“So that’s standard? Every Friday, both Miss Riverton and Miss Walker are not scheduled to come in?”
Smiling tightly, Mimi nodded once. “It is. If you’ll excuse me, I have some things I need to do in the back.” She whirled around on her heel and disappeared behind the door. It shut behind her with a loud bang.
Alice and Whitney stared at Adam in disbelief. “Are you Santa Claus?” Alice finally asked, keeping her voice low so Mimi wouldn’t be able to hear.
Finally relaxing, Adam grinned at her. He looked extraordinarily pleased with himself. “If I tell you that I am, will you sit on my lap?”
Alice tried to glower at him but was too shocked by what had just happened to make it convincing. “I’m too old to sit on Santa’s lap,” she retorted before shooting him a sly smile. “But you’re never too old for this.” Then she stepped forward, threw her arms around him, and squeezed tight.
Adam stood frozen for three tenths of a second before his arms went around her. He didn’t squeeze nearly as tight, but she could feel the warmth from his hands seeping through her blouse. He didn’t seem to want to let go when she tried to pull away. “Need I remind you that Mimi’s twenty feet away?” she asked, tilting her head to the side and looking up at him.
He blinked twice and, reluctantly, she thought, dropped his hands to his sides. “If all it takes to get you to hug me is to finagle you a day off work, I’ll make sure I do it again.” He cleared his throat and stuck a finger in his collar, tugging it away from his neck. “I’d better be going. I’ll see you two later.”
Then, with one final glance at Alice, he almost sprinted out the door and down the hallway.
***
Adam was going to need a heart transplant.
With one single, innocent touch, Alice had made the one currently residing in his chest hammer so hard it nearly punched a hole in his ribs.
Not that he was complaining, but he kind of liked his ribs in one piece. Maybe what he really needed was a titanium ribcage.
He finally slowed his steps when he reached the atrium in the middle of the mall and sank onto the ledge surrounding the fountain. He stared at the pennies lying in the water and wondered if he’d get in trouble if he ducked his head under and yelled.
He wasn’t angry or anything. He just had an awful lot of energy all of a sudden, and there was no good way to get rid of it–short of running a mini-marathon. Of course, he could always kiss Alice senseless. But he didn’t think she’d appreciate that nearly as much as he would, which was why he’d left in such a rush.
So now she was going to regret her impulsive action and would most likely run in the opposite direction the next time she saw him coming. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Mission Alice was going to kill him before he’d even started it properly.
The mall owners were opening their doors when he finally made his way back toward The Glass Slipper, and he ducked into Lewis’s shop before he could get side-tracked. “Hughes!” he called, dodging around dresses that appeared to be more lace than substance. “Hughes!”
Lewis emerged from his labyrinthine back room. “Yes, Wentworth? You bellowed?”
Adam grinned at him and crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
Lewis pushed aside several frothy confections to make room for the one had slung over his arm. “Working on my summer order, unless Alice invites me over to dinner.”
Adam felt a momentary twinge of jealousy before he shoved it to the back of his mind. “I happen to know that Alice and Whitney have the entire day off, and…”
The dress fell to the ground with an unceremonious swish, but Lewis didn’t seem to care. “What? Alice never gets an entire day off! Are you yanking me around?”
“Now, now, Hughes,” Adam scolded. He was secretly enjoying watching Lewis gape at him. “I happened to be passing Alice’s shop–”
“Meaning you was stalking her again. She’s going to catch on to you eventually, you know–”
“–And I happened to overhear Mimi try to make her clean yet another shoe store.”
Lewis’s mouth fell open. “Another store? Has Squeaky bought herself another one?”
Adam leaned against the counter. “I imagine so. Does she have a Swiss bank account no one knows about, or is she married to a sugar daddy?”
They both shuddered and grimaced. “Lord help us all if that’s the case,” Lewis said fervently. “How come I haven’t heard anything until now?”
Shrugging, Adam picked up the gown and tossed it to Lewis, who caught it automatically. “Beats me. I thought you were the gossip guru around here. If it makes you feel any better, both Alice and Whitney seemed surprised, too.”
