazine. Lots of young women wearing far too little. Ratted jeans, crop tops, wide brim hats. Some looked okay, but then he hit the brilliant red dress with too many cutouts and barely enough material to cover the model’s bottom. On the next page a girl who looked like she was sixteen wore a black bit of cloth with cleavage practically down to her panty line.
No way! Not his Lana!
He tossed aside the magazine, shoved to his feet, and made it one step in Lana’s direction before he stumbled back into his chair which almost flipped him backward into the sewing machine.
There she was—it was his Lana. He knew it was. But he barely recognized her despite that.
The blond girl who looked so sharp in her black and white track outfit was gone. As was the sad girl, as devastated by her mother’s abrupt departure as he’d been. In her place wasn’t some under-clothed vixen. It was Lana, become herself. She’d blossomed into a version of herself he’d never imagined.
Her dress was the graffiti-laden fabric he’d watched Kari working with just moments before. It was purple, with pale-orange lettering that looked hand painted. Quotes of great thinkers, silly faces, and words like: strength, passion, joy. It should have been garish—would have been if the shades and tones hadn’t been so carefully selected—instead it was pure teen chic.
It hung loosely without hiding that she was lean and fit. Below a narrow belt that made a tight gather at the waist, it flowed to mid-thigh. No slutty tease of a neckline about to slide off her shoulder, the sleeves added a softness that belied the hard lines of her dead straight hair and tall figure.
Calf-high boots in a cobalt blue shouldn’t have worked, but the tone matched the small purse slung low across her body on a thin strap and made her eyes shine. The only adornment, a thick copper bracelet tied her outfit together.
It wasn’t inappropriate. It wasn’t lurid.
But it also wasn’t his little girl. It was a confident woman who was no longer afraid and no longer cowed by a mother’s betrayal. Powerful in herself.
He staggered to his feet and went up to her, stopping half a step away.
“Daddy?” Lana asked him uncertainly. She hadn’t called him that in a long time.
“You’re magnificent.” He didn’t know what else to say to her. Didn’t know how to say how proud he was of her, so grown and so strong. So he did the only thing he could think of, he folded her into his arms and held her as tightly as he used to hold a little girl afraid of the dark.
He mouthed a thank you to Tammy who was doing a little victory dance.
Then he looked at Kari. She had her back to him, but kept wiping at her eyes, her hand coming away wet.
Chapter 7
“A date?” Kari grabbed Tammy by the shoulders and shook her. “What am I going to do? Richard wants to take me out on a date.”
“Cool!”
“Don’t Cool! me, girl.”
“Why are you so wound up? Do you like him?”
Kari dropped onto a stool. It was evening, rain pattered against the darkened windows. The store and studio were empty, still echoing with Lana and Richard’s most recent visit. She and Tammy were the last ones here, waiting for Perrin to get back from her doctor’s checkup.
“Well?” Tammy stood in front of her with her fists planted on her hips like a school marm.
“Can you tell me one thing not to like?” She waved a hand helplessly. Over the last few weeks, father and daughter had come in several times. Kari had watched them closely. And it was as if he was rediscovering his daughter all over again. Tammy had made Lana look chic, smart, sassy, modest, and amazing in turn, without once hitting what Perrin called the “Tramp Button.”
Throughout the fittings, Richard kept revealing facets of how deeply he cared about his daughter’s happiness. He hadn’t cried when Lana tried on about the most amazing prom dress Kari had ever seen, but he’d come close.
Then he’d taken Tammy’s hand and shook it with great respect. And when he’d taken Kari’s
hand, he’d asked her out on a date. She never even saw it coming.
“Well,” Tamara finally answered her. “Dad likes him. Jasp and I have known him since forever. Jasp worships him.”
“Leave your little brother out of this.” Jasper Cullen was way too smart about people for a twelve-year-old boy.
“Richard is really nice to him. He’s always teaching Jasp lighting design stuff or letting him run the control board or something. I thought you’d like him. And he’s a real hunk for a grown up.”
Kari eyed Tammy.
“You thought I’d like him?”
Tammy’s jaw dropped, but she recovered it with a quick shrug and a sheepish grin, though not very sheepish, “Oops!”
“So this wasn’t about Lana? You set me up?” Kari felt an anger rising, but not very strongly. It was hard to be angry after seeing father and daughter together. After the last fitting, Lana had given both she and Tammy a huge hug before walking out holding her dad’s hand.
“I gotta help Lana with Francis. You see, if I do, then she promised to get Tony to ask me to—” Tammy clamped her mouth shut, slapped a hand over it, and blushed so fiercely that her golden skin went several shades darker.
Kari raised her eyebrows in question, torn between horror and laughter.
“You can’t tell Perrin or Dad,” Tammy mumbled through her hand. “She might be cool with it, but Dad would freak.”
“I’ll keep quiet under two conditions.”
Tammy nodded carefully. She was just as much a matchmaker as Perrin. Kari had seen Perrin do it to others. Kari already had dodged a couple of Perrin’s attempts. She didn’t want to be set up, she just wanted to…meet the right guy. But she hadn’t been watching out for Perrin’s daughter; even though not related by blood the imp was equally dangerous.
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