Free Just Kiss Me by Rachel Gibson Page B

image over her shoulder. “I’ll hurry,” she said.
    One Vivien was bad enough. Three Viviens were two too many. She was aggravating and annoying and so outrageously beautiful, she turned him off and on like he was a light switch. He tossed the magazine on the chair and walked by rows of designer clothes hanging from racks bolted to the old brick walls. He moved out the glass doors and into the heat and humidity of the oldest part of the Holy City. Traffic congested the corner of King and Broad, adding a layer of exhaust to the hot, muggy air. He’d rather choke on soupy fumes than watch Vivien grab her behind again.
    He shoved a shoulder into the side of the building and pulled his cell phone and sunglasses from his breast pocket. He had a real life and a real job and didn’t have time to babysit a spoiled actress or read beach-hair tips from a fashion magazine. He answered e-mails and text messages from suppliers and clients and checked to make sure his request for final approval on a renovation in the French Quarter was on the Board of Architectural Review’s agenda.
    After ten minutes, Vivien had yet to appear and he checked on some beat-up tech stocks while he waited. Trading was no longer his full-time job, but he did keep a peripheral eye on the market. At the height of his trading days in New York, he’d invested in news-driven stocks and the sectors in play. These days he managed the limited partnership and hedge fund he’d created with his mother and brother several years ago. The fund was just one piece of their family’s investment portfolio, and he made sure it made more money than it lost. Now that banking and finance wasn’t his full-time job, he could relax and even enjoy playing the market. Now that it wasn’t his job, he could focus on what he really loved. The job he would have gravitated toward naturally, if he’d ever been given the choice.
    For as long as he could recall, he’d had an intense interest in the warm grains and smooth textures of exotic woods. He’d loved to envision different and unusual uses for different and unusual hardwoods. He’d always had a natural vision for spatial design, even before he’d known there was such a thing.
    The front door to Berlin’s finally swung open and Vivien strolled outside, once again wearing her jeans and T-shirt and his Clemson baseball hat. She carried her red purse but nothing else.
    “Where’s your dress?” he asked. She’d tried on enough to pick at least one.
    “It’s being altered right now.” She dug in her purse and pulled out her sunglasses. “We need to come back in an hour.”
    “What?”
    “Since the ladies were sweet enough to have their seamstress get to work on the hem right away”—she paused and shoved her big sun-glasses on her face—“the least I could do was tell them we’d wait.”
    “We?” He felt the corner of his eye twitch.
    “Oh.” She glanced around at the traffic, both vehicle and pedestrians, then looked up at him through the dark lenses. “Am I keeping you from something?” she asked as if he just naturally had all day to wait on her.
    He’d like to leave her stranded, but of course he hadn’t been raised to abandon women. “What do you propose
we
do for an hour?”
    “I need to go to Bits of Lace.” She looked behind her as if she expected someone to jump out at her. “The ladies in Berlin’s said it’s down the street.”
    He was sorry he’d asked. “The underwear store?”
    She nodded and the shadow from the baseball cap’s bill slid across the seam of pink lips. “I think I should call and tell them I’m coming in.” Once more she dug in her purse and this time pulled out her cellphone. “I’ll have to Google them to get the number.”
    “Why?” he asked, suspicious of her motives. His mother had called Berlin’s and they’d put together an entire rack of clothes just for her. He wasn’t about to watch her try on a trunkload of panties for an hour. From behind his