by Jill Shalvis
parlor crammed full of wonderful old things that were strewn about, things that drew the eye and made you want to reach out and touch. She’d been careful with scents, too; today she’d used the vanilla oil and the whole place smelled like Grandma’s kitchen.
If she’d had a grandma who’d baked.
She sold vintage clothing and assorted other things ranging from accessories to knickknacks to antique furniture. She’d accumulated everything herself, whether from estate auctions, garage sales, eBay, Craigslist, or her own closets.
Every piece had a story, a past, which was important to her. And though she loved it all, everything had a price—except the things she had stored in a special trunk that she kept for herself. Those things were pieces of her past, and her only luxury.
As she looked around the shop, it was with the usual surge of complicated emotions. Pride, which was easy to understand. And relief, which wasn’t.
She’d left her old world, although, granted, not on her own terms. In fact, she’d been cut out of her old world, separated from everything and everyone she’d ever known.
In hindsight, it was easy to see that it hadn’t been anything personal. Her show had come to an end, and that was Hollywood, baby.
But when she’d been in it, when the sets, her trailer, the food service, and the studio had been all the home she’d ever needed, losing it had been devastating. And yeah, she’d lost her way and gone a little wild. There was no disputing that it’d taken her a long time and a lot of screw-ups to figure her shit out, but she had figured it out.
So maybe the relief wasn’t so hard to explain after all.
The shop bell rang, and three older women walked in. They were in polyester tracksuits in varying colors of the rainbow. Purple, pink, and green, all with bright white tennis shoes.
The leader, the one in purple, was Lucille. Hard to determine her exact age, but it was somewhere near the three-quarters-of-a-millennium mark.
“Heard you landed yourself in the drink and got saved by Captain Hottie,” Lucille said in lieu of a greeting.
“Captain Hottie?” Olivia repeated.
Lucille grinned. “Sorry. I forget you’re not a born-and-bred local. I’m talking about Cole Donovan. Did he give you mouth-to-mouth?”
“Uh, no,” Olivia said. “And that’s not exactly how it went, by the way.”
Lucille’s face fell. “Well, better luck next time, then.”
Her cohorts nodded sagely.
Lucille leaned in close to Olivia. “You may not know this, either,” she whispered like she was imparting a state secret, “but just about every woman in town would like to get with that.”
Olivia just blinked.
“Get with that,” Lucille repeated, enunciating each word as if she thought Olivia was half-deaf, or maybe just a little slow on the uptake. “It means—”
“I know what it means,” Olivia said quickly, not wanting to hear Lucille spell it out. Good Lord. “I just…I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
“Because many have gone before you, but no one has succeeded,” she said.
The others nodded like bobbleheads.
“Succeeded in what?” Olivia asked.
“Why, getting into his heart, of course,” Lucille said. “Not since…” She hesitated. “Well,” she said demurely, “far be it from me to spread rumors.”
Riiiiight.
“It’s just that he’s such a good man,” Lucille said. “And though women line up to try to catch him, he’s been laying low, not nibbling at any lines.”
“You are aware that he’s not actually a fish,” Olivia said.
“If he were, he’d be a really great fish,” Lucille said. “You’ve seen him, you know what I’m talking about.”
Olivia thought back to the Blanket Incident three days prior, when she’d taken a good, solid look at Cole in all his naked glory. And there’d been a lot of glory.
So she had to agree—she knew exactly what Lucille was talking about.
“And on top of looking so fine, he can fix anything,” Lucille said. “You have any idea how rare that is in a man these days? And he coaches his five-year-old nephew’s baseball team. He’s worth a test drive, is all I’m saying.”
“Now you’re making him sound like a used car,” Olivia joked, trying to think of a way to get out of this conversation without turning away customers. “How many miles does he have on him?”
Lucille didn’t smile. “I’m serious, honey. He’s…special. I want you to take very good care of him.”
Olivia paused. “He’s not mine to take care of.”
A look of disappointment crossed Lucille’s face, and Olivia sensed any purchase opportunities going down the drain. “Tea,” she said. “How about tea?”
“You got the good stuff?” Lucille asked.
She was talking about the Keurig machine that Olivia had splurged on to serve her customers. Each cup she made cost a mint, but even though some people came in just for the tea—cough, Lucille, cough—it was worth it. “Always,” Olivia said.
Lucille smiled. “Well, then, of course. We’re here looking for some pearls.” She gestured to the woman in the bright pink tracksuit next to her. “Mary needs a strand to wear to her sister’s birthday party. Problem is, she already spent her social security check on bingo this week, so she’s hoping you got something that looks real expensive but isn’t, know what I’m saying?”
