Shopping for Love (BookShots Flames)

by Renee Carlino

  What you’re holding in your hands is a BookShots Flames story.

  It’s part of a revolution in reading.

  Hand-picked by James Patterson, BookShots Flames are a whole new kind of book—

  100 percent story-driven, no fluff, always under $5.

  At 150 pages or fewer, all of our BookShots can be read in a night, on a commute, even on your cell phone during breaks at work.

  For special offers and the full list of BookShot titles, including our thrillers,

  written and co-written by James Patterson himself, please go to: bookshots.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About Bookshots Flames

  Title

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About the Author

  There’s Always a Deal at BookShots.com

  Newsletter

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2018 by JBP Business, LLC

  Cover design by Kapo Ng; photograph by Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  BookShots / Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  bookshots.com

  facebook.com/JPBookShots

  twitter.com/Book_Shots

  instagram.com/jpbookshots

  First ebook edition: February 2018

  BookShots is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The BookShots name and logo are trademarks of JBP Business, LLC.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  ISBN 978-0-316-52389-9

  E3-20171204-DA-NF

  Dear Reader,

  Desire is one of the strongest human emotions, and sometimes, even when life is going well, we can’t help but yearn for something more. We all know what it’s like to want something you can’t have, whether it’s a fancy car, a trendy designer purse, or even a person.

  Hayden Fox loves her life and her job. She’s a personal stylist, and she takes a lot of joy in helping her clients change their lifestyles and find their self-confidence. Hayden is all about solving other people’s problems—until she’s confronted with one of her own: She’s falling in love with her client’s boyfriend.

  Hayden is in a tough spot—she’s been shopping for other people for years and years, and never puts herself first. But this might just be the moment where she learns to fight for what she wants, even when the odds seem impossible. I rooted hard for Hayden to find love, and I hope you do, too.

  —James Patterson

  Chapter 1

  “I’m a stylist.”

  “A what?”

  Why in the world I let Diana Crompton talk me into speed dating, I’ll never know.

  “I pick out clothes for people and help them with their style. What do you do?” I say.

  I’m on round six of this stupid organized social torture. The five three-minute dates I’ve had prior to this one all crashed and burned, but this guy’s actually cute, in a Seth Rogen kind of way.

  “I’m a commodities broker. But I’m fixated on this stylist thing. So you just buy clothes? That’s your job?” He scoffs.

  Oh, no, not another one who thinks I’m shallow because I shop for a living. Never heard that one before. I swallow my sarcasm.

  “We only have one minute left—Ryan, was it?”

  “Brian.”

  “Right, Brian. Anyway, so you say you’re a commodities broker…does that mean you actually sell pot out of your mom’s basement or something?”

  He stares at me blankly for the final five seconds of the date. Now, I’ve crashed and burned. The bell rings and just before getting up he says, “No, Hayden, I don’t sell pot. I work at Charles Schwab.”

  I shrug. “Sorry. It was joke.” God, if only he had Seth Rogen’s sense of humor. Well, another one bites the dust. That’s it, time to leave; I’m over this crap.

  I skip out, avoiding my client Diana. No thanks for dragging me to this god-awful science fiction version of matchmaking. I text her from my car letting her know I don’t feel good, but I don’t think she cares at all. Her dates looked to be going wonderfully. Which is not to say that my dates also could not have been going well if I’d tried harder. I just get tired easily of the what do you do for a living conversation. I couldn’t take another minute or three of it.

  Few people believed me when I told them I was dropping out of college to become a stylist. It was three years ago. I had one year left at Emory University before I could get my sociology degree. I had received a full academic scholarship, something most would kill for, and I “threw it away” to become a personal shopper and stylist.

  Everyone I knew thought it was frivolous, irresponsible, downright crazy. My mother asked if I’d been doing a keg stand the moment I decided to drop out. I didn’t think that was funny. She was concerned that without the degree, I wouldn’t land a high-paying job. So far, she’s been wrong. I’m not exactly rolling in the dough, but at least I can support myself, I love what I do, and I can help my mom out when she needs it. Although, admittedly, my somewhat rash decision to drop out of the prestigious college I worked so hard to get into has created a fear of bottoming out as a stylist, so I’m still putting my all into it.

  My boyfriend at the time, who was also attending Emory, said to me, “Hayden, shopping for other people is not a career.” Which made me even more determined to make it one and prove him wrong. It’d be my own personal sociology experiment. Of course, the day after I dropped out, he broke up with me and kicked me out of his apartment.

  But dropping out didn’t mean I wasn’t going to apply everything I’d learned about sociology toward my dream career as a stylist. After all, dressing people is about knowing people, and their behaviors.

