Masters for Hire

by Ginger Voight

  I bit back yet another sigh. Clearly he wasn’t going to take the hint. “I thought we could use some alone time. We’re always so busy with the store, with Father, with the wedding.”

  He nodded before he launched right into business talk. “Speaking of the store, that new shoe designer you found debuted over the weekend. You were right about him. We sold out and went into back order by Saturday afternoon.”

  My eyes hardened as I stared at him. Really? This was what he wanted to talk about when I looked sexier than I had ever looked in my entire life? I grabbed my glass of wine and guzzled it dry. “It’s always good to be right,” I mumbled.

  “You’re right more than you know,” he assured as he dove into his mound of Chinese food with a pair of chopsticks. “You really should trust yourself more.”

  “I trust myself plenty,” I shot back. “It’s usually Father I have to convince.”

  “He’s just conventional, you know that. With dying malls and impersonal online shopping, he just likes that Cabot’s offers a more nostalgic shopping experience. Wait till we’re done with the overhaul of the store downtown,” he said, referring to the reconstruction of the elegant flagship store originally built in 1941. “He’ll probably bring back doormen and elevator operators.”

  I fought not to roll my eyes. I breathed, ate and slept Cabot’s twenty-four hours a day. Frankly, I was over it. “I tell you what. Let’s talk about something other than work.”

  His eyes met mine. “What do you want to talk about?”

  I practically gaped at him. “You could start with, ‘Gee, CC. You look amazing tonight.’”

  “Well, I mean, of course,” he stumbled and stammered, “I’m just a little thrown off, I guess. You look so different.”

  “Good different, or bad different?”

  “Just… different?” he offered with a shrug.

  I poured glass number two. “Well, I feel different. I’ve never had the kind of shopping experience I had today at Cabot’s. And won’t, until Father expands the brand to include extended sizes.”

  Oliver rolled his eyes and reached for his own glass. “CC.”

  “What? I’m not allowed to feel sexy and pampered and valued, just because someone somewhere decided a size-16 is a ‘plus’ size and we’re too good to carry it?”

  “You know that’s not it.”

  “Then what is it, Oliver?”

  He emptied his glass before he said, “It’s about not muddying the brand. Certain timeless styles are desired by discerning shoppers, and that’s all. And we carry size-16, by the way. We carry sizes all the way up to 24.”

  “Yeah, if you want a muumuu. That’s the only thing guaranteed to fit some of our larger customers. And you know what we’re doing when we tell them that’s the best we can do? We’re telling them that’s the best we will do, because they’re not worth ‘muddying’ the brand.” I drained the glass and reached for more. “Today was the best day shopping that I’ve ever had. I had a knowledgeable sales girl who helped me navigate sizes and trends, one who made me feel, and look, like a rock star. And guess what? That store was jam-packed. That could be Cabot’s.”

  He snickered to himself. “Seriously, CC? You really want a barrage of tattooed, alternative hipsters crowding the floor?”

  “Why not? Their money spends just like everyone else’s.”

  By this point, he was as frustrated as I was. “Because the Cabot’s customer has a higher expectation of us. We’re talking about affluent women who are educated, who have careers and families and juggle everything with effortless style as a modern woman who ‘has it all.’”

  I rolled my eyes as he regurgitated one of our most popular commercial taglines. “Everything but a comfortable bra or a formal dress that actually fits.”

  “Like your father says. You don’t dress down if you want to sell up.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears as I stared at him. I gestured to my outfit, one that had made me feel like a superstar the minute I put it on. “Is this dressing down?”

  He sighed as he looked me over again. “If it isn’t dressing down, why did you want to have dinner at home?”

  I struggled to my feet. “I wanted to have dinner at home because I wanted to have more than dinner, you idiot.” I gathered my plate and glass and stomped to the kitchen. He was close behind.

  “What is wrong with you lately, CC? It seems like nothing makes you happy anymore.”

  “Ding, ding, ding!” I exclaimed. “We have a winner! Johnny, tell him what he’s won.”

