Alice in Glass Slippers

by L. C. Davenport

  Alice’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Another one? I’m beginning to think you’re a woman.”

  Adam stared down at her, and he swallowed once before speaking. “Oh, believe me, Miss Riverton, I’m all man.”

  Alice’s mouth became dry, and she raised her hand to touch her parched throat. “Is that so?” she whispered.

  “Oh, yes.” He leaned in even further. The sound of a large purse hitting the counter made him jump slightly, and he turned his head to look around. “About those shoes,” he continued smoothly. “I was hoping you’d have something I could wear to a very formal occasion. That might include dancing.”

  “Dancing?” Alice squeaked before clearing her throat. She was really going to have to install a water cooler in the shop soon if Adam kept wandering in.

  “Dancing. Can you take care of it for me?”

  “Of course. When do you need them?”

  He paused for a second, a strange expression flitting across his face. “Two months or so.” He glanced over at the counter again, where the woman was impatiently tapping her fingers on the surface and glaring at him pointedly. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

  Alice smiled to herself as she watched him disappear into the crowd outside her shop. Friday was both an eternity and a second away.

  ***

  “I’m not sure about this, Alice.”

  Whitney stood in front of Alice’s car, safely parked in their driveway, and frowned at it. “I mean, I know I asked you to teach me how to drive, but this is your car. What happens if I drive it into your mailbox or something?”

  Shrugging, Alice patted the hood of her car and tried to look sympathetic. “It’s not like the mailbox will mind all that much,” she said calmly. “I don’t think you’re that bad. I’ll pull it into the street for you, and all you’ll have to do is drive it to Lewis’s.”

  “There are too many people around.”

  Alice glanced down the road. Not a single car was moving anywhere. “Whitney, please. You can do this.” She knew she wasn’t being as patient as she should have been, but Adam was due to show up in a few hours and she still had to clean out the bedroom.

  Her head popped up when Whitney started to laugh. “He’ll be here before you know it,” she teased her friend.

  “How did you know I was thinking about Adam?”

  Whitney smirked. “It was just a guess, but thanks for telling me. Why don’t you just put the poor guy out of his misery and go out with him?”

  Alice had been wondering the same thing ever since Monday afternoon. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “At first it was because of Mimi, but now…” Her voice trailed off as she thought of that list stuffed in her sock drawer. It wasn’t like Mimi could give her any more work than she already had.

  Whitney eyed her curiously. “What’s she done to change your mind? You’ve been acting strangely for a couple of days now.”

  Sighing, Alice leaned against her car and rubbed her eyes. After Monday she’d known that she was going to have to get to the mall early and stay late so she could work on Mimi’s assignments. That’s why she’d asked a delighted Lewis to ferry Whitney around in his precious Tang. He, of course, had been so excited about the chance to spend some unexpected alone time with his songbird that he hadn’t asked any questions.

  “Everything’s fine,” Alice sighed. “Now, about those lessons…”

  “Lessons? Is this some sort of girl talk or are you playing school?”

  Lewis bounded up the sidewalk and beamed at them. “Can I play, too?”

  Whitney laughed while Alice scowled at him. “I was going to teach Whitney how to drive,” she told him. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  He grinned down at her and ruffled her hair. “I get days off, too, Alice.”

  “Not Fridays!”

  Lewis just shrugged. “I do now. What’s this about teaching Whitney how to drive? Can I help?”

  Alice had opened her mouth to tell him to go away when Whitney spoke up. “That’s not a bad idea, Alice. I know you have a lot to do today, and it would probably be easier if I was out of your hair.”

  A watermelon could have fit into the grin on Lewis’s face. “Yes, Alice. Let me help you out. I’ll take care of Whitney…” He smirked at her. “…And you take care of whatever else it is that you need to do. It’s a win-win situation. I’ll go grab your keys.”

  Alice watched as he bounded up the stairs to her apartment. “How long do you think it’ll take before he realizes that I have the keys to my car?”

