Carolyn Hector - The Bachelor And The Beauty Queen

“I will not sit and wait.” The man cut her off. “I came to find out who would be so reckless as to sell a provocative gown to a sixteen-year-old.” He cast a glance up and down Lexi’s long frame. “Now I understand.”

“I beg your pardon!” Lexi gasped and reached for the pearls around her neck. This morning she’d smoothed her honey-blond hair into the perfect chignon. She knew her high cheekbones became heated with red after being reduced to some scolded teenager.

Mr. Foxx’s voice rose, “Young man, is there a problem?”

The man peered over Lexi’s shoulder and offered a half smile. “Please forgive me,” he said, offering a dazzling smile in Mrs. Foxx’s direction.

This time Lexi did not miss the batting lashes, though she did not blame the woman for blushing. Two seconds ago, she would have melted at the same smile. Despite the angry tone, his deep, velvety voice purred in her ears.

“I needed to come back and hand deliver this piece of garbage this woman sold to my young niece. You ought to be put in jail for this.” He clenched the black material in his fists and shook it in the air.

Over her shoulder, Mrs. Foxx gasped. Lexi twirled a pearl between her thumb and forefinger as he held up the barely there dress she’d designed and worn once during her youthful indiscretions. Of course, seeing the black dress held up in this man’s meaty hands caused Lexi to finally understand her parents’ concern at the time on her direction in life. Mary Pendergrass had warned her about it coming back and haunting her one day.

At the time, Lexi had paid no attention to her mother. Lexi was never quite the angel her sister, Lisbeth, was. She had designed the dress in order to get noticed by design schools and modeled it, something she did to supplement paying for college when pageants weren’t covering the bills. Designers wanted the iconic dress in a vault. Lexi wanted it burned. Her assistant, Andrew Mason, had insisted on holding on to the dress as a memento, reminding her what launched her career.

“Do you deny this belongs to you?”

“Well, yes.” Lexi bit the corner of her lip. The last time she’d laid eyes on it, she’d played a game of tug-of-war over it in her loft upstairs with Andrew, who wanted the dress hung on a platinum hanger and sealed in a glass case. How the dress had come to be sold was beyond her.

“Miss Pendergrass.” Mr. Foxx stepped forward with his wife, who adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “We’ll be leaving now.”

Lexi’s heart sank even before Mr. Foxx made his excuse to leave. Mrs. Foxx offered Lexi a curt smile as they quickly exited the office. Once the door closed behind them, Lexi craned her neck toward her intruder.

“Are you serious?” Lexi ground her back teeth together. Her body began to shake with bubbling anger.

“Did I ruin something for you?” the man spat out, sarcastically amused. “Imagine how I felt being called down here from an important meeting, only to discover your garment on my niece.”

“I don’t understand how your niece got my dress.”

“Clearly you’re in need of some capital.” He strolled over to the 3-D model of her proposal on her desk and she followed. “And you want to get it by any means necessary, so you sold a skimpy dress. No decent woman would even think about wearing this.” For emphasis, he shook the garment in the air again.

Typically, Lexi always liked to keep her cool, but this man had possibly cost her a building sale—not a dress sale, but a building sale. She narrowed her eyes at the dress before reaching out and snatching it from his hands. “Look, I have no idea how this dress got in your niece’s hands.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said folding his arms across his broad Black Label Ralph Lauren suit.

As a designer, Lexi familiarized herself with the difference between an off-the-rack ninety-nine-dollar suit and one costing two grand. This man reeked of money and entitlement. And armed with the knowledge, Lexi realized he would not give up—or leave—without an apology. She wanted him out of her office. She wanted him out of her store, hell, out of her life. “Look, Mr.—” Lexi realized he’d never even given his name before ruining her day.

“Reyes,” he provided in a clipped tone, “Stephen Reyes.”

Thanks to the suit and the introduction of his last name first, Lexi imagined him as some secret spy, like in the movies. Instead of a James Bond British accent, she detected a slight Caribbean accent, which wasn’t the point. Lexi shook the image of him in a black tuxedo holding a vodka martini out of her head.

“Mr. Reyes,” Lexi said with a slight nod. “I cannot explain how my dress ended up in your niece’s possession. It has never been on the floor. I apologize.”

“Are you telling me you don’t know who you sell your dresses to?”

Lexi’s mouth gaped open for a moment at his belittlement. She braced herself by placing her hands on the edge of her desk. “Did you hear the part where I apologized for this mix-up?”

“I heard it. I want an explanation. Do you not keep track of your customers and their purchases?”

“For the most part, yes,” she said, pressing her lips together and biting the inside of her cheeks. “We don’t make a habit of carding customers.”

“So you carelessly sell hooker dresses?”

“Hold on one damn minute, Mr. Reyes!” Her employees glanced toward the mirror as her voice rose. “I am sorry your sixteen-year-old got ahold of this dress, but I do not understand how. Either way, you have no reason to hurl insults at my work.”

Mr. Reyes closed the three-foot gap between them. His square jaw twitched as his back molars ground together. His dark eyes narrowed on her face, judging her, as his creamy, café-au-lait skin turned a slight red. “Your work—” he used air quotes “—nearly got a sixteen-year-old assaulted at a club.”

Immediately Lexi’s mind wheeled. The dress would certainly bring unwarranted attention to a naive woman. Her mouth dropped open. “Assaulted? What a woman wears has no bearing on an attack. Is she okay?” She didn’t know what to say.

“No thanks to you.” Mr. Reyes took a step back and sniffed the air. His eyes skimmed over the pictures and trophies of her beauty pageants on the shop walls.

“Again, I am so sorry for the mix-up.”

“Sure you are,” he said, as if no longer interested in her explanation. His eyes fell on the curios representing her past.

The accolades ranged from her time as a teen pageant queen and crossed over into her world of modeling and her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons The New School for Design. His eyes focused on Lexi’s party-girl images, including one of her wearing the infamous dress his niece had somehow got ahold of. The corners of his mouth turned into a frown; obviously her accolades did not help her apology. Just as her mother had predicted, people were going to judge her by her past.

Lexi cleared her throat, “Please let me know if I can do anything to help. I have two—”

Whatever Lexi wanted to say fell on deaf ears to Mr. Reyes. He snapped his gaze back at her. Not sure what had brought on his newly formed coldness, she shivered and stepped backward.

“What you do with your...whatever is your business. You need to keep underage girls out of here, so you don’t influence them with floozy dresses. ”

“Floozy?”

The smirk spreading across his face chilled her. “If the dress fits, lady.”

“I suggest you keep a better eye on your niece, instead of looking to blame other people.” Her statement clearly shocked him. With him off guard, she continued. “I think you should leave, Mr. Reyes,” Lexi said, tight-lipped, her heels clicking across the hardwood floors as she opened her office door. When the door swung open, Chantal and Andrew jumped back half a foot. “We’re done here,” she told him.