A serpent-like grin slithered across Lacey’s face, igniting it with sheer glee as she asked, “What did you say, darlin’? Julianne Bartlett has … paid you … to be her date?”
Paul leaned down toward Julianne. “Can we go?”
“Oh, wait just a minute,” Lacey continued. “Indulge me for one golden moment, would you, please? Are you Julie’s hired escort?” Before he answered, Lacey burst into laughter, looked back at her companions and asked, “Did you hear this?”
“Julianne? What’s going on?” her mother inquired.
“Oh, this is priceless,” Lacey clucked.
Julianne’s heart had started to beat again, but in tinny, pounding rhythms that echoed in her eardrums. Without another breath, she plucked her shoes from beneath the table, grabbed her purse, and ran for the door.
“Julianne! What’s going on? Lacey, what did you do?” she thought she heard Will ask as she escaped the ballroom and raced toward the elevators and pounded on the call button.
“Jules!” Will called out, but the elevator opened and she jumped onboard. “Jules, wait!”
He reached her as she pushed the button for the lobby.
“You just had to bring her, didn’t you?” she shouted at him. “You couldn’t let it be just me and you.”
“Jules, come on. Wait.”
“No, Will. I’m through waiting. I’m just … through!”
“Hanes!” The sudden shout caught the attention of them both, and she squinted at the familiar face grinning at her as he jogged down the corridor toward them.
“Judd,” Will said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Yeah, I told you I’d be in town this weekend, remember? I came in for this, and for a few rounds of golf for the charity event tomorrow.”
“Can I catch up to you in a few minutes? I’ve just got to settle something here with Julianne.”
“Hey, Julianne. Good to see you again.”
“Hi, Judd,” she managed.
“Listen,” he said, turning back toward Will. “Let’s make sure we talk. I want to discuss the offer I made you about coming to work for us in Lexington.”
Julianne felt all the oxygen deflate from her lungs. “Offer?” she somehow managed.
“No, I—”
“He didn’t tell you?” Judd cut in. “Yeah, I’ve got a job tailor-made for him. And with all of the Parkinson’s research going on down there, I think it’s the perfect time. With Davis’s situation and all.”
And with that, Julianne wielded one of the crystal shoes directly at Will. He moaned as the spiked heel hit him dead-center in the chest and the elevator doors slid shut.
Will could hardly think straight. He stood in stunned silence in front of the closed elevator, clutching the shoe she’d sent barreling toward him like a spiked cannonball. Before he’d fully gathered his wits again, Judd smacked his shoulder.
“Angry cat out of the bag, huh? I’m sorry, buddy.”
“Can we talk later?” Will asked him. After I’ve started breathing again and find the presence of mind not to wring your neck?
“Sure. Why don’t I call you after the fund-raiser tomorrow. We’ll get a bite and talk.”
He nodded Judd off and focused on drawing some air back into his lungs. Before he could fill them, however, Paul Weaver appeared beside him and pressed the call button on the elevator.
“Did she leave without me?” he asked, incredulous. “She actually left me here? And she didn’t even pay me. Nice, huh?”
Will turned to him, slowly and with deliberation. “You want your payment, Weaver? I’ll give you your payment.”
He whipped his checkbook out of the breast pocket of his jacket and frantically wrote a check for five hundred dollars, tearing it off with such force that he left a ribbon of it behind. He chucked it at the ditch digger with a sneer, and it fluttered to the floor in front of him.
“Never mind that you humiliated her in there, huh? As long as you got your money.”
Will turned and stomped away from him, but Weaver just didn’t have the good sense to leave it at that.
“Hey, I’m not the one who made the big announcement to the rest of the people in the room, buddy. Your date did that. That part’s on you.”
It took every ounce of resolve not to turn around and pound the guy’s pretty face with everything he had. But somehow, Will managed to keep walking; back through the doors, across the ballroom, and straight to their table.
Standing over Lacey, he glared down at her. “We’re going.”
“Will, did you catch Julianne?” Amanda asked him. When she noticed her shoe in his hand, she grimaced. “Is she all right?”
Will placed a hand on Amanda’s shoulder, as tenderly as he could manage at that very un-tender moment. “She’s gone home.” He looked back at Lacey and repeated, “We’re going.”
“You go ahead,” she snapped. “It’s what you want to do anyway. I’ll get home on my own.”
“We can take her,” Phoebe volunteered. Will glanced at Phoebe to confirm, and she nodded. “It’s fine. Go.”
Without another word to Lacey, he sprinted across the ballroom.
“Tell her to call me tonight,” Amanda said after him, and he nodded over his shoulder without slowing down.
“Thanks, Archie.”
“It was my pleasure, Julianne.”
She’d sat up front with him, but Archie did his job and went around to the other side of the limousine and opened her door. She slipped out and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“Thanks for the ice cream. And for the shoulder.”
“Anytime. I’m here for all your limousine and bad-date needs.”
Bad date.
“The understatement of my lifetime,” she muttered as she hobbled up the sidewalk on one bare foot and one four-inch heel. “Night, Arch,” she called back to him.
“G’night, Miss Julianne.”
