If the Shoe Fits (25 page)

She turned her head, maybe to hide her face, maybe to get closer to him, then buried her head deep into the crook of his shoulder and half-laughed, half-cried, then sort of hiccupped. He slowly peeled her body away from his. “Why are you crying? You waited for exactly the right person. All the rest of us wasted our time casting about and fumbling around with the wrong people, and you just… got me… right out of the gate.”

He moved her gently off of him and down onto the mattress, situating her more fully onto her back, and then he straddled her body, the sheets between them. He laced his fingers through hers and pushed them flat into the deep pillows on either side of her. Then he kissed her with such a profound tenderness, a gentle coaxing that erased any hint of embarrassment or tentative insecurity from her mind. The kiss left her warm and content, with a feline desire to curl up and nap on and off for the rest of the day, with a big book in front of a small fire.

“Luckily there’s a sheet between us; otherwise I’d never make it to the stables on time.” He rolled off the bed and she murmured some quip about varying definitions of luck as her eyes slid closed and she curled back into a delicate half-sleep.

A few minutes later (after hearing the intermittent sounds of a zipper and the soft sluice of fabric being pulled over skin), it was so quiet, she thought he had left the room. Sarah was already half dozing, half planning what she was going to wear for the day when she heard the gentle sound of his feet against the carpet. Then his face nestled into her hair and nape. He took a long inhale, growled low with pleasure, then turned back toward the door and left without a word.

Sarah rolled deeper into the pillows where he had slept, taking in the remnants of his warmth and scent, then forced herself to get out of bed and begin this splendid new day.

Twenty minutes later, she was fulfilling her cat fantasy, curled up at the end of Bronte’s enormous bed with Wolf stretched out between them.

“It really is
ducal
, Bron!”

“Oh, cut it out.”

“Seriously. Who sleeps in a room this size? It’s like Grand Central Terminal.”

“Stop it! I can’t help it if his marauding ancestors wanted to make a splash.”

“They weren’t marauders, Bron.”

“No one gets this much
stuff
without at least a little marauding. But enough about the internecine family lore—what the
hell
is going on with you and Devon? Max told me you guys left after dinner ‘around the same time,’ which is obvious Max-speak for: they were practically shagging like minks at the dining room table. So spill it. You’ve been so tightly wound for so many months.” Bronte paused and cocked her head to get a better look at this new and improved Sarah, then smiled broadly. “It’s nice to see you a bit more
relaxed
.”

“Stop! You are so impossible. How can anyone get a word in?”

“I know I am the worst… after Devon, that is… he is far more…” Bronte slowed to a stop when she noticed Sarah was all of a sudden thoughtful. “What is it?”

“I think I’m falling in love with him, Bron.”

“I tried to warn you, remember? I told you at the wedding he is a heartbreaker.” Bronte was playing with Wolf’s legs, circling them as if he were riding a miniature bicycle. “Devon’s a real cipher in a lot of ways… do you know that in the nine months since we’ve met, I’ve only been to his apartment once? And even then, it was only because I finally demanded to see where he hangs his proverbial hat. He could have been living in a cardboard box in the middle of Leicester Square for all I knew. He always comes to our place for dinner and all, the perfect guest and all that. But still.”

“I know what you’re saying. He has that private side, but I don’t think he is really a secretive person. I think it’s more a result of years of habit, evading his mother, that sort of thing.”

“He couldn’t be more transparent with Max, I know, but I just don’t want you falling into something that’s all well and good on the surface, only to be held at bay, you know, on a deeper level. Does that make sense?”

“Of course it makes sense. He’s perfectly open to me at every level. I promise.”

“Are you blushing? How divine!” Then in a higher pitched voice, “Wolf, look at your Aunt Sarah. She has a crush on your Uncle Devon and she’s getting all
missish
about it; isn’t she adorable?” The infant stared at his mother with a look that only she could interpret. “I know, right? Isn’t she adorable?”

Sarah started laughing at the wonderful transformation that had taken over her formerly cold-blooded, heart-of-stone, kick-ass businesswoman of a friend. “Who are you? And where is Bronte Talbott?”

