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She couldn’t hide the way she looked at him, particularly when he held her in his arms. There was love in her eyes.
“Let’s talk about it later, okay?” he said, quickly backtracking. “We still have some time here, and I know you need to focus on the grand opening tomorrow morning.”
She looked troubled; her eyes were bright, as if she had tears in them. He silently cursed himself again for putting her on the spot, pressuring her too soon.
Before he could say anything, or even think of what to say, a woman’s voice intruded. “Speaking of the grand opening, Kate, I need you to set something aside for me tomorrow morning.”
They both looked up as Rose joined them, her arms loaded with bags of supplies from the hardware store.
“I want one of them Kama Sutra sheet sets, so I can honestly say my bed has had every sexual position known to man performed on it.”
Kate’s worried expression faded as she ruefully grinned. “You got it, Rose.”
KATE FIGURED the grand opening of Bare Essentials in Pleasantville would be discussed by its residents for years to come. Old-timers would reminisce about it the way they did the big snowstorm of ’73, the high school girls’ state championship team of the early eighties. Even Flo Tremaine’s striptease and skinny-dipping session in the town square fountain thirty years back would take a back seat to this day.
The newest generation of Tremaine women were definitely giving them something to talk about.
The line to get into the store Monday morning wound down the cobbled sidewalk, blocking the entrance to the Tea Room. That obviously ticked Mrs. McIntyre off royally, because she’d posted a snippy little sign saying Do Not Block Stairs on her porch railing.
Kate heard later that a few of the Tea Room biddies had made rude comments about the store. They’d been overruled by the people in line, including Mayor Otis who declared Kate and Cassie worthy of a civic award for their efforts to revitalize Pleasantville’s downtown shopping district.
A neighboring city had even sent in a news truck. Sure, it was a teeny cable station, with a viewership of about eight, but it was exciting, nonetheless. The reporter conducted interviews with the customers, many of whom were the Bunko women who’d come to the pre-opening party last week. Their husbands were even more enthusiastic in their support of the new shop.
Singles, couples, young and old, the populace of Pleasantville chatted and laughed, lauding the store as an asset to the town while they shopped their hearts out.
Armand’s lingerie was a huge hit, with sexy books and fun-and-naughty gifts doing well, too. Kate suspected the hotter items—dildoes, vibrators and the like—would sell better when there were no throngs of townspeople present. Or TV cameras.
If Kate hadn’t already changed her mind about wanting this store to fail, she might be feeling pretty upset about its obvious success. Now, since she wanted it to succeed, she should be feeling at least triumph, if not downright jubilation.
Depressed better described her mood.
Stupid. It was stupid, juvenile and girlish, but she was depressed about Jack asking her to move in with him yesterday.
The modern woman who carried a vibrator around in her purse should have been thrilled, recognizing Jack had really been offering a sort of commitment in today’s day and age.
A deeper, more vulnerable part of her had been very hurt.
Did he want her to serve the same function as her mother had? The woman who was good enough to mess around with, but not the one you married, not the one you had children with?
Men from Lilac Hill didn’t marry trashy Tremaine women. They had sex with them in secret and left them stuff in their wills, but they certainly didn’t introduce them to their mothers or give them wedding rings.
She knew her reaction was unfair. She’d seen motives and desires he might never have intended. And it wasn’t as if Jack knew about his father’s relationship with her mother, so he couldn’t possibly have realized how she might take it.
Kate was intelligent enough to know her own deep-down insecurity had made her tense up when he’d asked. That didn’t lessen the feeling, though.
At the end of the day, a few minutes before closing time, Kate found herself alone behind the cash register. Cassie had run an errand, most of the shoppers had left. There were one or two people in the dressing rooms, she believed. She was ready for them to get out so she could go take a long, hot bath. When the bell jingled over the door, she glanced up and saw, to her surprise, Darren McIntyre.
