Window Shopping, page 5
Phew. Okay, we’re attracted to each other.
It’s not one-sided.
This is going to be a problem.
Maybe what we need right about now is a defining of the lines here. Because they should be thick and easy to spot. Like a fresh, black Expo marker on a whiteboard.
For one, he’s my boss and the handbook was clear. Employers are not to have romantic relationships with their employees, of which I am one. Even if it’s on a trial basis. I broke a lot of rules in the past and I’m not sure I want to do that anymore. Maybe at heart, I’m still the girl who trespassed with impunity and vandalized the sides of buildings. Do I still have that in me? Or am I capable of permanently changing?
I don’t know. I’m still trying on this new identity for size.
Two. Aiden is the real deal. He’s…genuine. And delightful.
There, I said it. By my third encounter with him, I should be noticing a crack in his aura of kindness, but I’m really thinking there isn’t one. And he is not—not—a man who sleeps with or dates or anythings with an ex-convict.
If he did, it would be another Good Samaritan move.
Show the tragic goth girl she’s worthy of love!
No, thanks. Not happening.
As badly as I’d like to find out how he kisses—and just how “rough” he can be—I will not start making major decisions when I’ve only been out of prison for a single month. I’m not letting him make any bad decisions, either. Aiden is the guy who wants to save people. Look at the way he charged downstairs and rescued me, carrying me upstairs like Prince Charming.
But I’m not a princess. Not the kind of girl who ends up with Aiden Cook.
Nor do I want to take advantage of his good nature. Isn’t that what I’d be doing if I let this turn into something when I know he’d only be in it for noble reasons?
Get out the Expo marker.
“Armed robbery,” I blurt, my fingers curling hard into the edge of the desk. “That’s what I was in prison for. My friend, Nicole, she…no, we arranged to rob a restaurant where our friend was closing up. It was going to be easy. We’d make a show for the camera, wave our fake guns around and walk out with the drop before he could put it in the safe. But uh…” I give a jerky shrug, finishing the rest of the story through pinched lips. “It turns out, the guns weren’t fake. And our friend’s boss came back because he forgot his phone. He took a gun out from beneath the register and fired at Nicole. She panicked and fired back, hitting him in the side. He lived,” I say quickly, glancing up for the first time to judge Aiden’s reaction. For once, he’s stoic.
“What happened after that?” he prompts quietly.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Aiden certain details about what happened next. But those facts might absolve me in his eyes. Or make me seem less guilty somehow, when the fact is, I made the decision to steal. I am guilty. End of story. And making myself look innocent right now would defeat the purpose of my goal, which is to impress upon Aiden how different we are. He would never, ever take someone’s hard-earned money. Never end up in the back of a cop car or an interrogation room. This is how I nip this attraction in the bud before it flourishes.
“The rest is history,” I say, hopping off the desk and backing toward the door. “Thanks for coming to let me out, boss. Good night.”
“I want the rest, Stella.”
With my pulse ticking in my temples, I keep walking.
He wants the rest.
The rest of what? Me or the story?
His gruff tone makes it impossible to tell. But I can’t give him either one.
4
Aiden
“It’s going to be a good day,” I mutter to myself, popping two Advil and swallowing them dry. Unfortunately, on board meeting days, my mantra doesn’t ring quite as true.
Leland crosses the office and stands in front of my desk with the demeanor of a pallbearer. “Are you ready, boss?”
No. “Of course.” I force a decent smile onto my face, though it’s a struggle. “They’re waiting in the conference room?”
“Yes. According to Linda in reception, they have rejected the muffin tray and are requesting sashimi.”
Hold on to that smile. “At ten thirty in the morning?”
“Yes,” Leland sniffs, disapprovingly. “I don’t know why board meetings can’t still be done remotely. They just come here to flex their power and kill our vibe. Linda says they didn’t even comment on your decorations. They have some nerve—”
“Easy now, buddy.” I push back from my desk and stand, reaching out to pat Leland on the shoulder. “You’re going to pop a blood vessel in your eye again.”
The vein adjacent to my assistant’s eye throbs ominously. “Don’t you ever want to tell them to just…fuck right off?”
I start to deny it, but that would be a lie. I’m a terrible liar, too. He’d see through me easier than a piece of swiss cheese. “Of course I do,” I sigh. “But they own this department store same as I do. They kept it going through some tough times and we all have jobs because of it.”
“You’re conveniently forgetting the fact that you bailed out Vivant five years ago. They conveniently forget as well. They treat you like they did you a favor, instead of the reverse.”
I gather up the necessary paperwork for the meeting. “Leland, if complaining a little makes them feel better about not being hands-on, let them. I don’t need a pat on the back.”
Ah, geez. The tip of his nose is turning red. “But you deserve one, boss.”
“Well, there. Just got one, didn’t I?” I come around the desk, grinning. “Let’s go eat some raw fish and pretend it’s a blueberry muffin.”