  He leaned against the island countertop. “So what do you want?”

  I twirled around to face him. “I want to be able to shop at my store and find clothes I like, to feel important and valued, like I matter. Like I count. I want my father to hear me when I tell him how important that is, not just for me but for all the customers we’re losing because we think they’re somehow beneath us. I want a boyfriend who, when I show up in a traffic-stopping dress, unwraps me like a present instead of talks my head off about business. Jesus!”

  “This is about Lucy, isn’t it?” he asked. My head nearly exploded.

  “No! It’s not about Lucy! It’s about me, Oliver! Me! I matter! I’m a full, three-dimensional person, with thoughts and ideas and opinions. I’m more than Lucy’s sidekick. I’m more than Charles Cabot’s only daughter. I’m more than just some convenient date for you so that you don’t have to eat alone.”

  He had the nerve to look offended. “Is that really what you think?”

  “You tell me. If my last name wasn’t Cabot, would you even be here right now?”

  “Wow. You’re some piece of work, you know that? You live in a multi-million-dollar home. You have a doting dad, a prestigious job and more money than you could ever spend. But because you can’t get this one thing you want, you act just like a child, finding a problem with everything and everyone just because we don’t agree with you.”

  Well, at least he owned that. “So you’re saying that as long as you are vice president, you’re going to block anything I do bringing extended sizes and younger styles to the store.”

  “Yes,” he finally admitted.

  I placed one hand on my hip as I stared at him. “Why?”

  His glance traveled over me again, and I could tell that no matter how good I thought I looked, he didn’t care for the new me at all. “Because you look like a cheap prostitute, that’s why.”

  Though my blood boiled, I gritted my teeth to contain myself. “Get out.”

  “You forced me to say it, CC. I tried to be nice.”

  “Nice,” I repeated with a humorless laugh. “I just realized that’s about the worst word in the English language. Somehow or another it’s always the word used to excuse behavior that really hurts people. ‘I didn’t tell you what I really thought because I wanted to be ‘nice.’’ Let me tell you something, Oliver. Nice is not having that thought in the first fucking place.”

  “CC…,” he started, but I wouldn’t let him finish. I was done.

  “But thanks for dinner. It was a heaping helping of perspective I desperately needed. You can show yourself out,” I gritted between clenched teeth as I stalked past him towards the sanctity of my bedroom.

  It’d be a cold day in hell before he was allowed in there again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Though I did it alone, I slept at Petit Paradis that night. I tossed and turned through fitful dreams reliving the argument over and over again, once even dubbed in Spanish for some reason. I finally gave up on sleep around four o’clock in the morning.

  The decision to play hooky that Monday came shortly after.

  I hid in my cozy little retreat the entire next day, where I uncharacteristically called in sick to work. That didn’t stop Gretchen from finding me. She showed up at nine o’clock with oatmeal, twelve noon with chicken soup and mid-afternoon for a cup of green tea and a naughty little pastry from her secret stash.

  She fussed over me with each visit, ta
king my temperature as she fluffed and fidgeted with whatever pillow and blanket I happened to be clutching at the time. “Non-specific aches and lethargy could mean the flu. We’re not taking any chances,” she said, nearly force-feeding me vitamin C and zinc every four hours. By the end of the workday¸ when I begged for undisturbed rest for the rest of the evening, I felt a little more sympathetic about the fois gras issue.

  Undisturbed rest, however, was not to be. Because I stopped answering my phone, Lucy showed up on my doorstep a little before six o’clock, carrying two big burlap bags. “I’ve been calling you all day,” she announced unnecessarily. “I thought you died.”

  “And you brought some burlap to bury me. How thoughtful.”

  “Fuck you,” she grinned. “I thought maybe you could use some TLC. I can do that, you know.”

  “A woman of many talents,” I said as I followed her to the kitchen.

  She unpacked the first bag. “I stopped by our favorite cantina for some menudo, just in case you were nursing a hangover or something.”

