Free Miss Impractical Pants by Katie Thayne Page B

place like a crazy person, all the while squealing like an excited pig.
    “This is so great! You’re going to England!” Heather squealed. “I’ve never been out of the country! Promise you will call and tell me about everything! At least once a week. I want to live vicariously through your adventures.”
    “I’m only going to England, and I’ll be working. It won’t be very adventurous.” Katie chuckled at Heather’s naiveté.
    Heather looked disappointed for a moment and then was overcome with a fresh wave of excitement. “This is so great!” She danced around with such gusto that Katie thought her arms would yank off. “What can we do to help you get out of here?”
    “We need to track down a dress that I’ll never wear,” Katie responded without thinking, grateful to Heather for giving her the perfect segue into reason number two for calling the spontaneous meeting.
    Heather and Mr. Scott looked at her in mystified silence.
    “Just before I let myself be convinced I needed to change my personality, I was about to try on that absolutely amazing and utterly impractical silver dress,” she recalled, retracing her past as if unlocking the clues to an important mystery. “Remember, Heather? When you and Anna and I went shopping a few months ago? That dress was the last impulse I had as the old me, before I became the new me, which is now the old me, making the first old me the new, new me again.”
    Heather’s face was blank.
    “What in the name of Angela Lansbury’s tea kettle are you running on about?” Mr. Scott snapped.
    “I need that dress!” Katie replied as if they were dense. “Don’t you get it? It symbolizes who I was—who I am?”
    Mr. Scott shook his head, thinking that Katie had lost her mind, and grinned. “Indeed, I believe she really is back to her old self.”
    “I get it!” Heather responded, to Katie’s immense relief. “Let’s go!”
    “Slow down, lasses.” Mr. Scott’s voice of reason cut through the urgency. “It’s been months since you saw that dress. It’s probably long gone by now.”
    “That’s why we don’t have another minute to lose,” Katie chastised. “Now stop being such an Eeyore and get your coat.”
    “Me?” he blurted in protest. “Go to the ladies’ shops with the two of you? I’d rather have Lady Gaga sing at me funeral.”
    “Which is going to be a lot sooner than you think if you don’t get that ornery British butt of yours into the car,” Katie threatened.
    Heather’s giggles were out of control. “How does he know about Lady Gaga?”
    “He watches the E! Channel religiously.” Katie cast him a sidelong glance, letting him know she knew his dirty little secret.
    Mr. Scott puffed up. “No one’s ever caught me watchin’ that tripe!”
    “Just because no one has caught you doesn’t mean it isn’t so,” Katie sniffed self-righteously as she pushed him and the laughing Heather out the door.
     
     

Chapter Nine
     
    One boutique, two charity stores, three consignment shops, and one fabulous silver dress later, Katie used the spare key to let herself in to Jared’s apartment. She shuddered, instantly feeling the raging furniture tension. An unmistakable battle warred between Asian Minimalistic East and All-American Bachelor West for reigning control of the great room.
    Before she could step inside, Queen Sheba, Jared’s vicious Chi-poo—a Chihuahua/poodle mix puppy—growled at her from behind the protection of two potent pooey landmines she had deposited in front of the door. Katie offered her hand out for the sniffing, and cooed in sweet soothing tones, “That’s a gooood Sheba. What a good little Chi-poo. You’re the best little Chi-Chi-poo-poo in the whole world. Aren’t you, you hateful little doggie? Who’s the nasty little Chi-Chi-poo? You are, yes you are.”
    Sheba dipped her head, indicating she was still not pleased by Katie’s presence, but was willing to allow her safe passage beyond the poo