One-Click Buy: June 2009 Harlequin Blaze

by Tori Carrington

  “We shouldn’t serve our clients flat sparkling wine, now, should we?” Lia poured it into her coffee cup and returned to the office to wait until Zhin had arrived at work for the day.

  It was funny that Elizabeth insisted on the finest of everything except champagne. Then again, an excellent sparkling wine beat cheap champagne any day. Except, this wasn’t exactly an excellent sparkling wine. Either Elizabeth needed to upgrade or Lia shouldn’t be drinking champagne out of a coffee cup. Probably both.

  Lia idly searched Google for sparkling-wine ratings, and then Asti Spumante and Prosecco, the sweet Italian sparkling wines. Actually, she liked the idea of serving those. It seemed a hipper side of classy. And maybe they should invest in a cappuccino machine. Shopping for bridal and attendant gowns was an exhausting business emotionally and physically. Those beaded dresses could get heavy, and struggling into various girdlelike contraptions to support them gave a girl a workout. Elizabeth didn’t provide cookies and tea sandwiches just to be nice, she served them to keep customers from leaving the store and maybe deciding to go elsewhere to shop after having lunch or dinner.

  And speaking of…

  After a few more sips of champagne, Lia went in search of the shortbread cookies Elizabeth kept on hand.

  She heard rustling when she opened the cabinet in the kitchen. Rustling in a place where food was stored was never good. Lia closed the door and kicked it, hoping to scare away whatever she’d heard.

  She didn’t hear further sounds or find evidence that anything had been raiding the cookies when she looked inside. Okay, then.

  Lia grabbed a box of shortbreads shaped like wedding bells and munched as she checked out Clive Hamilton’s Web site. Any designer who knew a woman’s body the way he did might have other outfits she’d like to order.

  Hmm. The cookies were good and her cup was empty and Lia was thirsty. Virtuously, she drank a glass of water before filling her cup with more champagne. Leaning back in her chair, she propped her feet on the desk and the computer in her lap. That’s why they called it a laptop, right?

  Opening the chat interface, she typed, Zhin, are you there?

  Several moments went by. “Late? Ooh, Zhin, you lazy thing. Big night last night?” she murmured aloud.

  Elizabeth was impressed with Lia’s willingness to work overtime, but the truth was that over the months, she and Zhin had become friends and Lia enjoyed “chatting” with her. Maybe someday they’d even meet.

  “Zhiiiiiiiin. Where are you?” Lia spoke to herself as she typed. “Big order. Mucho importante. Major buckos. Lots o’ pink.”

  Lia snickered to herself. Zhin prided herself on her English and would incorporate any new word she heard, slang or not. Sometimes those incorporations made Lia laugh until she sobbed and then her typing deteriorated, which tipped Zhin off that she’d been set up. Zhin took her revenge in subtle ways. Like only being available to chat at 2:00 a.m. or something equally hideous.

  Hey you, Zhin typed. You’re losing your touch.

  Nice use of idiom, Lia noted.

  So you’ve got an expensive, big-deal wedding to dress? Zhin typed.

  Exactly, Lia typed back. So can we discuss it now and not in six hours? She added a smile emoticon.

  Exactly. Gimme the deets. Zhin was getting really good with American English.

  Twelve shades of pink from light to dark.

  Twelve? They’re making a killing.

  But Zhin wasn’t perfect yet. Lia stared at the screen and then got it. You mean “overkill.” Making a killing means making a lot of profit or acquiring much stuff. Didn’t it?

  You not going to profit?

  Yes, but…

  Lia stopped typing and reached sideways for her dictionary of slang and idiom. Much better to use a paperback than to get caught looking it up on the Internet. Zhin’s computer was networked to hers and once, instead of downloading orders, Zhin had downloaded the slang dictionary Web site Lia had opened. Mucho loss of face for Lia.

  Her fingers were pulling the book from the shelf when she heard rustling again. In Texas, rustling like that usually meant giant roaches—enormous flying things that lived in pine trees, unless they found their way inside classy bridal salons.

