Yes, she replied. You owe me.
Within moments he texted back: What do you want?
A kiss was the first thing that popped into her head. A kiss like the one he’d given her in a downtown parking lot. Like the one she’d wanted him to give her at the pink tea as he’d looked across their hands.
Before she could answer he texted: I have a few suggestions.
She thought of a punishment commensurate with his crime. Something beneficial for her, yet miserable for him at the same time:
Pink tea at Bay View Retirement Home.
Heels for Meals marathon.
Gettin’ Hitched reunion.
It took him an hour to return her text, and she didn’t even like to think about how many times she’d checked before he wrote:
Probably not.
Maybe.
Give it up.
When he learned that he’d have to run in a pair of pumps, she felt certain he’d choose a tea with seniors. She smiled at the memory of Sean drinking from a teacup and his bewilderment at the petits fours and cucumber sandwiches. She wasn’t certain why her father and Sean had crashed the tea, but it had been interesting to watch them watch each other. It was like a battle of testosterone. A game of quien es mas macho surrounded by pink frills and delicate china. She wasn’t sure of a winner, though.
At five, she made chicken and spinach Cordon Bleu, and they sat down to dinner at six.
“I don’t drink,” Geraldine said as Lexie set two wineglasses on the table, but when Lexie popped the cork of a chardonnay perfectly paired with the meal, she changed her mind. “Well, maybe just a sip. Sean will never go hungry with you around cooking for him. I can see why he kidnapped you away from Pete.”
Lexie wasn’t sure if that was a compliment, but it did make her feel guilty. She hadn’t been kidnapped and she was only going to be “around” another month.
By the time dinner was over, Geraldine’s plate was cleaned, the bottle was empty, and the woman was feeling no pain, for a change.
“I used to dance,” she told Lexie as they did the dishes together. “My mother took me to lessons every Wednesday. I could have been really good if I’d stuck at it.”
“Why’d you quit?” Lexie asked as she loaded the plates.
“Off to other things, I suppose. I’d get bored with piano or ballet or painting and I’d take up something else.” She handed Lexie a mixing bowl. “I was the only girl and very spoiled. I loved it. I almost died when I was born, and my mother and father carried me around in a shoebox filled with satin. They were so afraid I’d break.” As Lexie hand-washed the wineglasses, she kept quiet and let Geraldine talk. Something she had no problem doing. The more Geraldine talked, the more Lexie gathered that Geraldine had been the center of her family’s universe. Which made sense, she supposed.
“My two older brothers are deceased now, but my brother Abe practically raised Sean. He was such an unusual child.”
Lexie’s ears perked up and she reached for a dish towel. Ever since he’d kissed her hand and looked into her eyes at the pink tea, she found herself thinking about him at odd and random times of the day. She knew a bit more than she had the night she’d had sex with him in the Canadian motel, which wasn’t saying much since she hadn’t even known his real name, but when she’d looked at him across their entwined hands, something happened. Something changed. Her world tipped and she’d caught her breath waiting for it to right itself again.
“I watched you at your store today. Ordering those men around and telling them what you wanted done. You’re a smart girl.”
Lexie was still, waiting. “Thank you.”
“Pretty, too.”
“Again, thank you.”
“You’re not at all dusty in the attic like Sean said.”
“Excuse me?” She guessed she didn’t have to wait any longer. Sean was still a jerk. “He said what?”
“That your attic is dusty.” Geraldine folded her arms across her skinny chest and thought she should further explain, “You know, not very bright. Special. Like special-needs special.”
“Really?”
Sean didn’t think she was smart. That just showed he didn’t know her at all. “When did he say that?”
“Sandspit.” She looked at Lexie and shrugged. “I think he just said that so I wouldn’t ask lots of questions.”
“I noticed he doesn’t like to answer.” She set the glasses on the counter, then walked down the hall to the laundry room. She guessed she did know more about him than she’d thought. He didn’t like questions and he thought she was stupid. She was going to remind herself of that the next time her world felt all tippy.
“It’s the way he was raised,” Geraldine said from the doorway. “Kids would ask him about me and he’d get embarrassed.”
