by Jane Graves
"Relax, darling. You're going to love the show."
Then Mark came out of the dressing room.
5
Liz blinked to clear her eyesight, because for a split second she wasn't completely sure that the man who walked out of the dressing room was actually Mark. She tried to reconcile the man she'd first seen in Simon's several nights ago with the man she saw before her now, but there was such a disjunct between the two images that her brain was having a tough time putting them together. She blinked again. It was Mark, all right.
And he looked gorgeous.
He wore a dark navy double-breasted suit, a cornflower blue shirt, and a tie in brilliant jewel tones. The cut of the suit showed off his body in a way his other suits never had, making him appear taller, trimmer in the waist and even broader in the shoulders. Eddie had removed his glasses and his face had come alive, defining his cheekbones, sharpening his chin and adding a surprising touch of power and sensuality. And those eyes. Why hadn't she noticed his deep, dark eyes when he'd taken off his glasses the other night in the parking lot at Simon's? It had been nearly dark and they were in the midst of committing an act of vandalism, but even that shouldn't have mattered.
"The suit is Tallia Umo," Eddie said. "He's got such height and such an athletic build that the Versace and the Austin Sandoval I tried just weren't right. The tie is Bruno Westphal. He's one of the few designers holding onto bright colors right now, thank God. Mark's dark hair and eyes absolutely demand contrast, so I simply could not allow him to wear the drab neutral tones everyone is so indiscriminately fond of this season."
Eddie's running commentary went in one of Liz's ears and out the other. The designer names were meaningless to her, the color analysis nothing but white noise. All she knew was that it had come together to create a man so attractive he took her breath away.
Mark shrugged a little, giving Liz a look of apprehension, as if he were waiting for a bomb to drop. "Well? What do you think?"
Liz just stared at him. Not only had he taken her breath away, but her speech had gone with it, as well.
Mark shook his head with disgust. "I knew it. The tie's too loud, isn't it? I feel like a traffic light. And I've never worn a suit that fits like this before." He tugged at a button on the coat, then walked across the room to a three-way mirror, examining himself from all angles. "It'll probably look even worse when I put my glasses back on and can actually see."
Eddie leaned over to Liz and whispered, "You'd better tell him how wonderful he looks, darling. He'll listen to you."
"To me?"
"Oh, yes. Every time he tried something on, he asked me if I thought you'd like it. He values your opinion."
Liz stared at Eddie, dumbfounded. Mark valued her opinion? Up to now she assumed he thought of her more like a prison guard leading him to his execution.
She set the wine glass down on the table beside her chair, then stood and walked over to Mark. With him in dress shoes and her wearing flip-flops, he towered over her by a good seven inches. When she looked into those deep brown eyes--eyes she felt she was seeing for the first time--it struck her that he'd wasted years of his life being ordinary when he could have been spectacular. She smoothed her hands down his lapels and gave them a gentle pat, then looked up at him as sincerely as she possibly could.
"Mark, I'm saying this from the bottom of my heart, so I want you to listen up. I don't remember the last time I saw a man who looked as handsome as you do right now."
He stared at her blankly for a moment. Then his lips quirked up in a wary smile, as if she'd told him a joke and he wasn't quite sure he'd caught the punch line.
"You're kidding, right?"
This wasn't some thinly-disguised self-deprecating stuff that hid an enormous ego. He genuinely didn't know how wonderful he looked.
Liz maintained her somber expression. "I've never been more serious in my life."
He turned back to the mirror, narrowing his eyes, as if to get a different perspective on the man looking back.
"Maybe I'm just not used to it," he said, his voice still unsure, as if the realization of how good he looked was coming to him in tiny pieces he couldn't quite fit together yet.
"I told you, Mark. You look wonderful."
He stood up a little taller, his shoulders back, then raised his chin a notch, until finally he was displaying the confident bearing that made the look complete--a successful man from head to toe. All at once she felt a strange, fluttery feeling in her stomach.
You're attracted to him.
It had been so long since she felt that deep-down reaction to a man that she froze, then told herself no, you're not. He wasn't her type. She wasn't his. And that was that.
"I've helped him pick out other things, too," Eddie said. "Two more suits, slacks, shirts, ties, accessories. Everything he needs to make a spectacular appearance anywhere he goes."
Mark frowned, a look of uncertainty settling in again. "Look, Eddie. I know you went to a lot of trouble, but I'm not sure I really need--"
"Tell you what," Liz interrupted. "Why don't you go change, and while you're gone Eddie can ring everything up. Okay?"
Mark closed his eyes, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Reality had struck again. The money thing. But Eddie had done wonders for his image, and he couldn't back out now.
"I'll give you the final tally," Eddie said. "After that you can still make adjustments if you want to."
To Liz's relief, Mark finally nodded. He disappeared into the dressing room. Eddie headed for the cash register, tossing Liz a sly smile over his shoulder.
"Go ahead, darling. Tell me. I outdid myself, yes?"
"Yes, Eddie," Liz said, joining him at the counter. "You outdid yourself."
"You never did say. Why the sudden need for a makeover? He looks smashing now, to be sure. But you don't usually go for the sophisticated look in your men."