  She thumped the shelf with the book and the noise stopped. But only because it changed to a flap. Flapping sounds were much better than rustling sounds, bugwise. Flaps were more likely made by the cleaning crew next door than flying cockroaches.

  Her computer chimed the first part of “Shave and a Haircut,” signaling that Zhin was logging in to the order section.

  Hang on, Lia typed. I want to talk pinks first and verify that the order numbers match the shades we really want before you download the order.

  Okeydoke.

  These are the twelve pinks. Lia cut and pasted from the order and sent it to Zhin.

  Please arrange in order from lightest to darkest, Zhin requested.

  In order from light to dark we have Bridal Blush, Blush, Morning Frost—check that one, I think it looks too purply—Ballet Pink, Petal, Petal Blush, Carnation, Shy Rose, Lipstick, Deep Pink, Rose and Vivid Rose. And these are the numbers I have for them. With Zhin, it was best to do words and numbers separately.

  Can you get actual fabric samples and eyeball them all together? she asked Zhin when they’d finished verifying numbers and whether or not the shades were still manufactured.

  Eyeball=look?

  Yes, sorry. This is a serious order. If one of the shades is off, please say so.

  BBIAF.

  BBIAF? What was that? She chimed Zhin. Nothing. “BBIAF?” she muttered. “BBIAF. What does she think she means?” Lia chimed “Shave and a Haircut” again. And then again. And again. Zhin? Come on. BBIAF? One more chime.

  “Be back in a few!” a male voice called, startling Lia into jerking her hands from the laptop.

  She hit the edge of the slang dictionary, which smacked into her cup of nearly flat champagne, and ended up knocking both onto her keyboard. As a guitar strummed the “two bits” part of the jingle, the remnants of a moderately priced California sparkling wine fizzed and sizzled over her laptop. No, the wine didn’t sizzle—that would be her computer sizzling. In the throes of electronic death, the screen flashed and went dark.

  “No!”

  “I’m telling you it is. BBIAF is ‘be back in a few.’” The voice was male and deep and so loud, it sounded as though he was standing right beside her. He had to be in the fitting room of the tux shop next door.

  “I don’t care!” she shouted at him.

  Turning the keyboard upside down, Lia shook droplets of liquid from it and tried to reestablish the connection with Zhin.

  Nothing. The thing was dead. “No. No, no, no, no.”

  “I’m telling you, it is.”

  “I’m not talking to you, whoever you are. Go back to cleaning.” At this hour, he had to be part of the cleaning crew.

  “What happened?”

  “You scared me and I knocked my drink all over my keyboard while I was talking with China, thankyouverymuch.”

  “Bummer.”

  Bummer? “Oh, it’s a lot more than a bummer.” Who was she talking to, anyway? She knew the staff next door, but she didn’t recognize this voice.

  Where was he? Lia stood and walked toward the end dressing room. When she opened the door, she heard soft singing.

  I was talkin’ to China

  And drinkin’ a lot.

  But I spilled my drink

  And then I was not.

  “This isn’t funny!” She heard rustling. So that’s what it had been.

  “Who the hell are you? Where the hell are you?” She was swearing. She never swore. Never. Made it a point not to because Elizabeth fined them for coarse language, as she called it. But sometimes…sometimes it was called for. Like now.

  Lia heard strumming.

  I was sleepin’

  In Tuxedo Park

  It’s nice and quiet

  When it’s
dark

  But then I heard

  An angel swear

  And I wished

  I wasn’t here.

  Lia inhaled. And exhaled and inhaled again. “You do realize that I’m so angry right now that I am about to punch through this very thin wall and strangle you?”

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Well, you did!”

  “Sorry, darlin’.”

  In spite of her anger, Lia couldn’t help noticing that the rich bass voice vibrated right through the wall and into her middle. Truthfully, slightly south of her middle, but she wasn’t going to admit it.

  She didn’t like big bass voices that sounded like actors picked to play the Almighty in movies and commercial voice-overs.

  She didn’t like being called darlin’.

