He returned the afternoon after the ball, so worried that he walked through the store he’d sold a year and a half before without even a twitch. After he reassured himself that his only child was, in fact, perfectly fine, she reminded him of this. He paused for a moment, deep in thought, before simply folding her in his arms and telling her that he was sorry for everything that had happened. And that he was home to stay. Provided, of course, that Adam didn’t mind a roommate for a while.
Alice smiled to herself as she tried to close the lid. She’d come to learn that people deal with grief in very personal ways. She could admit now that Arthur had needed to get away for a while. It was good to have him back, though.
She glanced up from her seat on the floor and watched as her father walked into the shop. “How was your lunch with Mr. Hughes?”
Arthur tossed a folder on an empty table and looked around. “We talked more about Lewis’s upcoming wedding than anything else,” he noted absently.
“Can you blame him? I’m sure that’s all he hears about at home now that Lewis’s set up Wedding Central in his living room,” Alice said.
Arthur grunted. “You’d think he’d want a change of subject.” He paced around the room, inspecting the walls and ceiling like he was taking internal notes. “Not to be rude, Alice, but this place looks awful. I hope the new owner takes better care of it.”
Alice knew she shouldn’t take such pleasure at Mimi’s downfall, but the fact that the woman had to sell the shop to pay for her lawyer’s fees made Alice inordinately happy. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“What are you going to do with all those shoes?” Arthur eyed the stack of boxes sitting in the corner of the shop.
“If the new people don’t want them any more, I’m giving them to the women’s shelter.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you.” He smiled at his daughter. “Oh, good. Here’s Adam.”
Alice sat back on her heels and watched as Adam slowly made his way through the hallway. A small group of people congratulated him on his move to Michigan. He laughed and nodded before yelling something into Lewis’s shop. A few seconds later, he was at her side, pulling her to her feet.
“Hey,” he said, grinning. “Having a good day?”
Alice glanced around the shop. All of the mirrors Brittany had made her install had been taken down, and the strains of a crooning Harry Connick Jr. weaved through the air. If you ignored the boxes, she thought, and the neon walls, no one would ever know Mimi had set foot in this place. “Great,” she told him, and leaned up to kiss him on the chin. “Absolutely wonderful.”
Adam was about to kiss her properly when Arthur cleared his throat. “I like you, Mr. Wentworth, but I’d like you a little farther from my daughter.”
The living arrangements in the downstairs apartment were friendly, Alice thought, but her father evidently had his limits. Which was why Adam spent most of his free time upstairs with Alice.
“Come on, Mr. Riverton,” Lewis’s amused voice chided from the doorway. “Give the guy a break. It’s not like another girl as fine as Alice will ever give him the time of day again.”
Adam ignored him. “Is that it, sir?” He nodded toward the folder.
“It is. Alice, I have something for you.” Arthur handed her a key, which Alice looked at quizzically.
“What’s this?”
“The key to your store.”
“I already have one.”
Adam glanced over at her father before grasping the hand that held the key. “You know that Mimi has to sell, right?” When Alice nodded dumbly he squeezed her fist. “Your dad bought it. For you.”
“What?”
Arthur stood on her other side and kissed her on the forehead. “I used the money Mimi paid for it originally. The deed is in your name. You can do whatever you want with it.”
Alice stared at him blankly for a long time. When Lewis caught her eye, he gestured to the wall behind her. “Let’s take that out,” he said briskly, “and go into business together.”
Alice burst into tears and was immediately surrounded by six male arms. “Now, Alice,” Lewis said from somewhere over her head. “There’s no reason to cry. I know it might be a little awkward at first, working with a man who owns his own mall, but don’t let it bother you. You can keep calling me Lewis if you want. I won’t insist on Master Hughes.”
***
“How’s your car coming along?” Alice asked as she walked into Lewis’s shop late the next evening. “I see you’re still driving that rental.”
Lewis scowled and nearly poked a hole in his counter with a pair of scissors. “That guy’s license should be revoked,” he muttered.
“Already taken care of.”
Lewis glowered at her. “Then they should revoke it again. How hard is it to miss a car like Tang? It positively screams don’t touch.”
“It screams something, all right.” Adam walked in and rested against a fitting room door, pulling Alice back so she leaned on him. “It’s trying to tell everyone, I’m orange. Put me out of my misery.”
The look Lewis shot him was withering. “Tang will be back on the road in a few days,” he told Alice. “And when she is I’m going over to that assisted living center and giving that old guy a piece of my mind.”
“I’ll come with you. I haven’t talked to Johnny or the Tooey brothers in a week or so.”
“That’s going to be quite the outing,” Adam said, his chin resting comfortably on her head. “Don’t Harold and Roger live on opposite sides of the city?”
“Not anymore. They had such a good time whacking Mimi with their canes that Roger decided to move next door to Harold so they can savor their victory together.” She made a face. “I’m not sure that I envy their neighbors.”
Lewis turned around casually to study a gown that was set aside for alteration. “Speaking of neighbors, have you given any more thought to my proposal?”
“Why would I be thinking of that? Haven’t you already started to plan the wedding?” Alice asked.