  I was determined. I put my student loan money toward a loft in Decatur, the creation of a handful of advertisements and flyers, and the maintenance of a fancy professional website. In two weeks, I had three clients. In a month I had seven, and in two months, I had twelve.

  Just to stick it to my ex, Joshua, I sent him a picture of my client list, as well as an ATM receipt with my new account balance showing the eleven thousand dollars I h
ad made in the sixty-three days since he’d kicked me to the curb. He ignored my texts and then blocked me on Facebook. Good riddance.

  Now I’ve settled into my little business and it’s thriving.

  One day after the speed-dating catastrophe, I’m with Diana Crompton again.

  “What do you think of this?” she asks me in the dressing room area at Bloomingdale’s. She’s a tall, beautiful woman in her forties with a ton of family money.

  “I like the green, but I think mauve might be more your color. It’ll bring out the pink in your cheeks. Should I bring in the other option, just to compare the two?”

  Diana is the one client I ever dread working with. She rarely entertains my suggestions, and she can be selfish and condescending at times. Also, she calls Bloomingdale’s “Bloomies,” which I absolutely hate. But I get paid to follow her around so she can use me as a human shopping cart, and that’s fine with me.

  “I’ll give the mauve blouse a try,” she says, “but I want everything to look perfect for my date on Friday.”

  Why is Diana always going on dates? Why can’t I get a date?

  I shrug off my dating woes for a moment to direct my attention back to Diana. “It will be perfect for your date,” I say confidently. “But if you don’t like the mauve blouse, you have a strong option with the green one.”

  “You’re so good at this. You know who could use your help?”

  “Who’s that?” I say.

  “My niece, Caroline.”

  I keep my expression neutral. Though working with another Crompton sounds challenging, to say the least, I’m still building my client list. The family is ridiculously rich and I’m not in a position to turn away new opportunities.

  “That’d be wonderful. What’s she like?”

  We talk through the dressing room door as I pick up the clothes she carelessly tosses over it. She always acts like she owns Bloomingdale’s. Hell, she probably has enough money to buy it.

  “Caroline is my brother’s daughter and she’s only twenty-five. She’s very young and pretty, but dresses dowdy, you know? Like a schoolmarm. Turtlenecks and dress pants in the middle of the humid Georgia summer.”

  Hmm. It sounds like her niece is too insecure to be adventurous with her clothes. That’s a problem for a lot of my clients. A big part of my job is to make clients feel good about how they look—and clothes are usually the first way to do that.

  I dealt with my own confidence and body issues as a teenager. My father took off when I was a baby, so my mother had to raise my brother and me on her own. She often left us with my grandmother, who was hard on me about my looks and weight as a child. Grandma called me “butterball,” and said if I didn’t thin out, I’d never be able to find and keep a man. That was always her concern, especially after seeing my mother struggle to make ends meet. My mother’s concern, on the other hand, was always about us going to college. My older brother got a degree, but he’s paying high dollar to live the life in New York City as an assistant to a book editor. He’s barely getting by. I’m proud that I can send my mom a little extra every month. She’s been working her butt off for thirty years as a grocery store cashier with no retirement in sight.

  It’s not surprising, given Grandma’s awesome criticism of my body, that I became anorexic in high school and throughout part of college. I try to put those days behind me. Since the Hayden liberation three years ago, I’ve learned to love my body, modest curves and all.

  “Sure, Diana,” I say, snapping to the present. “I’ll give your niece a call. Do you want to give her my information first?”

  She peeks over the dressing room door and grins. “I’ll let her know you’ll be calling tonight.”

  “Perfect.”

  I stand in line for thirty minutes to check out for Diana while she gets a touch-up at the makeup counter. It’s been a long day, which is putting it mildly, and I’m ready to get home.

  “Drinks?” Diana asks as we walk out of Bloomingdale’s.

  A lot of the time my job requires me to be a friend or therapist, but I decide to shirk my responsibilities just this once. I have a good excuse, after all. “I’m actually dying to get home to call your niece, and get started on that new wardrobe for her.”

  “Great!” Diana says as she texts me Caroline’s number. Her private Town Car pulls up. “Do you need a ride, sweetie?”

  “I—”

  “Shoot, I forgot I’m getting happy hour with the girls,” she says as she types something into her phone. She slips elegantly into the Town Car and takes off without saying good-bye. Sigh.

  I call an Uber to take me home from the mall. My Uber driver is a young, cute guy who’s wearing a GSU sweatshirt. I try to chat with him, but he turns the music up and ignores me. Maybe I can be a spinster stylist. Married to the job. That’s a thing, right?

