If the Red Slipper Fits...

by Shirley Jump

  Martha spun back toward her desk. “I didn’t say you had to splash your private life all over the magazine,” she said. “But it would be nice if you got honest with the press. And with yourself. Maybe once you do, you’ll find some peace.”

  Peace. That didn’t exist for him. Maybe never would.

  “I’m fine.” But even as he said the words, he knew they were a lie. And knew Martha was right. He had been floundering at the head of this company for months, searching for the solutions that would turn it around, and he had yet to find them. Martha would tell him it was because he had yet to straighten out the mess of his personal life, so how could he expect to tame the corporate one?

  “You want to know what made your mother so successful?” Martha asked as she typed away on her keyboard.

  “She knew what she was doing.”

  Martha laughed. “No. She didn’t. I was here with her from day one, and she was as lost as a puppy on a cat farm. She made a million mistakes. But what she did that made her succeed was put her heart into this company. Into every design she created. That showed, and that’s what customers responded to. And she wasn’t afraid to ask other people for help once in a while.”

  “Martha, I’m putting everything I have into LL Designs.”

  “Everything but your heart.”

  Caleb shook his head, and his gaze went back to his mother’s portrait on the far wall. “That’s the one thing I can’t afford to put into this company.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Karl stood over Sarah’s desk, arms crossed over his chest, face an angry mask. “And why the hell are you wearing the exclusive, one-of-a-kind, not-supposed-to-be-seen-by-the-public Frederick K shoes?”

  “I have a great explanation,” Sarah said. Across the cubicle, Pedro raised an eyebrow in disagreement.

  “And that is?”

  Sarah scrambled for something to tell her boss. Something that wouldn’t make him explode. “Remember how you told me I could write a story on the shoes?” she said, rising out of her seat to make her point. “Well, I thought I could work on it at home—” A partial lie. “—so I took them home the other day. And, uh, my sister accidentally threw one out the window.”

  “Your sister accidentally threw a Frederick K stiletto out the window?” Karl’s brows peaked in twin triangles. “Did she mistake it for bird food?”

  “It all worked out, though, because someone found the shoe.”

  “Don’t tell me. Cinderella? One of the seven dwarves?”

  “Caleb Lewis.”

  The name hung in the air for a long time. Karl’s scowl dropped off his face, and then a predatory smile darted across his lean, sharp features. “Oh, really? Well, isn’t that interesting?”

  She could see Karl formulating the headlines in his mind already. Undoubtedly, every mental word was geared toward shedding the worst possible light on Caleb Lewis—the one that also sold the most issues. “And as soon as I found out, I retrieved the shoe.” She left off everything that had happened in between. And certainly didn’t talk about the kiss they had shared this afternoon.

  That insane, heady, amazing kiss.

  One she’d been unable to forget—and unable to come to terms with. What had she been thinking?

  She hadn’t been. She’d let the shoes overpower her common sense. That was all. Nothing more.

  Uh-huh. Then why was she still thinking about kissing Caleb Lewis? And wishing that kiss had never ended?

  Karl pointed at her feet. “None of that explains why you are wearing them now.”

  She’d forgotten her regular shoes back in Caleb’s office but telling Karl that meant explaining everything that had happened between her and Caleb. She’d run out of there so fast, she hadn’t realized that she was still wearing the designer stilettos. “I, uh, wanted to write an article on how the shoes make a woman feel. How they can transform her personality.”

  Karl opened his mouth as if he was going to scream at her. Then he thought a second, and nodded twice. “I like that idea. It’s different.”

  “Good.” Sarah hoped her voice didn’t betray her relief that Karl had agreed with her.

  “And you…you’re a good candidate for that kind of transformation thing.”

  “Because I’m not a supermodel?”

  “Because you’re a regular woman.” He gave her shoulder a pat. “The kind a guy could have a beer with.”