  Whitney lifted a shoulder. “Not too long. Look, about Adam. I’m sorry to abandon you, but come on. There aren’t a whole lot of Wentworths around, and this one really, really likes you.”

  Alice couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “And I know you like him, too.” Whitney’s eyes were knowing. “Give him a chance. For all you know, you could be passing up on your own Prince Charming without even knowing it, and I don’t want to see you hate yourself for it later on.”

  The door slammed shut above them, and Alice took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said shakily. “If he asks me again, I’ll… I’ll…”

  “You’ll what?” Lewis asked, fishing in her pocket to grab her keys.

  She took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure she was ready yet to admit how much she liked Adam, but…“I’ll do it.”

  Whitney squealed and threw her arms around her friend. “We’ll take our time,” she whispered in Alice’s ear. “Have fun this afternoon.”

  Alice watched as Lewis backed her car out of the driveway before helping Whitney into the front seat. He was leaning on the open door, in the middle of explaining where the windshield wipers controls were, when Alice ran up to him. “Why aren’t you taking your car?” she demanded, holding her hand out for her keys.

  He just slapped her hand lightly. “Mine has character, Alice. Yours is easier to explain. And I thought you were okay with Whitney driving yours.”

  “I am, but you just sabotaged–”

  “Didn’t you have something terribly important to do?”

  She sighed and let her hand drop back to her side. When Lewis caught that look in his eye, there was little use in arguing. “Fine. But you better fill it up before you come back.”

  He grinned cheekily at her. “Yes, Mom.”

  Alice watched as they drove very slowly down the road. She thought she detected Lewis’s arm thrown casually across the back of Whitney’s seat, but she wasn’t sure. She hoped his arm fell asleep. It was very possible.

  Alice walked into her old home and took a deep breath, looking around and trying to see it from Adam’s eyes. She’d never been to his home. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she knew where ‘home’ was. The only car she’d ever seen him drive was a rental, so she wasn’t sure what exactly he was used to. But from everything she’d heard about him from Brittany, it had to be better than this. She wondered why he was so eager to move into her dad’s portion of the house.

  A little voice that sounded remarkably like Whitney echoed in her brain. It’s because of you, the voice said smugly. He likes you, and he wants to be near you.

  “Shut up,” Alice told herself.

  But for the rest of the morning and even through a hurried lunch, she couldn’t get that thought out of her head. She flung the windows open, cranked up the music, and dusted and cleaned and boxed up her memories like her life depended on it. She didn’t even cry when she took her mother’s wedding dress out of the closet and hung it in the basement. She figured that had to be a good sign. Of what, she didn’t know, but at this point a good sign was a good sign.

  She was in the foyer, wiping down the clock on the wall facing the front door, when the song changed. When she heard the familiar sound of a bass, a drum and snapping fingers, she smiled to herself. She closed her eyes, and let the music take over.

  ***

  Adam was having a rotten week.

  The only good thing t
hat had happened to him since his pseudo date with Alice the week before had been seeing her in her shop on Monday. He’d spoken to her like a rational adult. She hadn’t spilled anything on him, accidentally or otherwise. She hadn’t tried to maim him, and he’d been so elated by the whole thing that he’d put his arm around her. And she hadn’t run screaming for the police or tried to stomp her heel into his toe.

  In fact, she’d leaned into him. She’d even been awake this time. It was almost more than he could bear.

  That, however, had been the one and only highlight of an altogether dismal week. This whole interviewing process was proving to be more tedious than he’d bargained for–and it was hard on his stomach. There had to be a way to talk to people without massive amounts of greasy food involved.

  But when Friday morning came along, he popped out of bed with a little more enthusiasm. He only had two people scheduled this morning, and after lunch… well, after lunch things would change.

  He could just feel it.

  It didn’t take him long to pack up his clothes and the few things he’d accumulated in the two months that he’d lived in the hotel, and he paid his bill with a grin on his face.

