If the Shoe Fits

by Sandra D. Bricker

  “You mean it?” she finally asked him.

  Rand squirmed. “Yeah.”

  “I want you to get rid of your gun.”

  “Whoa, wait just a—”

  “That’s a possibility,” Julianne interrupted. “What else?”

  “The gun is nonnegotiable,” the girl insisted. “Nobody in the neighborhood wants to know that, if they make a little too much noise or they skateboard into your trash can one day, you’ll get out your gun and shoot at them.”

  “You make a very good point,” Will said.

  “Yeah, okay,” Rand conceded. “What else?”

  “I want a new baby pot-bellied pig. And I don’t just want you to pay for it. I want you to go with us to pick one out so you can see how gentle they are.”

  Rand looked at Julianne helplessly.

  “You know what,” she said. “I’d like to see how gentle they are, too. Maybe we can all go.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I do.”

  Emily seemed happy with that. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Will repeated.

  “And you’ll stop with the flyers,” Rand confirmed.

  “Yeah.”

  “And take down any of them that I’ve missed.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay!” Julianne exclaimed. “Excellent! So we’ve come to a constructive and mutually agreeable conclusion. Doesn’t everyone feel much better now?”

  Rand grunted softly, but Emily didn’t seem to care. She probably came out feeling like the winner.

  “And I’ll bet Mr. Winters would also like to make a donation to an animal welfare charity in Wilbur’s name,” Will told Emily. “Would you like that?”

  “In Wilbur’s name?” she asked excitedly, and she waited for Rand’s agreement.

  “Yeah, all right,” he surrendered before falling back against the chair.

  In Julianne’s experience, no other animal could ever truly replace a lost companion. But they’d negotiated a settlement that would give Emily a new friend, protect Rand’s reputation, fund animal welfare, and rack up some billable hours for the firm.

  Win-win-win-win.

  As Will tied up the loose ends between them, Julianne stepped out to reception, where Phoebe had just ended a phone call and hung up the phone.

  “That was the clinic,” she told Julianne. “The dog had surgery to set a broken leg, and they need to keep him there for a couple more days before they turn him over to the shelter.”

  “Did you find out how much the bill is going to be?”

  Phoebe cringed. “Just over a thousand dollars.”

  “A thousand!” she exclaimed. “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  Alison’s dark auburn hair caught the sunlight through the window behind her, and Will couldn’t help but notice how truly beautiful she was.

  “I’ve wanted to try this restaurant ever since I first heard about it,” she told him with a smile. “The French toast is to die for. Do you want a bite?”

  She cut a small corner from the raspberry-filled confection and ran her fork through the powdered sugar before extending it toward Will. A little too sweet for breakfast fare, as far as he was concerned, but tasty enough.

  “Good, right?”

  He nodded. “Aside from the cavity it’s digging into my teeth.”

  Alison giggled, and he thought how cute it sounded. “All right, that’s enough out of you. So I have a sweet tooth. Now you know.”

  Will gulped back the last of his coffee. “You never told me,” he said as the waiter filled the cup. “What were you doing out this way today? It’s a little far from home for you, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I’m chaperoning a group from school at the kite festival this weekend, and I wanted to stop by the boathouse and pick up some maps for some of the parents.”

  “The one at Winton Lake.”

  “Yes. We’re bringing picnic lunches and sitting on the hill together to watch them fly the kites. Do you want to come?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched slightly before he gave up a chuckle at the irony.

  “Ah, you’ll be busy. Maybe we can do something another time.” Then, “But I’m making my world-famous potato salad,” she sang to tempt him. “And afterward … there are two-person pedal boats available. If you’re man enough to give it a try, I mean.”

  “Oh, I’m man enough,” he declared.

  “Meet you there around noon on Saturday?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Will replayed the conversation in his head a couple of times as they finished their breakfasts.

  Man enough.

  Yeah, he was man enough to sit with some third graders to watch a bunch of kites flying overhead, even to pedal a boat around Winton Lake with their stunning teacher.