Lexie turned with a clean T-shirt in one hand.
“After a while he quit bringin’ kids around.”
There had been a time in her life when her world had changed so dramatically, she hadn’t wanted to talk about it, either. When old friends and new friends asked questions that she didn’t want to answer. That hadn’t made her a secretive liar, though. Well, maybe she had gone through a fibbing period.
“He was alone most of the time and kept to himself. He wouldn’t tell me when there were other kids’ birthdays or school plays or nothing.” Geraldine shook her head. “So we went to live with my brother Abe ’cause I thought he needed a man’s influence. I meant for us to stay for one summer, but Sean didn’t leave until he was eighteen and went off to play hockey in Calgary. I missed him but was too sick to follow.”
Sean probably hadn’t wept buckets about that, she thought as she folded the shirt and put it in a basket.
“He avoids any kind of drama. Although I swear he’s paranoid about the smallest things sometimes.”
No shit storms. No drama. No questions. His refusal to take part in the Gettin’ Hitched reunion made perfect sense. That was going to be a shit storm of shit storms, and she wasn’t looking forward to it.
Shortly after Lexie finished folding clothes, Geraldine went to bed. Lexie stayed up making outlines and lists and possible Gettin’ Hitched scenarios. She fell asleep grumpy and got up cranky. Her eyes were hardly open a crack when she walked into her kitchen to the sight of Geraldine and the sound of her sputtering Keurig.
“What are we doing today?” Geraldine asked, all bright-eyed and happy.
“I have to pick up dog food.” Lexie scrubbed her eyes and she yawned. “It’s my donation day at the pet rescue downtown. I have to go to PetSmart, fill up the back of my car with food, and drop it off at the shelter where I adopted Yum Yum.” She yawned again and added, “It’s sad and I wish there was more I could do to help.”
“I have bursitis in my left shoulder, but I can lift with my right arm.”
Through the slits in her scratchy eyes, Lexie looked across at Sean’s mother and her flat bed head. At least the woman was off the couch. “I didn’t think you liked animals.”
Her bathrobe hung off the one skinny shoulder and she shrugged. “Maybe I like ’em. Last night, your little dog curled up next to my neck like a little heating pad and my fibromyalgia pain went right away.”
That’s where Yum Yum had disappeared. She should have guessed.
Geraldine’s nose wrinkled. “She kinda stinks though.”
“Just when she sweats.”
“I can’t help with only the one arm, though.”
Lexie had been kind of hoping to get a break from Geraldine. No such luck. Three hours later, and weighted down with hundreds of pounds of dry food, Lexie pulled to the back of the shelter and reversed to the door. Geraldine wore a shoulder sling to make sure no one accidentally mistook her for an able-bodied worker, and she instantly disappeared as the big bags of food were unloaded. Lexie didn’t need the help or want to be responsible for Geraldine accidentally contracting a rare and unidentifiable illness.
As she wheeled the last bag inside, she foun
d Geraldine sitting in a chair by one of the grooming stations, Buddy the three-legged bichon frise curled up in her lap. Two-year-old Buddy had been found on the 405, his right front leg so mangled there had been no choice but to amputate. Lexie had sponsored his care and rehab, and he was well enough now to find a special home.
“She’s soft.” Geraldine’s free hand stroked his fur.
They made quite the picture. A disabled dog and a hypochondriac. “His name is Buddy.” No one knew his real name, but everyone at the shelter had started calling him that because he got along so well with other dogs.
“He’s hot with all that hair.”
“That’s because he has a dense coat and doesn’t shed much, like a poodle. He’s hypoallergenic and . . .” He needed a more subdued family where he didn’t have to run around a lot. “Buddy is a special-needs dog.” Maybe Geraldine could benefit from thinking about something other than herself all the time. Lexie knelt on one knee beside the chair. “He’s a sweet boy and never smells when he sweats.” She smiled and told a little fib. “He’s a therapy dog. In training.”
“How about that.”