“Lost.” Bronte shook her head in mock dismay. “Utterly lost. She’s gone the way of the dodo, I’m afraid. Last seen haunting the halls of the attic. Now, in her place, sitting here before you, you have this doting beast of a mother, fawning concubine of a wife, prying bitch of a friend—well, that last bit has stayed pretty true to form, no?—but the rest? Completely MIA. Beware of those Heyworth men. They’re seductive vampires, Sarah: they gradually suck the blood from your veins and replace it with a burning desire for more bloodlettings.”

The two friends laughed again; the little babe kicked his feet.

“I’m only half-joking!” Bronte added between barks of laughter.

Sarah continued to laugh softly at her friend’s unexpected happiness.

“Let’s get some breakfast, Bron. I’m starving.”

“Well, if you’re going to be tight-lipped about everything in the romance department, I suppose food will have to do.” Bronte swaddled Wolf into a tight ball and slipped him into the baby sling she had taken to wearing. “I look like a friggin’ Navajo for Christ’s sake. Who am I?” But she smiled down at her baby, then up at her friend, and Bronte had never been more certain of who she was.

By early afternoon, the three of them—Bronte, Wolf, and Sarah—were fast asleep on Bronte and Max’s enormous bed.

“The best way to get him to go down for a nap is to pretend you are falling asleep,” Bronte had explained to Sarah with her newfound maternal authority. So the two friends had pretended at first and then fallen fast asleep in earnest, the little cub splayed out between them, arms tossed over his head, a look of pure bliss on his face.

Max and Devon came in quietly, Max going on as usual: “Dev, you have to come look at the baby when he’s asleep; it’s so great.”

Devon agreed but made a mental note to tell his brother in a few weeks’ time that all this baby craziness needed to be curtailed at some point.

The two men pulled up short.

Speechless.

“Lucky bastard,” Max said under his breath, arms crossed, staring down at the baby snuggled between the two beautiful women. “I haven’t been able to get that close to her for weeks.”

Wolf was nestled between Bronte and Sarah, his head turned to his mother, lips moving gently in a milky dream, and one small fist wrapped around Sarah’s index finger. The three were utterly lost in a deep, gauzy sleep.

Devon just stared at Sarah’s turned body as it formed a natural bend around the baby. His gut turned. “This is sublime.”

“Oh, Dev, you have no idea,” Max said quietly. “You need to get yourself one. Or two.”

“I think just the one should do it.”

Max turned to look at Devon, serious now. “Are you sure?” he said in a lower voice. “Sarah seems so young.”

“Look at her Max; she’s perfect. She’s beautiful, she’s Catherine Deneuve in
Belle
du
Jour
, she’s a phenomenal businesswoman, and she seems to tolerate my advances with equanimity… well, at least now that she knows I am a jealous beast.”

“Just be careful, Dev,” he said softly, then grabbed his younger brother in a one-armed embrace and led them back out of the room. “Come on, let’s let them rest. There will be plenty of time to harass them later.”

Devon spent the rest of the afternoon running a few computer programs and checking on two work projects. He peeked in on the Sarah James server and saw that someone had accessed it from Chicago at three in the morning that day. He also saw two new log-ins from locations in Geneva and Milan, and added them to the still-meaningless compilation of data points that he had been amassing over the past few months.

After he’d spent the morning hunting and riding with Eliot Cranbrook, Devon knew his paranoia where Eliot was concerned was completely unfounded. Eliot was so clearly devoted to Sarah James (the friend
and
the business) that it seemed totally impossible that he would have been involved in any corporate malfeasance where she (or anyone else, for that matter) was concerned. Eliot had been speaking to Abby about how he was currently sitting on the board of a nonprofit organization that did everything they could to bring to light the financial and artistic mayhem brought about by stolen intellectual property. Within the luxury goods industry, it was rampant: clothing, handbags, shoes, you name it—the designs were being stolen, meticulously replicated or cheaply imitated.

Devon momentarily considered telling Eliot about the
attention
he had given to Sarah James’s website and online (lack of) security, but the more he thought about it, the more perverted it sounded. He knew he should shut it down once and for all, but he felt like he was about to get to the bottom of the whole mess. When he did, of course he would share everything with Sarah and help her remedy her existing security vulnerabilities. Until then, he wanted to track down the perpetrator. And he was embarrassed, he supposed, and didn’t really see a good moment to confess his immature prying.

