“It’s amazing? And alarming? I didn’t know there would be…” Vicki looked around, hoping for Carol’s support, but the other teacher had faded into a grinning background. Everybody nearby was, in fact, beaming at her with either encouragementor grimacing at her in obvious envy. Vicki took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and managed a smile for Grace. “I didn’t know there would be a horde of people to go along with the dress. I guess I wasn’t expecting such a fuss.”
“Well, we’ve all got Google,” Grace replied with disarming frankness. “The winner being from Zane Bellamy's home town is a great story all by itself, and then it turns out you look like Cinderella. All you need is a pumpkin and a fairy godmother!”
Vicki blinked down at herself in astonishment, then blinked at Grace, too, before pulling together a crooked smile. “Are you saying I’ve got ashes in my hair and need to take a bath, Ms. Chen?”
The reporter’s hearty laugh bounced upward again. “You know I’m not. Tell me, what kind of dress do you have in mind?”
If Vicki’s eyebrows went any higher, she thought they’d crawl off her forehead. “The kind that Mr. Bellamy suggests, probably. I’m a school teacher. I buy most of my clothes at the Five and Dime. I have no idea what a fashion designer would think looked good on me.”
“Your coat is very good,” Grace said with a thoughtfully critical eye. “Am I supposed to believe you don’t know that?”
“There’s a wholeheckof a lot of difference between a decent wool coat and couture, Ms. Chen,” Vicki said wryly. “Tell you what—oh, no.” The last words were to the world in general as a whole bunch of other reporters swooped down on her, now that Grace Chen and her cameraman had noticed her. She spent the next forty minutes answering exactly the same questions from people who were mostly not as nice as Grace, as Vicki’s exhaustion and blood pressure both rose.
Vicki’sbrotherliked being the center of attention. Vicki did not. It had been a running joke in their family ever since their parents had gotten married. Vicki, aged eight, had done all she could to avoid being the flower girl because people wouldlookat her. Her soon-to-be stepbrother, age twelve, had put in a remarkably good argument forhimbeing the flower girl, although in the end, she’d been the flower girl and he’d escorted his mother down the aisle. Vicki was still fairly certain he’d have looked better in her dress than she did.
Her brother also would have handled a billion interview questions better than she did. Vicki finally escaped to the bathroom, where she contemplated the high, narrow windows. She could probably go out one, if she wanted to. It had to be better than going back out through the crowd in the gym.
Next thing she knew, Vicki was balanced precariously on a garbage can and pushing the window as far open as it would go. She could get her arms through it up to the armpit, enough to squirm up and look down at the forty-foot fall.
“It isnotforty feet,” she breathed to herself. It was maybe eight, really. Ten at the most. If she could get herself out and turned around so she could dangle from the window, her feet would only be a little ways above the ground.
A deep warning part of her mind informed her that this was going to go incredibly badly. The window was not wide enough for her to get up there and lie on her belly and squish a leg through so she could go out feet first. Not unless she had secret contortionist skills unknown even to herself. She pushed herself up a little farther, trying to see how exactly she could make this work, and two terrible things happened.
The first one was she had hitched herself up just far enough to get her boobs over the edge of the windowsill. Vicki was nottremendouslywell-endowed, but having gotten her boobs over, she suddenly realized there would be No Going Back. For one thing, it would hurt like a motherjammer, because it would be all squish and scrape all the time.
For another—the second terrible thing—she had just knocked the garbage can over with her squirming and kicking. Itcrashed to the tile floor with a tremendous bang, echoing wildly through the bathroom.
There was no way half the gymnasium hadn’t heard that, which meant Vicki had to get the hell out the windownow, or the entire east coast press corps would be in here to see her ass-up hanging out the window in an all-too-obvious escape attempt. She said several words she wouldn’t want her first graders to hear her use, thought,this is going to end badly, and gave herself a good solid shove forward.
For a couple of seconds she was high-centered on the window sill, bent double over it, her front half free to the world and her back half kicking and flailing against the bathroom air. She could already tell she was going to be one big bruise from collar to hip bone, and she could see no way to get out of this situation without scraping the ever-loving hell out of the fronts of her thighs.
And probably breaking her neck. But it was too late now. No way through but forward. She heaved again, had a horrible moment of scraping pain, terror, and free-fall, before landing hard on a man who came rushing up to the wall as she fell down it.
They both collapsed to the earth with a series of grunts and howls, apologies already pouring from Vicki’s lips as she struggled to roll away from her poor, no-doubt damaged rescuer.
“No, no, it’s okay,” he said in the hoarse voice of a man who’d had the wind knocked out of him. He still had his hands on her waist, like he was afraid she’d keep falling if he let go. “Better we both go down than you break your neck. Are you okay?”
“Mortified,” Vicki reported, trying to get her hair out of her face so she could see, “but mostly unharmed. You? Thank you so much. Oh mygod,” she said as she clawed her hair back and got a decent look at the man’s sharp, handsome features and the softglint of the expensive fabric he wore. “You’re Zane Bellamy. And I’ve just ruined yoursuit. I amso sorry!”
CHAPTER 4
No man had ever been blessed with such good fortune as to have the woman of his dreams literally fall into his arms. That was cinematic in scope, Zane thought. Storybook love was made of such things.
Storybook love did not, however, dwell on how much it actually hurt to have somebody land on you. Or how awkward it was to try to catch somebody sliding headfirst down the side of a building, for that matter. In movies, the heroine leaped gracefully into the hero’s embrace, giving them both plenty of clearance. They didn’t slither through a high window and slowly gain momentum as they slid out the other side, and the hero’s strong arms were capable of catching a hundred and thirty pounds of falling human without everybody slamming to the ground.
Zane had never thought of himself as much of a romantic hero, and now he was sure of it. Some of his film star friends probably could have managed it—Fletcher Cole, who was tall and wiry and incredibly strong, and also fun to dress because of his narrow frame, or Benton Sinclair, who was built like one of the superheroes he’d recently starred as and looked goodin literally anything—would have caught Victoria Hawthorne effortlessly.
Which was why Zane was designer to the stars, and not one of the stars himself. He croaked, “The suit will wash,” although given how much muddy snow he’d rolled in, he wasn’t actually sure of that. “Are you all right? What were youdoing?”
“Escaping the media.” Victoria rolled away from him, apparently undisturbed by the fact that she was spreading more mucky snow across her boxy wool jacket. She lay there in the mud for a minute, looking at the sky as if the distant stars were the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. “What wereyoudoing out here? You left the gym almost an hour ago.”
Zane groaned. “The B&B is surrounded by media. I sent Dion in as a distraction and ran.”
“Back to the school where there’s a ton of media presence?” Victoria pushed up on her elbow, amusement curving her mouth. She didn’t seem nearly as cold as he felt, though she was, of course, wearing a large coat, and he was in a suit meant for a Los Angeles winter, which was an easy twenty degrees warmer than Virtue. “Aren’t you freezing?”
“I am, in fact.” Zane smiled lopsidedly at her, then felt a pang of dismay as she scrambled to her feet and offered him a hand up. “I should be doing this for you…”
“You stopped me from smashing my head on the ground and breaking my neck. I think I’m still in your debt.” Victoria pulled him up with unexpected strength, then steadied him as he lurched a little from the power of her lift. “Sorry. I’m stronger than I look. Hauling all those six year olds around will do that.”
