If The Shoe Fits (31 page)

Luke laid back, a hell of a sexy smile on his
face. “I’m all yours, babe.”

He
was
all hers. And if he didn’t know
it yet, he would.

Staci slid his zipper down inch by maddeningly
slow inch. And if it was this torturous for her, she could only
imagine what it was like for him.

She smiled. Good.

She slid her palms along the line of his hips,
and shoved his jeans down a few inches, but not enough to free
him.

“
Babe.” His hips flexed upward as
he groaned.

Staci stilled her hands. “Say my name,
Luke.”

His eyes opened. He blinked. Then he licked
his lips and a smile curved the corners of his sexy mouth upward.
He hiked himself onto an elbow and cupped her cheek with his other
hand. “Why? You think I don’t know who I’m with?”

He tugged her to meet him as he sat up,
capturing her lips in a hot, open-mouthed kiss that put to rest her
doubts. Almost. Because this was too important to her; it meant too
much. “Do you, Luke? Do you really?”

He took the time to search her eyes. To travel
over her nose, linger on her lips. To thread his fingers through
her hair and stroke the ends across his cheek. “Staci Fontaine. The
sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. The woman who hasn’t been off my mind
since the moment we met. The woman I don’t know if I’ll ever get
enough of. That’s who I’m with. That’s who I want.”

Staci trembled with the passion in his words.
Passion for what he was saying, for what those words meant, and…
for her.

“
Show me, Luke. Show me how you
feel.”

Show me what it’s like to be wanted
for myself, to have someone care for me. For me, the person. Not
me, the body.

She didn’t utter the rest; she couldn’t. But
the words hovered there, in her subconscious, where they’d taunted
her for years. How she wanted him to be the one to make them go
away.

And he did, slipping the clothes from her body
with murmured words and hot kisses, a nip here, a lick there,
stoking a fire deep inside her, tendrils licking through her
veins.

He laid on top of her, pressing her into the
soft mattress with his strong, hard body, every point of contact
sending shivers racing through her. Somehow he managed to get out
of his jeans, and the pressure of his thigh sliding between her
legs had her moving against him.

He kissed her, their tongues dueling and
tasting, sucking and stroking. He tasted of coffee and sugar and
heat and him. “You taste so good.” He stole the words from her as
his tongue dragged along her collarbone. “I could do this for the
rest of my life.”

His confession sliced through the haze of
desire between them. Staci opened her eyes, seeing puzzlement in
his. “
What
?” she asked, not sure she’d heard
right.

A smile replaced the puzzlement. Then a cocky
grin. “Yeah. That’s right. You heard me.” He framed her face with
his hands. “The rest of my life, Staci. The rest of
our
lives.”

“
But—”

“
Shut up, woman, and let me show
you what I mean.”

He reached into a nightstand drawer, ripped
apart a foil package, and rolled the condom in place. One more
scorching look, the grin back, then Luke bent his head to feast on
her neck, sending shivers down her spine and out through every limb
as his fingers danced upon her skin as they slid lower, brushing
the last scrap of material she wore.

“
Lift up for me, babe.” He ran his
fingers along the crease of her thigh, stroking just under the edge
of her thong.

Staci obliged him and he hooked his fingers
under the band and drew it down her leg. He repositioned himself on
the other side and repeated the action, this time, though, moving
down her body.

“
Oh, man. What’s this?”

He kissed the spot she knew he would. The one
only she and one other person knew about.

The spot with the tattoo of a pink rosebud
unfurling into bloom.

She’d gotten it four months ago after Mother
had mortified her by flourishing her date’s rap sheet during their
first—and last—date, condemning the man in front of the entire
place.

It’d been Staci’s private rebellion—Mother
found tattoos distasteful—but Staci hadn’t yet worked up the nerve
to show her. She’d sworn the tattoo artist to secrecy.

Luke looked up at her, laughter dancing with
desire in his eyes. “I’m guessing Madeleine knows nothing about
this.”

She laughed. How freeing it was to laugh at
this moment. To share something so intimate and personal with
someone who understood. “You guess right.”

“
I’d love to tell her about it.”
He kissed the pink petals again. “But this is our secret. I’m not
sharing such a precious memory with anyone else, especially not
that woman.”

Those were the last words they said for a
while as the feelings and emotions overtook them, sending her heart
racing and her mind into a thousand sparkling, shattering pieces as
he drove her over the edge of completion. But those words were the
ones that kept repeating themselves in her mind. Luke had created a
special memory between them. One just for them. Their own little
inside joke and every time he kissed that rose, that one small,
should-be-insignificant piece of artwork, Staci felt her heart
belong a little bit more to him.

Chapter
Thirty-Two

“
What’s the present for, Bella?”
Sophia bounced into Bella’s bedroom the next morning, almost
knocking the box to the floor.

“
It’s a gift from Mr. Griff.”
Bella ran her fingers once more along the gown Gus had made her. It
was utterly beautiful and for the first time, she knew she was
going to feel like her namesake.

“
Can I open it?”

“
Not yet, honey. Mr. Griff said I
can’t open it until noon.”

Just then, the bells of St. Gabriel’s and the
grandfather clock in the living room rang in the lunch
hour.

Sophia grinned. “It’s noon.”

“
So it is,” Bella laughed. “Okay,
let’s open it.” Like two kids on Christmas morning, Bella and
Sophia untied the gold voile ribbon and lifted the lid.

“
Oooh!” Sophia clapped.
“Look!”

Bella looked. She couldn’t
not
look.
Inside the box on a velvet pillow were… the Lucite shoes from Mr.
Griff’s store.

“
Can I try them on,
Bella?”

Bella shook the shock from her muddled mind.
“Sure. Like I said when we saw these in the store, every little
girl should feel like a princess at least once in her
life.”