  And she didn’t like the way this voice made her strain to hear more and ignore her poor wine-soaked keyboard and—

  Zhin. Today’s orders!

  Lia yelped and scuttled back to the computer. She shook it upside down some more and then tried to reboot.

  Nothing.

  Okay. No time to panic. She’d just plug into one of the sales associates’ units.

  Did that work? Of course not. That would have been too easy.

  “Oh, come on!” She blew on the keyboard and then got one of the portable fans they used when the salon became too warm.

  Women experiencing high emotion were hot and she didn’t mean sexually. Not to mention most of the mothers were of the hot-flash age. Small fans were in all the dressing rooms. Sometimes more than one.

  After turning on the fan, Lia propped the laptop next to it. And stared. And waited. And hoped.

  She was going to have to call Zhin. It was far easier for Lia to place an international call than it was for Zhin to get permission to do so. It wasn’t easy to actually get Zhin, herself, to the phone, but it was possible. Sometimes. Depending on who answered the phone and how well they spoke English and how well Lia could garble out the Mandarin Chinese phrase Zhin had taught her and she’d written out phonetically.

  Yeah, the phrase she’d carefully stored in a flagged file—in her dead laptop.

  With a sick feeling, she saw the recharging units the staff had used to record their orders and remembered that she’d erased their contents after she’d downloaded to the laptop propped next to the fan. No backups on fancy, expensive paper. And she’d stopped Zhin from accessing the network because she’d wanted to discuss the pinks first.

  “I hate pink,” she said savagely.

  “What did that poor sweet color ever do to you?” came from the dressing room.

  “It’s not what it did, it’s what you did,” she shouted. “And stop listening. Don’t you have cleaning to do?”

  “Nope.”

  Lia marched over to the back dressing room and spoke next to the wall. “What are you doing in there?”

  “Playin’ my guitar.” He strummed as he spoke.

  Lia still didn’t recognize his voice. She would have remembered that voice. “Are you part of the cleaning crew?”

  “Nope.” He plinked out a phrase, repeated it, and then changed a couple of notes.

  “Who are you? Does anybody know you’re there?”

  He chuckled. “You do.” Strum, strum.

  She did not have time for this. “Give me a reason not to call the police.”

  “You’re not a poker player, are you? You should have told me you’d already called the police. Now I know I’ve got plenty of time to get away or, even worse, come over there and tie you up…empty the till…steal a few wedding gowns… I could get up to all sorts of mischief.”

  Lia felt no threat from him based on nothing more than his voice and, well, the fact that he’d used the word mischief. Not that she’d had any experience with hard-core criminals, but she couldn’t imagine them referring to illegal activity as “mischief.” “Come on. Who are you?”

  “You know Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy?”

  “He works here. I’m his cousin.”

  “Oh, you mean James.” James was a junior associate at Tuxedo Park.

  “Actually, I meant Jimmy. He hasn’t been James since he was christened.”

  Prissy James had a cousin with a voice like his? “That still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing at Tuxedo Park after hours.”

  “It’s quiet. I can work on my music here without anybody listening. Nobody’s bothered me…until tonight.”

  “I’m bothering you?” What nerve.

  “You’re pretty noisy over there.”

  “I—” She was going to burst a blood vessel. She was. Really. “I work here!”

  “Which one are you? What do you look like?”

  Oh, no. She did not have time to flirt through the dressing-room wall with a deep voice she knew only as “Jimmy’s Cousin.”

  “I look like a desperate assistant manager who just lost the day’s orders and is about to be fired.”

  “Would that be a blond assistant manager?”

  Men. “That would not.”

  “A brunette assistant manager?”

  Lia looked at her light brown hair in the mirror. She probably should streak it into something richer, but she didn’t want the bother of upkeep. “Probably not.” And on that note, she stepped out of the dressing room and into the office. He said something, but she ignored him.

  The computer was still dark, but the keyboard had dried. Zhin probably hadn’t noticed that they’d lost the connection since she was still gathering fabric samples.

  This was the pits. She’d have to call Elizabeth and tell her what happened.