  But am I man enough to run into Julianne and her ditch digger boyfriend?

  “Do you see him?” she asked, leaning over the branch of the tallest tree she could find for a closer look. “He’s wearing a beautiful blue cloak.”

  “I see him!” her friend replied.

  “If only we could get closer. You could see how the cloak matches the blue of his eyes. He has beautiful eyes!”

  “Do you love him deeply?”

  “As deep as the ocean, as vast as the sky,” she replied. “He’s my one-and-only.”

  “I wish I had a one-and-only,” her childhood friend remarked.

  “You do. Everyone does. You just haven’t found him yet.”

  Will decided to ride his bike rather than drive the couple of miles around his circular subdivision and down to Winton Lake. He padlocked his bicycle to the rack at the edge of the parking lot before setting out to find Alison and her students, and he pulled the iPhone from his pocket to send her a text.

  I’m here. Where are you?

  Meet you at the boathouse came her reply.

  By the time he reached the dock, he spotted Alison in a blue and white paisley maxidress that seemed to float behind her while her long auburn hair danced on the breeze. His heart fluttered slightly when she grinned at him, two large soft-serve ice cream cones in her hands.

  “Bought you a present,” she said, handing him one of them. He took a lick before accepting it, and she giggled. “We’re over there, on the hill.”

  They meandered through the crowd before breaking free and hiking up the grassy hill. Scads of people dotted the lush green lawn, from families with picnic baskets seated on blankets and beach towels to teens sunning on low lawn chairs with audio buds connected to their ears. A clear summer canopy of blue, dotted with the occasional puffy white cloud, provided a perfect backdrop for the dozens of colorful kites zigzagging across the sky.

  Alison led him toward a grouping of more than a dozen young children sitting on blankets pulled closely together, several adults anchoring the corners.

  “Everyone,” she announced, “this is my friend Will. He’s going to be another chaperone for us today.”

  The adults nodded friendly greetings before checking him out, but most of the kids hadn’t even noticed his arrival in deference to the display of color overhead. With their heads tilted back and their eyes bright and wide, the appearance of Miss Reece’s friend Will held very little appeal.

  One particularly large delta-wing kite drew Will’s immediate attention with its colorful graphic design. “I flew one like that,” he pointed out to Alison as they sank down to a large square of blue gingham fabric held in place by a bright red picnic basket.

  “Have you been to the kite festival before?” she asked.

  “A few times, when I was a kid. My pop helped Jules and me build pretty elaborate ones, and sometimes they even stayed in the air.”

  Alison chuckled. “Jules. That’s your law partner? The one you said you’d known since you were a boy?”

  He nodded and took a moment to tend to the stream of melted ice cream making its way over the rim of his cone. “Julianne. We grew up next door to each other.”

  Alison
pulled her dress up to mid-calf and crossed her suntanned legs at the ankles. A silver chain hung loosely around one ankle, and braided white leather sandals, each of them bejeweled with one light blue stone, revealed perfect cinnamon-frosted toes.

  “I’ve only been to this park a couple of times,” she told him as she finished her ice cream cone and leaned back on both elbows, fascinated by the colorful kites flying overhead. “It’s beautiful.”

  “You could probably blindfold me and set me loose to find my way around, and I could do it without a problem,” Will replied. “These are my old stomping grounds. You can almost throw a rock and hit my dad’s house up there.”

  He pushed the base of the cone into his mouth, and Alison passed him a paper napkin that he used to wipe his chin. “They have summer concerts out here. I remember hearing the Cincinnati Symphony do an evening of Mozart when I was nineteen.”

  “Mozart.” She mulled it over before gazing up at him curiously. “I didn’t peg you for a Mozart kind of guy.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Julianne?” she asked knowingly, and he nodded. “Were you two an item back then?”

  Will chuckled. “For about twenty-six minutes.”

  “Oooh. Didn’t make the half-hour mark. Sorry.” Her mock-serious face melted away into a bright smile.

