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Because when Bianca learns the truth, she won’t ever want to see me again.
28
BIANCA
Anastacia walks behind me as I slowly stroll through the rows of designer shoes, and I can feel her resentment walking beside us like an evil twin.
I decide to ignore her and enjoy the landscape of designer shoes in front of me. After all, I’m in my happy place, and I intend to enjoy it.
But it’s hard to do when I can feel her cool gaze burning a hole in the back of my skull.
“You don’t like me much,” I say.
“What I think of you doesn’t really matter,” she says, a tight smile on her face.
“Well, you’re absolutely right about that,” I say, picking up a glorious Thomas Monroe shoe with a death-defying seven inch heel and studying it.
“You used to come in with your friends. Two blondes and a brunette.”
My eyes flit to hers. “So?”
“It was sad, really. Another spoilt princess spending daddy’s money on her friends so she could keep them.”
“Excuse me?”
“We could all tell they were using you.”
“They weren’t using me—"
“But then, we see that all the time around here. Sometimes we feel bad, other times we laugh about it.” A cruel gleam in her cold blue eyes tells me which category I fell into. “Money makes people so tasteless. Your friends seemed, I don’t know… off.”
This ice maiden doesn’t know how right she is. But it will be a frosty day in hell before I let on.
I turn away from her to put the Thomas Monroe down. “I think I preferred it when you weren’t talking.”
She scoffs. “I suppose you’re expecting another apology.”
“Not if it’s as fake as the first one.” I select a pair of Betty Saville stilettos with a four-inch heel and hand them to her. “I’ll try these in a six.”
Feeling the sting of Anastacia’s accurate description of my friends, when she leaves to find the shoes in my size, I walk over to the elegant chaise lounge by a row of Keeley Jones handbags, and sit down.
Thinking about the way my friends treated me still makes me feel small. Hell, the heels on the Thomas Monroes felt taller than me. I know there is no way she could know about what happened with my friends. About the lunch date from hell. But it’s like her smugness is clairvoyant, and she knows I’m friendless and vulnerable and at my lowest.
So when she returns with the shoes and tries to sit beside me I stop her with a look and a raised eyebrow. “You can’t help me if you’re sitting up here.” I look at the floor and then back to her. “You’ll need to get on your knees.”
Our eyes lock. She hates me as much as I hate the last three months of my life, and if her eyes had bullets then I’d be machine gunned to death. But they don’t, and I’ll die of old age before I look away.
Her jaw tightens so much I think her teeth might shatter. But she slowly lowers herself to the ground by my feet, nonetheless.
Now, in my previous life—the one that didn’t have me living in a dive motel and selling my belongings to a pawn dealer for bill money—I would be enjoying this moment immensely.
But sitting here watching her sink to her knees to help me slide on these delectable Betty Saville shoes is not nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.
In fact, it kind of feels shitty.
After all, I don’t know what cross she is bearing. Maybe her closest friends dumped her at the same time as someone stole everything from her, and it’s made her angry as shit.
I should probably give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Look, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot,” I say, and when I recognize the lame pun, I laugh. But she looks up at me with a blank expression and says nothing, so I push on. “Perhaps we could put it down to we were both having a bad day and move on.”
But again there is silence.
“It seems pointless to keep—”
“You know, that’s the good thing about working here and meeting all the people with money,” she says, cutting me off. “You can tell who has money and class…” She looks up at me. “And who only has the money.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning a pig in sheep’s clothing is still just a pig.”
I stare at her. Mouth agape.
“Are you seriously calling me a classless pig in sheep’s clothing? For starters, the saying is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and secondly, fuck you—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of saying such a thing.” She looks up at me through her long Velour lashes. “I was just making conversation since you seem so intent on talking.”
She glances over at Massimo, and a wicked smile curls on her red lips.