  “Come back to us soon, Mr. Wentworth,” the girl at the counter said, her eyes lingering appreciatively on him as she handed him his credit card.

  He grinned at her like an idiot and shook his head. “I sure hope not.”

  He barely registered her disappointed look when he walked out of the hotel and into the sunshine, whistling the tune that had been playing in Alice’s shop when he’d been in there a few days before. He didn’t know what it was, but it sure had a catchy tune.

  All the windows were open when Adam pulled into Alice’s driveway. He didn’t see her car, but he figured she wouldn’t leave the house like that and then run off, so he grabbed his suitcase and a box and trudged up the few steps to the front door. He paused when the strains of a song he’d never heard before, wandered out the living room window.

  Half a second before he pressed the doorbell, he glanced through the thin window next to the door. He was done for. There in front of him stood Alice, her hair swinging around her body and her hips doing things that should be illegal… and she was singing.

  He was extremely grateful Lewis was nowhere near him now. If he’d seen him staring through Alice’s front window like a common peeping tom, he’d never hear the end of it. And he could never, ever tell him that the sound of Alice crooning out one of the sexiest songs he’d ever heard and snapping her fingers with her back turned to him, might just bring him to his knees.

  In fact, they were getting weaker by the second. If he didn’t wrench his gaze away from her, he’d end up in a blubbering puddle on the welcome mat.

  When she turned to face him, he took one look at her face and stumbled backward.

  Things wouldn’t have been nearly so bad had he not stepped on his suitcase. But as it was, the wretched thing was behind him, and when he lurched back he lost his balance, crashed down two steps, and landed in the middle of a recently-watered flower bed with a crash.

  He laid there for a second, trying to figure out exactly what had happened and hoping desperately that Alice hadn’t heard him massacre her tulips. And that she hadn’t seen him spying on her. Maybe he really was a stalker.

  Unfortunately, the music had stopped all too abruptly and the only thing he could hear was a bird twittering at him from the roof.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he muttered to the sky.

  The door flew open, and he groaned. The gods were obviously not on his side today.

  “Adam!” Alice jumped over his suitcase and knelt next to him. “What happened to you?”

  Why did she have to descend the stairs like that while he was lying on his back in the mud? If he didn’t know any better he’d swear she did it just to rub it in. “I fell,” he muttered, trying to sit up.

  Alice pushed him back down, her hands hovering over his head uncertainly. “Are you okay? Did you bump your head?”

  He laughed weakly and shook his head, wincing when he felt the wet dirt mash even further into his hair. “I think I’m okay,” he sighed. “My pride may be a little wounded, but that’s it. I’ll have to replace your flowers, though.”

  She laughed at that. “Well, I guess you’ll have to go to Holland to do that.”

  Adam sat up and eyed the tulips even as a clump of earth slid down his hair and landed on his shoulder. “You guys went all out.”

  Alice scrambled to her feet and held out her hand to help him up. “Holland, Michigan,” she clarified. “It’s on the Lake Michigan side. They have a tulip festival every year. You should go while you’re here.”

  Adam wasn’t doing any sightseeing without her, but given his current state, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t think very favorably about going anywhere in public with him. He sighed when he looked at his jeans. “I need a shower,” he mumbled, trying to wipe his hands on his pants. It didn’t do a whole lot of good.

  Alice ran up the stairs and grabbed his suitcase, wrestling it into the foyer before he could scramble to his feet and snatch it from her. “Follow me,” she told him over her shoulder. He swore she was laughing at him, but was too polite to be obvious about it. “I’ll give you the grand tour when you’re done, but for now–” she threw a door open at the end of the hall “–your bathroom’s through there.”

  Once he was in the shower Adam started to feel marginally better. He still couldn’t fathom how he reverted to a twelve-year-old almost instantly every time he was within thirty feet of Alice. But she hadn’t laughed at him outright, and she hadn’t told him to take his pitiful suitcase back to the hotel. It could have been a lot worse, all things considered.

