by Ren Benton
The skirt was fuller than the previous selections, but the lines were tailored and the scattered crystals were as understated as crystals came. Swann’s Bridal Couture had dresses not merely capable of taking over a wedding but of flattening the city in a battle with Mothra. This wasn’t one of them by a long shot. “A shy, quiet bride might disappear in it, but I can’t imagine you taking second place in any competition for attention. This dress would be bait to lure your admirers closer. But if you don’t love it, we’ll take it off and move on.”
She plucked off the topmost clip.
“You’re just trying to flatter me into buying a dress.”
Ivy spent a good part of her day smearing verbal honey on the clients she needed in order to pay her mortgage, but blunt honesty was more effective with the shrewd ones. “Technically, that is my job, but I want you to feel great about whatever choice you make. It doesn’t do either of us any good if I push you into something you regret later and you cancel the order. You won’t have a dress. I won’t get paid. We both lose, so let’s put you in a dress you like.”
She plucked off the next two clips in one swipe.
“Wait! Put those back on. I want to hear what Mom thinks.”
Ivy did as instructed, hiding her smile behind Martina’s back. Every consultant claimed the bride’s happiness was her priority, but come payday, it was abundantly clear no one’s motives were wholly altruistic. Since internalizing the two concepts as a mutual benefit policy, Ivy had fewer combative appointments and the lowest rate of canceled orders in the thirty-year history of Swann’s.
Martina adjusted her boobs as the clips were replaced. “When I called to schedule my appointment, the girl asked if I wanted a standard experience or a party. I hate being upsold, so I cut her off, but it made me curious. What’s the party?”
Martina might not want the pitch, but she had friends and family to whom it might appeal. “It’s our option for brides who want even more of the spotlight than standing on a pedestal while twenty other brides are doing likewise elsewhere in the store, and for women who aren’t getting married in the immediate future but want to play bridal dress-up.”
Martina lifted the hem of her skirt to facilitate maneuverability. “Does that happen a lot?”
Ivy helped her squeeze through the door. “Often enough to inspire the idea.”
Spending a quarter of the day with a customer who never had any intention of making a purchase devastated paychecks and sales quotas. Every fake shopper shamed into paying for a party instead of wasting an appointment counted as a victory for commissioned salespeople everywhere.
“They get the whole store to themselves for up to four hours of undivided attention. We serve champagne and hors d’oeuvres.”
“Sounds pricey.”
Less pricey than any dress in the store. “Money is no object for the center-of-attention bride. The non-bride can split the tab. Her friends can chip in as a gift, or they can all take turns trying on dresses. It’s the customer’s party. We’ll customize the experience for her.”
“What’s in it for the store?”
Ivy’s boss had asked the same question when she proposed the idea. The fee schedule she’d set up barely covered expenses and an hourly wage for the staff who stayed late to run the party. Unless the event led to a sale, there was no profit in it for the store — but no loss, either.
A little smear of honey convinced her boss to go forward with a break-even proposition. “It’s another opportunity to create a happy customer who spreads the word about Swann’s.”
Martina stopped at the edge of the showroom, keen eyes dissecting the scene like a scalpel. “I’m a segment producer for Nine News.”
In the distance, angels sang. Dignity suppressed Ivy’s urge to wave her hands and scream hallelujah. “Sounds exciting.”
“It’s not. If I can get my boss on board with the story, can I bring a crew to one of these parties?”
That kind of free publicity would ensure a successful launch for Ivy’s idea and win her the manager’s job and associated steady paycheck that would make providing for her nieces and nephews so much easier. “We can discuss it with my boss, but right now, try to forget about work and enjoy being a bride.”
She helped Martina onto her pedestal. The entourage released their oohs and aahs without receiving a mood prompt from the bride. She liked the attention, after all, and decided to order the gown that lured it to her.
The bride’s business concluded, Ivy sat down with the Nine News segment producer in her boss’s cluttered office. Rita hurriedly granted permission to publicize one of the parties at the store, and Martina left with promises to be in touch.
Rita closed the door behind her and gave Ivy an exaggerated jaw drop. “How did you swing that?”
Dumb luck.
But that was no way for a management candidate to answer. “I’m a marketing genius.”
“You’re good, I’ll give you that.” Rita’s chair squeaked as she settled into it. “If this goes well, I see management in your future.”
The unspoken but suppressed Ivy’s hand waving and hallelujah this time. “If not?”
“I probably won’t fire you.”
Ivy feigned a weak laugh at the jovial threat of financial ruin.
A knock sounded at the door. Rita called out a command to enter. Two consultants spilled into the office, squabbling about splitting a commission.
As Ivy was crowded out the door, Rita shouted over the bickering, “It’s your responsibility to find a party girl willing to be on TV.”
No problem. A network could develop an entire series around brides battling to the death for five minutes of celebrity. Ivy could line up a suitable bride with one call, but that could wait until after lunch.
She foresaw needing something to make her feel accomplished after the confrontation with Griff.