  Wow. Rousing endorsement for her femininity. If anything could make her feel less like a supermodel, that was it. Except, with the shoes on her feet, Sarah realized Karl’s words didn’t pack any ego punch. “Gee, thanks, Karl.”

  “Run with that idea, then come talk to me. Might make a good feature,” Karl said, and started to leave.

  He hadn’t promised her the article. She hadn’t moved any further away from the gossip pages nor any closer to the main section of the magazine. She could see her best opportunity for the career she wanted stepping away the farther away Karl got. If he wasn’t going to let her run with the shoes idea, then she’d just have to hit him with another one until he said yes. “I also wanted to do a piece on Caleb Lewis and LL Designs. In fact, I’ve been working on it all week while you’ve been out. He’s really doing some amazing things over there.”

  “That man is practically a one-person gossip machine.” Karl turned back, chuckling. “What’s our favorite playboy up to now?”

  Kissing the reporter who ruined his reputation? Turning my world inside-out and my thoughts into a revolving door of his mouth on mine?

  “I meant a serious piece. One that would go into Smart Fashion, not the tabloid,” Sarah said. “Caleb is taking the company in new directions and really revitalizing it. Readers love that kind of climb-back-to-success story.”

  Karl chewed on his lower lip. “Maybe. What I’d like is the scoop on Lenora. Where is she while her company is in trouble? Living it up in the South of France? That’s the story we should be doing. Just credit some vague ‘source,’ or ‘close friend’ saying she’s partying like a rock star while her son runs the company into the ground.”

  Sarah forced herself not to roll her eyes at her boss’s insensitivity. “The real story is what Caleb’s doing with the company this year, Karl,” she said. “He’s got some fabulous ideas for a new shoe line and—”

  “Fine. I’ll get Laura on it.”

  Laura. The magazine’s main features writer, who covered virtually everything in the fashion industry. And whose job Sarah had wanted for years. “Karl, I want to write it.”

  “You?” His gaze roamed over her. Assessing. Calculating. He rubbed his jaw. “All right. I’ll let you have this one. But you screw it up—”

  “No. I want more. I want both stories.” A new kind of strength rose inside her. Not just because of the shoes, but because in the last few days, she’d found a new confidence in herself. In the job she knew she could do with these articles. “I want to do the one on the shoes, too. And after I prove myself to you with these—and I will—I want to be transferred to the main magazine.”

  “Moxie. I like that.” Karl nodded. “You got it, Sarah. But you better do a damned good job, because our fall issue is our biggest seller. The last thing I need is crap on the pages.”

  “You can count on me.”

  As Karl walked away, Pedro sent Sarah a thumbs-up and a whispered, “You go, girl.” The thrill of victory peaked inside her. She’d done it. Now all she had to do was live up to everyone’s expectations—

  And hope that kissing Caleb Lewis hadn’t made him change his mind about working with her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CALEB dropped a blank notepad on Sarah’s desk, following the wide white pad with a trio of colored pencils. “I want your input.”

  She glanced up, surprised to see him. Especially after how they had left things in his office the day before. She’d spent that night tossing and turning, replaying the kiss again and again. The way his lips had claimed hers, sent a charge of desire roaring through
her body. She was fooling herself if she thought a pair of stilettos was the sole reason she had kissed Caleb Lewis.

  She had wanted him for as long as she could remember. However, wanting—and the wisdom of having—were two very different things.

  Now he was in her cubicle, sending her tossing and turning in a whole other way.

  “My input? On what?” she asked, deciding it was better to steer the course away from the very personal incidents of the other afternoon.

  “I want to know what you think.” He dropped into the visitor’s chair beside her. His tie was loosened, the top button of his shirt undone. He looked relaxed and sexy, as if he could put his feet up beside her at the end of a long day, share a glass of wine and a long conversation.

  “Oh. Okay.” She tried not to let disappointment trickle into her voice. The last thing she wanted Caleb Lewis to know was that she had been affected by that kiss. Or that she was upset that he had come all the way over to her office—

  For work. Not to see her.

