Free Vixen by Jillian Larkin

top floral note masking the darker ones that lay hidden beneath.

LORRAINE
    Lorraine was furious. “Horsefeathers! We can’t just stand around like this! It’s not a school mixer!”
    The group was perched, stiff and unmoving, at the edge of the Green Mill’s dance floor. They’d made it past the door smoothly (password:
Sugar Daddy
), but why were they all being such Mrs. Grundys? Raine was ready to drink and dance! Gloria, on the other hand, was gazing dreamily at the stage as if she’d never seen or heard live music performed before. Clara eyed the bar like a little girl scandalized by all the naughtiness grown-ups did in private, and Marcus … well, it didn’t matter
what
he was doing. He was a complete sheik, the sort of keen guy a girl could get dizzy over.
    “Can we at least make an effort to
pretend
we belong?” Raine asked.
    “Why don’t I take Clara for her first real drink, and you two go dance,” Marcus suggested, placing his hand on the small of Clara’s back.
    “No! I mean—” Lorraine fumbled. What
did
she mean? She could almost swear that Marcus had been
genuinely
flirting with Clara all night. The way his hand had rested on Clara’s back—a little too comfortably and a tad too long—went far beyond the call of duty. He almost seemed to be deriving pleasure from the touch. Lorraine should have known better than to assign a man to do a woman’s job. She would have to steer Project Send Clara Home all on her own. “I mean, it’s only appropriate that
I
go with her instead. We wouldn’t want any of the eligible men to think Clara was taken.”
    Clara waved her hand. “Oh, but I’m not here to meet men—”
    “Why not? Do you have some secret fiancé back home that we don’t know about?” Lorraine hoped Marcus would laugh, but instead he seemed to eagerly await the answer.
    “I’m here to help with Gloria’s nuptials, not my own matrimonial prospects,” Clara said, glancing toward the bar. “Besides, I have no interest in … consuming illegal substances.”
    “But it’s mandatory!” Lorraine cried. “Alcohol is to the Green Mill as milk is to your cows.”
    “What cows?”
    Lorraine burst out laughing. “You’ve only been awayfrom home for a week and already you’ve forgotten your beloved cows?”
    Clara twisted her gold bracelet uncomfortably. “Oh no. It’s … um … if you’ll excuse me …”
    They all watched her dash off to the powder room, clearly humiliated.
    Lorraine burst out laughing, pleased at her handiwork. “Well, we all know what side of the Prohibition she’s on.” Lorraine stepped onto the dance floor, pulling Gloria with her. “Come on,” she pleaded, “we can do the Charleston.”
    Gloria groaned. “Oh, Lorraine, you don’t know the Charleston.”
    “Do so,” Lorraine said, swiveling her hips along to the music, trying to remember the moves. “Violet taught me during physical fitness class last week.”
    Lorraine hated Violet, but the girl had her uses. She had been boasting to everyone with ears how she’d mastered the steps of the Charleston. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had,” Violet had said between exercises.
    Miss Wilma had blown a whistle, and the girls had had to run a lazy circle around the gymnasium. But even that hadn’t stopped Violet from talking.
    “It’s all the rage, you know,” she’d said. “I saw it in New York.”
    Later, near one of the water fountains, Violet had put on a demonstration. She started twisting her feet. “Just pretendthere’s music!” she told the assembled girls. The twisting was slow at first and then became faster.
    “It’s like the Jay-Bird!” Lorraine exclaimed, nearly recognizing a dance move she and Gloria had practiced almost nightly a year before.
    “No, it’s better,” Violet insisted, her legs moving so swiftly, her feet kicking forward and backward at such a rapid pace, that Lorraine could only watch in awe, wondering how someone so ungainly could move so