"That's because he's not my man."
Eddie's brows arched. "Oh? I just assumed--"
"No. Actually, he's just a friend who decided he needed a new look."
"How long have you known him?"
"Not long. Just a few weeks, really. He's one of my customers at Simon's."
Eddie beeped a hand-held scanner across a tag on one of the ties. "Very attractive man. Not classically so, exactly, but there's something about him..."
"Yes. I know."
"He seems to like you. Are you sure he's just a friend?"
"Don't start, Eddie. He's not my type. He's a CPA. All that corporate stuff. When's the last time you saw me date a guy like that?"
"Why not? He doesn't strike me as the snobbish type."
"He's not. He's just a really successful guy who wants to look the part. And he wants the women he dates to look the part, too."
"Perhaps he doesn't know what's good for him," Eddie said.
"But he knows what he wants, whether it's good for him or not. Trust me. It's not someone like me."
She meant every word of that. Any man who had wanted a woman like Gwen would never be happy with a woman like her. Up until ten minutes ago, that hadn't mattered. Did it now?
Eddie beeped the scanner over several more tags. "Does he know how you feel about him?"
Liz's mouth dropped open. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I don't feel any way about him!"
"Oh?"
"Cut it out, Eddie. You're way off base here."
Eddie dropped three dress shirts into a bag, then gave her a knowing smile. "I think you're protesting too much."
Eddie was a hopeless romantic. That was his problem. He saw what he wanted to see--true love blossoming before his very eyes. She found Mark attractive--she wouldn't deny that--but that's as far as it went, and as far as it was ever going to go.
"Oh, sure, Eddie. Can't you just see me being one of those fluffy, picture-perfect little corporate wives? It gives me hives just to think about it."
Eddie merely shrugged, as if washing his hands of the issue, but his smu
g expression said he hadn't changed his mind.
A moment later Mark came out of the dressing room wearing his old clothes. He gave Eddie the suit and accessories he'd been wearing, and Eddie scanned the tags. When he showed Mark the final tally, his face literally went white.
"Oh, boy." He breathed the words in such a shaky voice that Liz knew they weren't out of the woods yet. "I thought I was adding it up as we went along, but I...I had no idea."
"Mark? Are you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine. Really. It's no problem. I'll just pay this bill and then declare bankruptcy."
He closed his eyes, his jaw tight, and despite his sarcasm she could see how truly painful it was for him to spend this much money. It went beyond being frugal, or even miserly. She knew it touched something deep inside him that he'd never really reconciled, something it hurt like hell to face.
"It's worth every penny," Liz said, dropping her voice so she was talking just to him. "Every penny. Do you understand me?"
He turned his gaze back to meet hers. She lay her hand against his arm and gave it an encouraging squeeze. He swallowed hard, and for a moment she truly thought he was going to call the whole thing off.
"Okay," he said finally. "If you say so."
Liz felt a surge of relief. He laid the charge slip on the counter and signed it, then tucked the receipt into his wallet. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Thanks, Liz."
"For what?"
"For making me do something I should have done a long time ago. Of course, a long time ago I'd have had to rob a bank to pay the bill."
He smiled, and that fluttery feeling struck Liz again. It wasn't as if she felt that way about him, as Eddie had suggested. She was just responding to the fact that he looked so handsome when she hadn't expected such a drastic change. That was all. She certainly wasn't shallow enough to be attracted to a guy solely because of the way he looked.
But was it that he looked so handsome, or that he looked so handsome and didn't know it?
She saw handsome men every day of her life at Simon's. Some absolutely dazzling men. But those good looks were always accompanied by a huge ego--the prettier the face, the bigger the conceit. Not one of them had ever made her feel the way she felt when she looked at Mark right then, not to mention the way she felt when he looked at her.
Lord have mercy--could Eddie be right after all?
* * *
They left Bergman's and took a trip to the optical shop, where Mark let Liz talk him into getting a long-overdue eye exam, then contact lenses. He'd anticipated having to spend days getting used to them, but as he wore them now, he was surprised how comfortable they felt. Unfortunately, the new lenses put him back to twenty-twenty again, so the bottom line on the bill was so crystal clear he couldn't pretend it was anything less than what it was. But Liz's admiration for the way he looked without his glasses made him feel as if the contacts, like the clothes he'd just bought, were worth every bit of the money he'd spent.
They walked back through the mall, and as he gazed around at the extravagant surroundings, he thought back to when he was a kid. The only place his mother could afford to shop had been in the thrift store in Mason, Tennessee, twelve miles down the road from Waldon Springs. His clothes had always been too big or too small and had always belonged to somebody else first. Back then he never could have imagined shopping in a place like this and having the means to buy the things he'd bought today. But that was exactly why he'd left Waldon Springs and worked his tail off all these years--so he could become so wealthy and successful that he could forget that kid had ever existed. Thanks to Liz, that memory had faded more that afternoon than it had in the past ten years.
"Are you ready for that pizza now?" Liz asked as they headed to the mall exit.
"Yeah. I'm starving, and you're buying. It doesn't get any better than that."