  “Or something,” I confirmed as I rifled through the containers filled with delicious Mexican food. There was just one thing missing. “And just where is this magical menudo?”

  “Shit!” Lucy said as she clasped her hand to her head. “Everything looked so good I started ordering everything on the menu. There’s some crispy chili relleno in there, by the way.”

  “Ooo,” I said as I dug around some more.

  “Anyway, I guess I forgot the menudo.”

  “That’s okay,” I told her as I grabbed a fork from the drawer. “I don’t have a hangover.”

  “Oh, goodie,” she said as she reached into another bag for a large bottle of tequila.

  We ended up sitting cross-legged around my coffee table, watching some generic chick flick we found after a minute or two of channel surfing. “So what gives? You never call in sick even when you are sick.”

  “Who says I’m not sick?” I countered.

  She glared over her glasses at me. “You can’t lie to me, remember?”

  “Shows what you know because I really am sick. Sick of my dad, of Cabot’s and of Oliver Lavoie.”

  Lucy offered a sympathetic ear as I recounted the troubling events of the night before. When I finished, she concluded, “Asshole,” with a snarl. “So where are these naughty new clothes? I want to see.”

  Five minutes later I was modeling my new outfit. Lucy responded with whistles and howls as she applauded. “That’s the best I’ve ever seen you look. Seriously. And that asshat Oliver didn’t jump all over that? He’s an idiot.”

  “He said I looked like a cheap prostitute.”

  “Cheap, nothing. I bet you could make some big bucks looking like that.”

  I laughed. “Whatever.” I plopped down on the sofa. “I do like the way this feels though. Every time I put it on, it’s like I’m assuming a brand new identity. Like a superhero, right down to the magic underwear. I just don’t know what I can do to make Father and Oliver see how wonderful it could be for our customers.”

  Lucy lit up like a light bulb. “You show up like that at the benefit this weekend.”

  I shook my head. “No way. Your mother would have a stroke.”

  “Even more reason to do it,” she said. “Then I won’t have to go through with this farce of a wedding. I mean, we’ve already booked the church. Change the ceremony to a funeral and Mother gets the grand affair she’s dying for.”

  “Lucy,” I said with a frown. As someone who had lost her mother, I didn’t find her flippant joke funny at all.

  “Sorry,” she said softly, instantly contrite. “She’s just really more than I can handle right now.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “She probably says the same thing about you.”

  Lucy laughed. “Probably.” She eyed me thoughtfully. “I am serious, though. Show up at the party looking like that, and it’s bound to cause a stir. Imagine. All the paparazzi abuzz just to find out who you’re wearing.” I shuddered at the thought. “And of course you’d have to say, which would make your father nuts. Use that argument against him, tell him if you offered that kind of style, that’s the kind of interest you could generate. It’s up to him. And if he’s still on the fence, that’s where you remind him that with enough media attention, you could draw the same negative attention Titanium and Lace got a few years back, which would totally force his hand. He’d have to cave or your brand would be wrecked forever, just like theirs.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to do something that public, Lucy. I’m mad at him, but I don’t want to hurt him. And this would. Cabot’s is his whole world. It has been since Mother died.”

  “Funny. I would have thought you were his whole world.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “But that’s just it, isn’t it? His dismissing this idea isn’t just some difference of opinion on business strategy. He’s dismissing you.” I turned away before she could see the damnable tear that tried to squeeze from the corner of my eye. She rolled easily to her feet. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” I said as she pulled me to my feet as well.

  “The bait is on the hook,” she announced. “It’s time we caught you a fish.”

  I pulled her back. “I can’t leave the house. I played hooky all day, remember?”

  “Like that’s ever stopped us before,” she dismissed with the wave of a hand.