Lexie sat on a love seat made from a claw-foot bathtub. Now cut in half, it was tricked out in a coat of red paint and outfitted with tuck-and-roll leopard cushions. The rest of the Gettin’ Hitched set had been shipped to the Fairmont, and the ballroom now resembled the inside of a barn, complete with the tractor they’d all climbed down from on the first episode. A small studio audience sat on bleachers behind the cameras, blacked out of sight from the stage.
The show had been taping for several segments before Lexie was brought out and shown her place on the love seat. She wore a cobalt turtleneck dress that clung to her like a second skin and blue suede heels. The perfect touch of modest and sexy. Of class and in-your-face sensuality.
Across the stage, the more memorable members of the cast sat on hay bales while the hostess of the show, Jemma Monaco from The Young and the Restless, sat on a leather buggy seat on Lexie’s left. The wheelbarrow chair where Pete sat while Lexie had been backstage was empty. For now. Lexie would have to face him on camera, but the hitchin’ brides wanted a piece of her first.
“Welcome Lexie to the show,” hostess Jemma Monaco greeted after the light on the main camera turned green. The audience alternately booed and cheered, but Lexie couldn’t see them so they were easy to ignore.
“Thank you.”
“Have you brought the infamous Yum Yum with you?”
Yum Yum was curled into Lexie’s lap and shook from nerves. “Yes. She’s a little shy.” Lexie pulled one side of her long hair behind her shoulder and ran a soothing palm down her dog’s back. “She’ll warm up in a few minutes.” She looked across the stage at the ten or so of the hitchin’ brides poised on bales of hay. They all looked cleaned up and polished for the show. They wore stilettos, short skirts, and phony smiles with nasty intentions. Lexie almost felt bad that they had to have itchy hay up their butts. Almost but not quite. During the first segments, she’d sat in her dressing room while Pete and the women had really piled on the insults.
“What is your dog wearing?” The tone of Jemma’s voice implied that she might not be on board with animal couture.
“A blue dress and white pinafore from my Alice in Wonderglam collection.” The mumblings from the hay bales across the set made her smile. “She loves the little bow in her hair,” she said, and adjusted the ribbon on top of her dog’s head. “It’s sold out online.” Which was thankfully true. “We’re taking preorders and hope it will be back in stock for the grand opening of my Bellevue store in two weeks. We’d love to have everyone stop in.”
“I don’t think the other girls will hang around.” Jemma turned her legs to one side, attempting to figure out her best angles beneath the studio lighting. “I’m sure you’ve been listening to what the other girls had to say.”
“Yes. I heard them.”
“Do you have a response?”
Lexie gave them the smile she’d always reserved for church. The I’m-bursting-with-God’s-holy-love smile. “I understand they’re upset. We all went on the show to find love, and rejection is never easy. Some people strike out at others instead of dealing constructively with their own disappointment.”
“You shouldn’t have been allowed on the show,” Davina from Scottsdale said. “You obviously weren’t there to find love like the rest of us.”
Lexie turned up her smile instead of rolling her eyes. Davina was an actress and had figured reality television would make her a star. A chance that was as fat as her head. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“God, I’d like to smack that smile off your face,” Davina added, followed by a smattering of applause that Lexie couldn’t ignore.
“No one is getting up from their seats,” Jemma warned. “Violence is never the answer.”
Lexie straightened her little dog’s pinafore. “Yum Yum is a pacifist. So am I.”
“You’re a sneaky liar!” Mandy from Wooster pointed at her.
“You think you’re better than all of us,” Desiree from Jersey said, triggering full-on tirades from the other girls on the set.
“You spent most of your time on the pig phone.”
“You stole my lip chap!” Whitney from Paducah claimed, and the audience howled with laughter.
Oh God, not Lip Chap–Gate, again. Whitney’s Chap Stick had gone missing around week three and she’d turned it into a huge ordeal. As if it was worth a million dollars instead of costing around two bucks.
“You told Jody I walk like a poodle. What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, it—” Lexie tried to explain but was interrupted by Jenny from Salem, who pointed at her. “You tripped me in the chicken-and-egg contest. That’s the only reason you won.” Jenny scooted to the edge of the bale. “I should have gone on that hayride date with Cindy Lee and Pete. Not you.”
