Authors: Barbara Bretton
"You're a doll, Charlie." Sam planted a kiss on his cheek. "Caroline will be so pleased."
"Not when she sees me, she won't be."
"Of course she will," Sam protested a shade too vigorously. "She's just so absorbed with her business that she hasn't had time to get to know you."
"Yeah," said Charlie. "Right." If you asked him, Caroline Bradley was a cross between Scarlett O'Hara and Donald Trump in the body of a petite Marilyn Monroe. She was opinionated, flirtatious, with a spun-sugar face and an acid-etched tongue that she didn't hesitate to use on anyone who didn't see the world through the same pair of rose-colored glasses as she did.
He remembered the first time he saw her. He wasn't due to start work for a couple of days, but he'd decided to stop in the bar and get to know some of the regulars. O'Rourke's had struck him as a
man's
kind of place. Lots of dead fish hanging on the walls, plenty of smoke, a wall-mounted TV permanently set to the Sports Channel. A place where a man could relax. Forget about his troubles. Enjoy a brew and a ballgame.
He pushed open the door and stopped dead in his tracks. There, perched atop an old piano like Michelle Pfeiffer in
The Fabulous Baker Boys
, was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She wore a black dress that clung to her small but curvy body. Her hair was pinned atop her head, tendrils curling about her elegant cheekbones.
She was exactly the kind of woman he dreamed about regularly but made a point to avoid. He ambled over to the bar, steering a wide path past the piano. Bill O'Rourke was behind the bar.
"Something, isn't she?" Bill pushed a draft toward him.
"Do they always crowd around her like that?" From the stool where he sat only her shiny blonde head was visible in the crowd that surrounded her.
"Always." Bill explained that the vision was Caroline Bradley, best friend of his daughter Sam.
"What is she, a singer?"
"She runs a dress shop."
Charlie angled another look in her direction. For some strange reason he was beginning to feel angry with the woman. "Is she going with one of those old-timers?"
Bill chuckled. "I don't know who she's going with. All I know is those guys would do anything for her."
"Does s
he hang out here a lot?"
"Only when she drops in with my daughter-in-law Sam, but when she does, watch out! She takes over the piano and before you know it, every man in the place is in love with her."
What in hell was a looker like the beauteous Ms. Bradley doing wasting her time flirting with the Over the Hill Gang? She hadn't so much as given Charlie a second glance and he was closer to her age by at least a good fifty years.
"Want an introduction?" asked Bill, eyes twinkling with mischief.
"Forget it. She's not my type."
Bill's laugh was loud and boisterous. "Pal, she's any man's type."
"Not mine."
"Yeah," said Bill, refilling Charlie's beer mug. "Right."
Charlie wasn't lying. He had no use for women who collect men's hearts like charms on a bracelet. You'd have to be blind to miss what she was up to over there, fawning all over the old men. Practicing her skills. Sharpening her weapons. Killing time until better prey came along. Everything about her looked expensive, from her hair to her fingernails to the pale suede shoes on her small feet. A man could go broke trying to keep her in pantyhose. Yeah, Caroline was beautiful--you'd have to be a fool not to notice--but Charlie never much cared for women fancied themselves as southern belles. Especially not when the southern belle in question lived in central New Jersey.
He had to hand it to her, though, he thought as he drove the back roads from Rocky Hill to Princeton.
She had the old geezers at O'Rourke's eating out of the palm of her hand. Scotty almost fell over his orthopedic shoes every time she swept into the bar, smelling like expensive perfume and dripping sugary compliments. Even Bill O'Rourke, who was about as hard-boiled as you could get outside of Charlie himself, turned to geriatric mush when she batted her false eyelashes in his direction.
Not that Caroline Bradley spent any time batting her eyelashes in Donohue's direction. She still didn't like him any more than he liked her and that was just fine with Charlie. He'd bumped into her once over at the Princeton Marketfair movie complex. He and a friend were waiting on line to see Schwarzenegger's latest when Caroline and her boyfriend of the moment came sweepi
ng out of the newest French flick. Charlie had raised his bag of popcorn in salute and it was clear by the horrified expression on her face that she wished he was invisible--or, at least, dressed in something preppie and safe like her pal. A Coors t-shirt seemed okay to Charlie but then there was no accounting for taste, especially not around Princeton. The geek she was with was a case in point.
So there he was on his way over to her precious second-hand dress shop. If she'd looked horrified that evening at the movies, he could only imagined how she'd look when he showed up on her doorstep, ready to manhandle all those frilly ball
gowns or whatever the hell it was she'd made her fortune hawking.
Most of the rush hour traffic had disappeared by the time Charlie turned onto Nassau Street and made his way to the shop. The late afternoon sun was strong and he slipped his Ray-Bans on, still squinting behind the dark lenses. A few aging prep school grads strolled down the street toward Palmer Square, still lean and tan in their tennis whites. The hell with old soldiers never dying, he thought with a shake of his head. Preppies seemed to go on forever.
He stopped for a light across the street from the book store, tapping his broad fingers against the wheel. Too damn crowded in town, if you asked him. In the two years since he'd breezed into the area, he'd seen a change. Condos springing up everywhere. New construction where old farms used to be. The hand of progress everywhere you looked, generally gumming up the works and pushing civilization where it had no business going.
The light changed to green, and he shifted his truck into gear.
Not that he was a crusader or anything like that. He pretty much took life as he found it, not taking the problems too seriously, not letting the good times slip away from him. His years in the navy had given him a hatred of bureaucracy and a love of freedom, two attributes that made it hard for a thirty-five year old man to make it big in the United States today.