“
And big girls too?”

Bella smiled. “Yes, big girls can, too, I
suppose.”

“
Like you tonight with that pretty
dress and these Cinderella shoes.” Sophia waltzed around the room,
humming the movie theme song Bella had grown to hate over the
years. “I bet you’ll meet a handsome prince and fall in love and
live happily ever after.”

And mice would turn into horses and a pumpkin
into a carriage and she’d rush off at midnight—

Wait. Hadn’t Mr. Griff said she had twelve
hours with the shoes and then she had to give them back?

She smiled. Ah, if only tonight
were
going to be a fairytale…

Still, she hesitated before lifting one of the
shoes from of the box.
What if—

Oh for heaven’s sake. She was being
irrational. It wasn’t as if Mr. Griff was her own special fairy
godfather.

“
This dress makes Gus your fairy
godmother, you know,” said Sophia, draping the gown across the
front of her. “Just like the one in the movie.”

Who’d been an older female, but, yes, the
comparison was there. There were a lot of comparisons all of a
sudden.

It’d be so nice to believe that it was true.
That at the stroke of midnight she’d run off and leave her shoe and
Prince Charmant would come after her.

And Madeleine wouldn’t interfere.

She handed the shoes to Sophia. Let her little
sister believe in magic and fairy tales for now; reality would come
soon enough.

***

“
Uh oh, Giac.” Perla scooted onto
one of the stools at the counter at. “Hurricane Staci at two
o’clock.”

Giac looked over her retro-eighties,
Snookie-
pouf
. Perla was right. Staci and her
take-no-prisoners attitude were storming the gates of Casteleoni’s.
Just what he didn’t need at this eleventh hour when he and Gus were
putting the final touches on Bella’s presentation before they
loaded everything into the van. He scrambled out of his apron and
intercepted Staci before she made it past the counter.

“
Giac.” Staci gripped his arms,
the first touch the woman had ever willingly given him. And Giac
had been okay with the status quo. “We need your help.”

Of
course
there’d be a reason for her
to be nice to him; she needed something. “I’m kind of busy right
now, Staci. And shouldn’t you be? The auction’s in a few
hours.”

“
I know. That’s why we have to
move fast. My mother is making everyone’s life a living hell and
she’s threatening to send Sophia off to boarding
school.”

So what else was new? What Giac wanted to know
was why it had suddenly become a soapbox for Staci.

He was saved from answering by the front door
bells jingling again.

A man Luke had never seen before—because he
would have remembered
him
—strode through the door
and—

Put his hands on Staci’s shoulders? What was
happening in the universe?

“
Hi. I’m Luke.” The guy extended a
hand. The other never left Staci.

Giac shook Luke’s hand automatically because
he was still processing why the guy was touching Staci. Surely
someone of his obvious good taste wouldn’t fall prey to the likes
of her?

“
Has Staci brought you up to
speed?”

“
Speed?” Giac felt as if he were
moving in slow motion through molasses. And he didn’t have time for
it. They had to get everything loaded. He shook his head, trying to
clear the confusion. “I’m sorry, but I have to get moving. Perhaps
we could discuss this some other time, you two—”

“
Oh but Giac, you have to listen.”
Staci put a hand on his chest.

Giac looked down at it, waiting to feel the
pain of the knife she probably stabbed him with… but couldn’t. He
looked back at her.

She plucked her hand away. “Sorry, but we
really do need your help. It’s for Bella.”

“
Bella?” That cleared his head
somewhat. More when he started to worry that Staci was planning a
minefield for her nemesis. “What do you want with
Bella?”

“
We want to help her.” Luke
stepped around Staci and clasped Giac on the shoulder. “Look, we
all know that Madeleine wants one thing and one thing
only.”

Giac nodded. “World domination.” He wasn’t
kidding, but Luke laughed anyway.

“
Besides that. She wants
respectability. To be one of the ‘in’ crowd. And she thinks
becoming a Board member is her ticket to the cool crowd. Problem
is, she’s aware that she’s going to need something extra to get
herself invited in.”

“
But they’ve spoken to Carolyn
Charmant about the position. I heard her mention it myself when she
was in for lunch.”

“
But Mother doesn’t know that and
we have to make sure she doesn’t until this auction is over,” said
Staci.

“
How?” Regardless of her improved
taste in men, Staci could be just as conniving as the witch who’d
given birth to her.

“
She thinks Bella isn’t working
the auction.”

“
Why on earth would she think
that? It was a coup in the Casteleoni cap she’s counting on to
improve our standing in the community.”

“
Because she thinks if Reese
fails, his mother will never get the position and she’ll have a
shot at it.”

“
You’re kidding.”

“
Unfortunately, no. But that’s the
way Mother’s mind works.”

“
Well, obviously we’re not going
to let tonight turn into a fiasco, so what are you
proposing?”

Luke and Staci wore identical Cheshire-cat
smiles. The same ones Giac had learned to be wary of.

“
What’s said to be the best
revenge?” Luke asked.

“
Duh. Living well.
Why?”

“
Exactly.” Luke leaned on the
counter conspiratorially. “We all know that Reese is head over
heels for Bella. What do you think would happen if Bella ends up
with a better social standing than Madeleine?”

Ah, for a moment, Gus had reveled in the hope
that their plan had a prayer of succeeding. And while it was the
same one he had for Bella, the reality was, it couldn’t happen if
Madeleine was against it. “You’re forgetting one thing: Sophia.
Bella will never do anything to jeopardize her sister. Plus,
there’s this place to consider. It’s almost as important to Bella,
and Madeleine can wreak havoc and revenge here, as well.” Giac
sighed. “Sorry, you two. It’s a nice idea, but it’ll never work.
Madeleine’s got the law on her side.”