She spotted him from a distance, somehow distinguishing him from all the other dark-haired men in the park paying no attention to her. He wore a suit, as did many of the others, but he’d left the uptight self-importance in his other pants. He crouched to pet a golden retriever leashed to a girl in pink running shorts and a yellow racerback tank, who stood next to the mirror image of herself.
Of course it would be twins.
His distractions gave her the opportunity to admire him without the discomfort of being studied in return. Camille was crazy if she thought Ivy could compete for this man’s attention while women with undimpled thighs and nonjiggling arms — in stereo, no less — swanned over and invited him to rub their furry pets.
One twin’s lips moved, and Ivy filled in the unheard words. If you think my dog is friendly, you should come back to our apartment and get acquainted with my hairless kitty.
She was smirking at her ridiculous script when his gray eyes shifted in her direction. His smile had been friendly for the twins. It turned intimate for her, warmed by their shared knowledge.
Her legs stopped functioning. The region at their apex flooded with heat in response to that smile. I remember you, too.
So the rest of her body wouldn’t feel left out, her memory sent phantom hands and lips to roam her skin.
And so it came to pass that she stood in a public park in the middle of the day with steaming panties, tight nipples, and a prickly mouth because a man smiled at her.
He gave the dog’s ears a final tousle, bid farewell to the twins, and strode across the grass toward her. His study of her felt like retaliation for her surveillance of him.
Her feet refused to move toward him to shorten the duration of his scrutiny. She squeezed the shoulder strap of her bag with both hands so her forearm covered any residual evidence of excitement poking through the lining of her bra.
After what seemed an eternity, he stopped in front of her. “Are you afraid of dogs?”
“What? No.” Because she too hastily rejected the excuse he’d supplied for her paralysis, she had to invent another one. “I, ah, lost something.”
<
br /> Namely, her dignity.
“Do you need help finding it?”
He’d be of little help, since she seemed to misplace it only when he was around. “I can live without.”
“Good.” He nodded toward a point beyond her. “Is that your dining establishment of choice?”
She glanced over her shoulder at a truck with an artist’s rendering of a stack of dirty bowls, complete with flies, painted on the side. “That’s the one.”
He exhaled heavily. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
The big, strong man with self-professed daredevil inclinations was awfully squeamish. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Probably in that bag of yours.” He cupped her elbow and turned her toward the truck. “Do you want me to carry it for you? Looks like it weighs a ton.”
Her legs returned to full duty, keeping pace with the man at her side. He might not be too uptight and self-important to offer to carry an enormous purse in public, but she would feel unprepared for emergencies without it. “I lean to one side. Without the counterweight, I’d fall on you.”
“I’d catch you.”
Her head snapped up at that softly voiced promise, and she nearly toppled despite the ballast.
He steadied her, his bland expression acknowledging neither her stumble nor the words that caused it because women probably tripped over themselves around him all the time. “What’s in there, anyway?”
The itemized list would take all day to relate. “Everything.”
“That’s useful.”
This was the first time someone hadn’t mocked the Bag of Infinite Holding prior to needing a bandage, a replacement for a missing button, an antidote for low blood sugar, or any of the other emergency remedies contained within. “Thank you.”
His gaze dropped from her lips to her chest. “You look unusually severe today.”
Employees at Swann’s wore black to help them fade into negative space and keep all eyes on the bride, so she looked this severe most days, apart from the two he’d known her. In comparison to the Sunshine Twins, however, she looked like a shadow. “Dress code for work.”
He quirked a brow. “You work in a funeral home?”
Her childish illusions about matrimony had gone there to die. “Good guess.”
They fell in line behind half a dozen diners waiting at the window of the Soup or Bowl truck. Griff eyed the mobile restaurant. “I’m disturbed by the ‘or.’ Will he ladle the soup into my hands in the absence of a bowl?”
“Soup comes in a cup, and you don’t want it.”
“Harsh.”
The woman in line ahead of them turned her head. “True.”
The guy working in the window called out, “I won’t sell it to you unless you speak my name into a mirror three times.”
Griff jammed his hands in his trouser pockets. “Now I’m not worried at all about dying.”
They reached the front of the line, and Tuck pointed at Ivy. “Wednesday means veggie bowl, right?”
Wednesday meant compensating for overindulging at Camille and Von’s house the night before. “You got it, Tuck.”
“Coming right up. You two together?”
She said “no” at the same time Griff said “yes.”
“For the purposes of paying for lunch, we’re together,” he clarified as he withdrew money from his pocket.
Of course. What else would together mean for them?
When Griff hesitated to place an order, she said, “The taco bowl is legendary.” If she split it four ways and didn’t eat her shard of the deep-fried tortilla, it almost fit within her calorie limit for a meal.
He conveyed the recommended choice with the trepidation of a man ordering a serving of botulism.
Tuck prepared their food and passed it through the window. He waved away Griff’s money. “Ivy and her plus-one eat free.”
Griff arched a wry brow at her. “For someone so concerned with my fiscal irresponsibility, you were quick to make me pay for my own lunch.”
