by Avery Flynn
Chapter Thirteen
“I can’t concentrate in flats.”
—Victoria Beckham
What had her life devolved to when Sylvie had only thrown one pair of flats into her overnight bag? Not a single pair of chunky heels, knee boots, or mules. Every girl knew nothing made your butt look better than a pair of heels. They were the most often used weapon in a battle of seduction, and Sylvie needed everything in her armor to get Tony to see past his self-imposed rules.
She dug through her Louis Vuitton orange leather duffel, praying to the fashion gods that she’d find something hidden in its depths. Her fingertips hit the soft suede bottom. Shit, not only were there no heels, but her search failed to discover a second pair of shoes at all. She plopped down on the bed in Tony’s room, knocking the overnight bag to the floor. Even when she’d had only two pairs of shoes in her closet at her last foster home, if she ever went anywhere, both pairs came with her.
Priorities, sister. You weren’t exactly thinking straight when you packed that bag. You’re hiding from the stalker nut job who broke into your apartment.
True. But here in Tony’s manly man bedroom in the wilds of Waterberg, the disturbing reality of her life seemed like a child’s game of pretend. Which, in fact, it had been. Pretending to be the High-Heeled Wonder. Pretending to be happy in a relationship with a man whom she knew didn’t love her. Pretending she wasn’t petrified of taking chances.
But she was done with all that.
She slid her feet into the muted eggplant-and-navy-striped Fendi ballet flats. Today, she was the no-heeled wonder on a mission to get her groove back.
She stood, and her jeans, tailored for wearing with three-inch heels at the minimum, pooled at her feet. She sighed. And so the transformation begins.
After a quick assessment in the mirror, she went to work. She rolled her jeans until they stopped just above her ankle, swapped the patterned blouse for a cream tank, and slipped on her favorite cropped navy blazer. A chunky gold necklace and a few bangles finished the look. It wasn’t her usual armor, but somehow it worked.
Bring it on, world. I’m ready for you.
As if hearing her thoughts, her phone chirped. Then it gonged. A piano trill sounded a second later. Holy crap. Henry, Drea, and her sister all texting her within thirty seconds of each other. Her insides became as fizzy as a shaken soda. So not good. She grabbed the phone and peered at it with one eye closed.
She opened Henry’s first.
Honey, I know a lot of crazy things are going on in your life right now, but today’s posts aren’t like you at all.
What was he talking about?
Drea’s text was a bit longer. And even more stress inducing.
Are you smoking crack with HHW posts?!? Also did you see Pippa’s quote in FashionWear Daily about you coming out as the HHW? “Really, it’s not surprising considering her background and her fathers. Not that it matters. These so-called fashion bloggers will never make a lasting impact on the world. They lack taste. They lack knowledge. They lack influence. The real power will always be with Chantal. Always.” Da-y-um! Wear kevlar to fundraising dinner tomorrow. Don’t worry. I’ll bring the Uzi! :)
Shit. This could not be good.
Heart pounding, she punched up the last text. Anya was more diplomatic, but the trend continued.
It was satire? Yes?
All of the bubbles inside Sylvie’s stomach replicated and grew until they squashed her lungs against her rib cage. In three clicks she had the High-Heeled Wonder Web site up on her phone.
The top of the page was taken up by a large candid photo of a plus-sized model eating chocolate cake with the headline: Do Fatties Have a Place in Fashion?
Her cheeks flamed as her blood thundered through her veins.
She scrolled down. A photo of a well-known buyer for a major department store sniffing white powder off a woman’s naked butt appeared next, with the headline: How Certain Fashion Lines End Up in Stores.
The bubbles in her abdomen popped, replaced by a panic that squeezed her kidneys.
The final image had been taken outside of her apartment building. It showed her smiling and walking down the steps, waving to an unseen someone in the distance. A crudely drawn cartoon dialogue bubble floated over her head: Hi! My Name Is Sylvie Bissette and I’m the High-Heeled Wonder!