On the way out of my office, I can’t help but glance back at my desk. At the exact spot where Stella sat on Tuesday night after I carried her up here. It’s Thursday now and I haven’t seen her once since then. It’s been killing me to stay away, but Jesus, I have no idea what to do about her. I came dangerously close to kissing her perfect mouth right there in the elevator. Then once again in my office. And after having her thighs hug my waist for nearly five minutes, my body wanted a lot more than kissing. I haven’t been that hard in God knows how long. My cock was so stiff, I had to face the opposite direction and think about the time I walked in on Aunt Edna shaving her bikini line with a straight razor.
Yeah, this girl. She gets to me. Bad.
I don’t often act without logic, but that’s exactly what I’ve done here.
I’ve essentially hired Stella—on a trial basis—so that I could see more of her. But in turn, hiring Stella has made her off limits. Not only would kissing her be a violation of company policy and an unforgiveable abuse of power…I sense it would be a complication totally separate from our positions at Vivant.
I don’t mind complications. I’d do just about anything to get complicated with her.
I’m just not sure she’d want to get complicated with me.
She’s made it pretty clear that she thinks I’m the world’s biggest cheeseball.
My worst transgression is a parking ticket. While she was in prison, lonely and cold—I’m actually going to break out in hives just thinking about it—I was up here in this cushy office worrying about product displays and purchase orders. Easy. So easy compared to what she’s faced. And I think that’s what she was trying to tell me on Tuesday night when she confided the reason she got convicted. It was a roundabout way of saying we’re different.
Too different.
And she’s not interested.
Why else would she have run out of here like I offered her moldy toast?
On my way down the hall, I catch sight of my reflection in one of the glass partitions between desks left over from the pandemic. I’m smiling, even though I’m dreading the next couple of hours with every fiber of my being. I’m wearing a bright red bow tie and suspenders and I can already see Stella smirking over them.
Maybe I should skip the meeting and go downstairs to the window box where she’s working. Just to be positive she’d smirk. Hell, I’d take a smirk over not seeing her at all. I’ve held the girl in my arms one damn time and now all I can think about is doing it again. Sitting down with her in my lap, letting my hand roam freely up the softness of her wool tights. Watching awareness dawn on her face that I’m nothing in bed like I am in the street.
Not even close.
Christ, don’t think of that now or you’ll embarrass yourself.
We reach the entrance to the conference room and Linda, the receptionist who has been here longer than me, comes stomping out with a pinched expression holding a pitcher of water. “They don’t want it cold,” she says, somewhat hysterically. “They want it room temp. Last time they wanted it freezing.”
“Maybe we should have the water blessed by a priest and burn the demons out of them,” Leland suggests. “St. Patrick’s is only a few blocks away. I could be back in no time.”
“Forget the water, Linda. I’ll handle them.” I lean down and whisper near her ear. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk. Go take a swig.”
Her shoulders drop down from around her ears. “Bless you, Aiden Cook.”
“Leave a drop for me,” I chuckle on my way into the conference room. “I’ll need it,” I murmur under my breath as I come to a stop at the head of the table, taking in my family members and their shared air of impatience.
Closest to the window overlooking midtown is my grandmother, Shirley, and her grandson—my cousin—Randall. Randall will not look up from his phone once during this entire meeting and frankly, I’m good with that. He tends to say things that make me want to pop a blood vessel, Leland-style. Across from my grandmother and cousin sits my father. Bradley Cook. He looks over at me briefly when I walk in, then goes back to studying the skyline.
“Merry Christmas, everyone,” I say, taking a seat. Leland flops down into the chair beside me like he’s about to get a tooth pulled without Novocain. “I hope you didn’t hit too much traffic coming in from Long Island.”
“Of course we did,” Shirley draws out, fingers wrapped around the straps of the purse in her lap. “This is Manhattan and we’re nine days away from Christmas. The bridges and tunnels are full of people wanting to shop.”
“For which we are eternally grateful,” I say briskly, spreading my paperwork out in front of me. “Where do you folks want to start?”
“Folks?” My father snorts. “Where on earth did you come from?”
Shirley cranes her neck to look out the conference room door, probably wondering where Linda is with her room temperature water. With any luck, Linda is feeling no pain right about now. I’m not going to make my receptionist run around for water when I’m sure my grandmother’s limousine is waiting downstairs stocked with nine flavors of seltzer. “It’s Edna’s influence, Bradley,” she drawls. “The fault lies with you for sending him to live down south with that loon for so long.”
My skin turns hot under my clothes, but I refrain from taking issue with that statement. If Edna were here, she would laugh and say, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are just a representation of the speaker’s insides—not me. And not you.
I clear my throat. “Moving on from family matters—”
“I had to send him. You know my hands were tied there,” Bradley slides in smoothly, gesturing to me. “At least he got a decent education while living in Tennessee. I’m not sure how Edna managed to get employed at a prestigious boarding school as an art director, but they obviously knew what they were doing.” I’m caught between skepticism and shock that my father just gave me a rare, if roundabout, compliment, but skepticism wins when he tacks on, “So he occasionally sounds like a country bumpkin. You take the good with the bad.”
“I suppose,” my grandmother murmurs, looking at the door again.