“Not that proposal, genius. I may have allowed you to be Whitney’s maid of honor–”
“Allowed? I don’t recall her giving you a choice.”
“Even though I wanted you for my best man–”
“It helps to be a man to do that, Hughes, which is why you asked me.” Adam tightened his arms around Alice momentarily and grumbled, “Not that I care about that kind of stuff.”
“Please try to concentrate on the matter at hand. Get away from Wentworth, Alice. He’s addling your brain.” Lewis rapped on the wall that separated his shop from Alice’s. “I think we should tear down this wall and go into business together.”
Alice pulled away from Adam and walked slowly over to Lewis’s side. She’d been thinking about this very thing ever since he’d mentioned it the day before. “Tear down the wall, eh? Do you think the new mall manager would approve? I hear he’s pretty hard to work with.”
Lewis smirked at her. “Something tells me that if anyone could convince him, it’d be you. What do you think? It’d be a match made in heaven.”
Alice thought briefly about her mother and shook her head, smiling at Lewis. Belinda would have loved the idea just as much as she did. “We’d be a perfect pair.”
Lewis was grinning wildly. “That’s a good name, don’t you think? ‘The Perfect Pair’.”
“It is, partner.”
The next second Lewis was hugging her so tightly she could have sworn she felt her spine hit her ribcage. “I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time, you know,” he said. “The two of us will be unstoppable.”
Alice caught Adam’s eye over Lewis’s shoulder and laughed. “You mean the four of us.”
“Do we really have to include Tall, Dark and Handsome in this equation?”
“I’m afraid we do, Mr. Hughes. After all, he’s contributed to this just as much as the rest of us.”
“Fine,” Lewis grunted good-naturedly, and released Alice just as Ad
am reached for her. “But only because he’s grown on me.”
“I wonder if I should close the shop until we’re finished with the wall,” Alice mused as she dusted for the third time that morning. “No one can see any shoes with all this sawdust.”
Whitney looked up from her bridal magazine. “Will you stop that? No one but you thinks those shelves need to be dusted. And anyway, business has been better this past month than I’ve ever seen. I think people are excited for the change.” She glanced over at the ever-expanding hole in the wall. “I still can’t believe this is all happening.”
“And I can’t believe you and Lewis are getting married in a month and a half. Are you sure you can pull it off by the middle of October?”
Whitney shrugged and then grinned. “Frankly, I don’t care when we get married. It’s Lewis who insisted that we use the fall leaves as a backdrop. The only thing I’m worried about is rain.”
Alice was about to agree when a shrill voice sounded over the hammering. “Isn’t anyone going to welcome me back?”
Brittany stood at the entrance to the store, looking around critically. Her new fake tan made her hair look almost white. “This looks awful. Who authorized all of this?”
Alice and Whitney shared a smile. “I did,” Alice told her, “since I own the shop now.”
Brittany stared at her, hard. “Oh, that’s right. Some lawyer guy told me something like that, but I forgot.” She waved a hand dismissively, like the state of the store she and her mother had owned had never been a major concern to her. Which it probably hadn’t.
“What are you doing back?” Whitney stood slowly from behind the counter and came toward her sister. “Last I heard you were in Las Vegas with your new husband. Of course, that was a couple months ago…”
The shrewd look on Brittany’s face immediately morphed into something Alice could only describe as lovesick. “Oh, Clydie is amazing. He knows such fascinating things about everything. We’ve been back for simply ages. Clyde has a very important job, you know. I’m only here because I heard my little sister is getting married, and I want to help out.”
Alice had a feeling that the ‘helping out’ was really an excuse to plan the wedding Brittany hadn’t had. “Actually, I could really use your help,” Whitney said smoothly. “Can I put you in charge of the spa day? I don’t really want a bridal shower so Alice and I were going to hang out and relax the day before the wedding.”
“Spa day?” Alice mouthed in Whitney’s direction. Whitney just smiled serenely and focused on her sister.
“Oh, I love going to the spa.” Brittany got a strange glow in her eyes. “I might have to try out a few so I know what to recommend.” She beamed at Whitney and then strutted out the door, her cell phone at her ear before she’d crossed the threshold. “Clyde, honey? Speak to me.”
“What was that about?” Alice threw her duster to the side and placed her hands on her hips. “Since when are we doing a spa day? You hate pedicures.”
Whitney shrugged and went back to her magazine. “It seems like a very small price to pay to keep Brittany out of my hair for the next month or so. And she’ll have a blast, so don’t look at me like that. Hey, Mr. Hughes. What’s up?”
Lewis’s father laid a large hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Official business, I’m afraid.” His eyes twinkled as he looked at Alice. “You’re lovely this morning, my dear, as usual. I’m glad to see my son hasn’t beaten you to death with one of his wedding magazines.”
Alice laughed and hugged Jacob Hughes. “He’s tried. What’s up? Did the sale not go through?”
“Oh, it went through, all right. Several weeks ago. I was wondering, Miss Riverton, if you could sell me a pair of shoes for a wedding.” He laughed as Alice scrunched her face at him. “Black tie, of course.”