Her fingers fumbled frantically on the touch screen as she typed in her password on the blog login page. Denied. She tried again. And again. Each time, an error message flashed across the screen. Damn! She’d meant to change the password last night, but after getting all freaked out seeing Tony’s file on her fathers, she’d forgotten about doing it. The asshole stalker must have changed the password. She couldn’t access her own site.
She stumbled backward until her back hit the wall. The phone slipped from her fingers, whacking against the hardwood floor with a hollow thud. My God. Those horrible posts. Mean. Ugly. Nasty. The bastard had turned her whole life to shit with the click of a mouse. He wouldn’t be the only one calling for her to shut down the blog now. If it hadn’t been her own Web site, she’d be one of the voices calling for the blogger’s head.
Her muscles screaming with the need for action, she swiped her phone off the floor, tossed it onto the bed, and paced the twelve-by-fourteen room. Fury boiled her blood to cold fusion levels. Which cleared her thinking and let her brain zero in on what needed to be done. Like Rocky, she apparently had to get knocked around before she could work up enough anger to land a killer punch.
She really wanted to pull the asshole’s fingernails out with a rusty pair of pliers. But that was way too good for the bastard. No. This dirtbag needed to be stripped of his anonymity and exposed for everyone to see, along with his crimes. There had to be something in those posts that gave him away.
She’d find it, and she’d nail his ass to the wall.
She couldn’t wait. She stormed out of Tony’s bedroom. Pumped up on righteous indignation, she peeled around the corner into the kitchen—
And jerked to a stop.
The early morning sunlight filtered in through a bay window, casting a warm glow around Tony, who wore a pair of worn jeans frayed at the bottom…and nothing else.
Bare toes.
Hard abs.
A police shield bisected by a black band tattooed on his left shoulder.
Her insides went gooey and she caught her breath. The man before her was very bad in a very, very good way. “W-when did you get back?” she stammered.
“About ten minutes ago. Long enough for a quick shower.” He cracked an egg on the edge of a frying pan, and the yolk sizzled as soon as it hit the heated surface. “Ready for breakfast?”
She knew just how that little yellow goop felt. “I’m so ready.”
“Good. Grab an orange juice and sit down. These will be done in a second.”
Her brain jerked back into control, resurrecting her anger and bringing high indignation along as backup. Spending the morning eyeballing Tony’s six-pack out of the corner of her eye was so not going to happen. “Wait. We don’t have time to eat.”
He flipped the egg and then reached up and took down the pepper from a cabinet. A few sprinkles and he slid the egg out of the pan and onto a plate. The motion set off a ripple of muscles across his back. “There’s always time for breakfast,” he said calmly.
“Somebody hacked into the High-Heeled Wonder and put all sorts of hateful crap on my blog. Like I wrote it. Plus they outed me.”
He paused, the pan hovering above the stovetop. The muscles in his shoulders danced for a moment, and then he clanked the Faberware down and grabbed the plate with a curse.
“So much for having one single fucking thing in our favor with this stalker.” Tony laid a blue plate loaded with toast, strawberries, and a fried egg on the table in front of her. “I’ll go grab my laptop. You eat.”
“What is with you and food?”
“I’m Italian.” He shrugged. “Eat.”
Sylvi
e had finished crunching her way through the toast when he returned, his fingers thrumming across the keyboard as he walked.
“Can you hack into the site so I can take that shit down?”
“Yes, but I won’t.”
Her jaw dropped before she remembered her mouth was full of toast. “Why the hell not?” She wanted to scream in frustration.
“Because our boy has moved to the next level. Meaning he’s about to make a mistake…if he hasn’t already. And then we’ll get him.” Emitting a low whistle, he pulled out a chair and sat down. “What can you tell me about these photos?” He indicated the oh-so-fucking-lovely pics accompanying the vile posts.
Looking at the High-Heeled Wonder’s bloodied carcass made the toast rhumba in Sylvie’s stomach. In one fell swoop, the bastard had torched everything she’d spent years building. Her audience would rebel. Advertisers would abandon her. Worst of all, her family and everyone she loved would pay the price, too. Guilt by association was practically a bylaw written into the fashion world’s social contract.
