Читать книгу Be My Valentino - Sandra D. Bricker - Страница 9

Chapter 2

2

I can’t even believe you came in today.” Amber gingerly set down a cup of coffee on the desk in front of Jessie. “I’d still be reeling. Are you reeling?”

“A bit,” Jessie admitted with a sigh.

“I don’t blame you. What can I do? Can I get you something?”

Before Jessie had a chance to consider the offer—although she had no idea what she could request that little five-foot-four Amber could get for her—Piper stormed through the door to the miniscule office and crowded in with them.

“How did you know?” Jessie asked the instant she spotted the look of terror/concern on Piper’s face.

“Danny called me.”

“Of course he did.”

She knew it made little sense to anyone but herself; however, the lingering fuel of her resistance to his role as her protector hadn’t quite burned off yet. She swallowed to keep from screaming at the very idea that she might even need one.

“He’s concerned about you. And so am I.” Piper looked at Amber pointedly. “Did she tell you Jack forced himself into her apartment last night?”

Jessie stood and gripped the edges of the desk with both hands. “Enough. This is my place of business, and business is the only thing that’s going to keep me sane today. It is officially declared a No Drama Zone for the rest of the day.”

Piper chuckled. “Does that work? Just declaring it?”

“Yes.” She pondered the absurdity for a moment before adding, “I need it to work. I have things to do.”

“What things?”

“We have new inventory to sort through, and . . . and if I could concentrate, I could probably tell you what else.”

“You’ve got Francesca Dutton at three o’clock,” Amber prompted.

Jessie scratched her head. “Who?”

“She’s the daughter of Stella Dutton. The woman who passed away? She invited you to come and look through her closet?”

“Oh. Of course.”

Francesca had called the store and described a wonderland of designer labels left behind by her mother, inquiring about whether Jessie might be interested in choosing a few things to sell on consignment. She’d refrained from explaining that Adornments was a rental boutique and that, despite her eventual hope of expanding into retail consignments, she wanted to wait until the store gained momentum. Perhaps in a year or so. But the opportunity had presented itself to dip a toe in those waters with Stella Dutton’s enviable closet, and she decided not to look a gift horse in the wide-open mouth.

“Every designer from A to Z,” Francesca had stated. When she added, “Armani to Zac Posen,” Jessie was sold. But with everything going on since, she hadn’t given it another thought.

When the phone buzzed, Amber snatched it up from Jessie’s desk. “Thank you for calling Adornments. This is Amber.” Jessie massaged her throbbing forehead until: “Sure, Danny. She’s right here. Hang on.”

She stared at the phone Amber pushed toward her, making no move to take it.

“Jessie,” Piper chastised in a whisper.

She clicked her tongue and surrendered. “Hello?”

“I won’t keep you,” he stated in that matter-of-fact monotone she hadn’t heard in quite a while. “I wanted to quickly tell you that Rafe made a couple of calls on your behalf, and an attorney named Tina LaBianco will finalize a restraining order against Jack for you this afternoon.” A pregnant pause left her wondering if he’d hung up. Then: “If that’s what you still want.”

“Yes, of course it is.” She scribbled the lawyer’s name on the pad in front of her and added, “I’ll call her right away.”

“Good.”

“Good. Well. Thank you, Danny.”

“Have a good day, Jessie.”

And with that, the line went cold.

“That was short and sweet,” Piper commented.

Jessie looked down at the unruly desktop in front of her. Just keep your eye on the ball.

“Are you ready to get to that inventory?” Jessie asked Amber as she returned the handset.

“Sure.” The jingle of the front door announced a more immediate need. “As soon as I tend to some customers.”

Amber hurried out front and, instead of following, Piper sat in the chair across the desk from Jessie and smiled. “Let’s talk about it,” she urged. “You start.”

* * *

Danny grabbed Carmen, his favorite of the three surfboards hanging on the rack, and stowed her under his arm. Zipping the wetsuit, he made his way across the sand. Frank galloped ahead of him, the Great Dane’s shiny harlequin coat glistening under the late morning sun. Riggs hadn’t waited on him, and Danny could see him bobbing atop his bright coral board a hundred yards out. They’d probably missed the best of the swells, but he’d take whatever wave therapy he could get.

Frank barked twice and followed him into the first few feet of foamy surf until Danny hopped to his stomach on the board and paddled through the channel to the outside. By the time he reached the lineup, Riggs had already caught his ideal wave and ridden it out so Danny didn’t have to concern himself with avoiding a drop-in. He simply headed for an ideal spot, sat upright, and watched over his shoulder for a rideable wave. One came along in no time at all, and Danny caught it just before the break. Anchor-heavy thoughts of Jack Stanton, restraining orders—and even Jessie herself—sank into the water behind him as he angled his board across the wave and rode it home.

Riggs had flopped on his longboard in the sand, face up to the clouds as he ripped a bite out of a massive sandwich. Danny laughed at Frank. The dog looked like a drooling soldier standing guard over Riggs. Instead of turning out for another ride, Danny grabbed his board.

“Let’s go in, Carmen.”