There was a light tap at his bedroom door. He shut the lid of his laptop and got up to see who it was. Sarah looked a bit mussed and disoriented. “May I come in?”

“Of course.” He didn’t even realize that he was standing there staring at her, instead of asking her to come in. “Come in, come in. You look gorgeous, by the way.”

She gave him a careless pat on his lower back as she crossed the masculine, burgundy room to a deep, brown velveteen sofa in front of the small fireplace. “Mmmm, this is exactly where I wanted to spend the rest of the day. Curled up in front of a fire.”

She kicked off her suede driving shoes, pulled her legs up under her, and Devon grabbed a blanket from the large wooden chest at the end of the bed. He went over to where she was already starting to fall back to sleep and draped the warm mohair over her body.

“Mmmm, thank you.” He walked back to his desk, put his computer away, and picked up a sheaf of papers he had been reading for work.

“Move over.” He pushed her legs aside to make room for himself on the couch, and the two of them spent the dwindling hours of the late afternoon in a blissful silence. She rubbed her leg against his in a half-sleep of dreams and desire; he simply reveled in the nearness of her body after such a long and dismal absence. When she sat up a couple hours later, looking mussed and sexy as hell, she asked him what he was working on.

“This new polymer.” He shrugged.

She smiled and rubbed her eyes. “Polymers sound sexy. What is it made of?”

He tossed the sheaf of papers on the coffee table and pulled her onto his lap. Devon began kissing her neck and whispering words like
retrofitting
,
anchorage
, and
water
absorption
.

Sarah pulled back a few inches and looked inspired. “Water absorption?”

“Yeah, why?” He tried to kiss her neck again and she shoved him back a little.

“Do you want to do something for me?”

His face split into a lazy, satisfied grin. “Day and night. Night and day.”

“Cut it out. I mean it, for work—”

He was trying to reach his palms up to her chest.

“Devon!” Sarah laughed, pushing herself off his lap and grabbing a piece of paper from the work documents he’d been reading. She took his pen and asked, “May I?”

He sat back and watched her. “You weren’t kidding about the whole compartmentalization thing, were you?”

She was sketching a high-heeled stiletto and looked up quickly to catch his eye. “I wasn’t kidding.” She went back to the sketch for a couple seconds more, then showed him what she was thinking. “It’s always a problem, the load-bearing capacity of such a pencil-thin heel. Also, I have a theory that steel is not the only option—it offers no give on a woman’s hips and back. It has to be really strong, but I want it super-thin… it’s just so much hotter, don’t you think?” She peered up at him with a questioning, hopeful look.

He stared at her and felt the now-familiar pounding in his chest.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
He felt like a stranger in his own body sometimes, the way she could turn him on with a look or a quick lift of her beautiful face in his direction. It was terrifying. Exhilarating but terrifying.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He shook his head. His expression must have looked angry or confused. “I’m not—”

“Oh.” She looked disheartened, then defiant. “Just dumb old shoes. I get it.” She threw the drawing back onto the coffee table and let the pen drop on top of it, then folded her arms across her chest.

He pulled her back into his arms so she was reluctantly straddling him, her arms folded between them. “I have no idea what the hell you are on about,” Devon said, “but I would love to help you work on the sexiest goddamned stilettos in the history of sexy stilettos.”

She looked like a chastised girl, trying to avoid his gaze, then she looked up into his eyes. “You would?”

“Yes, you fool.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said bitterly.

Devon put his finger under her chin. “What is it, love? You know I don’t think you are in the least foolish. That’s my job, to play the fool. I am your devoted servant. I would love to help you in your business any way I can.”

She tried to look away but he held her in place. She realized he’d done that while he was making love to her last night. He didn’t want her to look away. Ever.

“I… it’s dumb. I just think men, or my dad, or whoever, think the whole enterprise is silly. And—” She took a shallow breath as his thumb began to touch the edge of her mouth. “I guess I just assumed you were—” Her eyes slid shut as he kissed her on her neck, then pulled at the fold of her turtleneck and kissed farther down, near her collarbone. “Oh, Devon, it just seems so unlikely that you could care for me like you do…”