Whatever it took, she was going to hunt this weasel down and make him pay, big time.
She pointed at the woman eating cake. “This is Estelle Vance. She’s the premiere plus-sized model in the industry. Gorgeous woman, great personality, and smart as hell. She’s walked in several of my fathers’ shows.” She pointed to the next picture. “That’s Bob Shneizer, head buyer for Dylan’s Department Store, taking a hit off of Mila Kontis’s right butt cheek.”
“How can you tell whose ass it is?” He stared at the screen showing a woman’s body but not her face. She couldn’t blame him. Mila’s back was arched and her right arm raised above her head, showing off her cellulite-free behind to perfection as she lay on the glass coffee table.
“Tattoo on her elbow.” Sylvie touched the screen, an inch below the Olympic rings tattoo. “She won a silver medal in archery.”
Tony grunted and leaned in for a closer look. Close enough that his breath practically steamed up the screen.
Sylvie fought the urge to kick him in the shins. Hard.
“Hot damn.” His voice had risen an octave.
“What?”
“There’s something reflected in the glass. See it? Right…here.” His pointer finger landed three inches up from the crack of Mila’s ass.
Squinting, she could almost turn the blur into a recognizable form. “I give up. What is it?”
Tony clicked a camera icon on the desktop and opened the photo to full screen. Mila’s butt took up seventy-five percent of the space. He scrolled upward until the blur took center stage. A few more clicks and he zoomed in further. Two pinkish, pixelated triangles appeared.
An answer tugged at her subconscious, taunting her. While she tried to yank the truth to the forefront, Tony grabbed his phone and dialed.
“Hey, Carlos, I’m sending you a picture. The resolution is for shit. I need you to clean it up and get it back to me.” He paused. “It could be the thing that breaks this case wide open. I need it yesterday, man.” He nodded. “Great.”
He set the phone down between them and they both stared at the screen as if it were the second coming of Coco Chanel.
She said, “It could be a street sign.”
“Maybe, but the color seems off.”
“A picture?”
“That’s my guess. Or…it could be a store logo.”
She tilted her head to gain a different perspective. Still nothing. Chewing the inside of her cheek, she tilted her head the other way.
The cell buzzed. “Hiya,” Tony answered.
The gears shifted in Sylvie’s head. Hiyah. As in a karate kick. With a high falsetto… She whipped her head around and locked onto the screen.
Little pink triangles.
“Tony, those are Miss Piggy ears.” Her words wheezed out, squeezed out of her by the too tight corset of realization. “Just like the ones in Anders Bloom’s last collection.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.”
—Marlene Dietrich
Tony was trying to sneak out on her. Again. The little shit.
As if Sylvie would ever let that happen. Not when they were so close to bringing down the bastard who’d turned her life into a circus sideshow. When they confronted Anders, she wanted to be the bitch turning the screws.
Standing in the kitchen doorway with one hip cocked, she jangled Tony’s car keys from one outstretched finger. And cleared her throat.
Which grabbed his attention as surely as the smell of pizza after a two-day juice cleanse. He halted, his shoulders rose to ear level, and he spun around in slow motion. By the time he’d made the one-eighty, all evidence of guilt had faded into a charming grin that nearly knocked her to her knees.
Anton had warned her about boys like him. She should have listened.
He held out his calloused palm. “I have to pick something up before we can head into Harbor City.”
“Great, I’m coming with you.” She strutted into the living room, calling his bluff.
“No need, I’m just getting…toilet paper.” He cringed as soon as the words were out of his delicious, lying mouth.
“Really? That’s the best you could come up with?”
Cute as he was, he still had a thing or twelve to learn about her if he thought pulling the old I-just-need-to-run-to-the-store routine would actually work. Her trouble alert had gone to Defcon levels ten minutes ago while he’d been in deep phone conference with one of his guys. Trusting her gut, she’d snagged his keys from a bowl by the front door. Perfect timing, since he’d waited approximately fourteen-point-two seconds after Ryder’s arrival to announce the bogus emergency store run. After she’d caught him.