“I didn’t trip you.” That wasn’t an outright fib. She just hadn’t tried to trip her. “Your running in five-inch wedges through a chicken coop tripped you up.”
“Speaking of the chicken coop challenge, you all had your share of trips and falls.” Jemma pointed at a big overhead television. “Let’s take a look.”
On the screen ran a montage of various challenges, starting with the pig chase and ending with Lexie winning the obstacle course, pumping her fist in the air and hotdogging the hell out of it. “Booya, suckers!” she said into the camera as the other girls struggled to get over the last wall.
The lights came up, and Lexie shrugged. “Perhaps I am guilty of excessive celebration.”
“Lexie and Pete will come face to face for the first time since the ring ceremony.” Jemma smiled into the camera. “We’ll be right back.”
A red light signaled the commercial break, and the makeup artist appeared to reapply Lexie’s lipstick. The cast gave her evil looks as they vacated the hay bales, and Pete took the wheelbarrow chair on Jemma’s left. Lexie glanced at his face but couldn’t tell if he was going to play the part of the wounded groom or get real.
“We’re back with Pete Dalton. Welcome back, Pete. How does it feel seeing Lexie again?”
This was the moment where he either manned up or threw her under the bus again. “You look nice,” he said.
“Thank you. You look good, Pete,” she said, which was true. Blond streaks in his hair made him look like a surfer.
“What do you feel now that you see Pete again?”
Relief. Joy. A bit of guilt. “That we experienced something unique together, but it didn’t work out.”
“Did you ever think you were in love with Pete?”
“At the time, yes. I was caught up in the show.” She put a hand on her chest, then motioned toward Pete. “I think we were all caught up in it, but once I went back to my real life, reality hit me and I realized that it takes more than ten weeks, and half that many dates, to know a person well enough to fall in love. Let alone get married.”
“What d
o you have to say to that, Pete?”
“My heart was involved.”
He was all tanned and healthy from his show in the Acapulco sun, where he got to pimp a whole new batch of women.
“It hurts,” he added.
If Lexie believed him for one minute she might feel bad, but they both knew the only thing she’d hurt was his pride. “I’ve apologized to Pete repeatedly. I know that an apology doesn’t assuage his pain, but I am very sorry.” There, that sounded sincere. And it was—mostly.
“I was there to find my soul mate,” he said. “All Lexie wanted was her face on television.” A smattering of applause broke out from behind the cameras.
That was true, but no truer for her than for any of the rest of them. Even Pete.
“You were on the rebound from your hockey player and you used me to get back at him. As soon as he showed up again, you went running back to him.”
“It wasn’t quite like that.” In fact, it was nothing like that. “I should have handled things differently. I wish I had.”
“Pete mentioned something that I wanted to get into with you, Lexie.” Jemma turned to her and said, “You told a Seattle newspaper that Sean Knox got a note to you moments before you were to walk down the aisle with Pete. If Sean hadn’t sent you the message, would you have married Pete?”
That was easy, since the message was a lie. “No. I knew I couldn’t go through with it before Sean contacted me,” she confessed, which earned her a wall of boos from the audience.
“Quiet down.” Jemma held up one hand. “Tell us where you went when you left the Fairmont.”
Yum Yum shifted in Lexie’s lap, and she ran a soothing hand over her dog as she repeated the story she and Sean had told the Seattle Times. When she was through, Pete looked ready to explode, and Jemma said, “We’ll be right back.”
The makeup artist appeared again and this time brushed Lexie’s hair as well as retouching her lips. As the woman worked, Pete’s wounded-guy veneer slipped and he laughed and joked with some of the crew. She had two more segments to go before the reunion was over. Two more segments that were bound to be worse than the previous segments combined. The cast only had twenty minutes to get in their last minutes of fame. They all knew the most outrageous behavior would be showed on commercial clips to hype the show, and she braced herself for the inevitable.
The Art of Running in Heels Page 19