“Sure. What’s the budget?” Olivia asked, trying to figure out if they wanted real pearls or imitation.
“Fifteen dollars.”
Imitation it was, then. “I have just the thing,” Olivia said. And she did. She’d been gifted with the ability to collect what others didn’t even know they wanted to buy until they saw it. From a young age she could recognize a Chanel at a garage sale as opposed to a Kohl’s knockoff, and she could bargain like no other.
Stocking her shop was her one true joy.
She brought the women into the parlor, where she had several jewelry displays, and showed off a long strand of pearls that she’d gotten from a great estate sale of a set designer several years back.
The ladies oohed and aahed over the necklace.
“If you like it,” Olivia said, “I’ve got the earrings to match, and a cashmere sweater set that they’d both look fantastic with.”
The geriatrics got all aflutter at that, and Mary tried on the sweater. “Get a load of me,” she breathed, staring at herself in the free-standing antique mirror, wearing the gorgeous pale-peach sweater and her neon pink track pants. “I’m…glamorous.”
“Hollywood should be knocking,” Olivia agreed, helping her arrange the necklace just right. “You belong on a set with your own name on a chair and everything.”
Mary beamed. “I’ll take it, all of it.”
The other lady, Mrs. Betty Dettinger, was looking through a wooden bin of stuffed animals. “My granddaughter comes to your Drama Days,” she said, referring to the weekly event Olivia hosted here at the shop for the local kids to play dress-up and act out small plays. “She was wondering if she could buy one of the costumes for Halloween.”
“The costumes aren’t for sale,” Olivia responded. They lived in her favorite antique travel trunk, usually placed at the foot of her bed. The exception came once a week during Drama Day. The contents were her own personal collection from Not Again, Hailey!—the one-of-a-kind pieces of her childhood that she wouldn’t sell.
The show had followed Hailey, the daughter of two professors, one who’d taught science and math, one who’d taught acting. Each week, Hailey had gotten herself into a mess, say forgetting to put a dessert in the fridge, so that her father could teach her a lesson, like what happened to food when it was left out. Hailey had played dress-up with her acting-professor mother’s wardrobe—hence all the costumes—and had gotten herself in trouble for a variety of things, such as peeking into her siblings’ private things. Every time she got in trouble, her parents or teachers or friends
would say, “Not again, Hailey.”
A simple premise, and shockingly popular.
“Are you sure they’re not for sale?” Betty asked.
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Such a shame,” the woman said. “You’d make good money from them.”
She didn’t care about making good money. She’d done that. And then she’d lost it all. It was all the same to her.
When the ladies finally left, Olivia went into the back room and pulled out the box of cookies she’d picked up at the town bakery. Then she went back for the large antique trunk of costumes that she’d hauled into work earlier.
The costumes were just about all that was left of her earlier life. They represented the only good times from that period, times when she’d been loved and adored as Sharlyn Peterson, pre–public breakdown.
At age fourteen she’d been short and chunky and still playing age nine. One year later she’d started to grow up—and out—and from that moment on, she’d been under constant pressure to stay teeny-tiny.
Don’t eat that, Olivia.
Or that…
But no matter what she’d done, she couldn’t stop time. She’d grown like a weed, and they’d had to give the other actors in the show lifts in their shoes to make her look shorter.
Every year, Tamilyn had said a special prayer over Olivia’s birthday cake. “Please God, don’t let her go into puberty and ruin everything!”
Then it had happened. Olivia had turned sixteen, gotten boobs, and it’d been over. She could still remember being pulled into the producer’s office and being told that they were going to have to recast someone younger, someone “fresher,” or cancel the show.
The powers that be had chosen to cancel.
And just like that, her worth had dried up. In fact, she’d become of less than zero value to the studio. She’d become a liability.
The front door to the shop opened and kids piled in. Six of them, followed by their parents, with the exception of the two little girls holding hands with Becca, who occasionally helped out their father after school. The twins were identical, one in all pink, including her ponytail holder, the other in a variety of mismatched clothes indicating she’d been her own stylist that morning.
“Olivia, Olivia, Olivia!” Pink yelled—the only decibel level she seemed to know—jumping up and down at the sight of her. “What’s today’s play?”
It was silly, but Olivia got just as excited as they did. When she’d first opened Unique Boutique, she’d known she wanted to let her costumes be used by local kids. She’d never been one to dream about marrying and having her own children to share her past with. Her life had always been too chaotic for those kinds of settling-down fantasies. And then when it had no longer been so chaotic, she’d just figured that she wasn’t exactly the maternal type.