A bellow echoed from the other side of the wall and Whitney slipped from her perch on the stool. “Excuse me,” she said, and rolled her eyes as she ducked through the hole.
“How’re things going with the shop?” Jacob watched as Alice filled out an order form. “Keeping busy?”
She nodded absently as she wrote. “Yeah, much better. The men’s line has really taken off.” She chewed on the end of her pan as she studied his feet. “Those last few months with Mimi were kind of bad, money-wise. I still don’t know how we got so desperate.”
“Did Mimi ever talk to you about the shop’s finances?”
“No, and the one time I brought it up she acted strange and told me I wasn’t supposed to think about stuff like that. Secretly, I think she was using the money to seduce all those poor old men.”
Jacob Hughes let out a bark of laughter. “You’re not far off the mark. She was starting to get antsy for another store, so she took money from the shop’s accounts and bought a boatload of stuff like wigs and makeup.” He paused, a distasteful expression on his face. “And Viagra, which I hope she never used.”
The two of them shuddered. “I don’t think she did,” Alice said finally, praying that that mental image would somehow erase itself from her brain. “Unless there’s another gentleman we don’t know about.”
“No, the Tooey brothers were her latest conquests. Thank goodness they were spared.” They shuddered again, and Alice made a mental note to visit Harold and Roger that weekend.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Alice told him as she finished her order. “I’ll call you when your shoes come in.”
“Thank you. And if you can get my son to stop obsessing about that car of his, I’ll be grateful to you for life. Ever since it came back from the shop, he’s gone a little crazy.”
“Yeah, he insists on parking it all the way at the other end of the parking lot and making me drive him the rest of the way.”
Jacob patted her on the back. “Whitney is going to be a good influence on him. I hope.”
Alice waved at his retreating back. Between wedding planning meetings and crazy car talk, she somehow felt like she was the one that was losing it.
***
On a cool, clear September afternoon, Adam and Lewis stood across the street from the mall. Adam watched as several rather burly men struggled to hang the new sign on the side of the mall. A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk near the workers, and they stared up raptly. Lewis, however, seemed more interested in his car than in his name strung in lights for the whole town to see.
“I thought this was supposed to be a big deal for you,” Adam said with some asperity. “Weren’t you the one that was all, ‘My father really wants our family name on something important’, or am I remembering that conversation incorrectly?”
Lewis grunted from his position under the hood of his car. “Yeah, I might have been a little wrong about that.” At Adam’s incredulous look, Lewis shrugged and polished something metal that Adam couldn’t identify. “I talked to my dad about that and it turns out he doesn’t care what kind of shop I run as long as I’m gainfully employed and not wanting to move back home. Oh, and that I’m happy. He might have mentioned that part, too.”
“So this whole thing here…” Adam gestured at the scene in front of them. “…is a waste of time?”
“Oh, never a waste of time.” Lewis straightened up and peered over the top of his orange car. “After all, the Hughes Ever After Mall has a nice ring to it. I quite like it, in fact.”
Adam shook his head in disgust. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t have just named it the Hughes Mall.” Contemplating the building critically, he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It looks like I’m running a fairy tale instead of an upscale shopping center.”
“Upscale shopping center? You’re sounding awfully hoity-toity. I think my new mall manager is letting his position go to his head.” The hood of the car went down with a thunk and Lewis wiped his hands on a towel he’d slung over his shoulder. “Next thing you know, you’ll think you can tell me what to do.”
“Your mall, huh? I’ll start forwarding the electric bill to your address then.”
A g
aggle of girls across the street stopped in their tracks and stared at the two men. They whispered to each other and then burst out into a fit of giggling. “Your admirers are out in force today,” Lewis said wryly.
“They could have been gawking at you.”
“I’m taken, Wentworth. In a few weeks I’ll have the ring to prove it. You, on the other hand…”
Adam was silent as the sign was fastened and the workers returned, with much applause, safely to the ground. “Well?” Lewis prompted, nudging Adam’s foot. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
“This was a lot easier with Alice’s father,” Adam muttered to himself.
“What was that, Wentworth? Have you gotten in touch with your inner Emily Post and asked Alice’s father for permission to ask her to marry you?”
“I will neither confirm nor deny that statement. Do you remember our discussion outside the girls’ house, back before we took them to The Whitney?”
“You mean about joining forces?”
“Yeah. Did you see yourself getting married to Whitney back then?”
Lewis rubbed at a non-existent spot on Tang’s side panel. “No… but it didn’t take long for me to realize that she made me happier than anything else ever has. Why? Did you see yourself marrying Alice?”
“I did the day I made her dinner.”
Lewis looked at him shrewdly. “That long, huh?”
“Yep. That long. I’m going to ask her to marry me at your reception. Do you approve?”
The spot on Tang suddenly seemed very, very interesting to Lewis. “Are you asking for my blessing?”
“No. I’m asking Alice’s best friend in the world if he approves of her future husband. There’s a big difference, Hughes.”
“Not from where I stand.” Lewis finally looked up and met Adam’s gaze. “Have you spoken to Arthur?”
Alice in Glass Slippers Page 34