The two of them were quiet for a minute. Adam could only guess at Lewis’s thoughts, but his own kept drifting back to the way Alice had thrown her arms around him like he was the best thing since movable type was invented. He wondered how he could get her to do it again.
Lewis finally cleared his throat and eyed Adam beadily. “How exactly did you convince Mimi to give them the same day off? I can see her doing it for Whitney, but Alice… I secretly think she wants to get her so mad she just up and quits.”
“Why doesn’t she?” Adam had been wondering this for a long time. He just hadn’t had the guts to ask Alice.
The way Lewis rolled his eyes implied that he’d asked her that same question before, and hadn’t received a good answer. “If you can figure that out, you two are meant for each other. You still haven’t answered my question, by the way.”
Adam smiled in a very Cheshire-cat sort of way. “Mimi let it slip that Alice never gets a lunch break, and I pounced on that before she could backpedal. So now they each have an hour for lunch and every Friday off.”
Lewis stared at him wordlessly, his mouth hanging open again. Then he thumped his partner in crime on the back with so much enthusiasm that Adam was afraid he’d be knocked into a dressmaker’s dummy. “You, my dear Wentworth, are a genius.” They smiled at each other conspiratorially. “I think it’s about time to put the next phase of Operation Whitney in motion, don’t you think?”
“Quest Whitney,” Adam corrected automatically.
He drew himself up as tall as he could while Lewis laughed himself silly. “Quest sounds nobler,” Adam said loftily. “Operation Whitney sounds like you’re going to cut her open and examine her innards.”
Finally getting himself under control, Lewis hung the dress he’d been holding on a hook next to the cash register. To Adam’s surprise it didn’t look terribly wrinkled. “I’m the one chasing her, so I get to name it,” Lewis stated with a smirk. “And I’m calling it Operation Whitney, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Uninformed.”
Adam sighed in defeat. “It’s your semantic funeral, Hughes. Now, how are we going to go about this? I’ll run into Alice in the food court–”
“I don’t think so.” Lewis rolled his eyes. “Patience, man. You’ll get to eat with her tomorrow. I know how to guilt Alice into doing things. You don’t.”
“I don’t want her to go out with me out of guilt.”
Lewis looked like he was biting his tongue. “Fine. I know how to convince Alice to do things. What are you, a thesaurus? All you have to do is make the dinner reservations and be at their place by five tomorrow evening. Do you think you can handle that?”
Maybe working with Lewis wasn’t such a good idea after all, Adam mused. He was one of the most obnoxious people he’d ever met. “I can make dinner reservations in my sleep,” he retorted loftily. “It’s you I’m not sure about.”
Lewis grinned slowly. “Oh, don’t worry about me,” he said. “Alice can’t resist me when I pull the ‘Precious Moments’ face.”
“What?” Adam was beginning to think that Lewis had been repeatedly whacked in the head with a dull object as a child. He half hoped it’d been Alice’s foot.
“The face. She has one that I can’t resist, and vice versa.”
As far as Ad
am was concerned, Alice had a lot of faces he couldn’t resist. That, in a nutshell, was really the problem. If she wasn’t so ridiculously kind and honest and beautiful, then he could go on his merry little way like nothing unusual existed in the mall. He’d have to take cover during the next thunderstorm if he didn’t admit that he found her too attractive for her own good.
“Go ahead and call the restaurant. Alice and Whitney will be ready for us to pick them up.”
Adam heaved a sigh and turned to leave, but a fresh thought made him turn around before he took two steps. “Are you sure about this restaurant?” he asked suspiciously. “Or are you just choosing it for the name? It seems a little… creepy.”
Lewis had the grace to look uncomfortable. “It’s a great place,” he retorted. “I took Alice there before prom, and it was stunning. The architecture alone is enough to get the romantic juices pumping.”
“I’m not eating romantic, Hughes. How’s the food?”
Lewis just waved at him dismissively. “You worry too much, Wentworth. It’ll be perfect. You’ll see.”
