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“Does that mean you had to think about what you wore more carefully when you did?”
“To my continual annoyance, yes. Clothes say much more about a woman in a professional setting than a man. You can wear a good suit and a nice tie and be done with it. I have to think about the kind of person I’m meeting and what the job is. Will they want me to be conservative, or show some imagination?”
Ha, so that accounted for the riddle of Wren’s shoes. Sometimes they were playful and sometimes they were unremarkable. She chose her shoes depending on who might be looking at them. “That has to be annoying.”
“If you like clothes, it can be fun. I find it an added stress, getting it right. I have help to shop for what I need. Other women are more talented at knowing how to style themselves. Some of them are artists. It’s a skill and I’m still practicing. That’s why the dark suits and the good tailoring and the bright scarves. It lets me be a little bit of everything.”
He passed the hangers back the other way. “I need to do the whole outfit?”
“I’ll do the underwear, but otherwise if you don’t pick it, I don’t wear it.”
“I’m suddenly paralyzed by choice.”
She laughed. “And I don’t have that extensive a wardrobe.”
There was a dress he liked. He’d seen it once, in the early days. A dark wine color. It had sleeves to the elbows and a scooped neck, and that’s all he remembered about its style, what he remembered was what it looked like on her. Elegant. She’d had her hair up and the pearls that she often left lying around on, and oh heck, no idea what shoes. They were all in a jumble at the bottom of the wardrobe. He’d have to sort through them to come up with a pair of anything.
He looked for the color. Found it and held it up for her approval.
“I haven’t worn that one for a while.”
“Bad choice?”
“Not at all. It’s less formal than I sometimes need, but today is the perfect day for it.”
“You won’t need a jacket.”
“You’re getting the hang of it.”
“Beginner’s luck.” He went to his knees and rummaged. What went with plum wine? “Any hints here?”
“It’s all yours.”
Would she have shoes this color? Wren probably did. He found a black, shiny shoe—couldn’t go wrong with that, surely—but where was the other one? There was a gray shoe and that was smart-looking, the heel less killer than some. He wanted her to be comfortable. That was it, he’d go with the gray.
He put them outside the wardrobe. “Now what?”
“Anything else you think I need.”
He sat on the floor with his back against the wardrobe and sipped his coffee. What else did a woman wear? What else did this woman wear that he liked seeing her in?
“The pearls on the silver chain. The earrings like silver buttons. You have a pearl thing you sometimes put in your hair. You should put your hair up that way you do with it all neat in front and messy at the back. I like the perfume that smells of oranges and when you do whatever it is that makes your eyelashes look a thousand feet long and your eyes hold all the answers.”
“You think I have all the answers when my eyes are made up?”
“I think you have most of them when they’re not.”
“You have spent more time taking notice of me than I imagined, Mr. O’Connell.”
“You’re difficult to ignore.”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
That was entirely true. “Have I given you everything you need not to embarrass yourself in public today?”
“No, I’m missing one thing.”
Dress, shoes, hair, makeup, jewelry. What else was there he’d missed?
