Lee Nichols - Hand-Me-Down

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Thanks are long overdue to Nancy Coffey, Farrin Jacobs, Lynn Nichols, Jessica Alvarez, Helen Ross, Paula Ross and Constance Wall.

CHAPTER 01

CHAPTER 02

CHAPTER 03

CHAPTER 04

CHAPTER 05

CHAPTER 06

CHAPTER 07

CHAPTER 08

CHAPTER 09

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

The second time Ian Dunne came into my life, I was trapped under a pile of bodies, behind a sheet of plate glass.

I’d just graduated from UC Santa Barbara, my hometown school. I’d finished at the top of the middle of my class—which is the story of my life—and a week later had grabbed the bottom rung of corporate America.

I was folding men’s charcoal woolens at Banana Republic when my manager materialized at my shoulder.

“You’ve almost got it!” Jenny chirped. “First the sleeve, then over, over…” Showing me, yet again, how to fold a sweater.

I gritted my teeth, and gestured to my pile. “Mine are fine.”

“Good enough for the Gap.” Jenny smiled encouragingly. “Maybe.”

“Maybe I should do the windows instead.”

“You can’t do the windows.”

“But I want to do the windows.”

“Sorry,” she said, and scurried into the back office.

My problem was that I was assertive enough to annoy, but not enough to succeed. That’s always been my problem: I’m the uneasy medium. Pretty enough, but not beautiful. Smart enough, but not brilliant. If I were a college, I’d be a safety school. If I were a skirt, I’d be basic black.

Wren finished ringing up a sale and drifted over. We’d started work the same day, and she’d been promoted to the register by the end of the morning. I liked her despite her obnoxious competence and her glossy dark hair and clear olive skin. She smiled and neatened my sweater stack. “Jenny’s teaching you to fold again?”

“Folding’s not really my strength.” I glanced toward the front of the store. “What I should be doing is—”

“Oh, Anne, not again. She’ll never let you do the windows.”

“But I’m pretty sure that window design is my thing.” I stacked the last sweater. “I’m sort of arty.”

“You were a business major.”

“Well, arty-businessy. Anyway, I have the soul of an artist.” Since graduating, I’d been doing some thinking. It was clear I wasn’t going to make it on looks alone. Not like my oldest sister Charlotte. Nor was I anyone’s idea of a girl-genius, like my other sister, Emily. So I figured I’d be the next Paloma Picasso. Artist/designer. Of course, my dad was no Pablo, but still.

“How many art classes did you take?” Wren asked.

“Does pottery count?”

“Only if you got an A.”

“Oh. Anyway—” I lowered my voice. “Aren’t you a little embarrassed to be working here?” Wren had just graduated from Pomona.

She shook her head. “I love clothes.”

“Yeah,” I said, unconvinced. I liked clothes, too. New ones, at least. “Still. Shouldn’t we aspire to greater things than our fifty-percent discount?”

“Like a sixty-percent discount?”

“Exactly! Or, for instance…”

“The windows,” Wren finished.

I smiled. And ten minutes later, when Jenny was on the phone to the head office and Wren—in a fit of self-preservation—disappeared for an early lunch, I crammed myself into the front window with six mannequins.

An assortment of mall-walkers noticed me, and paused and pointed. Enjoying the celebrity, I gave them a queen’s wave and got to work. How hard could it be? Easy as stacking wood, I told myself—ignoring for the moment that I’d never actually stacked wood.

The official theme for the Fall windows was the stunningly original “Back to School.” I decided to stay on topic and create the Banana Republic Cheerleading Squad. Given Jenny’s level of pep, she’d have to approve.

I wrestled the first mannequin, dressed in denims and suede jacket, into a crouching position. It took some doing, as she was not at all limber, but I finally grappled her onto all fours. The second mannequin was easier, but the third required that I kneel on her stomach and roughly yank her legs. The fourth and fifth, wearing light gray sweaters and khaki cords, were male. I twisted them onto their hands and knees and turned to the sixth mannequin, a recalcitrant squad leader in a plaid mini. By the time I finished tangling with her, I was sweaty and exhausted…and had attracted a crowd.

I loftily ignored them, and arranged the first three mannequins. Easy enough. Side by side, on hands and knees—the two males on the outside, a female in the middle. I manhandled the next one on top, balanced another next to her, and stepped back to admire my handiwork. Looking good. Jenny was going to be amazed.

They say a pyramid is a totally stable structure, but I challenge anyone to prove it with cheerleading mannequins. I lifted Plaid Mini, the recalcitrant squad leader, over my head and stepped forward. Neatly avoiding the sprawled limbs of the other mannequins, I rose onto tiptoes and gently flipped Plaid Mini onto the very apex of the pyramid.

She teetered. She tottered. The crowd hushed…and the sixth mannequin settled perfectly into place!

I beamed.

The crowd applauded.

And as I curtsied, there was a knock at the window. My sister Emily. I almost didn’t recognize her. She’s sort of severe and intellectual-looking, not exactly a mall rat. Standing next to her, smiling, was a tall, blond, handsome man.

“I did it!” I told Emily triumphantly through the glass.

“What?” she yelled.

“I did it!” I gestured behind me at the pyramid. “My first window!”

“What?” she shouted again.

She turned to the blond man, and I saw him say: she says she does windows.

Emily frowned as she answered. I couldn’t hear the words, but from her expression I could tell they were pretty ripe. She’d just had her first book published—an indecipherable academic feminist treatise which for some reason had been getting press in Cosmo and Newsweek—and she wanted to be this classy, cool philosopher-queen. Not someone whose sister wrestles cheerleading mannequins in mall windows.

“Back to school!” I mouthed, as if that were an explanation.

This didn’t soothe Emily. The man turned to calm her, and I suddenly recognized him.

I said, “Ian?”

He saw the word. He nodded.

I startled backward, almost tripping on a splayed plastic hand— I grabbed an errant elbow to steady myself. The elbow joggled the barest inch and the mannequin underneath twisted slightly. I lunged to steady him—and slipped. My knee whacked Suede Jacket square in the face and she squirted out of the pyramid like a wet watermelon seed. Then Plaid Mini leapt at me from above and grabbed me in an obscene scissors-hold between her thighs. I struggled for air and popped one of her legs off— I twirled and spun as the pyramid collapsed around me in a hail of cheerleaders, and finally ended on my back, with Khaki Cords splayed on top.

The applause was louder, this time.

Emily slammed her bag onto the table at the Coffee Bean and scowled. After the collapse of the Great Pyramid, Jenny decided it was my turn to take lunch—preferably in another state. I didn’t argue, even though Emily was lurking outside the store with smoke issuing from her nostrils. Emily is the middle sister, so she’s supposed to be mild and quiet and timid, but nobody’s ever been foolish enough to mention that to her.