  “It worked out just fine.”

  Somewhere out there among the hundreds of Queen City residents enjoying the day’s festivities were Julianne and her perceived Prince Charming: A freakishly tall ditch digger who reminded Will of Gaston, the arrogant pursuer of a girl who preferred a beast over him in an animated Disney film Julianne had forced him to watch with her when she had the flu. He couldn’t remember the song lyrics, but that tune about the character’s brawn and good looks—if you went for the lumberjack type, anyway—hummed around in his brain every time he thought about Paul Weaver.

  “Will?”

  The familiar lilt of the voice that had called his name pinched him, and Will looked up expecting to see Julianne. But the golden-haired beauty who stood over him, backlit by a stream of Ohio sunshine, was not Julianne.

  “Hello, Will. How are you?”

  As he swallowed around the lump in his throat, he realized he hadn’t seen her since the night she returned the diamond ring he’d given her.

  “Holly.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” Julianne puffed. “Great.”

  When Paul suggested a date to Winton Lake for the kite festival, Julianne had pictured the two of them sitting on a blanket somewhere, watching the colorful displays overhead, maybe sharing an ice cream cone or indulging in a couple of hot dogs. She certainly hadn’t anticipated an hour of kayaking, followed by a brisk three-mile hike! Her cute pink wedge sandals were nearly ruined.

  “Is it much farther?” she asked him, winded as she tried to keep up.

  “About another half a mile. You think you can make it?”

  “Oh yeah,” she lied. “I—I can make it. But maybe you could slow down a little? Your legs are a lot longer than mine.”

  He stopped in his tracks and waited for her to catch up to him. “Do you want a ride?”

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Hop on my back,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Oh … no … I …”

  “It’ll be a good workout for me,” he said, scrunching down in front of her. “What do you weigh? About one-fifty?”

  “No!” she exclaimed. Dialing it back, she forced a chuckle. “No. I’m not one-fifty. I’m … much less than one-fifty.”

  “Okay. Well, hop on.”

  “No, really, Paul, that’s okay …”

  He straightened and turned around to face her. “Look, Julianne. You’re really slowing me down. Hop on.”

  He pivoted and leaned down again, his hands braced behind him in the shape of stirrups.

  Julianne glared at her ruined shoes for a moment as she considered the offer.

  “I don’t know, Paul. A piggyback ride? Really?”

  Before she could process it, Paul lifted her from the ground.

  “Wh—what’re you … What are you doing?!”

  She groaned as her fanny plunked down on the top rung of the rustic split rail fence that bordered that section of the hiking trail. Turning his back to her, Paul demanded, “Hop. On.”

  Julianne shrugged. After she pressed down the hem of her pink-and-white gingham top with one hand and adjusted her denim capris with the other, she tossed her hands to his shoulders for support and threw herself onto Paul’s muscular back. It was the tallest piggyback ride she’d ever had.

  And the most mortifying as well. Although …

  “Wow. You’re really strong, aren’t you?”

  Paul chuckled as he forged ahead at twice their former speed, blowing by several other hikers, most of them giggling as they passed. She guessed she really had been slowing him down. In no time at all, they reached the end of the trail, converging on a more dense assembly of people.

  “Okay. You can put me down now,” she said, but Paul forged ahead. “Okay, Paul. I can walk now.”

  Onlookers snickered, and Julianne buried her face in the slope of Paul’s shoulder. Her words muffled by his denim shirt, she pleaded, “Would you pleeease put me down? People are staring.”

  At last, he slowed to a stop. When Julianne peeked at the world again, she saw that he stood slumped in front of a bench, and she slid down to it.

  “Thank you.” She resisted the sudden urge to slug him. His macho was wearing a little thin on her.

  “Let me see your shoes,” he said.

  “My shoes?”

  Instead of clarifying, Paul simply reached down and slipped off one of her sandals.

  “Wait! What are you—?”