She stopped just inside the door and caught a glimpse of her reflection: Wild hair in every direction, mascara-stained cheeks, one missing earring, and a dribble of Rocky Road down the front of her light blue vintage dress. She suddenly remembered Suzanne’s request that she remember to snap a picture, which of course she hadn’t, and the memory ignited uncontrollable laughter. Maybe she should take a picture now? Something to remember the moment; a reminder about what pride gets you.
Just about the time she pulled herself together, her mother’s voice pierced the solitude of her laughing jag.
“I made tea.”
Just three simple words, and they set her face on fire with embarrassment and emotion. Her expression crumpled like wax paper over a lit match.
“Come here.”
Her mother extended her open arms, and Julianne headed straight for them.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
“Oh, honey, take that shoe off.”
She kicked it off in the middle of the room and kept going, directly into Amanda’s embrace. After she hugged Julianne, and smoothed her crazy wild hair with the palm of her hand, Amanda gave her a little nod. With her arm around Julianne’s shoulder, she led her to the kitchen counter.
Julianne climbed up on the nearest stool while her mother set a cup of steaming tea before her. After she’d taken a sip, Amanda approached with a damp paper towel and began to wipe off the mascara mess under her eyes and down her cheeks.
“Oh, Mom, I’m such an idiot.”
“You’d better narrow that down for me, honey.”
“I paid a guy to take me out.” Julianne bit her lip, realizing she hadn’t actually paid him.
“Yes,” she said, focusing on the line of her jaw with the towel. “That was not your finest moment, I’ll admit.”
“It was so important to me, caring so much about what they all thought. I wanted to show them that they were wrong about me, and all I showed them was that they were right. Pride took ahold of me, and I couldn’t think straight.”
“And now?” her mom asked as she tossed the paper t
owel in the trash.
“Now? I’m just mortified.” The tears began to fall again, and she caved in to her folded arms on the counter. “And that awful Lacey!” she exclaimed. “I told you about her, didn’t I? She’s just horrible!”
“Well, it wasn’t very nice of her to ridicule you like that. But I got the feeling she just couldn’t help herself. That tends to happen when we’re focused on our own pain. We lash out and splash it all over the nearest person. And you happened to be closest, honey.”
“I hate her!”
“You do not hate her. But you surely hate what she did.”
Julianne looked around the kitchen and asked, “Where’s Phoebe?”
“She’s in the shower. She said she’d drive me home whenever I’m ready to go, but I wanted you to have some hot tea to come home to.”
Julianne chuckled and reached across the counter to take her mother’s hand. “That’s the answer to all the world’s problems for you, isn’t it, Mom? Hot tea!”
“It doesn’t hurt any, but no. It’s not the answer.”
Her face fell and crumpled again. “Then what is?” she whimpered.
Her mother didn’t reply with words. She simply pointed one finger heavenward.
An hour later, they had moved the somber party to the living room, and Phoebe had joined them. Julianne sat perched on the floor in front of the coffee table, the skirt of her chocolate-stained dress hiked up and her bare legs folded beneath her. Charming sat at attention, pressed against her, sniffing at the dried ice cream. Every now and then, he gave her dress an affectionate lick.
The lamp next to the sofa spilled a yellowish glow over the silent group, and music played so softly from the radio in Phoebe’s room that Julianne couldn’t make out the song.
Phoebe was first to shatter the silence. “Do you want to talk, Julianne?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.”
“Then I think I’ll have Phoebe drive me home now,” her mother piped up. “Unless you want me to stay.”
“No, Mom. You can take off. But thank you for being here.”
“Sometimes a girl just needs her mother,” Amanda said, and she pushed up from the sofa. “Do you want to come spend the night with me?”
“Next door to Will? I don’t think so.”
“All right. But you’re going to have to talk to him sometime, young lady.”
Julianne looked up as Amanda stood over her.
“That sometime isn’t tonight,” she said softly as Judd’s words roiled around inside her like a shot of acid.
He didn’t tell you? Yeah, I’ve got a job tailor-made for him. And with all of the Parkinson’s research going on down there, I think it’s the perfect time. With Davis’s situation and all.
“I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
She leaned down and kissed the top of Julianne’s head. “Promise me one thing?”
“Hmm?”
“No more Paul Weavers.”
Julianne raised three fingers, even though she’d never been a Girl Scout. “No more!”
“Good. A pretty face and good hair does not a husband make, you know.”
“I am aware; I was so foolish.”
“All right. Sleep tight.”
She watched them walk out the front door, and she tucked her arm around Charming and pulled him in for a nuzzle. They’d hardly been gone a full minute when the front door opened again. She looked up, expecting to find that her mom had forgotten something, but Will stood there looking at her instead.
Even without his jacket and his bow tie hanging loose around his neck, he still looked every bit as handsome as he had at the gala. He combed his dark hair from his face with both hands and tilted his head slightly.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Come on, Jules.”
“No,” she said, and she popped up to her feet and rushed toward him.
She put her hands on his shoulders, turned him around, and pushed as hard as she could until he stood on the porch looking back at her. It wasn’t until then that she noticed her shoe in his hand.