  She sighed. Poor William. He had his hopes up, among other things, she’d bet, and he wasn’t getting lucky tonight. What a waste of a fabulous lace jacket.

  “Helloooooo,” a deep voice called.

  “Leave me alone,” Lia shouted from the desk.

  “I’m not gonna do that. You intrigue me.”

  Lia rolled her eyes and poked at the dead computer.

  “Tell me you’re not intrigued.” His voice sounded closer, as though he’d moved to the other side of the dressing room.

  “I’m not intrigued.”

  “If you weren’t mad at me would you be intrigued?”

  “No.”

  She heard something brush against the carpet and then, “Golden brown.”

  3

  AS THE DEEP VOICE sounded in the doorway behind her, Lia jumped and banged her funny bone on the edge of the desk.

  She rubbed her elbow as he sang, sans guitar, “I dream of Jeannie with the golden-brown hair… Your name wouldn’t happen to be Jeannie, would it?”

  He grinned down at her, a living, breathing, I’m-oh-so-charming-and-I-know-it country-lite rocker cliché.

  One by one, she mentally ticked off the type:

  Longish hair carefully cut in a bazillion layers so it would always look just a little shaggy so he wouldn’t be accused of trying too hard—check. Bonus check for sun streaks.

  Stubble—check.

  Devilish half smile—check.

  Optional one-sided dimple—check.

  A few lines crinkling around his eyes to demonstrate that he’d been around—check.

  Long nose and/or prominent nose that had once been broken or had a kink of some sort in it. The importance of an interesting nose on a man should never be underestimated. Perfect noses on men meant bland good looks. The noticeably imperfect nose meant intriguing good looks. Why was this? Lia had no idea, but he had a definite check in the nose department.

  Blue eyes—check. Eye color had never mattered to Lia, but blue eyes seemed to always come with this type.

  Ability to slouch attractively… She looked at him lounging against the door frame. An A+ slouch. Check.

  Button-down shirt with cuffs rolled up—check.

  Jeans carefully worn and faded in just the right places—she’d give him a check even though she hadn’t seen the rear view because any guy w
ho fit the type this exactly was bound to be wearing a pair that hugged his butt to his best advantage.

  Broken-in boots—check.

  Voice…here he didn’t get a check because the template voice was usually a tenor. When he spoke, this man’s surprisingly deep, lush bass pulsed all the way through her like the vibrate setting on a bed in a cheap motel.

  Oh, and the attitude. He definitely had the I-can-be-reformed-by-the-right-woman attitude, accompanied by the care-to-try? twist to his mouth. Double and triple check.

  As though she was interested in wasting time reforming anyone. He was not her type, except that she hadn’t quite found anyone who was her type, and in the meantime parts of her had decided that he would do and were reacting accordingly.

  Stupid parts.

  “You said you were the assistant manager,” he said. “That must make you Lia.”

  She braced herself against the unwanted vibrations from his voice and said nothing, although she’d never heard her name poured from a man’s mouth in quite that way.

  “Pretty name for a pretty girl,” he offered.

  “You can do better than that.”

  “I can.” He smiled his one-dimpled half smile. “But you haven’t convinced me to try.”

  And she wouldn’t. She had work to do. She had computers to dry and pinks to order and Chinese phrases to figure out.

  And make no mistake, she was aware that she was alone, at night, in the back office of a closed bridal salon with a strange man. Just because she wasn’t getting any weird vibes—the ones caused by his voice didn’t count—didn’t mean all was well. “That’s because I want you to leave, Jimmy’s Cousin.”

  “Call me J.C.”

  For Jimmy’s Cousin? Oh, please. “How did you get in here, J.C.?”

  Holding up his hand, he dangled a key. Both Tuxedo Park and the bridal salon had the same key, so that explained that. However… “How did you get the key?”

  “From Jimmy.”

  “And does Jimmy know you have his key?”

  His smile faded for the first time. Straightening, he said, “Yes.” And held her gaze until something in hers told him she believed him.

  Nodding to the computer propped next to the fan, he said, “Good luck with that,” and left.