She scanned the street for possible lunch escapes. Options were bleak: a hardware store, a law office, the café, and a string of boarded-up shops. She was about to turn away when movement at the far end of the sidewalk caught her eye. A woman in a full wedding gown ducked into a building.
“Either that’s a bridal shop or Gi Gi’s Crossing has a runaway bride on its hands,” Frankie murmured.
She turned back to her desk, if the chaos that passed for her office could be called that, and grimaced. At Naked Runway, she’d be reviewing proofs and meticulously marking edits in red before anything went to print. It was a rhythm she knew well, one she’d mastered first as editor-in-chief at their biggest competitor and now at NR.
Here, she was in a small-town purgatory. Watching the door for a truant teen menace.
What would she have become if she’d been raised in a place like Gi Gi’s Crossing instead of the fashion trenches of Manhattan? Nothing worth dry-cleaning.Did small towns even have jobs that didn’t require sensible shoes?
If it weren’t for last night’s crash lesson in the virtues of foreplay, she’d already be halfway to the city, heels muddy, chin tilted in defiance, ready to take her chances with Mr. Uptight’s wrath.
But she’d finally met a man who could short-circuit her brain with the flick of his tongue, and she wasn’t walking away from that kind of neurological miracle. Of course, she’d punish him properly before allowing him back into her bed. The man had to learn some orgasm manners. But once he was trained, she had every intention of seducing him.
Which left her, for now, as a bookstore manager.
She plucked the to-do list Vivian had left and picked item number seven. Organize the bookshelves.
Three hours later, she rubbed the back of her neck. She’d stripped the shop bare. In hindsight, maybe not the best choice. Half the shelves weren’t labeled at all. The rest looked like someone had shelved books while drunk and guided by vibes alone.
“Now for the fun part,” she muttered, eyeing the piles. Sorting chaos into something that passed for a system.
It reminded her of an exercise her therapist had “assigned” during week two: reevaluate life rules by checking each one for relevance, accuracy, and expiration dates.
And by “assigned,” she’d meant mandatory…unless Frankie wanted Ms. Birdie to be invited to the next session.
Frankie’s list of rules:
Apologies are for the lily-livered.
Feelings are for the weak.
Never let a man hold the reins.
Power gets you respect. Kindness gets you walked all over.
None had expired. None were irrelevant. Only one, rule number four, had required a slight revision:
4. Power gets you respect. Kindness gets you walked all over...and the occasional friend.
The only rule she’d never broken was number one.
Rule number two, feelings are for the weak, was the one that had imploded during Fashion Week, ending with a stiletto sailing across the room like a high-end missile. Which, in her father’s words, proved his parting theory…boys were better because girls were ruled by their emotions.