“Yes!” Randall cries out, excited about whatever just happened on his phone.
Shirley smiles at him indulgently.
Leland is blinking so fast and so hard, I already know we’re looking at a doctor visit. The tip of his pen has already ripped a hole in the page of his notebook and he’s only written the date.
“Down to business,” I say quickly when my father tries to continue the conversation with his mother. “Our holiday shopping numbers are not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, but we’re getting there and we’re making up a lot of the deficit by focusing on online sales and marketing.” Shirley snorts at this. She thinks online shopping is tacky. She also thinks shopping in real life is tacky. I have no idea how she does her shopping. “It has been our saving grace through all of this, really, and based on focus groups we’ve been holding, I believe people will continue to shop this way, so we’re increasing the budget for online customer acquisitions.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Bradley asks, turning his chair slightly in my direction. “Don’t people want a return to normalcy?”
“Yes, sir. And what constitutes normalcy changes. It has changed. That’s not to say we’ve completely taken our focus off physical, in-person shopping. As we know, consumers tend to buy more in person or open a line of credit. We’re incentivizing in-person shopping through the newsletter and various television spots running through the holidays in the tri-state.” My bow tie suddenly feels tighter. “As far as appealing to casual shoppers and tourists, we hired a new window dresser, as you requested, and she’s taking things in an interesting direction. I should be able to send you more details once she’s finished with her current design. Now as far as—”
“Oh thank God,” my grandmother interjects. “The last girl was an abomination. Who is the new one? Have I heard of her? Please tell me you stole that genius from Saks.”
Hang on to your smile. “I did not.” I start to tell them about Stella, then hesitate. Not because I don’t think she’s qualified. Not because I’m afraid they’ll disapprove of her past (although they definitely would). But I’m already right on the edge of my patience. If one of them has a negative thing to say about Stella (they definitely would), I’m not going to handle it well. At all. In fact, I’m very protective of her in a way I didn’t realize until now. Or possibly when she called me, sounding breathless and terrified, to say she’d gotten locked in the window space and my heart dropped ten stories to the sidewalk below. Yeah, I was protective then and I’m even more so now.
I’m not casting her name out into the viper pit to be torn apart.
But at the very core of me is a need to people please. Especially when it comes to my family. No matter how unlikely it seems that they’ll be satisfied with anything I do, I can’t seem to stop trying, either. Something will give eventually, won’t it?
“She’s been hired on a trial basis,” I say. “We’re going to unveil her initial design on Friday and go from there.”
My grandmother sits up straighter. “But who is she—”
“Begging your pardon, Shirley,” I say, slapping a hand to my chest. “I have a conference call shortly. Would you mind if we powered through and I’ll update you on the window design situation at the end of the week? Thank you.”
Without taking a breath, I address the next few bullet points, but my grandmother doesn’t say a word for the rest of the meeting, continuing to watch me through eyes the size of dime slits. Toward the end of my marketing recap, I realize I may have made a mistake. In refusing to give them Stella’s name, have I inadvertently drawn their attention to her?
5
Stella
With my heart in my mouth, I stare down at the missed call on my phone.
Connecticut number?
There is only one person I know in the state of Connecticut and she’s housed in their women’s prison. Nicole. She must have found out I’ve been released, otherwise she wouldn’t have called my cell. Is she just calling to catch up? Why didn’t she leave a message?
With a familiar pinch in my chest, I leave the window box to find I’ve once again worked past closing without realizing it. I did the same last night and found myself on the various upper floors, roaming the empty aisles of Vivant to the sound of vacuums humming downstairs. There is something oddly soothing about a dark, empty department store.
For tonight’s venue, I choose the luggage section for my stroll. Picking through the holiday displays and boxes of inventory waiting to be shelved tomorrow morning, I can almost hear the buzz of customers lingering behind, even though it’s deadly silent in here now. Big, elaborate garlands are hung along the perimeter of the room, Vivant’s signature vanilla and cardamom scent evident in the air. Walking past a small, black quilted carry-on suitcase, I reach down and turn over the price tag, choking over the cost. No holiday bargains in this store.
Continuing on my slow journey through Vivant, I reach up and massage the back of my neck. I’m sore head to toe from hunching over on hands and knees all day. In the middle of the night last night, inspiration hit and now I’m covering the floor in fragmented pieces of broken mirror, which I smashed up with a hammer—very therapeutic, truth be told—to make the floor reflective. Once I hang the butterflies and turn on the lighting, the effect should be prismatic and amazing.
Hopefully.
Please be amazing.
Tomorrow is the unveiling of my first ever window display. It could be a massive flop. I could have completely misjudged the direction Vivant should be taking. It’s too late to change anything now, though, so I’m trying to keep my head down and focus on the finish line.
And I’m trying really, really hard not to think about Aiden.
Where has he been for the last two days? I mean, it stands to reason that the general manager of a department store would be a tad swamped with nine days left until Christmas. It also stands to reason that he has taken the hint I delivered and no longer plans to bother with me. As a friend, as an acquaintance. As anything. Which was exactly what I wanted.