After all, she hadn’t had a childhood. What did she know about giving one?
But she could at least connect with kids in the one way she was able to—through the world of make-believe. “Cinderella,” she said. She’d been Cinderella for one entire glorious week during her Not Again, Hailey! days, and it had been her favorite episode.
Pink was jumping up and down again. “That’s perfect!” She peered around Becca and looked wide-eyed at her twin. “Kendra, you’ve always wanted to be Cinderella!”
Kendra grinned from ear to ear. The two of them had been raised in foster homes until only a few months ago, when their father had relocated in order to take care of them. There was precious little money in their household, but Lucky Harbor did its best to take care of its own. There’d been clothing and food donations. The rec center provided after-school care. Becca brought them in for Drama Days.
It was reason number 1,000,003 that Olivia loved Lucky Harbor. “We’ll do something Halloweeny over the next two weeks to celebrate the rest of October.”
Pink clasped her hands together under her chin, her face a mask of sheer delight. “We never got to have Halloween before! Daddy says he’s going to try to get us costumes this year!”
Kendra nodded her matching enthusiasm without saying a word. She very rarely spoke, which would make it interesting if she was going to be the lead in Cinderella today.
The moms had been looking through the store, and several had laid items on the checkout counter to purchase. Kids were wandering around, girls chattering excitedly, boys looking for trouble. Their energy ramped up even more when Olivia opened her trunk.
The kids gathered in close. The first time they’d done this, there’d been more than a few catfights over the costumes. Olivia had put a quick end to it by promising that the costumes were meant for sharing, that they’d seen a lot of wear over the years and they enjoyed being passed around. No one would be left out, ever. They’d reenact the short play over and over, until everyone got a turn at whatever part they wanted.
And she’d always kept that promise.
“So much stuff!” one of the girls said reverently.
It was true. Olivia had a lot of stuff. Tamilyn had always said she was one box of stuff away from a Hoarders Very Special Episode.
That might be true, too.
The next two hours flew by. They ran the “script” four times, enough to give everyone who wanted a shot at Cinderella a turn. Kendra went last, she insisted on it. Not with words. In fact, she never spoke at all, just gently pushed each of the girls ahead of her.
Finally she got her turn, and she glowed through the whole thing, even if she did make Pink speak her lines for her.
Afterward, as they filed through the door, Olivia hugged each kid as they left. They were all beaming, happy, and it meant so much to her that she’d given them that. She wondered if any of the people in her life—her agent, manager, director, acting coach, set dresser, tutor, any of them—had ever felt the same about what they’d given her.
But she knew they hadn’t. Couldn’t have. Not with the way they’d all vanished from her life the moment the show had been canceled.
Kendra was last to leave, and she wrapped her thin arms around Olivia’s waist and pressed close, trustingly, sweetly, smelling like the chocolate chip cookies they’d consumed.
Unlike the others, the girl didn’t say thank you—she didn’t say anything. But as her gaze met Olivia’s, she didn’t have to. It was all there in her eyes: the gratitude, the joy, the relief that life was different for her these days, which was to say much better.
“You had fun?” Olivia asked, already knowing the answer.
Kendra nodded.
“You enjoyed the costume?”
Kendra’s grip tightened and she nodded again, even more emphatically.
“Good.” She squeezed the little girl, then concentrated on cleanup, dropping to her knees in the center of the Drama Days rug. When she picked up the Cinderella costume, she paused.
And then draped it over the front of her and looked down at herself. It would never fit her now but she could remember vividly when it had.
“I’d have guessed you were more the Xena, Warrior Princess, type than pink satin and lace.”
Olivia whirled around and found Cole standing in the doorway to the shop, watching her hold the costume to herself.
Chapter 9
Cole flashed that smile of his, the one that made Olivia’s stomach feel like a butterfly sanctuary.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, rising to her feet.
“Just walking.”
The same exact words she’d given him on the dock for the reason she’d been out so early.
A lie, of course. She’d been watching him work on the big, impressive boat that seemed as tough as he was, fascinated by the give and play of his muscles, the fluid, easy way he moved as if he was so sure in his own skin.
“You want to model that?” he asked.
She looked down at the Cinderella gown in her hands and snorted. “No.”
“Too bad.”
She gazed at him speculatively. He was toying with her. But two could
play at that game, she thought. “You have a princess fetish?”
“No fetish, but I’m never opposed to roleplaying.”
Her entire body hummed. Note to self: Not quite ready for prime