  He threw on the first clothes he pulled from his bag and was towel drying his hair when the phone rang. “Wentworth here,” he barked without glancing at the screen.

  “Well, hello, darling. Why are you in such a foul mood this afternoon?”

  Groaning, Adam let the towel fall onto the floor and leaned heavily against the wall. “Hello, Mother.”

  “Have you talked to your father recently?”

  “Just yesterday. Why?”

  “Well, either he’s not passing along my messages or you’re refusing to call your own mother out of sheer rudeness.”

  Adam groaned again. He knew he shouldn’t have answered the phone.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I know I should have–”

  “How’s Alice doing?” Jillian’s voice was too bright, like she knew she was asking a personal question but still expected an answer.

  This called for a rapid change of subject. “Do you know any old songs that have virtually no accompaniment?”

  “I know what you’re doing, Adam.”

  “No, really. I heard this song and I can’t figure out what it is. A woman sings it and snaps her fingers.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  Adam huffed out a breath. “There’s a line in it that caught my attention,” he told her slowly. “‘What a lovely way to burn’.”

  He let his mother think about this for a bit. He could tell she was thinking because he could hear her fingernails drumming on the phone. He hated it when she did that, but had learned to keep his mouth shut about it. “I’ll see what I can find for you,” she said finally. “Now, how’s Alice doing?”

  He should have known better than to think she’d forget her earlier question. Adam’s eyes drifted to the bedroom door and he grinned to himself. “Just fine, actually.”

  “Really? Has she agreed to go out with you?”

  Adam briefly considered telling her about their dinner at The Whitney, but decided it’d be way too complicated–and embarrassing. “Not exactly,” he hedged. “But I’m in the process of moving in with her.”

  There was a shocked silence, during which time Adam realized what he’d just said. He was about to explain when Jillian started talking. “Please tell me she’s not easy,” sh
e said in a voice dripping with disapproval. “I was starting to like this girl, and I don’t think I’m ready to have my little bubble burst quite yet. I don’t think I could live with myself if my son finally let one of those groupies lasso him.”

  “Alice isn’t a groupie,” Adam snapped. “I’m living in her downstairs apartment. Alone.” More’s the pity, he thought, but kept that to himself.

  “Thank goodness. You’re not old enough for me to lose all respect for you yet.” She paused for a second. “You’re taking her to the ball, aren’t you?”

  “If she’ll go with me.”

  Jillian chuckled quietly. “Have you ever met a girl that could resist you for that long, son?”

  Scrunching up his face, Adam ran a hand through his damp hair. “Not until Alice. She seems to bring out sides in me I didn’t know existed.” His eyes drifted to the bathtub, where a thin layer of flowerbed rested innocently near the drain.

  “Hmm. Is that good?”

  Adam sighed and rubbed his scalp. “I don’t know, Mom. I just don’t know.”

  “Well, get cracking! It’s not like you have a lot of time left!”

  If one more person reminded him of his supposed departure date he’d eat his rental car and regurgitate it on their shoes. “It’s hardly my fault that Dad isn’t cooperating,” he snapped. “I was planning on twelve weeks, not nine.”

  “You and I both know why the schedule was changed. There isn’t a force on Earth that could change your father’s mind at this point.”

  Blasted inter-league play. Adam sometimes wished his father had grown up anywhere but Chicago. “Wait a second,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “Dad told me it was your idea to change the schedule.”

  Jillian laughed lightly. “Really, darling. Since when do you believe your father about things like this? You know how excited he was when the schedule came out.”

  Oh, Adam knew, all right. It’d been all he’d heard for months. “Maybe I’ll just stay here after this is all wrapped up,” he mumbled without thinking about it.

  “Maybe you should,” she said. “Honestly, Adam, for a boy with an Ivy League education you certainly can be dense sometimes.”