the files that needed to be dealt with, the colorful sounds of the East Village awaking outside her open transom window, something called out harshly in Polish or Ukrainian, the sound of a delivery truck stopped nearby, a horn honking.
Molly stared at herself in the mirror. She had fully expected to see her romantic fantasy debunked. It would just be her, too tall, too skinny, redheaded and pale-faced Molly Michaels, in a fancy dress. Not changed by it. Certainly not completed by it.
Instead, a princess looked solemnly back at her. Her red hair, pulled out of its very professional upsweep by the entrapment inside the dress and the brief fray with the pearl, was stirred up, hissing with static, fiery and free. Her pale skin looked not washed out as she had thought it would against the sea of white but flawless, like porcelain. And her eyes shimmered green as Irish fields in springtime.
The cut of the dress had seemed virginal before she put it on. Now she could see the neckline was sinful and the rich fabric was designed to cling to every curve, making her look sensuous, red-hot and somehow ready.
“This is not the lesson I was hoping for,” she told herself, the stern tone doing nothing to help her drag her eyes away from the vision in the mirror. She ordered herself to take off the dress, in that same easily ignored stern tone. Instead, she did an experimental pose, and then another.
“I would have made a beautiful bride!” she cried mournfully.
Annoyed with herself, and with her weakness—eager to get away from all the feelings of loss for dreams not fulfilled that this dress was stirring up in her—she reached back to undo the fastener that held the zipper shut. It was stuck fast.
And much as she did not like what she had just discovered about herself—romantic notions apparently hopelessly engrained in her character—she could not bring herself to damage the dress in order to get it off.
Molly tried to pull it over her head without the benefit of the zipper, but it was too tight to slip off and when she lowered it again, all she had accomplished was her hair caught hard in the seed pearls that encrusted the neckline of the dress again.
It was as if the dress—and her romantic notions—were letting her know their hold on her was not going to be so easily dismissed!
Her phone rang; the two distinct beeps of Vivian Saint Pierre, known to one and all as Miss Viv, beloved founder of Second Chances. Miss Viv and Molly were always the first two into the office in the morning.
Instead of answering the phone, Molly headed out of her own office and down the hall to her boss’s office to be rescued.
From myself, she acknowledged wryly.
Miss Viv would look at this latest predicament Molly had gotten herself into, know instantly why Molly had been compelled to put on the dress and then as she was undoing the zip she would say something wise and comforting about Molly’s shattered romantic hopes.
Miss Viv had never liked Chuck Howard, Molly’s fiancé. When Molly had arrived at work that day six months ago with her ring finger empty, Miss Viv had nodded approvingly and said, “You’re well rid of that ne’er-do-well.”
And that was even before Molly had admitted that her bank account was as empty as her ring finger!
That was exactly the kind of pragmatic attention Molly needed when a dress like this one was trying to undo all the lessons she was determined to take from her broken engagement!
With any luck, by the end of the day her getting stuck in the dress would be nothing more than an office joke.
Determined to carry off the lighthearted laugh at herself, she burst through the door of Miss Viv’s office after a single knock, the wedding march humming across her lips.
But a look at Miss Viv, sitting behind her desk, stopped Molly in her tracks. The hum died midnote. Miss Viv did not look entertained by the theatrical entrance. She looked horrified.
And when her gaze slid away from where Molly stood in the doorway to where a chair was nearly hidden behind the open door, Molly’s breath caught and she slowly turned her head.
Despite the earliness of the hour, Miss Viv was not alone!
A man sat in the chair behind the door, the only available space for visitors in Miss Viv’s hopelessly disorganized office.
No, not just a man. The kind of man that every woman dreamed of walking down the aisle toward.
The man sitting in Miss Viv’s office was not just handsome, he was breathtaking. In a glance, Molly saw neat hair as rich as dark chocolate, firm lips, a strong chin with the faintest hint of a cleft, a nose saved from perfection—but made unreasonably more attractive—by the slight crook of an old break and a thin scar running across the bridge of it.
The aura of confidence, of success, was underscored by how exquisitely he was dressed. He was in a suit of coal-gray, obviously custom tailored. He had on an ivory shirt, a silk tie also in shades of gray. The ensemble would have been totally conservative had it not been for how it all matched the gray shades of his eyes. The cut of the clothes emphasized rather than hid the pure power of his build.
The power was underscored in the lines of his face.
And especially in the light in his eyes. The surprise that widened them did not cover the fact he radiated a kind of self-certainty, a cool confidence, that despite the veneer of civilization he wore so well, reminded Molly of a gunslinger.
In fact, that was the color of those eyes, exactly, gunmetal-gray, something in them watchful, waiting. She shivered with awareness. Despite the custom suit, the Berluti shoes, the Rolex that glinted at his wrist, he was the kind of man who sat with his back to the wall, always facing the door.
The man radiated power and the set of his shoulders telegraphed the fact that, unlike Chuck, this man was pure strength. The word excuse would not appear in his vocabulary.
No, Molly could tell by the fire in his eyes that if the ship was going down, or the building was on fire—if the town needed saving and he had just ridden in on his horse—he was the one you would follow, he was the one you would rely on to save you.
An aggravating conclusion since she was so newly committed to relying on herself, her career and her coworkers to save her from a disastrous life of unremitting loneliness. The little featherless budgie she had at home—the latest in a long list of loving strays that had populated her life—also helped.
The little swish of attraction she felt for the stranger made her current situation even more annoying. It didn’t matter how much he looked like the perfect person to cast in the center of a romantic fantasy! She had given up on such twaddle! She was well on her way to becoming one of those women perfectly comfortable sitting at an outdoor café, alone, sipping a fine glass of wine and reading a book. Not even slipping a look at the male passers-by!
Of course, this handsome devil appearing without warning in her boss’s office on a Monday morning was a test, just like the dress. It was a test of her commitment to the new and independent Molly Michaels, a test of her ability to separate her imaginings from reality.
Look at her deciding he was the one you would follow in a catastrophe when she knew absolutely nothing about him except that he had an exceedingly handsome face. Molly reminded herself, extra sternly, that all the catastrophes in her life had been of