“Julianne, this can’t wait anymore. I have to tell you—”
“There’s nothing you can tell me tonight, Will. Go home.”
One corner of his mouth quivered and turned upward before he dropped to one knee like some ridiculous, disheveled prince at the end of one of those obnoxious fairy tales that had caused so much trouble for her.
Will extended the shoe toward her. “Fair Julianne!” he exclaimed in his most noble voice. “I’ve traveled a great distance to reach you, and to tell you that I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I want you to know—”
“Oh, hush,” she muttered, and she turned around and slammed the door between them.
The echo of the thrown dead bolt stayed with Will all through the night. Julianne had slammed the front door, locked it, and shut off the porch light, all with him still on one knee declaring his undying love. He didn’t know how long he’d stayed there, but when he finally got up, he left her shoe on the mat outside the door and skulked away.
Suzanne had been right; they really were morons, both of them.
She hadn’t shown up for church that morning, and Beth Rudd told him she’d called early to ask her to cover the David and Goliath lesson in Sunday school. Will had been so preoccupied with her absence that he couldn’t even faintly remember the topic of the pastor’s message.
As he pulled his car up to the stables, he noticed Alec standing there with a young woman. When she turned around and smiled at him, Will recognized Alison waving the horse brush at him.
“I thought you were camping at Natural Bridge this weekend,” he said as he climbed out from behind the wheel and grabbed his saddlebag.
“I was. I got home this morning, and Alec invited me over to meet his new filly.”
He hadn’t seen that sort of light in Alison’s eye when they dated. Come to think of it, he’d never seen it in Alec’s. They were actually a pretty fair match-up.
“How was the gala?” she asked him, and his expression wilted. “That bad?”
“It was the Murphy’s Law of evenings.”
“Everything that can go wrong,” Alec said, nodding, “will go wrong.”
“You got it.”
“Did Julianne win the award?”
“No. She did not.”
Alison and Alec exchanged glances before Alec smacked Will’s arm. “Sorry.”
“Was she terribly disappointed?” Alison asked.
“With everything else that went wrong last night,” he answered, “I think losing out on the award was the last thing on her mind. Although I wouldn’t know, really, because she’s no longer speaking to me.”
“Oh.” Alison cringed. “Well, maybe a good ride will cheer you up?”
“Let’s hope.”
He headed toward the stable, and then he stopped in his tracks. “Hey,” he said to them. “I’m glad you two are giving it a go.”
Alison sauntered over and pecked his cheek. “Thanks, Will.”
Julianne noted that Will’s car wasn’t in the driveway, so when she didn’t find her mother at home, she felt safe wandering across the lawn to check with Davis. Sure enough, the two of them sat at the kitchen table with a pitcher of iced tea and a plate of butter cookies.
“There she is!” Davis exclaimed when he peered through the back door.
“I knew I’d find my mom here,” she said with a smile as she slipped in and sat down next to Amanda. “I just wanted to drop by and thank you for last night. I really appreciated you sticking around and making me feel better.”
“That’s what mothers do.”
Julianne winced as her eyes met Davis’s. “I guess you heard about last night.”
“I heard plenty,” he replied.
“Well, I hope you won’t think less of me, Davis. I lost my mind.”
“Which part has you losing your mind?” he as
ked directly. “The part where you offered to pay the louse, or the part where Will wrote the check?”
Julianne’s pulse began to pound. “Will paid him?”
“He did.”
She fished into her purse and produced her checkbook. “I’ll leave him a check then. That was … really … unexpected of him!”
“I guess that’s not all that was unexpected last night.”
The minute their eyes met again, tears plummeted down Julianne’s face. “Are you two really moving to Lexington, Davis?” she asked. “When was Will going to tell me?”
“What!” her mom exclaimed with a gasp. “No one’s moving anywhere, Davis Hanes! I suwanee! What, you’re going to just up and leave me? What would I do without you?”
“You might find a dancing partner who could give you the life you deserve,” he replied.
Julianne looked on as her mother’s eyes misted with emotion. “You old coot. I don’t need a dancing partner. I just—” She lowered her head and whispered, “I just need you.”
“You’re crazy, woman,” Davis said. “More crazy’n your daughter.”
“Hey!” Julianne interjected. “How did this get turned around on me? Let’s hit rewind because I thought I’d never see the day when you two finally admitted you have feelings for one another, and you were getting very close there for a second.”
“Julianna Margaret!” her mother exclaimed.
“Well, for crying out loud, Mom. You and Davis have been like an old married couple for years now, except for that patch of grass between the two houses.”
“Look who’s talking about this!” Davis cackled. “Julianne, you don’t know a confession of feelings when it’s right there on its knee in front of you.”
“What?”
“Will had other things to tell you before we decided about Lexington,” he said, leaning forward and locking Julianne’s eyes with his. “And I hear you didn’t have much to say when he finally did.”
She scratched her temple as she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“That boy’s been screwing up his courage for twenty years, Julianne. And he finally manages to tell you his feelings, and you shut the door in his face.”
If the Shoe Fits Page 24
