“I hate pink,” she said savagely.
“What did that poor sweet color ever do to you?” came from the dressing room.
“It’s not what it did, it’s what you did,” she shouted. “And stop listening. Don’t you have cleaning to do?”
“Nope.”
Lia marched over to the back dressing room and spoke next to the wall. “What are you doing in there?”
“Playin’ my guitar.” He strummed as he spoke.
Lia still didn’t recognize his voice. She would have remembered that voice. “Are you part of the cleaning crew?”
“Nope.” He plinked out a phrase, repeated it, and then changed a couple of notes.
“Who are you? Does anybody know you’re there?”
He chuckled. “You do.” Strum, strum.
She did not have time for this. “Give me a reason not to call the police.”
“You’re not a poker player, are you? You should have told me you’d already called the police. Now I know I’ve got plenty of time to get away or, even worse, come over there and tie you up…empty the till…steal a few wedding gowns…I could get up to all sorts of mischief.”
Lia felt no threat from him based on nothing more than his voice and, well, the fact that he’d used the word mischief. Not that she’d had any experience with hard-core criminals, but she couldn’t imagine them referring to illegal activity as “mischief.” “Come on. Who are you?”
“You know Jimmy?”
“Jimmy?”
“He works here. I’m his cousin.”
“Oh, you mean James.” James was a junior associate at Tuxedo Park.
“Actually, I meant Jimmy. He hasn’t been James since he was christened.”
Prissy James had a cousin with a voice like his? “That still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing at Tuxedo Park after hours.”
“It’s quiet. I can work on my music here without anybody listening. Nobody’s bothered me…until tonight.”
“I’m bothering you?” What nerve.
“You’re pretty noisy over there.”
“I—” She was going to burst a blood vessel. She was. Really. “I work here!”
“Which one are you? What do you look like?”
Oh, no. She did not have time to flirt through the dressing-room wall with a deep voice she knew only as “Jimmy’s Cousin.”
“I look like a desperate assistant manager who just lost the day’s orders and is about to be fired.”
“Would that be a blond assistant manager?”
Men. “That would not.”
“A brunette assistant manager?”
Lia looked at her light brown hair in the mirror. She probably should streak it into something richer, but she didn’t want the bother of upkeep. “Probably not.” And on that note, she stepped out of the dressing room and into the office. He said something, but she ignored him.
The computer was still dark, but the keyboard had dried. Zhin probably hadn’t noticed that they’d lost the connection since she was still gathering fabric samples.
This was the pits. She’d have to call Elizabeth and tell her what happened.
She sighed. Poor William. He had his hopes up, among other things, she’d bet, and he wasn’t getting lucky tonight. What a waste of a fabulous lace jacket.
“Helloooooo,” a deep voice called.
“Leave me alone,” Lia shouted from the desk.
“I’m not gonna do that. You intrigue me.”
Lia rolled her eyes and poked at the dead computer.
“Tell me you’re not intrigued.” His voice sounded closer, as though he’d moved to the other side of the dressing room.
“I’m not intrigued.”
“If you weren’t mad at me would you be intrigued?”
“No.”
She heard something brush against the carpet and then, “Golden brown.”
3
AS THE DEEP VOICE sounded in the doorway behind her, Lia jumped and banged her funny bone on the edge of the desk.
She rubbed her elbow as he sang, sans guitar, “I dream of Jeannie with the golden-brown hair…Your name wouldn’t happen to be Jeannie, would it?”
He grinned down at her, a living, breathing, I’m-oh-so-charming-and-I-know-it country-lite rocker cliché.
One by one, she mentally ticked off the type:
Longish hair carefully cut in a bazillion layers so it would always look just a little shaggy so he wouldn’t be accused of trying too hard—check. Bonus check for sun streaks.
Stubble—check.
Devilish half smile—check.
Optional one-sided dimple—check.
A few lines crinkling around his eyes to demonstrate that he’d been around—check.
Long nose and/or prominent nose that had once been broken or had a kink of some sort in it. The importance of an interesting nose on a man should never be underestimated. Perfect noses on men meant bland good looks. The noticeably imperfect nose meant intriguing good looks. Why was this? Lia had no idea, but he had a definite check in the nose department.
Blue eyes—check. Eye color had never mattered to Lia, but blue eyes seemed to always come with this type.
Ability to slouch attractively…She looked at him lounging against the door frame. An A+ slouch. Check.
Button-down shirt with cuffs rolled up—check.
Jeans carefully worn and faded in just the right places—she’d give him a check even though she hadn’t seen the rear view because any guy who fit the type this exactly was bound to be wearing a pair that hugged his butt to his best advantage.
Broken-in boots—check.
Voice…here he didn’t get a check because the template voice was usually a tenor. When he spoke, this man’s surprisingly deep, lush bass pulsed all the way through her like the vibrate setting on a bed in a cheap motel.
Oh, and the attitude. He definitely had the I-can-be-reformed-by-the-right-woman attitude, accompanied by the care-to-try? twist to his mouth. Double and triple check.
As though she was interested in wasting time reforming anyone. He was not her type, except that she hadn’t quite found anyone who was her type, and in the meantime parts of her had decided that he would do and were reacting accordingly.
Stupid parts.
“You said you were the assistant manager,” he said. “That must make you Lia.”
She braced herself against the unwanted vibrations from his voice and said nothing, although she’d never heard her name poured from a man’s mouth in quite that way.
“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” he offered.
“You can do better than that.”
“I can.” He smiled his one-dimpled half smile. “But you haven’t convinced me to try.”
And she wouldn’t. She had work to do. She had computers to dry and pinks to order and Chinese phrases