"Well then, you and the tiny house are going to have to duke it out," she retorted.
"We should see if they have shelf bras," I said as we walked down the sidewalk.
She snickered. "For science?"
"For science."
"Somehow I don't think that's going to be sold in Harrogate," Josie said.
"Yeah that may be a bit much for the townspeople here," I said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and tucking her next to me.
"I don't know. Ida might go for it," she said, laughing.
"That is an image I did not need in my brain," I told her, opening the door to the lingerie shop for her.
"It's probably a good thing," she teased. "You seemed like you were getting a little too excited!"
Josie did not model the lingerie for me. I was left holding the bag of shoes while she and the sales associate disappeared into the back room.
"You have to have a little mystery," the associate said.
I looked around the store while she was gone. They did not have shelf bras.
51
Josie
While I did love to shop, going to the boutiques with Mace brought back memories of Anke. I had spent money I didn't have when I was with her. The high totals at the cash register brought back the sick feeling of realizing I was stuck with a bill of tens of thousands of dollars. What if something happened and Mace wanted me to pay him back for all of these new clothes? But I tried to keep a happy face on through the shopping. Mace was a good guy. He was trying to do something nice for me.
I tried to concentrate on finishing up the last touches on the marketing rollout. The swag was already at the conference center. The website would be live tomorrow, and the video had Mace's voice dubbed over. For once something in my life was going right. I had this strange feeling like everything was going to be okay.
Until I went up to Mace's office and Anke was sitting at my desk. I felt my eye start twitching, and I held a finger over it. Mace looked up at me when I walked in.
"Just seeing if you had any final comment on the video," I said. "Otherwise it's going up on the website."
He stood up and came over to me. "It looks great." He reached for me, and I looked over and caught Anke's eye through the glass. She winked at me.
What was her angle? She always had an angle. It didn't seem like she was going after Mace. And I hadn't seen her after Garrett, Hunter, or Archer.
"You're not upset about the clothes, are you?" Mace asked. He looked concerned. I wanted to kiss him to reassure him, but Anke was right there. Somehow after all she had taken from me, I didn't want to share this with her.
"It's fine," I said with a sigh.
"It's a gift," Mace said. "You've done a lot. You deserve it."
"I hope it goes okay," I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Owen's been showing it around," Mace said. "People seem impressed. I think it's going to go very well."
I was glad he was confident. Though, after all Mace had done for me, I felt like I hadn't done enough for him. I wanted to make sure his life was going as smoothly as possible. And I knew what I still needed to do.
* * *
Ida wavedto me when I walked into the general store. "Any news?" I asked, grabbing a bag of candy and setting it on the counter.
"I did talk to my sister," Ida said. "She of course does not want to sell."
"If you could just get everyone in a room together," I begged. "I could pitch the big idea to them."