Just as he dropped the board, parallel to Riggs’s larger one, and sat down on it, Riggs extended the sandwich to Frank and let him take a huge, unruly bite out of it before taking another of his own. Danny winced slightly at the act.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he remarked to Riggs as he focused on another surfer riding just inside the curl, “I love my dog and all, but you’re not ever gonna see us swapping spit.”

“Eh,” Riggs replied with a wave of his hand, “it’s all the same to me. And if Frankenstein minds, he’s never mentioned it.”

Danny chuckled and shook his head.

“Hey, listen, my kid wants to go paddleboarding this weekend. Any chance at snagging the keys to your family’s mountain casa?”

“The last time you used my folks’ place in Big Bear Lake, you left without closing up the windows,” Danny reminded him.

“Yeah, but who knew that freak snowstorm was headed in?”

“Uh, anybody who turned on the news?”

“I’ll do better this time. So can we use the place?”

Danny glanced over at Riggs, still flat on his back, now cradling Frank’s head as the dog lay on his back as well, paws pointed skyward.

“Hey, you could come with,” Riggs exclaimed.

“Make sure the windows get closed?”

“That, and drive your old man’s boat.”

“Chop some wood, make sure there’s food in the house, that kind of thing?” Danny teased.

“Not a single one of those is a bad idea. What do you say?” With a second thought, he added, “Why not invite Jessie along?”

Danny blew out a sigh that mixed with a groan. “Yeah. Jessie’s not feeling me so much at the moment.”

Riggs twisted out from beneath Frank and propped up on his elbow. “What’d you do?”

“Nice. Assuming I did something.”

“Well, didn’t you?”

Danny fell backward on the board and stretched out. “I guess I’m just an inconvenient truth.”

“Like global warming.”

“Yeah. Like global warming. Jessie’s the globe, and I’m the warming.” He closed one eye against the rays of the sun. “And by warming, I mean me being one more guy she’s not sure she can trust.”

Riggs dug his fingers into the fur at the back of Frank’s neck and clicked his tongue. “Man, if she can’t trust you, I don’t know who the guy is that she can.” He thumped a couple of pats to Frank’s large back. “So we on for this weekend, or what?”

Danny thought it over. “Yeah. I guess so. Yeah, sounds like a plan. I’ll call my folks in a bit.”

“All right then. When will you call and invite her?”

“Sometime next month?”

“C’mon. The place is a monster. Jessie and Allie can take the big room. With you and me up in the loft on the other side of the place, she’ll never know you’re there.”

Danny looked out into the horizon. “I’ll sell it to her just like that.”

* * *

“Mother liked to organize her closet according to designer,” Francesca announced as she tugged open the double doors to a massive walk-in closet and flipped on the light, drenching them in opulent elegance.

Amber and Jessie exchanged fleeting wide-eyed glances before Amber dug her fingers into Jessie’s arm until she winced.

“Probably my imagination,” she whispered, “but do you hear angels singing?”

“Mm-hmm,” Jessie muttered before addressing Francesca. “This is really amazing.”

The woman placed a hand on one bony hip and looked around as if seeing the closet for the first time. “I suppose it’s a little ostentatious, isn’t it? But then Mother was an extravagant person by nature.”

Jessie had met Stella Dutton a time or two before her death. She wouldn’t really categorize her as extravagant as much as . . . impeccable. The first time they met was the Women of Excellence in the Arts benefit tea at the Marina del Rey Ritz-Carlton. Piper had chaired the event planning committee, and Jessie had volunteered to staff the registration table as a courtesy to her friend. She’d noticed Stella the instant she stepped into line at her table in a vintage Chanel suit, a double strand of pearls, and two-toned slingback pumps. In a different time, she might have been mistaken for Jacqueline Kennedy.

“The first time I met your mother,” she commented, “she was wearing the most exquisite Chanel—”

“Double-breasted?” Francesca interrupted.

“No. No, it was an off-white wool with black seam detailing and gold-tone buttons.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, heading to the far end of the closet. She unzipped one of the clear garment bags. “This one.”

Jessie’s hand flew to her heart, and she and Amber released appreciative sighs in perfect harmony.

“She did look lovely in this, didn’t she?”

Jessie nodded. “I remember thinking she eclipsed every other woman in the room just by wearing that suit.”

“Mother loved Coco Chanel. She said the designer wasn’t just stylish; she also created the very concept of personal style.”

“I’d have to agree.”

“What do you suppose you could get for something like this?”

Jessie stepped forward to examine it more closely. “The logo buttons are still pristine and the stitching is unblemished. We could easily put a price tag on it for, say, nineteen hundred.”

“And for consignment, the store takes twenty-five percent when it sells?”

Jessie discerned a sense of desperation in the question that their surroundings didn’t convey. “Yes, twenty-five percent.”

“All right. Put that one aside. I’ll have Elyse bring up a garment rack for us while you take a look to see what else you might like. Let’s start with maybe ten or twelve primary items and another dozen from the shoes and handbags, shall we?”

“That’s more than generous,” Jessie told her. “It will give us a solid look at whether my customers will be interested in purchasing as well as lease options.”