  He leaned forward, propping an elbow on the arm of the chair. “If you had to describe LL Designs—the company my mother headed, not the one it is now—in three words, what would you say?”

  Sarah gnawed on the end of her pen while she thought for a moment. “Adventurous. Spirited. Jeweled.”

  “Jeweled? You mean with too many rhinestones?”

  She laughed. “No. I meant that when a woman put on an LL Designs dress, she felt like a diamond. Or a ruby. Or an emerald. Unique and beautiful.”

  He shook his head and let out a gust. “That’s brilliant. If I had had to describe my mother’s designs, I would have said the same thing. Here I am, a former director of marketing, not thinking with my marketing brain. I’ve been too busy trying to stem the bleeding to think ahead.”

  “Well, you’ve faced a lot of challenges in the past year. But you’re doing the shoe collection, right? That should be different, something exciting.”

  He shook his head, not ready to agree. “What did you call our designs? Lacking in originality, unfocused? You were right. Absolutely right. And if I don’t start thinking in a new direction, everything for the spring collection and the shoe launch will have the same problem. And where will that get me? Nowhere but backwards.” He flipped out his cell phone and punched in a few numbers. “Martha, halt production on the spring collection and set up a meeting with the design staff at one. Tell them I want them to think of ideas that are…” His gaze met Sarah’s. “Adventurous. Spirited. Jeweled.” Then he hung up.

  Sarah’s jaw dropped. “You’re seriously scrapping the entire spring collection based on something I said?”

  “It’s the smart thing to do. If I release what I have on tap right now, I’ll end up exactly where I was before. And that’s not progress.”

  Sarah sat back and smiled at him. This was not the Caleb Lewis she had expected. In fact, over the last week, he had surprised her over and over again. He was proving himself to be open to input, to change, to risk. “Well, if I didn’t know better, I’d say Lenora was back. That’s exactly the kind of thing your mother was famous for doing.”

  “And exactly the kind of thing that threw the company into a panic more than once. It’s also something I should have done a long time ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I’ve been blind. To what this company needs, to what I should be doing.” His gaze drifted to some far-off spot, and she wondered what was going through his mind. “To the choices I need to make.”

  She heard something in his voice that told her those choices had little to do with the company. “What do you mean?”

  He opened his mouth as if he was going to say more, then shut it again. Caleb drew himself up, and seemed to shrug off the heavy cloud hanging over him. “Nothing.”

  The reporter in her raised its suspicious head. He was hiding something. She’d thought they had come far enough along in their relationship—this was a relationship, right? After those kisses?—that he wouldn’t feel compelled to hold back if she asked him a question. Plus, he’d been honest about the company, about his childhood, about the struggles with this year’s collection. He’d told her dozens of things.

  Why not whatever this was?

  Her journalistic instincts nudged at her. Told her to search for the truth, to find the answers that Caleb wasn’t giving her.

  Before she could ask him anything more, he spoke. “If I’m starting from scratch this close to Fashion Week, I’m going to need some help.”

  Sarah was busy writing a few notes about this change in direction with LL Designs, and didn’t look up at him. “I’d say so. You’re going to be busy.”

  “I meant…I’m going to need you, Sarah Griffin.”

  “Me?”

  Caleb nodded. “You’re our target audience. And you have the best analysis of LL Designs that I’ve heard in a long time.”

  “But—”

  Caleb leaned over, and his hand covered hers. Her words sputtered to a stop. “I need you. Please help.”

  I need you.

  Those three words worked like a magic spell. They were the words Sarah Griffin had never been able to resist. Coupled with Caleb’s deep blue eyes, they made saying no not even a possibility. Still, she made an attempt. “I’m supposed to be writing the story.”