Adam left the shop shortly after that. He wished he could have convinced Lewis to let him have lunch with Alice.
***
Mimi stormed around the store all morning. She was muttering words under her breath that Alice was glad she couldn’t hear. She was also yanking boxes off the shelves in the back room only to jam them, half opened, somewhere else.
Alice would have found it funny to watch a grown woman throw a temper tantrum if Mimi had been shooting daggers at anyone else. Well, maybe not Whitney…
“You’ll have to find someone to work for you every Friday,” Mimi finally snapped. She was practically frothing at the mouth. “I’m not making Brittany work all day long.”
For the first time Alice thought she understood what Whitney’s home life had been like. “You made Whitney work every day,” she reminded her coolly.
Mimi made a disgusted noise that Alice was sure wouldn’t have come out if Adam had been within earshot. “Brittany’s very delicate. She shouldn’t be made to work long hours for plebeians who don’t know the difference between a sandal and an espadrille.”
Technically, Alice thought, they were in the same category, but this didn’t really seem like the time to remind her boss. She was also slightly amazed that Mimi knew the meaning of the word ‘plebeian’. Hadn’t she thought the same thing about Brittany a few weeks before? The idea that the Walker women weren’t nearly as dumb as she’d thought made her uneasy.
“Which store did you purchase this time?” Alice asked, running through a mental list of all the shoe stores in the mall.
“Soles. The owners sold it to me for a song.”
Alice winced. Mrs. Sherman had been one of her mother’s good friends. Was Mimi single-handedly trying to take over the footwear industry? And how was she getting the money for this? She knew from first-hand experience that buying a business wasn’t cheap.
“She was just like your father–anxious to move on.”
Alice opened her mouth to say something that she was sure she’d regret later, but Whitney stopped her. “Do you care who works on Fridays?” Whitney’s quiet voice surprised Mimi, and her head swiveled around to stare at her youngest daughter.
“If anyone steals anyone from me…”
Whitney scrunched up her face but didn’t back down. “We can’t get someone hired by tomorrow, you know.”
“You will.”
Drawing herself up to her full height–Alice hadn’t realized exactly how tall Whitney was–she stared at her mother defiantly. “We can’t. You’ll have to drag your precious Brittany here tomorrow and you’ll both have to wait on… what did you call them again? Oh, right. The plebeians. We’ll have people here by next Friday.”
Mimi glared at her. Then she made an inarticulate noise in her throat that sounded like a muffled yelp, grabbed her purse, and stormed out the back door. A few seconds later they heard her car roar to life, and then it was silent.
Whitney sank into a chair, looking dazed. “I can’t believe I just did that,” she said. “I actually stood up to my mother.”
Alice dodged around the boxes Mimi had left on the floor and knelt beside her friend. “Twice in one day. Are you okay?”
Whitney’s eyes were fierce. “I’ve never felt better in my life.” She paused and absently ran a hand through her hair. ““Please tell me that you can find a couple of people to work by next week.”
Grinning, Alice sat back on her heels. “I could’ve for tomorrow, but you were on a roll and I didn’t want to mess up your momentum.” Whitney rolled her eyes, and the corners of her mouth quirked up slightly. “No, really. Lexie’s mom used to work for us a few days a week, and I know she has a few friends who are interested in part-time work. The fact that they’ll get shoe discounts won’t hurt any.”
Whitney slumped back in her chair and exhaled. “That’s good.”
Alice’s head popped up from a noise in the front room. “Who’s watching the shop?” They stared at each other for half a second before both of them bolted through the door.
An hour later, Alice was standing outside The Glass Slipper, waiting for Lewis. He’d popped his head in when she was busy with a customer and told her that if she waited for him by her window display at noon, he’d treat her to pizza for lunch.
So there she stood, loitering outside her own shop. She traced the outline of her grandmother’s slippers with one finger and sighed. She wondered if they felt as fabulous as they looked, and leaned her head against the cool glass.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Alice turned her head without raising it from the window. “Hey, Adam.”