“There is no way in hell you’re leaving me in Waterberg with your sister while you confront Anders Bloom.” She slid an apologetic gaze to Ryder. “No offense.”
The tall brunette shrugged, a typical Falcon family reaction. “None taken.”
“You’re my client,” Tony muttered through his clenched jaw. “I can’t risk taking you along.”
“It’s Anders’s flagship store in broad daylight, not a maximum security prison in the middle of a riot.”
He crossed his arms. “No.”
“Do you know his assistant? He knows every detail of Anders’s life and is a total gossip, but he’ll only talk to people he knows. And the clerks despise Anders. They’d love to spill the beans, but only to a trusted source, and only if their evil overlord is otherwise engaged. I’ve been getting the goods from both parties for years. What would take you hours to accomplish—if they’d even speak to you—I can get done in five minutes.” Triumph poured through her veins as though she’d just kicked back three shots of Badass-R-Us vodka.
“Carlos is working on whether we can eliminate Ivy, but he needs more time. Until he’s done, she’s our number one suspect, with Anders being a close second. If he’s our guy—”
“You’ll have my back,” she interrupted impatiently. “I didn’t decide on the boyfriend cover just because you’re hot as hell. It’s the most efficient way to gather information and figure out the troll’s identity without letting him know we’re on his tail. We work well together, as a team. Just look at how well we did with Ivy at The Darling House.” She rattled the keys in his slack-jawed face. “Let’s roll, honey babe.”
“Fine,” he huffed out. “But you are not driving.”
Sylvie barely smothered her chuckle. “Whatever you say.”
Half-dressed, multihued mannequins made out in the display widows at Anders Bloom’s flagship store. Most of the mannequins held switchblade knives behind their backs or were pulling them from thousand-dollar handbags. Weaving through the early lunch crowd bustling down the sidewalk, Sylvie tugged Tony toward the magenta-frosted double doors.
“Bet the tourists from Wisconsin love the mixing of sex and violence,” Tony said, eying the display.
&n
bsp; Sylvie laughed. “Yeah, there was a bit of a dust up with an alderman when the displays were revealed. Anders had to remove the mannequins that were feeling each other up.” A bit of pink caught her eye, and she yanked Tony by the hand until their noses practically touched the glass. Only an edge of the object stuck out from the mannequin’s purse, but her gut had already announced its ruling. “That sure looks like a felt pig ear to me. Ivy didn’t have the only set.”
He stepped back, drawing her away from the window. “I know you want to believe she’s innocent but—”
“I gave up on her too easily before. I was wrong.” Guilt warmed her cheeks and jumbled her insides. “I won’t do that again.”
“Still, you can’t just discount the evidence against her. Let’s work the angle we’ve got here, and see what happens.”
An argument danced on the tip of her tongue, but a shadow in the window froze it. A sales clerk with pink hair waved at her from the other side of the window. The clerk had been a great source of gossip when she thought she was just talking to a fashionista. Would she still give up the goods now that Sylvie had been outed as the High-Heeled Wonder? Would anyone? Sylvie returned the girl’s wave, girding herself for the confrontation with Anders and the uncertainty of life ahead.
She had no idea what would happen to the High-Heeled Wonder after they found her stalker, but she loved the blog. She loved sharing the latest about designers ready to make a splash on the scene, the discussions with readers about the need for fashion to move from being aspirational to attainable, and, most of all, the sense of community the High-Heeled Wonder created. Fashion was for everyone, no matter size or price point. She wouldn’t give up on that. She hoped her readers wouldn’t either.
But if this asshole kept fucking with her site, her audience would abandon her. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to stop him, and expose him for what he was. Then surely, surely, her fans would understand she’d been set up?
She could only hope.
Of their own accord, her fingers intertwined with Tony’s, anchoring her. “Let’s go in, boyfriend.”