He stuffed the money in the tip jar and took a bowl in each hand.
“I didn’t want you paying for both.” She grabbed napkins and a couple of plastic-wrapped forks from a bucket on the counter. “It’s the first I’ve heard the plus-one part.”
They wandered to the shade of a sprawling oak. “Did you give him buy one, get one free on a cremation?”
She poked the tines of the forks through the plastic and traded one for custody of her veggie bowl. “I made a rebranding suggestion when Tuck got a cease and desist for selling bowls that were super.”
Griff stirred mounds of pico, guac, and sour cream into the depths of his taco. “So the lousy soup is on the menu solely to frustrate hotshot corporate attorneys.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. The menu expansion is product diversification to attract a broader consumer base in a market that demands a choice of soup or bowl.” She did her best to look guileless as she popped a disk of vinaigrette-glazed cucumber in her mouth.
He chuckled. “Did you get a consulting fee?”
“You’re eating it.”
He took a tentative bite, then decreed, “Fair trade.”
Not for an incensed rant she hadn’t expected Tuck to take seriously. She always stuffed money in the tip jar, too, to make the trade fair.
In that way, at least, she was a decent human being.
Her need to be inoffensive compelled her to explain Jared to Griff. “I want you to know I wasn’t with Jared when you and I were... together. We split up years ago. He showed up—”
He raised a hand to halt her explanation. “I didn’t care about the other man when I thought you were married. I certainly don’t care after hearing you shoot him down.”
“You heard that?” Replaying any part of that scene in her parents’ kitchen made her tongue more sour than the vinegar in her salad. “Wait. You thought I was married?”
“It was a reasonable assumption. Smart, funny, pretty women are sought-after trophies.”
“Was it a reasonable assumption I’d cheat on my husband?”
She’d thought she was being a little naughty when, really, she’d come across as downright despicable.
He answered as though she weren’t in the midst of a moral crisis. “There was an intensity to our interactions I’m not vain enough to take all the credit for. It wouldn’t be the first time a man has been used to get revenge on a cheating husband.”
A cheater and cheated on.
She’d been neither. She knew that. It stung nonetheless because he had believed it. How could she have so thoroughly misjudged the character she portrayed? What was wrong with her that her idea of fun made her seem like the kind of person who broke vows and used innocent bystanders to get revenge? “I’m sorry, Griff. If I’d known you thought that, I never would have... any of it.”
It took longer than usual, but he finally noticed her distress. “Then I’m glad I kept it to myself. I wasn’t condemning you.”
If a man she suspected was married tried to get in her pants, she wouldn’t be so understanding. “You should have.”
The corners of his mouth pulled down. “There are those impossible standards of goodness again.”
“They’re not impossible.” Not cheating was entirely possible. Ivy had never cheated — not on a test, not in a game, not on a boyfriend. Honesty wasn’t hard to do.
Except when she lied about her entire identity.
“The Duchess wouldn’t exist if was possible to be as wholesome as Ivy Miller is expected to be.”
She caught her breath as he picked up on her guilty thought. “Well, the Duchess was apparently an awful human being, so good riddance.”
“I liked her.” He pointed his fork at her bowl to remind her to eat, and she shoveled a wad of greens into her mouth before she said anything else damning. “You didn’t give me much to work with. I had to fill in a lot of blanks to make sense of the mystery. The filler I chose says more about me than
you.”
She didn’t want to be awful alone. “What does it say about you?”
His physical withdrawal was barely perceptible, but the accompanying chill in his eyes shut her out completely. “That’s rather personal for a second date.”
“I’m sorry.” How gauche to ask a personal question after only two dates, even if the first had ended with taking him inside her body. Such rules were no doubt detailed in the etiquette guide for one-night stands issued to every adult, which she’d no doubt recycled upon receipt because she thought a sensible, responsible, inoffensive woman would never need the information therein.
She hoped his tight-lipped policy about his personal life extended to the small part of it he’d shared with her. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell my parents about any of this.”
“On one condition.”
Under the circumstances, she would gladly take on another obligation. “Name it.”
“You don’t tell mine.”
The laugh that popped out of her brought the smile back to his lips. His discretion was a relief, but she was no closer to understanding the purpose of this meeting. “If you’re not going to hold that over my head, why did you call?”
“You thought I was going to blackmail you?” It sounded ludicrous when he put it like that. “What does that say about you?”
That she had a sister who exploited her fear of disappointing her parents, teachers, employers, or anyone else she wanted or needed to think well of her — but that was rather personal. “It’s still our second date.”
His smile expanded to include the elusive dimple. “I called for the usual reason a man calls a woman. I wanted to see you again.”
The words soaked in and made her soft. Unfortunately, he was pouring that honey on imaginary toast. “You wanted to see a woman who doesn’t exist.”
One who extorted lunch from strangers, heckled wedding ceremonies, ate cake without scheduling it in her diet-and-exercise planner a week in advance, and had sex outside the confines of a steady relationship. A day in that other woman’s shoes had only proven they didn’t fit Boring Old Ivy’s feet.
