Sloane’s face flushes red with anger. She draws her arm back and hurls the contents of her drink directly into Winona’s face.
Chapter Eighteen
Winona
“Ow! Motherforker!”
Before I know it, Blake’s looped his arm around my shoulders and is steering me through the crowd. My eyes sting and tear from the alcohol, and I can barely see.
Behind us, Sloane is squealing in outrage. “Get your hands off of me! Do you know who I am? My daddy will have you arrested!”
A door opens, and slams behind us. I stumble, and Blake holds me upright. “Oh, damn,” I groan, as he pushes me into an elevator. “I know that was the last thing you needed. Did the reporters get all of that?”
“Yes, but it’s not a big deal. It makes Sloane look bad, not me. Now if she goes crying to the press about how I done her wrong, everyone will say ‘no wonder’.”
The elevator goes down two floors and stops. That means we’re on the womenswear floor.
Blake leads me out of the elevator. I’m still half-blind, tears trickling down my cheeks, and I almost crash into someone. “Sorry!” I cry out.
“The store is empty. That’s a mannequin.” Blake lets out a low rumble of laughter. “And she does not accept your apology. She says some people just can’t handle their alcohol.”
“Tell her everyone hates her for her plastic personality. Because, uh, I guess you speak mannequin.” He walks me away from the elevator, hand gently clamped on my arm, and I stumble after him. “My mascara’s doing the thing where I look like a melting panda, isn’t it?” I shake my head, and a blob of margarita-slush slides off my hair and plops icily onto my cleavage, making me shudder. “You’re always seeing me at my worst.”
He stops walking and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Are you crazy? Wait, never mind, we’ve already established the answer to that question. But I’ve never seen you look less than amazing.”
I screw up my face and squint my eyes at him, trying to blink away the sting. “The first time you met me, when I came storming out of the apartment wearing rainbow unicorn jammies with my hair in rollers?”
He laughs. “You were this gorgeously retro 1950s pinup angel of vengeance. A passionate little fireball. I said you were cute, didn’t I?”
“You said I was cute when I was mad,” I correct him snippily.
“I might have said that,” he concedes. “You threw me off guard, which doesn’t happen to me often, and I retreated behind a defensive wall of smart-assery. You’re also cute when you’re not mad, by the way.”
“The next day, when I came out in kitten-sunglasses pajamas?” I’m a little girl, begging for more candy. And Blake’s compliments are very sweet candy indeed.
“I didn’t notice the kittens.”
“What did you notice?”
He hesitates just a little too long. “Nothing.”
“You paused! That was the pause of a liar!”
He sighs. “Your pajama shirt had a button open.”
“Oh my God,” I squeal. “You perv.”
“Only for you.”
He really just said that. My heart pumps faster, and I bite my lip and turn away so I don’t say anything mushy or stupid. “Which way is the bathroom?”
He points to the sign. My vision is clearing enough that I make my way there without accidentally molesting any more mannequins. I wash my face off and use a few squirts of lotion to swipe my smeary eye makeup away. Most of it was on my cheeks anyway.
That’s okay, Blake said he’d never seen me look less than amazing.
Loves me no matter what I look like. My middle-school bookmark list pops into my head. Doesn’t matter. He hates dogs, doesn’t say thank you because it would take three quarters of a second and therefore put him behind schedule, and I’d bet my left kidney he’d rather pay someone to walk an old lady across the street than do it himself.
Also, he’s Blake Hudson, the man who’s so busy he schedules two minutes a morning for shaving. This is so not a man who’s in relationship mode.
But he’s also Blake Hudson, the man who’s told me again and again that I get under his skin like no-one else does. The man who finds time in his over-scheduled life to bombard me with texts all day long. The man who threw a hissy at the thought of me leaving town. Because he wants me to stay here? Maybe?
And he’s the man who just paraded me in front of New York’s finest like I was something to be proud of, not Weird Winona who makes skirts out of curtains and purses out of vintage lunch pails. Also, vintage lunch pail purses are totally on-trend now, and in fact Hudson’s sells ten-thousand-dollar replica vintage lunch pail purses, so in your face, head cheerleader Honey Lou Morrison, and also Aunt Loretta with her snide little “Well, isn’t that special” smirks.
Not that I hold a grudge or anything. Ahem.
I give myself a final once-over and emerge from the bathroom. Blake is waiting halfway across the room, holding up a gorgeous silk dress. It’s the color of a baby faun, trimmed with beige lace and hand-painted with flowers and hummingbirds.
When I reach him, he says, “I owe you a dress,” gesturing at my gown, which is splotchy and ruined now.
He hands the dress to me. I hold it up, trying not to drool on it. I stroke it very gently, letting the cool silk run through my fingers. It’s so pretty I’d rather hang it up on my wall at home than wear it.
Then I catch sight of the price tag and gasp aloud.
He grabs the tag and rips it off. “Sorry! I missed that, my bad. It’s yours. Don’t argue!” he says sternly. The note of command in his voice sends a pleasurable shiver down my spine.
I need help.
“I wasn’t going to,” I assure him. “In fact, if you tried to take it back, I was prepared to fight you for it.”
That earns me a genuine laugh. A happy laugh, not a sardonic, dry, mocking laugh.
“You can change right here if you want to,” he says. “Don’t worry, I won’t peek. Unless you ask me very nicely.” Before I can say anything, he walks off.
I carefully drape the new dress over a rack. I strip off my booze-soaked gown, roll it up, and shove it into my purse. Then I pull the new one over my head, shivering in pleasure as the silk pours over me. I twirl around, and it swirls like a breeze, lighter than air.
“Here you go,” Blake calls out. He’s holding an empty shopping bag in one hand, and in the other a Judith Leiber purse shaped like a butterfly, and a pair of low-heeled pumps. “The bag’s for your boozy dress and shoes and purse.”
I take them all, and stuff my drenched things in the empty bag. “Stop, you’re spoiling me. Kidding! I will accept a little spoilage.”
I step into the new shoes, and it’s like standing in two little clouds, the buttery soft leather hugging my feet.
“Holy tamales! They’re my new favorites!” I cry happily. “They’re the unicorn of shoes! Heels, but comfortable!”
“I aim to please.” He does a half-bow. “Your dress is unzipped in the back. Shall I?”
“That would be lovely, thanks.”
I turn around so he can zip me up. His hand moves up my back, fingers brushing against my skin as the zipper slides shut. The casual intimacy of the motion sends heat pulsing through my body.