  He took it with him to the water fountain. One quick splash on the shoe, and he scrubbed it with his thumb as he headed toward her again.

  “That worked pretty well,” he said, handing it back to her. “Let me have the other one.”

  She lifted her foot and allowed him to remove it. While he repeated the effort, she stepped into the clean one. When he finished, Paul knelt in front of Julianne and looked up at her as she slipped her foot into the damp canvas sandal.

  “Just like Cinderella,” she muttered, and a warm, broad grin spread across her entire face.

  Maybe not too much macho after all. Maybe just enough.

  “Except Cinderella was smart enough to wear her special shoes to a ball,” he replied. “Not hiking around Winton Lake. That wasn’t too bright, Julianne.”

  The grin melted from her face and landed in a puddle on her chin.

  “To be fair, I didn’t know we’d be kayaking and hiking today, Paul.”

  He stood up and looked down at her with a confused expression. “What did you think we’d be doing at a kite festival on a lake? Sitting on the grass eating ice cream?”

  Well, yeah. I kinda did, she thought. But she didn’t say so.

  “Ice cream sounds kind of good,” she suggested tentatively. “Want to get some?”

  “I don’t do ice cream,” he replied.

  “Oh. Well. Maybe … something … else then.”

  “We can get you some if you want it.”

  “No. That’s okay.”

  “If you’re hungry, we can get something.”

  “Maybe a hot dog would be nice.”

  “A hot dog!” he exclaimed. “These are the kinds of things you put into your body, Julianne? You’ll be dead by the time you’re forty.”

  “I’m pretty sure a hot dog isn’t going to kill me, Paul.”

  She raked over him with a heated glance. With his face all scrunched up like that, and the scolding tone in his voice, she realized she might have stumbled into the wrong fairy tale entirely.

  “All right, Grumpy,” she teased. “Let’s just go see what they have at the concession stand. Maybe you can find something that won’t do us in before we make it home.”


  Thirty minutes later, Julianne had scarfed down two hot dogs with ketchup and relish and ordered a big soft-serve ice cream cone that she enjoyed much more under the shadow of Paul’s disapproving and watchful eye.

  “Just a taste?” she said, offering him her cone.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Come on, Paul, let’s relax a little, huh? We can go sit on the hill and watch the kites for a while. What do you say?”

  He shrugged and thrust out his hand like it was part of his punishment. Julianne snickered as she clasped his massive hand, and the two of them headed across the green lawn, weaving around groups of suicidal people blissfully indulging in poisons like ice cream, cotton candy, and—gasp!—the dreaded hot dog.

  Sledability factor, through the roof, she observed as they trudged across the lush hill. Aside from the fact that a sled ride down this particular hill might surely end in a splash into Winton Lake, of course.

  When she spotted Will on a gingham blanket, Julianne felt sweet relief wash over her in a cool shower.

  “Will! Hey, Will!” She let go of Paul’s hand and jogged toward him, grinning. “Will! What are you doing here?”

  “Hey!” he said. “Jules, this is Alison. We’re here with her third grade class.”

  Julianne looked around at all of the children gathered nearby, and her eyes landed on Alison with a thud.

  “Oh. Hi, Alison. It’s good to meet you.”

  “Hey,” Will said with a nod that made Julianne remember she had company.

  “This is Paul Weaver.”

  “Hi, Paul. Alison Reece.”

  “Jules,” Will said, leaning back on one elbow, “you missed the best one. They had this enormous delta-wing up in the air, just like the one my dad made. Do you remember flying that one?”

  “I loved that kite!” she exclaimed. “I still have pictures of it somewhere.”

  Julianne glanced at Alison, and she sort of froze under Alison’s dark brown stare. Her hand instinctively went to her mouth. Why was Alison gawking like that? Had she gotten ice cream all over her face or something?

  “I’m sorry,” Alison said in response to Julianne’s obvious discomfort. “I’m staring. But it’s uncanny, really.”

  “What is?” Julianne asked.