He made a left at the next corner and angled into a parking spot behind the U-Haul van parked in front of Caroline Bradley's shop. Not for him the seven day work week, busting his behind so secretaries could dress up like socialites. Whatever it was driving Bradley on, it had paid off in spades. Even second-hand, you didn't buy the clothes she hung on her curvy little body with peanuts and, if he had any real estate smarts at all, this Princeton address came with a pricey monthly rent attached to it.
The door to
Twice Over Lightly
was open. He stepped inside the quiet shop and was hit immediately with a gentle wave of perfumed air, cooled by a silent central air conditioning unit hidden somewhere out of sight. Yeah, she had bucks, no doubt about it. Big bucks. The walls were washed a smooth ivory color with a wallpaper border in some fussy, female print bisecting it where the walls met the ceiling. Pots of flowers, all pinks and violets, rested on odd tables scattered around the room, tables that sat next to chairs so delicate they looked like they'd collapse if a hummingbird perched on one of them. He could easily imagine Caroline in one of those chairs, one leg crossed over the other, as perfectly suited to her dress shop in Princeton as he was to the bar in Rocky Hill. He fingered a gold mesh gown on one of the skinny mannequins near the door. He had seen spider webs thicker than the silky threads that kept that dress together. Hell, this was probably the kind of get-up the perfect Miss Bradley wore to unload a truck. It was hard to imagine her getting her manicured hands dirty. He doubted if she'd ever worked up a sweat in her entire, pampered life.
"Anybody here?" he called out. His voice sounded like a foghorn in the hushed, female stillness of the empty shop. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Hey! Someone could walk out with a mink coat."
"I wouldn't try it."
He turned in the direction of the steely, silk-coated voice. It sounded like Caroline Bradley but that was where all resemblance ended. "Caroline?"
"Who did you expect?" Her tone was edgy. "This
is
my store."
He couldn't believe he was looking at the same ultra-chic woman who'd been sitting in O'Rourke's less than an hour ago. Instead of an upswept hairdo, she wore a ponytail. The high heels and sheer hose had been replaced by bare feet and the designer dress had given way to shorts and a t-shirt. He couldn't have been more surprised if she'd appeared in a gorilla suit.
"Close your mouth," she snapped. "Haven't you ever seen a woman in shorts before?"
"Not on you." Not bad, he thought, gaze roaming the surprising length of her slender legs. Some interesting surprises had been hidden by those high-fashion
threads she usually wore.
She ignored the quasi-compliment and peered out at the street. "Where's Murphy?"
"The A-Team's busy," Charlie said. "If you don't need the help, say the word and I'm out of here." He sure as hell didn't want to be where he wasn't wanted. He noted with pleasure the way her chiseled cheekbones reddened. Score one for the blue-collar worker.
"I need the help."
She gestured toward some huge white boxes stacked ceiling-high in the corner of the store. "The fur coats have to be put in storage in the back."
"What do you have back there, a big closet or something?"
She pushed her pale hair off her face with impatient, stabbing motions and sighed theatrically. "An air-conditioned store room."
He glanced at the stacks of boxes. "Must be a pretty big room to fit all of them inside."
"And there are more where those came from," she said. "Look, if you don't think you're up to it, Donohue, I'll ask the teenage boy down the block to help me. I hear he lifts weights."
Now that stung. The quickest way to a man's ego was through his masculinity. He swung one of the boxes up onto his shoulder. "Which way?" he said, his voice more a growl than anything human.
She pointed toward a long hallway at the rear of the store. "Straight through. Last door on the right." Her eyes lingered on his bare arms. "It's freezing in the storeroom. Maybe you should put on a sweater."
"Worry about yourself," he said heading toward the storeroom. He doubted if anything could be colder than her attitude.
The phrase
bull in a china shop
leaped out at Caroline as she watched Charlie Donohue make his way down the spun-sugar pink hallway toward the storage room
cum
fur vault. She closed and locked the front door and hung up the embroidered CLOSED sign. Not that there was any crime to speak of in Princeton, but when you had an inventory like hers, it paid to be careful. If only she'd thought to lock the door before Donohue showed up....
"I'm going to kill you, Samantha," she said aloud, reaching for the telephone. She dialed Sam's number, waited, then slammed the receiver back into its cradle. Busy. Sam was probably on the telephone with Scotty, crowing about sending Donohue in Murphy's place. Of all the outrageous, idiotic stunts! She hoped Sam was enjoying her victory because Caroline intended to prove that victory Pyrrhic the first chance she got.
"This wasn't my idea," she said when Donohue came back into the front room and hefted another stack of boxed fur coats.
He cast
a perfunctory glance over one brawny shoulder. "Who said it was?"
She straightened her own shoulders. "It needed to be said."
The perfunctory glance turned curious. "Why?"
"That should be obvious."
"The only obvious thing in this room is the fact that we both want to get this over with as fast as possible."
Caroline wasn't used to being dismissed quite so nonchalantly and she bristled. "Look, why don't we just call it a day? I'll phone Sam and--"
"Forget it," he broke in. "I gave her my word."
"You don't have to look as if you promised to walk naked through a hailstorm."
"If you're giving me a choice, I'll take the hailstorm."
She bit her lip. What on earth was the matter with her, wanting to smile when she'd been insulted? "I'm sure Murphy wouldn't mind helping me out tomorrow."
He stacked a third box in his arms. "Sam's nine months pregnant. Why don't we humor her? When her hormones are running normally again, she'll forget all about this matchmaking stuff."
"That's disgusting."
His thick dark brows lifted. "Hormones?"
"Your attitude. That has to be the most sexist remark I've heard in years."
"Fact of life, Bradley. You're ruled by hormones from the day you're born until the day you die. Especially when you're pregnant."
"Right. And I suppose you're an expert in pregnancy."
"Doesn't take an M.D. to see what's what."
"Ridiculous! We're ruled by our intellect. Our sense of reason. Our--"