He regarded her silently, eyebrows lifted, for a few seconds. “Are you okay, or are you trying to ooze your way into that display through some sort of weird osmosis?”
She turned her head back to look, unseeing, at the slippers. “Thanks for getting me a day off every week. And lunch. Again, I really appreciate it.”
Adam leaned his head down beside hers. “Was Mimi that bad?”
She smiled faintly at him. “You’re pretty good at picking up nonverbal signals. What makes you think Mimi was cruel?”
Snorting, Adam shrugged. “I know enough about her to know that if she doesn’t get her way, she’s going to be a royal pain in the…” He glanced at her and cleared his throat. “…Anyway. That she’s liable to be very unpleasant.”
Alice stifled a laugh. Either he was usually very careful with his language, or his mother had drilled proper manners into him as a child. She rather thought the second was the case. “You’re good. But I don’t care how horrible she gets. I now have Fridays off–”
“Don’t forget lunch.”
“And lunch, and that’s enough to keep me happy for a long time.” She sighed and straightened back up. “Were you furious before?”
Adam stared at her blankly. “Why would I be furious?”
She shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, I hugged you and then you took off like I was a carrier for the bubonic plague.”
Adam’s face fell flush against the window and he laughed so hard, condensation formed on the window. “Nothing could be farther from the truth,” he gasped finally. “Please, feel free to hug me anytime the urge strikes.”
Alice eyed him skeptically. “If you say so. Again, thanks. I owe you one.”
Adam’s grin was almost wicked. “I’ll remember that.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
“No.” Adam’s answer was quick, but he sounded a little uncertain. “Not at all.”
“Wentworth!” Lewis shouted.
Adam’s body twitched, and he made a face. “Yes, Hughes?”
Alice looked between Lewis and Adam. “Since when have you two been on a last-name basis?”
Ignoring her, Lewis gave Adam a stern look. “Thanks for keeping Alice occupied for me, Wentworth,” he said in a voice that Alice could only describe as snooty. “Don’t
you have a meeting or something to go to?”
Adam muttered something under his breath that Alice couldn’t catch before glancing guiltily in her direction. “Goodbye, Alice. Have a good lunch. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
Alice let Lewis lead her toward the food court but she glanced over her shoulder at Adam as they went. He looked almost… forlorn.
“So what’s up?” she asked after they’d started eating.
“What do you mean?”
Alice leaned forward so her hands were protecting her slice of pizza. She knew how Lewis got at lunchtime. “I mean, how did you know I had a lunch break? You couldn’t possibly know what happened at the shop this morning.”
Lewis took a gulp of his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Actually, I do. I heard it from Wentworth.”
It was the tone in Lewis’s voice that made Alice suspicious. He sounded like he was trying too hard to conceal something. “Is that so.”
Lewis suddenly found the napkins lying on the table between them very interesting. “Yep. He walked past me just as I was opening this morning. How’s your pizza?”
Alice wasn’t swayed by his attempt at changing the subject. “What are you and Adam up to?” she demanded. “The last time I checked the two of you were barely civil to each other.”
Lewis opened his mouth, and then closed it with a calculating click of his jaws. He glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “I needed some help on a special project, and he agreed when I asked him.”
This wasn’t making any sense, Alice thought in bewilderment. In her limited experience with boys, they only called each other by their last names when the wanted to get a rise out of someone. Or, when they were playing football, but that was different. They slapped each other on the behind then, and thought it perfectly normal. “And you didn’t come to me because…”
Lewis leaned over the table, completely ignoring Alice’s pizza, and grabbed her hand. “I need your help, too, Alice. But I had to check with him first.”
Alice sat there and waited with raised eyebrows. Heaving a deep sigh, Lewis sat back in his seat. “I want to ask Whitney out on a date but I don’t want to go by myself. I know, I’m a big boy,” he added when she rolled her eyes, “but I knew that if I asked you to come, too, you’d feel like a third wheel. So I asked Wentworth if he’d come along to kind of even things out, and when he told me you both had tomorrow night off…” He let his voice trail off hopefully.
Alice in Glass Slippers Page 14