  I arrive at my trendy miniature loft studio just as it’s getting dark. It’s in a hip part of Decatur, with great walkability to cool restaurants and stores. It would be amazing if I had a social life, but I usually get so swept up in my work that I haven’t gotten to know anyone in my neighborhood.

  My loft has big windows that look out onto the street. When I moved in, I filled the living space with as many houseplants as I could to create the illusion that I had actual living, breathing friends who rely on me outside of work. Not that I’m complaining. I love my job, but lately, I’ve been yearning for something more.

  I have one of those lofted beds with a workspace below it that I decorated with sparkling string lights. I set up my computer and a small drafting board on the desk. That’s where I do sketches of potential outfits and keep my photos. I take photos of everything. Maybe if the stylist thing doesn’t work out, I could go into photography.

  I drop my purse off by the door, change into my pajamas, and sit down at my desk to text Caroline. I introduce myself, explain what I do, and let her know she can call me anytime. Then I crawl into bed and let myself doze off as I look at a fashion magazine under the light of the streetlamp shining through my second-story window.

  Chapter 2

  When I said Caroline could call me anytime, I didn’t mean midnight. I meant anytime during normal business hours. But somehow I find myself being jerked awake at twelve a.m. by the sound of an incoming call on my phone.

  “Hello?” I whisper, recognizing the number.

  “Hi, sorry. It’s Caroline. I didn’t expect you to answer.”

  “Then why’d you call?”

  “Oh, again, I’m sorry.” She sounds timid.

  “No, no, I’m kidding. I told you to call me anytime.” Anyway, it’s a Friday night, I’m in my twenties, and I’m sleeping it away. I might as well be working instead, I guess. I sit up, flip on my twinkle lights, and scoot down my loft bed to sit at the desk.

  “I was going to leave you a message,” she says. “I was working late. I really am sorry.”

  “Don’t sweat it. But it is late. You’re just finishing up now? What do you do?”

  “I work in finances for my father’s company, Crompton Enterprises.”

  “Right. Diana mentioned that. What does the company specialize in again?”

  “Energy,” she says quickly. I can tell by her tone she doesn’t want to talk about it.

  “Hmm. Are you interested in having a stylist? Maybe updating your wardrobe or getting some pointers?”

  There’s a long pause. “I don’t have much time to shop, but yeah, I could use some help in that department.”

  “Great! Do you want to text me your address, and I’ll pick you up around eleven tomorrow? Would you be available then?”

  “Sure. Um, I don’t really know exactly what kind of arrangement this is. How do you take payment?”

  “Diana didn’t tell you? She offered to pay me on your behalf.”

  “Of course she did.”

  “Is that a problem?” I ask.

  “No. It’s fine.”

  “Okay. This’ll be fun. Don’t worry. I’ll come ove
r tomorrow, and if it’s all right with you, I’ll take a look inside your closet and then we can go shop. I’ll put some outfits together for you. We can start out with a few meetings at first, and then get together once or twice a month, whenever you feel like getting some new things. Sound good?”

  “Sure, okay. I’ll text you my address. See you around eleven.”

  “Perfect. See you then.”

  I arrive at Caroline’s luxury condo in Buckhead at exactly eleven a.m. She must have been waiting, because when I ring her number outside the security gate, she buzzes me in immediately. She meets me on the steps outside her condo.

  Before even saying hello, she says, so quietly and quickly I have to lean in to hear her, “The code is five, six, eight, three. It spells LOVE so it’s hard to forget. That way you don’t have to wait for me to buzz you in next time.” She’s already talking about a next time. I hope it’s because she’s admiring my Madewell booties and Anthro scarf.

  “Thanks.” I smile and stick out my hand. “Hayden Fox, nice to meet you.”

  She shakes my hand. Hers are tiny and pale with soft skin. “Caroline Crompton, and same to you.”

  Caroline is pretty in a petite way. She has a small pointy nose and angled chin. Her pale blue eyes are framed by thin reddish eyebrows, which match her short strawberry-blond bob. She’s wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and a long black cotton skirt. It’s a tad shy of a nun’s habit, but at least her haircut is cute.

  “Follow me,” she says.

  Her condo is sparse. The furnishings look expensive but dated. If there were plastic runners in the hallway, it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s like a time capsule. Maybe she lives with her grandma.

  “Do you live alone?” I ask.

  “Yes. I’m not here that often. My boyfriend, Blake, is here every once in a while, too.”

  Boyfriend? I’m surprised and it’s terrible, but I think the feeling comes with the pang of jealousy that sits in the bottom of my stomach. I couldn’t even get an Uber driver to talk to me on a Friday night. I follow her up the stairs toward her bedroom and into the closet, which is filled with pairs of black flats and dress suits. Mostly pantsuits in gray, black, or beige.