Once Francesca’s Prada heels clopped down the hall and to the stairs, Amber and Jessie shared muted squeals from inside the closet.

“Do you believe this closet?” Amber squawked.

From the elaborate crystal chandelier to the subtle lavender fragrance enveloping them to the three inches of thick white carpet Jessie smoothed with the toe of her shoe, the term closet seemed slightly . . . inadequate to describe their surroundings.

“It’s bigger than my whole apartment.”

“Never mind the size of the closet,” Jessie whimpered as she floated toward a section of floor-length gowns. “May I escort you to the bling section?”

Amber gasped as Jessie removed an ethereal strapless evening gown with a sweetheart neckline, banded waist, and draped ruffle skirt. A stunning blue-and-grey print seemed to flutter over layers of airy, semi-sheer silk organza.

“Is that—” Amber breathed.

Together, they confirmed the label. “Badgley Mischka.”

“We’ve got to have this one,” Jessie declared.

“We can’t leave here without it.”

Over the next ten minutes, they found about twenty different garments they couldn’t leave without and, while Amber joined Francesca in the sitting room to fill out the consignment paperwork, Jessie arranged each one on the crystal hook on the back of the closet door and shot a digital record with Amber’s small camera of the four dresses, two jackets, six suits, and three gowns they’d agreed upon.

Elyse helped by enclosing each article in its own garment bag and hanging them on a wheeled rack while Jessie took additional pictures of the six immaculate pairs of shoes, seven like-new handbags and two exquisite wraps Francesca had agreed to include. After the accessories had been packaged and stacked, it took the both of them to roll the cart out of the closet into the sitting room where Amber and Francesca sat at a carved walnut table.

“You know,” Jessie said, pausing to consider how best to broach the subject tactfully. “I have a deal in place with several benefactors where they’ve given me items to lease out and collect a sort of royalty on each rental. If you’d like me to take more from the closet for that purpose, we’d be happy to do that.”

“How exactly would that work?” Francesca asked, and Jessie noted a mist of grief in her mahogany eyes.

Jessie sat on the quilted Parson’s chair adjacent to Francesca. Touching her hand gently, she said, “This can’t be easy. Is there anything I do for you?”

“Return my mother to me?”

Jessie’s heart seized. “I understand. I can’t tell you what I’d give for just one more day with my mother.”

A single blink, and the tears tumbled out of Francesca’s eyes and streamed down the slopes of her cheeks.

“Things weren’t right between Mother and me at the end,” she admitted. “I wasn’t the best daughter to her that I could have been. My only consolation, really, is that she had a very strong faith that allowed her a certain fearlessness at the end.”

Amber scraped her chair closer to the opposite side of Francesca. “Would you like us to pray for you?” she asked, and Jessie’s heart immediately pounded. “Right now?”

“Would you?” she asked, and Jessie’s breath caught in her throat at the unexpected reply.

* * *

After my April passed, little Jessie come to live with me a few blocks over from her homestead on Eaton Street. ’Bout a week in, after April was snug and buried, Jessie and me got done sayin’ our nighttime prayers, and Jessie looks up at me and says, “Grampy? Whatcha s’pose Mama’s doin’ tonight?”

The old ticker just ’bout gave way at the hope in those eyes o’ that young’un.

“Can’t know for sure,” I tells her. “But I guess she’s probly takin’ it easy, restin’ up.”

“Yeah, she musta been purdy tired, dontcha think?”

“I do.”

I could see her wheels a-turnin’ as I tucked in the covers around her and kissed her on the head.

“If I talk to her, do you s’pose she might hear me?”

“Could be,” I says.

“Do you wanna talk to Mama with me, Grampy?”

I thought it over a quick second before I says, “Why don’t we talk to the Father instead ’n He can relate the message when she’s rested up.”

“Okay. I guess that’d be all right.”

Three-quarters of an hour ticked by whiles Jessie talked to Jesus about all the things her mama had missed since she’d gone away. She covered the spelling bee at school, the supper she liked best of all—stew ’n biscuits with the short carrots—and the orange cones up on the corner of the main road where somebody’d knocked down a phone pole.

“I hope you’ll tell Mama about the flowers too, Jesus. She got so many of ’em that Grampy donated some to the hospital up the highway so’s some people who didn’t get no flowers when they was sick might wake up and see somethin’ purdy in their room. But we kept the ones that were Mama’s favorites. She liked the daisies and the long purple ones—”

“Iris,” I told ’er.

“Yeah. Irises. I like those too.”

“You think we might want to wrap this up, girl?” I threw in.

“Okay. Grampy says I need to wrap up,” she continued, her eyes clamped shut tight. “On account o’ you’re probly pretty busy and all. But if you wouldn’t mind, give Mama a kiss goodnight for me? On the cheek ’cause she likes that.”

My thoughts made it hard to sleep that night. A lotta nights after too. A girl without a mama needs a lotta things an old geezer like me didn’t know how to give.

Did my best, though, in the years that followed April up to heaven. Owed her that. Owed Jessie too.