  Her comment harkened to the days of our youth, where I would follow lively, lovely Lucy wherever she led, to all the popular clubs we could enter by virtue of wealth, where I lived vicariously through my vivacious friend and all the bad decisions one makes while still young and impulsive enough to make them. Only this time, I was the one dressed to kill, ready to make some bad decisions of my own. And I kind of wanted to. I offered no further resistance as I followed Lucy through the stone pathway that crossed over a koi pond. We sneaked all the way along the wooded path, ducking behind massive palms as we giggled. When we were kids, we used to pretend we were prisoners in a jailbreak.

  As adults, it hadn’t changed that much.

  We easily navigated the shadows of my estate, towards her waiting car on the bricked circular drive in front of the house, near the fountain out front. We squatted low to remain hidden from the huge windows in the front of my home, so that she could skirt me away from the house without anyone realizing I was gone.

  Within fifteen minutes we were at one of the most popular clubs in Hollywood. Thanks to Lucy, we didn’t have to wait in line to get in like all the other schlubs who circled the block. Instead we were ushered right inside. Music pulsated from all the speakers as we moved like a wave with the crush of bodies milling towards the crowded bar and even more crowded dance floor. I probably would have bounced off of a dozen different people like a pinball had Lucy not dragged me towards the bar. We shoved ourselves between two people who had unwittingly left a three inch gap.

  “Margarita?” Lucy shouted at me.

  Apparently we were keeping with the tequila theme. “Sure!”

  Once she procured our drinks, we shuffled over to the edge of the dance floor. “So what now?” I asked.

  “You still want a bad boy?” she shouted back.

  “I’ll take whatever I can get,” I told her.

  She gestured to my expanse of cleavage. “Then that’s a good way to go. I’ll give you a tip, though. Always choose the one who notices your eyes. Otherwise your risk of wiping jizz off of your tits goes up exponentially.”

  I burst out laughing. Lucy really was a riot sometimes. “Noted.”

  “One way to get the attention of a bad boy is to allude that you might be a bad girl. They all want the sweet virginal girl next door who miraculously turns into a double-jointed freak in the bedroom. It’s a god thing. They like this idea that they can turn nice girls into slutty, enthusiastic porn stars with their magic little penises. Talk about your blurred lines,” she smirked.

  “Only one p
roblem, though. I’m not sure I am a bad girl.”

  “Keep drinking,” she advised. “You’ll get there.”

  It was after our second round when we hit the dance floor. We had our hands all over each other, a clear sign to any guy watching that we weren’t afraid to let our freak flags fly. But it might have been sexier if we hadn’t dissolved into hysterical giggles at the absurdity of the situation. We gave up shortly after and went for round number three.

  Finally a potential bad boy sidled up to me at the bar. He spotted my cleavage before he saw me. “Hey,” he greeted.

  “Hey,” I responded, because that was the most clever thing I could think to say.

  He held out a hand. “Hank,” he said.

  I placed my hand in his. “CC.”

  He chuckled. “Are you sure it’s not DD?”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “You’re the one that has them out there on display,” he said with a shrug. “Don’t advertise for attention if you don’t want it.”

  “Listen, asshole,” I started but Lucy jumped right in between.

  “You’ll have to excuse her. She just started her period.”

  The would-be suitor made a face as he turned away, eyeing another busty target.

  “Yeah, rule number 1. Call a guy an asshole and he’s not likely to take you to bed.”

  “Like I’d sleep with him,” I muttered. “He’s a dick.”

  “Well, duh,” she responded. “They don’t call them bad boys for nothing, Ceece. Listen, I hate to break it to you but that bad boy with a heart of gold thing is a myth. If a bad boy is playing nice, he’s generally lying to you. He wants something from you and he needs to lie to you to get it. He’s working an angle. There’s only one agenda with a fuck-and-run bad boy. Get you to bed. What you want is a nice guy who plays the part of a bad boy. There’s only one way you’re going to get that.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I already told you. You’re going to have to pay for it. Ooo!” she cried out as she grabbed my arm. “That’s who you should take to the benefit.”

  The idea of showing up with some smooth-talking gigolo at such a prestigious event nearly made me spew margarita mix over half the bar. “Are you kidding?!”