  A smile curved across his face, and everything inside Sarah quivered with desire. To kiss him again. To have him take her in his arms again, and crush her to him. “This time, you’re part of the story.” Caleb tapped at the blank pad of paper he’d dropped on her desk. “I know you love shoes. And I know you know a lot about them—just from working here, and from the snippets of conversation I’ve heard between you and the shop owners in the last few days. You’ve impressed me, Sarah.”

  “That’s the last thing I ever expected to hear you say about me.”

  “Ditto.” He grinned. “You are a good reporter. You ask incisive questions, you listen, you observe, and you put all of that together and make informed judgments. I have no doubt that the story you’re doing on the company will be the best one ever written.”

  The warmth of his praise filled her. All these years, she had worked at the tabloid, sure she could be something better, wanting to be something more, but never having the opportunity to prove her skills. And here, the one man she had vilified on the pages of Behind the Scenes was telling her he thought she wasn’t just good, but great. She wanted to hug him.

  Instead she picked up the pad of paper. “Then what is this about?” She fingered the blank pages.

  “I think you’re smart on more than one kind of paper. I’d like to see if you could…design.”

  “Design?” She shook her head and moved back in her seat. “Caleb, I don’t have any experience in that area. I’m a writer, not an artist.”

  “You’re a creative person. Sometimes that’s enough.” He pushed the notepaper closer to her. “I’ve seen your shoe collection. I know you have a passion for this. Just draw what your ideal pair would be.”

  Pedro popped his head over the cubicle wall, eavesdropping without shame. “Did someone say shoes?”

  “Let’s go somewhere else to talk about this,” she said, gathering the paper and pencils and getting to her feet. The last thing she needed was Karl walking in and finding her collaborating with Caleb Lewis. Or Pedro asking questions that Sarah didn’t have answers for.

  They ended up at a coffee shop a block down the street, huddled in a corner booth. Sarah had expected Caleb to sit across from her, but he slid in beside her, his hip against hers, his thigh running down her jean-clad one. Heat ignited along the connection, rushing through her veins. The waitress dropped off coffee but Sarah barely noticed. Her every breath centered around Caleb’s nearness. Her mind replayed that kiss like a stuck videotape. She watched his mouth move and fantasized about tasting him again, and again.

  Oh, this was not good.

  “Where do I start?” she asked, dropping her gaze to the bla
nk pages. “I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what makes you think I can create anything.”

  Caleb picked up a second pencil. His hand skated near hers. “Just draw. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy. An idea, really, is all I’m looking for.”

  She did as he said, and her first attempts were awful. Stilted, rough approximations of footwear that no one would wear. “This is so not my forte.”

  Caleb’s hand covered hers, and Sarah’s breath caught. “Let yourself go,” he said quietly. “Think with your heart, not your mind.”

  With him right there, his touch still lingering on her skin, she could barely think at all. But she closed her eyes, and let her brain disconnect from her gut, then opened her eyes again and began to sketch. The drawing wasn’t good—she was no Picasso, after all—but the shoe that emerged from beneath the lines of the black pencil wasn’t bad.

  Caleb smiled. “I like that. I like the bow at the top of strap. And how you echoed that detail on the heel. What kind of fabric do you see this in?”

  “Satin?” She paused, then the hesitation left her as she pictured the design on her feet, the finishing touch to a slightly belled dress in a deep jewel tone. “Definitely satin.”

  “I agree. This is a brilliant start.” He slid out of the booth, taking her drawing with him, but leaving the rest of the paper and pencils. “I have to get back to work, but I’d like to take this with me.”

  “You’re not serious. That was just an idea—”

  “A good one. I want to see what the guys think.”

  “Caleb, I really don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be involved in your business. It’s a conflict of interest.” She paused. “I think.”

  “I think—” He leaned in closer and half of her wanted him to kiss her again. “—that this is the perfect opportunity for you to add that little extra something to your story. Not only did you see the production process from start to finish but you were part of it yourself. That creates an unforgettable story.”