Free Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease by Tatiana March

she couldn’t open the
window to hear them sing, couldn’t enjoy the rich, earthy smells of
the gardens in full bloom. For a moment, she longed to jump up to
her feet, scatter the documents to the floor, run outside and
frolic barefoot on the grass, like a carefree child.
    “ No,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll deal with
him.”
    Nick tossed the blueprints aside. “You don’t have to
understand these.”
    T oday, he was wearing a pristine white shirt, and the fine
cotton stretched taut across his shoulders as he reached for a
notepad. He drew three circles on the page. “Hank builds the cars.
Jorge sells them. Peter counts up the money.” He inserted an
initial in each circle, then drew a square box in the middle of
them and connected each circle to the box with a line. “If I had
colored pens, I’d paint this box crimson.” He gave her a sideways
glance, humor glinting in his eyes. “How did you come by that crazy
name, anyway?”
    “ My mother was a fan of Gone with the
Wind . She wanted to name
me Scarlett, but the lady next door had just had a baby girl, and
she’d called her daughter Scarlett. They expected us to play
together, and naming me Scarlett as well would have caused endless
confusion. So, in a stroke of inspiration, my mother came up with
Crimson.”
    “ Did you?”
    “ Did I what?”
    “ Play with Scarlett.”
    “ No.” Crimson felt her raw nerves easing.
With a rush of gratitude, she understood what Nick was doing—he was
using small talk to bring her down from her frenzied agitation.
“Scarlett moved away when she was two. Her mother ran off with the
washing machine repair man. We’d been wondering why her washing
machine kept going wrong. I have no idea what happened to
Scarlett.”
    “ Did you have a nickname as a
kid?”
    “ Puce. Purple.” She grimaced at the
memories. “My mother realized her mistake, and she tried, but
nothing stuck. Crim sounded too much like Grim, and Son sounded
like a boy, and Crimmy sounded too close to Crummy.”
    “ Crimsy?”
    “ Hey. I like that.” She sent him a bright
smile. “It might make people think I’m clumsy , which is okay. I can be a bit inept at times.”
Their eyes met, and held for three long seconds. Something twisted
low in her belly. Nick’s eyes were dark brown, almost opaque, and
as the air between them grew thick with tension, they narrowed,
wary and challenging. If the eyes were a door to a person’s soul,
Nick’s were locked and bolted, it occurred to her.
    “ Crimsy it is then,” he said, keeping his
voice light. Too light. She could hear the effort it cost him to
appear at ease. He pretended to be busy, shuffling papers that
needed no shuffling, until the emotional charge that had flared up
between them had died down again.
    “ Your job is to coordinate,” he told her.
“Hank and Peter will estimate how much the improvement will cost.
Jorge will tell you if customers will be willing to pay the extra.
That’s all there is to it.”
    “ All right.” She scored a tick on her list
of questions.
    Nick leaned back in the seat, hands laced behind his head. “What’s
next?”
    Crimson studied her notes. “Taking the vintage Spur to a
trade fair in Detroit.”
    “ No way,” Nick said flatly.
    “ Why?” she countered, equally
flatly.
    “ Where’s the damn thing now?
    Her brows drew together. “Hanging on a
glass shelf in the showroom.”
    “ And how do you think it got there?” When
her frown deepened, Nick abandoned his relaxed pose. “With great
difficulty, that’s how.” He gestured to emphasize the point. “That
thing is priceless. I can imagine the fuss the insurance company
would make to take it down and ship it across the country, and then
string it back up again when it returns. And, while it’s here, at
the factory, what do people have to do to see it?”
    She shrugged. “They have to come here, I guess.”
    “ There is no I guess about it. They have to come here. And they see, not only the