sorry?”
I reach into my bag for my notebook, taking the opportunity to suck in a deep breath while my head is inside the massive bag. “Your fragrance. Are you wearing it?”
“Is that a backhanded manner of saying you like the way I smell?” And just like that, the gentleman is gone again. The devil has pushed the angel off his shoulder.
With a click of my pen, I make a great show of pretending to take notes. “I’m supposed to be writing about my experience here today. So I’m giving you a chance to talk about products that you sell.”
The grin widens. “Well, thanks for that. And in your official capacity as a dedicated reporter, I’d like to tell you I’m thrilled with my collaboration with the Keels Fragrance corporation who’ve helped me to bring my signature scent to market. I consider Gareth Miller Homme an essential for today’s modern man.”
We’re driving up Fifth Avenue, and I’m having flashbacks of my last visit to New York. This trip seems both easier and harder at the same time. The view is a lot better from the back of a private car. But for the first time, I feel like I’ve got something to lose.
Miller reaches out and takes my notebook so I’m left holding my pen in midair. “Off the record, I don’t wear it.” He moves over, tilting his head toward me in an invitation to join his secret world. “Between you and me, there’s a perfumeria near my ranch and the old lady there, she must be a hundred or something. In the village, they say she makes love potions. She mixes this for me.”
“Why not make your signature fragrance smell like...like...how you smell?”
“Some things aren’t for sale, Cookie.”
The way he says this, with his smile fading and his dark eyes crinkling, suggests he’s thinking hard about everything he’s put on the market.
But that passes fast and he smiles again. “Besides, if I sold this stuff to everybody, how would I get you to look at me the way you are right now?”
I turn toward the window so that he can’t see my mouth hanging open. We’re passing through the fashion district, where, in a few hours, he’ll present his show to a worshipping crowd.
I’m both relieved and disappointed when we arrive back at the Refinery. I realize that I must have taken things too far and that Miller has decided to have breakfast with someone a bit more pleasant. At least I won’t have any more opportunities to make myself look stupid.
When he gets out of the car, I’m back to internally freaking out again. I sit there like an idiot for a minute while he holds the Town Car door. I’m there so long that he leans down and waggles his eyebrows.
I’m getting out of the car, pushing my blue Goyard St. Louis in front of me. I scored it at a NutriMin event and it’s pretty much my prized possession, my go-to accessory when I want to feel fabulous. Trying to make a glamorous exit from the car, I swing the bag way too wide. Only Gareth’s fast reflexes keep me from whacking a woman who’s the spitting image of Betty White in the gut. But the near miss is startling enough that she drops her own purse. Drinking straws, sugar packets and several rolls of toilet paper scatter all over the sidewalk.
I throw myself down to the concrete and try to scoop the contents back into the woman’s bag. And I’m momentarily distracted by the fact that the woman’s purse is actually much nicer than mine. A vintage Louis Vuitton Noé bucket bag. Probably 1960s, judging from the darkening of the monogram pattern. The stitching is in excellent shape, but the leather tie is frayed and won’t keep the bag closed.
While I’m busy thinking about how they really don’t make things like they used to anymore, and wondering why someone with a $2,000 handbag needs to go around town swiping basic necessities, I become conscious of the fact that the woman is talking to me. Getting pretty agitated, really.
“Girl! Girl! I say. What in the world are you doing?”
This is what the lady is sort of shrieking.
What I’m doing is holding on to the end sheet of one of the rolls of toilet paper and trying to use it to drag the whole roll toward me, which is having the opposite effect from what I intend. The roll is bounding up the sidewalk and is several feet away. A businessman crossing the street steps on it on his way into the hotel.
Gareth kneels down, desperately trying to get the drinking straws before they’re all knocked into the gutter. The driver even helps us. He’s got fistfuls of dirty sugar packets that it doesn’t seem right to give back to the lady.
We’re taking up a lot of space on the sidewalk and people grunt and snort in impatience as they pass. The woman makes a couple of attempts to lower herself to join in our efforts to pick up her things, but she can’t make it down.
I realize that she’s probably got arthritis in her knees like my grandma, and she looks like she wants to cry, which makes me want to cry.
“Oh, there, now. There,” she says. “Please just give me my bag.”
I get up on my knees and hold it out to her, but Gareth takes it instead.
He gives the woman his most charming smile. “I sure am sorry about all of this.”
“I’m sorry too. I’m sorrier than he is,” I add, scrambling off the ground.
Gareth nods at me but the woman can’t take her eyes off him. He taps his driver on the arm. “I’ll be very busy for the next coupla hours and my friend Joe here will be bored out of his mind. Why don’t you let him drive you home? And on the way he can duck into the market and replace the items we’ve lost here.”
“Oh no, no, I couldn’t possibly...” the woman says, but she’s already busy sinking into the posh interior of Gareth’s car.
Before the driver slams the door, the woman bites her lower lip and stares at me. “Well, dear, I must say, I can’t recall ever meeting someone quite so uncoordinated. Lucky for you, you’ve got your looks.” She breaks into a smile at the sight of Gareth. “And you’ve got yourself a very nice fellow there. A real keeper.”
My mouth falls open. Here’s another first. Being pegged as someone’s sugar baby. I bite back a retort. I mean, I did almost knock her off the sidewalk.
Gareth waves the car off. It pulls away, and his face shifts into a skeptical mug. This isn’t a man who dreams of being kept by anyone.
“That was...uh...” I struggle to complete the sentence. Weird? Surprising? Older women seem like they’d rank right up there with fat gals and babies on the list of people Gareth would love to push onto an iceberg and send off to sea. “Um...um...nice?”
His devilish grin returns. “Ah, I’m offended by your shock, Cookie Vonn. I figured it was the least I could do, considering you seemed so hell-bent on tossing all that poor lady’s toilet paper into the street and making sure she has no sugar for her coffee.”
My face heats up. “I’m not sure how I was supposed to know that the lady was making her way through Midtown scooping paper products into her handbag.”
Gareth laughs. “Well, that’s New York for you. I only wonder what Georges Vuitton would say if he knew that the Noé bag could be used to hold twelve rolls of toilet paper instead of five bottles of champagne.”
I