Gino's Pizzaria turned out to be a funky little restaurant with plastic red checkered tablecloths, rough plank floors and garage sale art. A waitress led them to a table close to a big screen TV, where a baseball game was in progress--the Marlins versus the Mets. Mark would have loved to have watched it, but he figured it would be rude to stare at the game all through dinner and ignore Liz. So to alleviate temptation, he circled around the table and took the chair that put his back to the TV.
Liz looked down at him quizzically. "Why are you sitting there?"
"Why not?"
"Because you can't see the game, silly. And I know you like baseball." She turned the table around a little and pulled two rickety wooden chairs together on one side of it, both facing the TV. "There. Now we can both see just fine."
Mark blinked with surprise. "You watch the Marlins?"
"My dad took me to a lot of baseball games before he died. Rangers, because we were Texans, but it's all about the Marlins now. I believe in rooting for the home team." She smiled. "I was kind of a pudgy little kid, and I think it was because of all the hot dogs I ate at the ball park."
After they ordered a large deep dish meat lover's pizza, Liz leaned over to an elderly man at the table next to them.
"What inning is it?" she asked.
"Bottom of the fourth," he said, in a New York accent so thick his aging vocal cords could barely eek out the words. "Score's one-zip, Mets."
All at once a roar went up from the crowd at the restaurant, and Mark spun around to the TV to see a ball sailing over the left field fence and the batter rounding the bases to tie the score.
Liz let out a whoop, then turned to Mark with a smile of delight. "This is going to be a great game! And it's so much better on the big screen. I'm glad we came here."
So am I, Mark thought, even though he wasn't completely sure it was only because of the game.
They finished off the pizza, then ordered two more beers and settled in to watch the game. Every time the network flashed one of those baseball trivia questions on the screen, Liz had an answer, and she never missed. It wasn't long before she garnered the attention of people at the surrounding tables, the vast majority of whom were men. They seemed to be a diehard group of sports fans, but it was impossible to miss the sidelong glances they cast at the flamboyant redheaded Marlin's fan. Once a couple of guys even came over and asked her to settle a bet--something about lifetime batting averages he couldn't have answered in a million years. The answer rolled right off her tongue.
All Mark could do was sit back in amazement. He'd never known anyone like Liz. She was smart, sassy, fun and alive, and she'd never met a stranger in her life. And people liked her. She had a glow about her that warmed a room the moment she stepped into it. Just being with her made him see how secluded his life had been, how work-intensive, and above all, how God-awful boring.
He thought back to that afternoon. Eddie had assured him that the clothes were exactly right for him, but now he realized that all the time Liz had been gone he'd been holding his breath, waiting for her to return so he could see himself reflected in her eyes. He remembered the surprise on her face when he walked out of the dressing room. For a minute he'd thought she didn't like the way he looked and his chest had tightened with disappointment. Then she'd told him, with that warm, wonderful smile of hers, how handsome he looked. Handsome. He couldn't remember a time in his life when he'd ever felt like that.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Liz watching the game, and suddenly he was hyperaware of everything about her--the strands of auburn hair that cascaded around her face, her warm, musical laughter, the feel of her hand against his arm whenever she wanted his attention. She'd lean toward him and point out something on the screen, and she'd be so close he could smell the faint remnants of the perfume she wore. It was a quirky scent but it suited her perfectly.
"So how are you feeling after the shopping trip?" she asked him. "Are you getting over the sticker shock?"
All at once he realized that for the past hour he hadn't been thinking about the money he'd spent at all. He'd been thinking about Liz.
"I'm fine. Another beer and I'll forget all about it." He paused. "Until the credit card bill comes."
"Want me to come by for moral support when you open the envelope?"
"Good idea. I'll need someone to call the paramedics."
"Who needs paramedics? I know CPR."
Mark was suddenly blindsided by an image that sprang to his mind--an image of Liz's lips meeting his and bringing him back to life.
“Come by Simon's Monday night after work so you can tell me how your day went. You're bound to get a thousand compliments on your new look, and I want to hear all about it."
"I don't know about the compliments," he said. "But I can drop by."
She smiled. "I'll be waiting."
Simon's. That meant he could see Liz again.
That thought warmed him so much that he held onto it far longer than ever he should have, finally shoving it aside and concentrating on the real reason he needed to go to Simon's again: His company function was coming up in less than three weeks, and it was a gathering place for just the kind of woman he needed.
Then, out of nowhere, an image of Gwen flashed through his mind. He saw her sitting on that barstool, aloof and icy-perfect, holding a glass of white wine that was almost as chilly as the look she'd given him when she'd handed back his suit coat and said, in so many words, that he just didn't measure up. A small shiver actually slithered down his spine, as if a wisp of Arctic air had suddenly swirled through the restaurant.
Liz touched his arm. "Hey. You okay?"
He turned to meet her eyes, and the imaginary Arctic air instantly disappeared, replaced by a balmy Caribbean breeze.
"Mark?"
"Uh, yeah. I'm fine. Why?"
"You were frowning."
"Sorry. Didn't mean to be."
"Having a good time?"