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"Unless it's seeing your second marriage fail," Margo returned with a cheery smile. "Is the divorce final, Candy?"
"Next month. You never did marry any of those… men, did you, Margo?"
"No, I just had sex with them. Most of them were already married anyway."
"You've always had such a European attitude. I suppose I'm just too American. I don't think I could ever be comfortable being a mistress."
Temper shot little lights of red in front of Margo's eyes. "Darling," she drawled, "it's blissfully comfortable. Believe me. But then, you're probably right. You're not suited for it. No alimony."
She stepped off the machine, grateful that her session with Candy had taken her mind off nerves and screaming muscles. Maybe her legs felt like limp strings of linguini, but she wouldn't give Candy the satisfaction of seeing them buckle. Instead, she carefully wiped off the machine as she had seen Judy do.
"Do come by the shop, Candy. We're having our grand opening tomorrow. You've always wanted what I had. This is your chance to get it. For a price."
As Margo flounced out, Candy drew a breath up her pert, tip-tilted nose and turned to the interested woman puffing behind her. "Margo Sullivan always pretended to be something she wasn't. Why, if it wasn't for the Templetons, she wouldn't be allowed through the front gates of this club."
The woman blinked the sweat out of her eyes. She'd admired Margo's style. And her sapphire tennis bracelet. "What was the name of her shop?"
Chapter Twelve
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Nine-forty-five, July twenty-eighth. Fifteen minutes to zero hour and Margo was sitting on the bed in the ladies' boudoir. The bed she had once slept in, made love in. Dreamed in. Now she was perched on the edge of it, holding her stomach and praying for the nausea to pass.
What if no one came? What if absolutely no one so much as stepped through those freshly washed glass doors? She would spend the next eight hours trembling, staring out the display window now so painstakingly arranged with her charcoal silk taffeta St. Laurent—worn only last year to the Cannes film festival—its skirts draped over a Louis XIV hall chair. That flowing skirt was surrounded by once prized possessions. A Baccarat perfume bottle, rhinestone-studded evening slippers, sapphire drop earrings, a black satin purse with a jeweled clasp in the shape of a panther. The Meissen candlestick, the
Waterford champagne flute, a display of her favorite trinket boxes, and the silver-backed dresser set that had been a gift from an old lover.
She'd placed every piece personally, as a kind of ritual, and now she feared that those things she had once owned and loved would draw no more than scorn from passersby.
What had she done?
Stripped herself. Stripped herself raw, and in public. She thought she could handle that, live through that. But she had dragged the people she cared about most into the morass with her.
Wasn't Laura downstairs right now waiting for that first customer? And Kate would dash over on her lunch hour, eager to see a sale rung up on the vintage cash register she'd hauled in from an antique shop in Carmel.
And Josh would probably swing by toward evening, strolling in with a smile on his face to congratulate them on their first day's success.
How could she possibly face them with failure? When the failure was all hers?
What she wanted most at that moment was to bolt downstairs and out the door. And just keep running.
"Stage fright."
With one arm still wrapped around her queasy stomach, she glanced up. Josh was in the doorway. "You talked me into this. If I could stand up right now, I'd kill you."
/> "Lucky for me those gorgeous legs of yours aren't steady." He gave her a quick, appraising look. She'd chosen a simple and perfectly tailored suit in power red with a short, snug skirt that gave those stunning, unsteady legs plenty of exposure to do their work. Her hair was braided, with just a few tendrils calculatingly free to frame her face. Pale as marble now, eyes glassy with fear.
"You disappoint me, duchess. I figured to find you down stairs revved up to kick ass. Instead you're up here shaking like a virgin on her wedding night."
"I want to go back to Milan."
"Well, you can't, can you?" His tone was hard as he crossed the room, took her by the arm. "Stand up, get a grip on yourself." Those big blue eyes were swimming, and he was afraid that if the first tear fell, he would break and carry her off anywhere she wanted to go. "It's a damn store, for Christ's sake, not a capital trial. It's just like you to blow it out of proportion."
"It's not just a store." Her voice hitched, mortifying her. "It's all I've got."
"Then go down and do something about it."
"I don't want to go down. What if no one conies? Or if they only come to stare and snicker."
