Free Searching for Grace Kelly by Michael Callahan Page B

a pain to get off of in a fitted skirt.” As she adjusted herself, a look of panic swept across her face. “Oh my God!”
    Laura leapt up in alarm. “What? What’s wrong?”
    â€œDid you just hear that?” Dolly whispered urgently. “I think my skirt just ripped. Oh, Lord, don’t tell me I just did that. God couldn’t be that cruel, could he? To have me rip my skirt at a coffee shop when I
didn’t
have the pie?”
    Laura turned Dolly around, traced her hand over the back. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “I think it’s okay.”
    Dolly smoothed down the front, grabbed her clutch off the counter. “Oh, thank God. Anyway, what was your question? Oh, right. Messner. I started, what, last Tuesday? Right before you got here. So it’s only been a few days. It’s a small publishing house, but everyone seems nice. I just sort of float around between departments, filling in for girls on vacation. I was lucky to get it.”
    â€œI’m sure you’ll have all of the office gossip by the end of the week.”
    â€œI hope so,” Dolly said, smiling as she headed toward the door. “God knows I can’t rely on
you
for any. Ta-ta!”
    Going to work was Dolly’s favorite part of the day. Other people complained, loudly and often, but to her each trip was a reminder that she was not buried in Utica but rather living in Manhattan, where anything could happen. Hadn’t she just landed at the Stork Club? She didn’t understand pessimism. Why look on the cloudy side when there was always a bright side? Her bright side was getting shinier every day. She’d made new, interesting friends, she was acing her classes at Katie Gibbs, and in no time she would be working in a big office packed with eligible men.
Or maybe
, she thought,
I’ve already found him
.
    She was sitting at her desk an hour later when another girl brushed by. “Mr. Shaw wants to see you in his office,” she said airily. “He said to give him five minutes, then go in.”
    Dolly felt her face go hot. Bertrand Shaw was the assistant director of accounting at Julian Messner, and from the moment she’d walked into the building, she’d had trouble getting him off her mind. He was hardly tall—maybe five eight—but incredibly dapper, and had movie-star presence in an environment that desperately needed it. Dolly had pictured a book publisher as an elegant spot brimming with men in tweed jackets (okay, maybe seersucker—it
was
summer) and women spewing Dorothy Parker one-liners but instead had found your standard-issue Manhattan office, with rows and rows of interchangeable faces typing, answering phones, picking up and dropping off files, clearing out twice a day—once for lunch, then for home. She had hoped that was because she had just gotten here and had yet to work on the publishing side, with the editors, artists, and designers whom she was sure had to be more interesting than the number crunchers and administrators.
    Except for Bertrand Shaw, of course. With his starched shirts always rolled up at the sleeves, his bulky body taut in his signature suspenders, he was more than simply attractive—he was a dreamboat. In the way Box Barnes was, even if Laura was too stupid to see it. Laura still hadn’t even acknowledged Box’s flowers, despite Dolly’s repeated protestations. How could you not acknowledge flowers sent to you by one of the biggest catches in New York City? Why were the pretty girls the ones who never knew how to handle men?
    She, Dolly Hickey, had no such hesitations. From her first day last week, she had been making casual eye contact with Bertrand Shaw—at the water fountain, in the occasional hallway pass-by. On Friday she had been inside a deli ordering a sandwich when she caught sight of him walking by outside; she’d feigned sudden illness, shouted to the coun­terman that she